Back in March of 2015 I heard that an MMO I really liked back in the old days of the early 2000’s – Shadowbane – was having a bit of a renaissance… The guys who originally built it were kickstarting a spiritual successor to the game that would be called Crowfall.
I thought this was a capital idea as I love goal-based PvP and I’ve always liked odd MMO races – so I backed the thing at a pretty high level.
How high of a level?
The game took five years to produce, and while they did fulfill all of the stuff they promised like the really cool physical copy of the game I eventually received…
The hard-backed art book (which is phenomenal)…
And even a one-shot comic and bunch of miniatures for the various races…
… the game itself, which was a cross between a gathering / crafting / survival game and a hardcore squad-based PvP game, wasn’t a commercial success.
I enjoyed it, but that doesn’t count for much when you need a critical mass of players to pay the people running the game.
Eventually the game was sold to another developer in 2021, and in November of 2022 the game was shut down.
Such is the way of the games industry; the games that try new things are super risky and have a high chance of failure, but those games have to happen to move the industry forward… If the try and fail didn’t happen, all we would have is 40 versions of “Madden”…
Oh, wait…
Listening to "How to Disappear" by The Bad Dreamers