Greetings:
My name is Aaron Victoria, Lead Designer/Programmer of an independent MMORPG entitled Legends of Etherell: Antavia. I'm also the CEO of an independent game development studio, SilverHelm Studios LLC. For the last 3 years our company has been developing Legends of Etherell, unfunded, as a community-driven product. As Lead Designer, I've drawn from massive amounts of inspiration from countless MMORPG experiences from Everquest to Dungeons Siege. However, one of my biggest influences was City of Heroes/City of Villains a game that I played from its early beta release to its final closing. City of Heroes was the first game that ushered in my exposure to team/party based gameplay; my friends and dedicated every other Saturday to it during my days in the military. We never missed a session for almost 5 years (except during deployments with no internet options). It was my inspiration, the supporting structure for our current skill system, and has been the basis of the grouping mechanics in our project.
City of Heroes represents an era that I'm not quite ready to let go of yet, and it's the reason why I'm here. I've spent the last few months researching the demand for City of Heroes and how its closing has affected players. I must say, it has revealed some incredible discoveries. After playing Champions Online, it just didn't have the same feeling. I didn't feel like I was playing a City of Heroes alternative, but more like I was playing another game completely. So I continued my research across various forums on the internet, and found that a lot of players tried Champions Online and felt the same way that I did. After a long meeting with friends and associates that played City of Heroes religiously, I decided they may be right; it may be time to share my idea with a community of like-minded City of Heroes fans.
We started developing Legends of Etherell 3 years ago, with the first 2 years dedicated to story development and the last year to physical content development and programming. About 2 months ago we met another group of independent MMORPG developers who worked on the technology behind Everquest 1/2 and Asheron's Call 1/2. They happened to have started development opposite of us; starting with programming first using placeholder art. Their game, "Project Gorgon" featured far more advanced server technology than ours had, so we formed a great partnership where we now utilize their outstanding technology to power our project in exchange for our help with art. This has empowered both teams to build a strong network of developers working to deliver games demanded by the players. The Gorgon server technology represents a massive software suite capable of easily creating template based MMORPGs. With a dedicated team of artist, programmers, directors, composers, and the community, I believe we can create the spiritual successor to one of my most favored MMORPGs of all-time, City of Heroes/City of Villains.
As I write this I think about all the cherished weekends partnering with my super group, rushing through zone, and blasting my way though instances (Energy Blaster FTW). I also remember all the friends I've made from the experience. Friends who's kids now call me uncle, that I spend time with; it represents something so much more to me and I thought I'd commune with people that may feel the same way. So I'd like to know, "Who would be interested in helping to see the rebirth of a legendary MMORPG?" For the moment a small team could work with the community to develop a game design document. Once the document reaches a set stage, development would only require a small team of developers to push it to the pre-alpha as it will borrow core code from both the client and server of Gorgon tech in starting. Only minor programming will be required to accomplish City of Heroes style gameplay. Here is a list of specifications:
Gorgon Server Technology:Development Engine: Unity 3D
Client Language: C#
Server Language: Java
Database System: MongoDB [MySql will be featured soon]
Team Requirement:1 Lead Designer/Project Lead
1 Project Manager
2 Advanced Network Programmers
2 General Programmers
2 Concept Artists
2 Characters Artists
2 Environment Artists
1 Level Designer
1 Composer
As a commercial programmer with over 19 years on-the-job experience, I'm able to help where I can. However, I also own and operate my own local recording studio, work as Lead Designer and Assistant Lead Programmer for Legends of Etherell, and I'm a single father with 2 children; this leaves me with enough time to enjoy a single MMORPG title (which was City of Heroes) when I'm off. I'm more than willing to offer my composing skills, as well as sound engineering, which is something I can do easily between clients at my studio. To support our independent development efforts my company launched our network SHOGN (SilverHelm's Online Games Network), where we provide indie MMORPGs with free web hosting, a crowd funding component much like Kickstarters, and a full forum. Our company does not retain any of the funds obtained from the crowd funding efforts. All earnings are paid to the project's developers as monthly salaries. Upon release, our network gathers 30% of all final revenue which is then invested into the advancement of the network; including the site, it's database, and other network related funding. SilverHelm Studios does not retain any of that funding; including anything towards the expansion or promotion of our company or our internal products. Our title has its own funding component as will the potential COH spiritual successor. Project Managers are held responsible for the management of these funds, though our Chief Operating Officer (COO) handles the final distribution of payments for legal responsibility reasons. The community is then made aware of where their money is spent before it is spent. This is in no way meant to be a "cash grab", and nothing is secretive with our company. We are a community-funded development (per project) development studio and we're proud of that. It's they way we want to run our studio and how we've been operating since it was founded 3 years ago.
Please voice opinions and share your ideas on this thread. I'd love to hear what everyone thinks about moving forward with this idea. Who would invest? What would you see done with the project that wasn't done with COH? What would be great rewards for investors? Thanks for your time.
Aaron Victoriaaaronvictoria@legends-of-etherell.com
http://www.shogn.net (beta)
http://loe.shogn.nethttp://gorgon.shogn.net