Divergence Kickstarter Campaign Announced For August 1st 2013!

At long last we're finally ready to announce our new campaign's start date and details!

There are a lot of things that are important to a lot of people, but in the end the feature that seemed the most important to the most people were player housing and player cities, and so that's what we devoted our energy to developing this time around.

And not just any old kind of player housing and cities. People made it very clear to us that they know when they're being duped, and that none such half-assed measures would be tolerated such as the abysmal attempts of games like Age of Conan and even worse, Everquest 2.

Nobody wants a home that exists in the exact same configuration with the exact same shapes and the exact same location as everyone else. They want to be able to point to the top of a hill and say, "See that? That's mine..."

As you all can imagine, this is a big big job for even a "real" studio. SOE spent millions developing their system years ago with a team of dozens of highly paid professionals. What makes SGL think we can compete with something like that, when no other professional studio has been able to match it since?

Because I believe a wanton amount of waste, inefficiency and plain-old-fashioned "not-give-a-damn" goes on in the game industry today. There should be nothing you're able to do in this little mmo that you can't do in Star Wars: Old Republic for an example; a multi-hundred-million-dollar "you must buy it because..Bioware... Shiny... Star Wars... more of...".

My intention is to continually build and improve this franchise and this particular game until it's the best out there, and I think that once this campaign starts people will see "what is possible" and hopefully back it to greatness.

Why August 1st?
Because in truth, the compulsion is simply to keep on saying, "Just one more fix..! Just one more thing...!" and to be honest, that could go on forever. At some point, you have to draw the line and say "it's happening at this place on this time one way or another" and set the wheels in motion. Our deposit has been put down on our simultaneous advertising campaign for MMORPG.com and it can't be refunded, so this is happening.

What all can we expect in the new campaign?
Like I mentioned earlier, player housing will be the primary focus, however we're also going to be showing off our framework for player cities as well. I know this is a big claim and assured to arouse some "PuhSHAH!"s from the community. I urge all to simply curb their suspicions until they see it in action ;)

How complete are those features?
Not. Obviously. The basis for being able to do the things we're doing in the new video is the harvesting, gathering and basic crafting systems which is... why we're trying to get money to go further with this. And so what you're seeing in the new footage is essentially those prerequisites stripped away just to show the "ability" that you have to do these things. Once we get another round of funding, it will be my pleasure to expand this to crafting and harvesting. I'll be expanding on this a lot in the commentary and press release.

Any new races, breeds or species that we'll see?
You'll just have to wait and see ;)

About the new movie(s) coming out... What will be the setting?
The hope was I'd be able to host them on one of our player islands in a different climate than our last video. So far we've shown Coniferous and Mediterranean climates. I'd love to host it somewhere else this time but one stubborn bug is cropping up that might prevent that. I have people on it so hopefully we'll know something in the next week as the new footage will be shot towards the middle of next week.

Does this campaign have a focus as to an individual faction?
It didn't intend to but when you're hiring a lot of people and working with them every day, things work out differently than you often anticipate. For example I had consignments for my designs for all three Terran factions to be included in the new campaign but only the fellow helping me with VRTek actually completed his work, so i've been playing catchup with OSI and DC for the last several weeks. Because of this reason and this reason alone (that there are actually assets for VR) that you'll see them more prominent in the new campaign, but we'll be filling OSI and DC out with the proceeds of this campaign to a much greater degree, even during the campaign.

What about perks? What will they be and how many?
I'd love to outline this ahead of time, but it would be impossible to list them without at the same time giving away "the surprise". I will say this though that several of the perks will have to do with aiding you in setting up your homestead. These perks will be an excellent way for both individual lone-wolves and also groups of friends to start off with enough materials to immediately begin staking their claim to an amazing piece of real-estate as the foundation for their own homes, settlements, trade outposts and even metropolises.

Ooooooh "surprise". Does that have something to do with the "super secret" stuff you mentioned in the last campaign? that if we chipped in enough money that we'd have it for this campaign?
Yes ;) And you'll be really surprised. I hope so anyway because if you see it in action and aren't surprised you're one jaded sumbitch my friend!

Will you be honoring any previous contributors by "grandfathering them into" the new perks system?
Yes, to a certain degree. This isn't going to happen without more money and so i can't lose my shirt on this, but at the bare minimum some people will be elevated based on their contributions: For example, all player-island purchasers will inherit our top-end property defense package to help prevent someone snatching their claim on the first day of release simply because they had a day job and couldn't be there. In addition, all players who purchased a vindicator or Verrator (the separate perk, not the perk where you got both) will be elevated from a Tier 1 to a Tier 2 suit at no charge. This suit likely won't appear in the new campaign simply because i'm very picky about what artists I bring on to help me out and i'm still in the market for an alien-technology-only artist to help me flesh it out. Players who bought both a Vindicator and Verrator will get something different from that but in a species war with two sides vying for survival, players who can "play both sides of the table" are in a much greater position to grief their own people than those who play individual sides."

Will Vindicator and Verrator still be available in the new campaign?
Yes but to a much lesser degree. We're pretty much at the limit of how many we want in the world. They're gods of death and our game world is in no position to survive a Ragnarok just yet, so they will be present in very limited supply and to a much greater expense. Essentially, they're only for fanatics now, which is the way I intended for it to be.

I want the characters that people already purchased to be rare and coveted.

I missed the last campaign so i didn't have a chance to get them when they were cheaper! Is there any way i could still lock in that price?

Under normal circumstances I would say no. But in truth, if I had the ability to include even one new thing into the upcoming campaign, I would be doing the project a disservice if i didn't at least try to come up with the money for it. I had a blessed response from players when UPS delivered my PC to me in pieces upon re-opening sales for a brief period last time and therefore for the next week I'll be taking email requests for these characters (individually - no packages for both sides anymore unless you want to pay double as in two orders) if anyone is still interested in getting in while they're cheaper. As an added bonus, I'll be grandfathering in any of these characters into Tier 2 suits if they buy before the new campaign starts as all new Vindicator sales after August 1st will begin in Tier 1 suits.

This also opens up a unique investment opportunity for players who maybe want to "buy in" now to a rare species in the game for the purposes of re-selling them to other players at a later date for profit. Anyone who recalls how much money a player Jedi (for instance) was going for on ebay in pre-cu SWG will understand what I mean.

Any sales requests can go straight to my email but please be compassionate - I still get over 15 emails a day and it's brutal to try and respond to every single one and still work on the game.

ethan (at) divergence-online.com

Well I've said enough for right now. If anyone is still reading, I want to say thanks again for the opportunity to service the mmo community with something I believe it desperately needs and I'm looking forward to showing off  "What we did with your money" very soon XD