Crowfall - videos, images, lore & open beta (free tests) info

[JamesGoblin]

Crowfall is PvP MMO with strong RTS / survival feel, kickstarted in March 2015. It's budget is already over $7M with 120 000+ registered supporters; alpha access is kinda expensive but there will be open beta (free tests) "this winter", requiring only registration on the site.

It is based on claiming territory + voxel building & destruction + players will be physically making their own kingdoms (by...playing Tetris!?!). For quick intro, say - it's IGN Wiki, Pantheon (gods/factions) and Archetypes (classes).

This game is bit strange - you are not a human, but a crow - spirit crow that can possess bodies. After death, one doesn't just respawn, but has to fly around in crow form and seek new corpse to inhabit; This often means change of class, race and sex!?



Here is the story of the comic above, explaining some important game mechanics: At first (pages 4,5) a knight chooses to serve Malekai, the Lord of Shadows - one of the 13 gods. God grants him eternal life and other benefits, but the knight is obliged to fight and pillage in Malekai's name - this might include building and maintaining god's statues and tempes (which also cost gold and resources for taxes and maintenance).

After that (pages 1,2,3), on the 47th day of the War of the False Kings, the knight dies and the crow-spirit leaves to fly and find another body (pages 6,7). On the graveyard nearby, the crow finds the corpse of fallen champion, possesses it and walks away to fight for Malekai again.

...and they all lived happily ever after   

The universe: here is an Imgur album with hundreds of Crowfall images and screenshots (all credits to Handies of Crowfall forums), for example this is how it's beasts change through four seasons (winter marks the end of the world, and death of all in it):




Graphics are cartoony to enable smooth battles with multiple hundreds of players, collision detection, physics and destruction. Anyway here's some player made footage of early tests, starting with a siege with lots of voxels and physics:

- "Death in the Rubble";
- Noob girl playing with fire (and couple Centaurs);
- Ranger PvP with some comments.

[franciscourant]

This game is bit strange - you are not a human, but a crow - spirit crow that can possess bodies. After death, one doesn't just respawn, but has to fly around in crow form and seek new corpse to inhabit; This often means change of class, race and sex!?

This forum... I think I've never had so much trouble registering on any website ever in my life. 5 anti-spam questions! If a spambot achieves to pass through this, its creator surely will win an award for AI development or something. Anyway...

So yea the Vessel system, lot of questions surrendering it... We talked about the attachment and RP so let's not even go there. I wonder how complicated it will be for a player to go get a new character after he dies, in the harsher worlds. They've hinted about vessels we could find in the cemeteries, but are they good enough? Can we even be efficient in PvP with those basic quality characters? My plan initially was to NOT grind much in the campaign, to stick to average or slightly above average gears and PvP a lot. But now, when I die, I guess that I'll have to find new gears (if the campaign features high change of looting), but on top of that the runes and the vessel I may also lose. So yea, we'll see how things go. Still pretty exciting new design, but I've never played something like that so who knows. Keeping an eye on the development (two eyes actually) and testing tomorrow. =)

[JamesGoblin]

<snippety snip>

So yea the Vessel system, lot of questions surrendering it... We talked about the attachment and RP so let's not even go there. I wonder how complicated it will be for a player to go get a new character after he dies, in the harsher worlds. They've hinted about vessels we could find in the cemeteries, but are they good enough? Can we even be efficient in PvP with those basic quality characters? My plan initially was to NOT grind much in the campaign, to stick to average or slightly above average gears and PvP a lot. But now, when I die, I guess that I'll have to find new gears (if the campaign features high change of looting), but on top of that the runes and the vessel I may also lose. So yea, we'll see how things go. Still pretty exciting new design, but I've never played something like that so who knows. Keeping an eye on the development (two eyes actually) and testing tomorrow. =)

Vessels are basically EVE online "quote" (one of many in Crowfall) - pilot (clone)/ship equals spirit/body, bodies can be crafted in various qualities, lost/stolen/destroyed and yadda.

It worked fine in EVE, OFC we are yet to see the results of this somewhat monstrous transplantation!? I don't see EVE as, well...exactly your typical RPG.

By the way, here's new video (Ranger PvP) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=LPPl7MpwqyI

[Produno]

This forum... I think I've never had so much trouble registering on any website ever in my life. 5 anti-spam questions! If a spambot achieves to pass through this, its creator surely will win an award for AI development or something. Anyway...

You would think so, yet I'm still deleting spam bots everyday here!!

[Riven]

This forum... I think I've never had so much trouble registering on any website ever in my life. 5 anti-spam questions! If a spambot achieves to pass through this, its creator surely will win an award for AI development or something. Anyway...

You would think so, yet I'm still deleting spam bots everyday here!!

Maybe try updating to latest smf 2.0.11 and squash some filthy bugs

[franciscourant]

This forum... I think I've never had so much trouble registering on any website ever in my life. 5 anti-spam questions! If a spambot achieves to pass through this, its creator surely will win an award for AI development or something. Anyway...

You would think so, yet I'm still deleting spam bots everyday here!!

Well if even here you guys are under spam bot attacks, I pity all those forums for which a simple captcha is required to register.

I remember on the Crowfall forum before they added the paywall, there was regularly nonsensical messages posted about products from Asia. I wonder if it's an effective tactic of marketing at all, for all the trouble  it must represent to code those bots and stay up to date with the most recent anti-spam technology.

[JamesGoblin]

Speaking of bots - yesterday, on Majorleaguegaming.com, first 3 pages or so were filled with new Korean (?) threads, each made a minute after the previous!? It was roughly one hundred threads, and the titles were varying - advertising god only knows what.


I just wonder, what kind of audience Korean anybody expects to find there? We can't even read the damn stuff (not that reading it would make much difference).

[Produno]

I dont always get time to check the forums everyday and sometimes after a few days of inactivity i was coming back to several hundred nonsense posts. Which probably dont sound alot but for a small forum like this is completely swamps the legit posts from legit users.

The only way i have found to tackle it is to continually update the question and answers - or keep adding more.

[JamesGoblin]

"The Big World" tests started - basically, it's a step from earlier MOBA-like small scale testing towards bigger MMO servers with crafting, gathering, mining etc. - tho building, territory control and character customization/genders are not in tests yet. A couple videos:

- game preview by TheLazyPeon. If you know about the game, skip first ~100 seconds - that's where he explains Crowfall to his subscribers.

- ...and combat changes by ItsZiz.

[franciscourant]

It's been a while! The devs are now working on the final major milestone.

This milestone includes:

- the Frostweaver (final class)
- the Dregs (guild vs. guild campaign)
- mounts
- caravans
- refineries
- remaining promotion classes, skill trees, and multi-classing disciplines
- ability to dynamically add, move and destroy buildings
- a host of other features