Project Copernicus, the Kingdoms of Amalur MMO

[CeeKay]

the Kingdoms of Amalur MMO has its first showing in this fly-through video.  no gameplay, just landscapes, and it kinda looks like an updated version of WoW.

not to mention the company may not survive long enough to release it.


[edit]  oh, and it's due out June 2013.

[EngineNo9]

Let's see: used their last money to make a late payment the state, couldn't cover payroll, burning $4 million a month, still owe $12 million to the state, and have another year to go in development of an MMO (which means more like 1.5)...yeah, they're in good shape.

[CeeKay]

Let's see: used their last money to make a late payment the state, couldn't cover payroll, burning $4 million a month, still owe $12 million to the state, and have another year to go in development of an MMO (which means more like 1.5)...yeah, they're in good shape.

and apparently they laid off everyone today.  no word on beta sign up though 

[CeeKay]

to quote Kotaku:  The Trailer You Weren’t Supposed to See for a Game You’ll Never Play.

[CeeKay]

interesting reveal:  this would have been free to play.

Flagging that story on his Twitter feed, Ted Nesi, a reporter for Providence’s WPRI (and a must-follow on all things 38 Studios), wondered how the move would have affected Project Copernicus, the MMO that Schilling’s company was working to create. Nesi asked, “Would 38 Studios even have been able to charge for Copernicus next year?”

The answer is that they wouldn’t have tried. When I talked to Schilling for my story breaking down 38 Studios’ crash, he told me that the company’s plan was to make Copernicus free to play and to seek revenue from within the game, the same way EA is attempting with Old Republic.

“We were going to be the first triple-A, hundred-million-dollar-plus, free-to-play, micro-transaction-based MMO. That was one of our big secrets,” Schilling told me. “I think when we eventually showed off the game for the first time, the atom bomb was going to be free-to-play. When we announced that at the end, that was gonna be the thing that, I think, shocked the world.”

[Blackjack]

“We were going to be the first triple-A, hundred-million-dollar-plus, free-to-play, micro-transaction-based MMO. That was one of our big secrets,” Schilling told me. “I think when we eventually showed off the game for the first time, the atom bomb was going to be free-to-play. When we announced that at the end, that was gonna be the thing that, I think, shocked the world.”

This along with some of Schilling's recent knuckleheaded comments concerning one governor stupid enough to help fund his company and now trying to get its money back seems to confirm A) Curt Schilling was disconnected from reality and had no idea what he was doing as a businessman, and B) It's probably for the best that 38 Studios didn't just get deeper in debt.

Besides, the best computer game is always the one that never got made. Then, we can just yak about all the great things it was going to do, and not deal with all the messiness of Reality.   I'd love to return to about a year and half ago when we were all chatting about how wonderful SWTOR and Diablo 3 were gonna be and we were gonna play them for years. For most of us, wasn't that more fun than the reality?

So, I liked Amalur, maybe even loved it, and sure Copernicus sounds cool. But a company that buried itself so deep in debt on a non-MMO going out and spending millions to do an F2P MMO, and then operate it and do customer service for it after launch? Ugh. That would've been an apocalyptic financial scenario, probably costing hundreds of people their jobs.

On a hopeful note, maybe some of the people working on the more promising aspects of Copernicus will get a chance to do something with the idea elsewhere, or maybe even just a sliver of it.