With the massively multiplayer online (MMO) game fantasy market quickly filling up with new titles and World of Warcraft still dominating the charts it’s difficult for a new studio to stand out. ArtCraft Entertainment, Inc. hopes to do that with its hybrid MMO real-time strategy game (MMORTS) Crowfall, which is now on Kickstarter.

ArtCraft Entertainment boasts two veterans of the MMO gaming world with Gordon Walton, Executive Producer of Ultima Online, The Sims Online, Star Wars: Galaxies and Star Wars: the Old Republic, and J. Todd Coleman, Creative Director of Shadowbane, Wizard101 and Pirate101.

The game of Crowfall hopes to mix MMO persistence with the excitement of strategy by providing a platform for massive numbers of players to gather and battle in destructible environments, across multiple worlds that run limited-time campaigns, and bring back the spoils of war to their own home instances.

The MMO market is dominated primarily by games that provide persistent worlds for players to level through, explore, and build a legend. Games such as World of Warcraft, Guild Wars 2, Runescape, and so forth all thrive on a central theme of the heroic character who does heroic deeds in a static world. Action strategy games, however, persist primarily in the massive online battle arena (MOBA) market, with League of Legends and DOTA 2, where players gather for matches of five vs. five and duke it out for short periods of time.

These two genre of mechanics do not mix very well.

However, the creators of Crowfall believe they have found a solution to providing persistent worlds for the staid “here is home” feel of an MMO game that can also provide the excitement of fast-paced strategy player versus player that rises out of MOBA gaming. To do this, Crowfall does what it calls “Eternal Heroes; Dying Worlds.”

The persistent Eternal Kingdoms

The MMO persistence of Crowfall occurs in a region known as the Eternal Kingdoms, a resource-poor world where players need to foray into campaign worlds in order to bring back much needed materials to build empires. In the Eternal Kingdoms players will hold territory, build strongholds, forge alliances, and vie for power.

“The Eternal Kingdom can be massive–with mountains and rivers, castles and villages, dungeons and ruins,” ArtCraft writes on the Kickstarter page. “They are also devoid of resources: stone, iron and wood. To gain the resources necessary to build structures and craft items, players will have to participate in Campaigns… or treat with those who do.”

These realms are ruled by players who can assign vassals, divide power, assay responsibility, and even levy taxes.

With the current information on the game, it’s hard to tell if these worlds are just part of player housing or if actual gameplay will occur here. If gameplay does, then this part could provide an actual MMO aspect to this game; if they do not, then the Eternal Kingdoms will likely just be player housing and lobby for the rest of the game making it more like a MOBA.

The RTS Campaign dying worlds

The real-time strategy in Crowfall arises from the dying worlds, campaigns that take place in short-span strategy games where players fight against each other for control of the limited resources of a world that is being consumed by a vast undead enemy known as The Hunger. These worlds exist for a limited time, typically 1 to 3 months or until some condition is met.

As the campaign marches forward through time it passes through four stages named after seasons: Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter. With each passing season the world becomes more hostile, increasingly frigid and difficult to control. Once Winter ends the Campaign World is consumed by the Hunger, a winner is decided, and that world is lost to the mists forever.

The different Campaign Worlds that pop in and out of existence will not be cookie-cutter copies of one another but instead give rise to different rules of engagement. For example, one world may only have centaurs and humans in it, another might become a free-for-all or a team vs. team match, another may only have wood available and no stone, a world may even arise where permadeath is a thing or that items on dead players are destroyed and not lootable.

This malleability of rules in Campaign Worlds could lead to varied and dynamic gameplay. It could also lead to certain Campaign Worlds getting a great deal more popularity than others as particular rules are sought or forsaken by players.

Crowfall: The Kickstarter

The Crowfall Kickstarter is already at $382 thousand (of an $800 thousand goal) with 29 days go to, basically barely out of the gate. Rewards for supporters start with special in game titles for supporters, access to the beta (starting at the $30 level), and rise all the way to being able to write your own Campaign World rules (at the $10,000 backer level.)

There is apparently already one person who backed at $10,000.

The game’s executives say during the Kickstarter video that they’ve come to Kickstarter because, while they know how to seek venture capital, they want to make sure that the game remains in the hands of the audience of players. They note that seeking external investment often comes with strings attached that can quickly dilute the original vision of the game.

This is not an uncommon reason for specialized audience games to go to Kickstarter. Chris Roberts, of Wing Commander fame, went to Kickstarter for his StarCitizen project for precisely this reason. That game originally netted $500 thousand and then went on to exceed $66 million in December 2014 and is now surpassing $73 million.

Crowfall may not see that level of success, but if the current Kickstarter continues at the same rate, it will most likely surpass its goal before the campaign ends.

Images courtesy of ArtCraft Entertainment, Inc. — http://crowfall.com