‘Crowfall’ MMO Coming From Producer of ‘Star Wars Galaxies,’ ‘Star Wars: The Old Republic’

ArtCraft Entertainment is a new studio with a few familiar names attached to it, and today, the developer is asking fans to help in funding a new MMO called Crowfall. Although the official website for Crowfall has been up for a while now, there was no word on the game’s release, and there was only terse information on the game’s mechanics. With the launch of the official Kickstarter for the game, however, that changed. Fans can find out plenty about the upcoming “throne war” MMO now, and they can choose to support it with their wallets if they see fit.

Crowfall is a voxel-based MMO where each player can run a persistent Eternal Kingdom. Outside of that kingdom are different realms for players to explore. These realms are called Campaign Worlds. They are procedurally generated and not permanent. A Campaign World only lasts as long as its four seasons, which become increasingly more difficult as time goes on. After the fourth season, the Campaign World is “wiped and that World goes offline forever,” but a winner is chosen and all player characters go on a little stronger from their experiences in the world.

Characters, unlike a Campaign World, are persistent. Characters take from the Campaign Worlds to build up their Eternal Kingdoms. With enough resources, players can build up their kingdom by crafting items and building structures. To obtain the resources, the persistent character must enter a Campaign World and harvest them, or a player can opt to barter with players that do instead of going out themselves.

Crowfall‘s “core module” of the game (essentially the basic foundation of the game), is what Kickstarters are funding. This is tentatively dated for a winter 2016 release, and includes server architecture, character creation, world building, combat mechanics, economy infrastructure, players’ eternal kingdoms, and campaign rules.

A number of different support options are available on the Kickstarter page for Crowfall. Hopeful players can pay as little as $5 to show their support, with a whopping $10,000 the highest. Starting at $30, players will gain access to the game in beta and will receive an official, digital copy of the game upon release.

Crowfall will be a buy-to-play game with an optional subscription fee called “VIP membership.” A microtransaction store will be included, with items available to purchase that should not affect gameplay outcome. The VIP membership includes a discount in this store among other features, like allowing all of a player’s characters to passively train while offline instead of just one and more.

Crowfall is being brought to life by Gordon Walton, Executive Producer of Ultima Online, Star Wars Galaxies, and Star Wars: The Old Republic, and J. Todd Coleman, Creative Director of Shadowbane, Wizard 101, and Pirate 101. Other developers of the game have worked EverQuest, DC Universe Online, and Warhammer Online.

In other MMO news, the Inquisitr reported that Perfect World and Cryptic Studios’ free-to-play title, Neverwinter, has officially been dated to launch on Xbox One later next month. While the game itself will be free, console players will still have to have an Xbox Gold membership to play.

[Images via Crowfall]