Vaporware finally coalescing?

roughbearmattach

Both Ship of Heroes and City of Titans are seemingly moving towards a beta release date:

Ship of Heroes

City of Titans

Can't find anything very concrete about Valiance Online, just more of their alpha phase.

I'm surprised, even pleasantly so. That being said, there's no guarantee that either SoH or CoT will be polished enough for me to leave Champs, but I will likely try them out.

Thoughts? Additional news?

nepht

roughbearmattach said:

Both Ship of Heroes and City of Titans are seemingly moving towards a beta release date:

Ship of Heroes

City of Titans

Can't find anything very concrete about Valiance Online, just more of their alpha phase.

I'm surprised, even pleasantly so. That being said, there's no guarantee that either SoH or CoT will be polished enough for me to leave Champs, but I will likely try them out.

Thoughts? Additional news?

So should be ready in early access in another 6 years.

avianos

I misread the title as Vaporwave and I got really confused

there will be no other MMORPG after CO for me, so not interested ¯\_(ツ)_/¯​​

nepht

avianos said:

I misread the title as Vaporwave and I got really confused



there will be no other MMORPG after CO for me, so not interested ¯\_(ツ)_/¯​​

What gets me is that Ship of Heroes art looks like its ripping off CO.

flyingfinn

nepht said:

avianos said:

I misread the title as Vaporwave and I got really confused



there will be no other MMORPG after CO for me, so not interested ¯\_(ツ)_/¯​​

What gets me is that Ship of Heroes art looks like its ripping off CO.

It's spiritually creating a successor.

jonsills

SoH wants to have an "open beta" for fifteen bucks a month???

Lots o' luck getting that "mass login test" you guys want - I don't know very many people willing to subscribe to a pig in a poke.

spinnytop

jonsills said:

SoH wants to have an "open beta" for fifteen bucks a month???

Woof. Takes balls to so blatantly try to cash in on fanboys.

roughbearmattach

Both of them already have alpha modes, but yeah, charging money for a closed beta is a big ask.
It comes with the promise (or lure) of "get exclusive stuff that you can keep when game goes live."

My big question remains, "MMOs need a good playerbase to work. How does a small game, without significant marketing or a big publisher, get that initial playerbase?"

Do they assume a big chunk of CoX folks will come back after all these years? Also, because two (or maybe three) of these MMOs will arrive at about the same time, won't they be splitting their target market?

spinnytop

roughbearmattach said:

My big question remains, "MMOs need a good playerbase to work. How does a small game, without significant marketing or a big publisher, get that initial playerbase?"

Well you have a free open beta so players can come in and see what your game is about and build hype around it- oh OOPS!

I mean they are just really crippling themselves with the 15/month beta. Not only is it going to limit the number of players they get, but of the ones they do get if they join the beta and aren't impressed they're going to resent having to pay 15 bucks and will trash the game. Instead of building hype, they're building anti-hype!

pantagruel01

spinnytop said:

I mean they are just really crippling themselves with the 15/month beta. Not only is it going to limit the number of players they get, but of the ones they do get if they join the beta and aren't impressed they're going to resent having to pay 15 bucks and will trash the game. Instead of building hype, they're building anti-hype!

On the other hand, if the game is terrible and people are going to trash it anyway, at least they got a bit of money out of it.

spinnytop

Hence my belief that this is just one big way to scam desperate coh fanboys.

biffsmackwell

pantagruel01 said:

On the other hand, if the game is terrible and people are going to trash it anyway, at least they got a bit of money out of it.

What a goal!

I might give these games a try. But I'm not gonna hold my breath. If either of them plays like City of Heroes, then I already know I won't like it. There's a reason I dropped that game the minute I saw screenshots of Champs. Looked bad, played bad. All the content in the world doesn't make a boring game less boringer.

Charging a monthly fee, I can't see that as anything other than shooting themselves in the foot. Is it just for the beta that they're charging or will the price carry over to live?

One thing that these games can do to get my attention is stick pretty strongly to comics aesthetics. But seeing as there's tons of money to be made from anthro people, I'm guessing these games will probably favor those styles. If it looks like I'm walking around Disneyland with cutesy wolfvampiredemondragonangels then I'm out.

Speaking of which, can someone make a mod for Champs that replaces all the cutesy animal heads with a hairy butt? Thanks.

City of Titans better have wrestling centaurs though.

roughbearmattach

spinnytop said:

Hence my belief that this is just one big way to scam desperate coh fanboys.

I don't think there is any active attempt to scam folks. Honestly, I hope one of these games succeeds.
I'm not betting on it, though.

pantagruel01

roughbearmattach said:

I don't think there is any active attempt to scam folks.

CoT and VO I think are just people being unrealistic about what they can accomplish. SoH seems... strange.