Many players are waiting for new information about the upcoming MMORPG Crowfall, especially regarding the launch of the new game. The Creative Director, J. Todd Coleman, introduced a new feature to MeinMMO author Benedict Grothaus and editor Leya Jankowski, revealing that the beta might be closer than they think.
Crowfall is among the most promising MMOs and MMORPGs for 2020 and 2021, and many players are eagerly waiting for more information – and more importantly, for a beta and a release.
In May, the developers officially announced the alpha and called for quick registration, as the beta will start soon. It looks like that’s really the case. More precisely: it has essentially already begun.
In the realm of MMORPGs, there hasn’t been anything new for several years now. The newest MMORPG is from 2016, Black Desert from Korea. In the West, it’s even longer ago: The Elder Scrolls Online from 2014. It’s now been 6 years since the last major MMORPG – with the exception of Albion Online from 2017, which follows a more traditional isometric sandbox approach. Crowfall is a light in the darkness.
As part of “Find Your Next Game“, the Creative Director of Crowfall, J. Todd Coleman, presented a new feature to MeinMMO: The Dregs campaign, something like the “king class” in Crowfall. This is where the competitive part of the MMO unfolds properly. I had the opportunity, together with MeinMMO editor Leya Jankowski, to ask some questions about the new feature and the future of Crowfall.
However, getting to the top is not the only goal of the campaigns, but also collecting resources for your Eternal Kingdoms. These are persistent worlds that you own and manage yourself, a meeting place for players and guilds, as well as the site for player housing.
You can choose to play the game as a fighter, crafter, or explorer. This way, you as a player can dictate how the game evolves.
Furthermore, you fight for resources in procedurally generated worlds. The time you have for this is limited, as the worlds will gradually be consumed by the mysterious “Hunger,” which corrupts enemies and makes them stronger, as well as blocking access to resources.
While in that world, it will get increasingly difficult, and the fight against other players will become tougher and tougher – until the world is finally completely devoured.
This is meant to set the MMO apart from other games that lead their players more “on rails.” The focus is on competitive play.
Technically speaking, the beta of Crowfall has already been reached
MeinMMO: Can you roughly tell us when the beta and release are planned?
J. Todd Coleman: “We are still trying for a release at the end of the year [2020]. The beta is not really about a collection of features. Although… technically speaking, we have already reached it. We wanted [for the beta] this version that was on the test server and goes live today. That is the version with which players will join and which we call beta. We are still making fixes. Once we reach a point where we feel comfortable enough, we’ll start inviting players who are not backers. All backers can already play, but right now we are not letting in players who did not support us. Between now and the Kickstarter, we have received over 400,000 beta registrations.
Now it’s no longer about a specific release, we’ve already reached that. It’s about reaching a certain level of quality. I don’t have an exact date for the beta, but that’s really coming soon. […] And when we are at the point where we have checked off all the items on the list, it will be time for the launch.”
MeinMMO: What about support for the game after release?
J. Todd Coleman: “There are so many things we want to do that we had to postpone until after launch. I’m not worried that we won’t come up with new cool features. We’ve built a really solid foundation with what we have, and it’s unique. Our architecture supports millions of players, like an MMO. We have procedurally generated worlds like Minecraft with monster camps, ruins, mines… We have passive training like EVE Online, which will last for years. We have 12 races and 11 classes, and I’m sure we will increase that to 12 because I love symmetry. And we have a discipline mechanic that allows people to play multiple classes.
So many interesting directions in which we can continue to grow. I don’t think we will have issues coming up with new cool things – for years to come.”
Regarding multi-classing, you can learn more in our overview:
A sort of “roadmap” – This is what the future promises
MeinMMO: In what way will that happen? DLCs or large expansions like WoW? Free updates with cosmetic shops?
J. Todd Coleman: “I have ideas about that, but nothing I can talk about yet. We only have a few questions left to answer, and the pricing of what’s in the VIP and such things are among the last items. I want the game design to settle a bit before we tackle that and say something about it. The basic model, however, has not changed. Buy it once and play it forever. There is an optional VIP membership and a microtransaction shop that primarily offers cosmetics and housing items. Nothing that gives any power.
At the moment, you can buy land for your kingdom or houses, a manor, a mansion, but you can also create all of that in the game. There are also skins for mounts, but mounts are not yet in the game, so that won’t be purchased much. There will be microtransactions, but every item that is there will also be obtainable in the game through crafting.
Back to your question: Will we sell DLCs? We have not discussed that yet. I don’t know what we will do after release. First, we will release the game and make our backers happy. After that, we will see what our community looks like and what the right way is to come up with a fair model. We want people to keep paying so we can continue to develop and improve the game. And to have jobs, that’s nice too. At the same time, we don’t want to be whale hunters.”
Crowfall will not be a World of Warcraft and does not want to become one
MeinMMO: One more thing: Gordon Walton said in our podcast, that WoW killers nearly killed the MMO genre. Would you say that Crowfall can save it?
J. Todd Coleman: “I don’t think Crowfall will save the MMO genre. I don’t even think the genre is dying. Gordon talked about how innovation and experimentation in the MMO genre have been killed. And WoW didn’t hit that. What happened after that is that people who funded games asked how to replicate WoW in making money. And when you wanted to stray from the path and experiment, they said: ‘No, no, don’t do that. Make it more like them, because we want to rake in billions too.’
And while the MMO genre has slowly homogenized around WoW, parts of the genre have snuck into other things. Look at Destiny, for example. If you put a checklist between that and the MMO genre, you see that a lot of the same DNA is involved. Then look at social media. Suddenly, you see MMO features everywhere: friend lists, chats, groups… The elements of MMOs have not disappeared; they have just wandered off. The term ‘MMO’ has become something specific, like FPS, Battle Royale, or MOBA.
One challenge for us is the question: Are we an MMO? Well, we have a lot of that DNA. But are we a guided experience like WoW? No, not at all. To that extent, we are in our own realm. Will we revive the genre and make billions? No, but that was never the intention. Our intention was to create something new, unique, and fresh, and find a specific kind of player who is genuinely interested in that. We want to find those guys and gals and make them incredibly happy and keep them forever. If that’s a smaller game, that’s perfectly fine.”
The new endgame feature explained: The Dregs
At the beginning of the interview, J. Todd Coleman gave me a detailed explanation about Crowfall and the new feature, the Dregs campaign. For your overview, we have highlighted the key points for you.
To understand this, one must know that campaigns are a crucial part of Crowfall’s concept. These are worlds that are accessible for a certain time, changing through the seasons, starting in spring and ending in winter.
The Dregs are the ultimate campaigns. Here, guilds compete against each other in procedurally generated worlds with the aim of gaining the most points in various areas: glory, wealth, and power.
For that, there are maps with tasks that you should complete in a certain area to gather points and stand at the top of the leaderboard at the end. The guilds dominate the areas of the world, ally with other guilds, build cities, and gather resources by, for instance, sending caravans through the world to collect materials. With that, you decide whether to craft weapons or prefer to build certain buildings.
The dark background is that the Earth Mother, the source of all life, has died. Now you try to win the favor of the 11 remaining gods with your actions. Coleman therefore speaks of three pillars that constitute the Dregs:
- Guild vs. Guilds
- City building
- Interaction with the gods
What is the interview about? A large part of the interview deals with the new feature of the Dregs, a new campaign aimed at endgame players, the hardest content in the game. You will get a good insight into where the journey in Crowfall is headed. The Dregs campaigns will be the activities with the highest risk and highest reward.
If you haven’t dealt with Crowfall yet or need a bit of a refresher, you can find more information here:
MeinMMO: Campaigns are consumed by the “Hunger” during their duration. Does that happen in the Dregs as well, or are they more like the Eternal Kingdoms?
J. Todd Coleman: “The Eternal Kingdoms and God’s Reach are the only worlds that are not consumed by the Hunger. That means they are more in the traditional ‘WoW style’ and are more or less safe. All other worlds have an expiration date.
The Hunger is this corruptive power that appears randomly in the world. Where the Hunger is, the resource harvest is disabled and all monsters that would appear there appear as gruesome crystallized undead creatures. Every monster in the game has its own ‘hunger-fied’ version.
Over the duration of a campaign, that is, spring, summer, autumn, and winter, more Hunger appears. The world becomes darker and more desolate towards the end of a campaign. This also means that hoarding resources at the beginning comes with certain rewards, as it becomes harder and harder to obtain those resources as the campaign gets closer to winter.”
MeinMMO: Should I rather gather early and stockpile or time it so that I mine something when there is still something left at the end?
J. Todd Coleman: “That’s an excellent question, which different players will answer differently. Ultimately, there are other ways to get supplies when you need them. Certain campaigns have a certain number of imports and exports. When you join them with your character, you can sometimes bring only 20 items, sometimes 50. You can decide whether to take a magical sword from another campaign or stones to build your barracks faster.
In some campaigns, there are no imports at all, you start practically naked. Many of our players enjoy these campaigns because everyone starts with the same conditions. Everyone starts with a max-level character that you can achieve in 2 hours or so. […]
MeinMMO: What scale are we talking about here? How many players are simultaneously in a Dregs campaign?
J. Todd Coleman: “At the moment, we are aiming for 10,000 players in a Dregs campaign, which corresponds to about 2,000-2,500 players simultaneously at peak times. I say this now by comparing the numbers with other games, but those may not be a good benchmark. When Shadowbane went online, we saw: When a new world goes online, we have monstrous spikes. 25-30% of the players who wanted to play there logged in on the first weekend. That’s why I’ve set it a bit higher now.
If it turns out that I’ve underestimated it and we need more, we can pack more zones into one world for more space, more resources, fortresses, monsters… more of everything. And because we have a procedural world generator, we can do that very easily. If we need three more worlds, we’ll just make them.”
MeinMMO: The Dregs are therefore available at the same time as other worlds?
J. Todd Coleman: “Yes, they run simultaneously. Since they are time-limited, it makes a difference when they come online and when they disappear again. […]
From a business perspective, the big problem with that is that we don’t know how many players we will end up having. We are trying to prepare ourselves so that we have a sort of factory with which we can simply create new campaigns and release them when we need them.”
Before release, the optimal length of the campaign must be found
MeinMMO: How long does a Dregs campaign last in real-time?
J. Todd Coleman: “I suspect something around a few months. Right now, we are testing in weeks, between one and four. One month seems to be a pretty good point for us. It’s enough time for players to stay engaged without getting bored. I would like to try longer campaigns, but that’s the question: How long can I hold the interest of the players? There is a tendency for players to stop when they feel they cannot win. If the game goes on too long, that can become a problem.
We will be experimenting a lot now. At the moment, many one-week campaigns are running, or four days, but a week will probably be the new standard. […]”
Solo, group, guild – How to best play the Dregs?
Almost half of MeinMMO readers prefer to play MMOs solo. One of the more important questions for me was whether the Dregs and Crowfall in general also work alone or in smaller groups.
MeinMMO: What if I don’t belong to a guild?
J. Todd Coleman: “That’s a challenge and we want to be honest. If you just want to dive into the Dregs and gather materials, you can do that; it will just be harder. There is also a free, protected city where you can sell your goods to participating fighters, but you still have to travel through dangerous lands.
We have purposely introduced three factions in the Dregs for players who do not belong to a guild so they can join and be part of a standard faction. You can play like that, but although you will be many players – everyone without a guild joins a faction – you won’t have organized power. We have observed that a small organized team can beat a large group that doesn’t have organized players.
I always say this with a warning: I have done everything I can as a designer to try to make it a functional experience. Nevertheless, you are in the hardest part of the game and facing very strong organized guilds. And they mean business. So be careful. And I would advise you to seek out guilds that are currently recruiting. Honestly, the game is much more fun when you are in a guild. […]”
MeinMMO: What about player groups that fall somewhere between solo players and large guilds? Ten or maybe 20 players acting as mercenary units or groups of traders offering to fight or gather resources for them? Is that an option?
J. Todd Coleman: “Yes, of course. These maps I mentioned earlier: there are some that will give you a task and the points are then divided by the number of participating players. So there are some maps designed to benefit smaller guilds. So it’s not just about getting as many players as possible into the guild. That can be a strategy, but it doesn’t have to be.”
The rewards: Winning is worth it… at least soon
MeinMMO: What is the goal at the end of the campaign, besides the right to brag about the victory?
J. Todd Coleman: “There are rewards. However, the reward system is not yet implemented; it’s coming between now and the launch.
In this system of divine favor, there is glory, wealth, and power as the three types of cards. After each season, each guild receives points in these three categories, and you can add them up to see how much favor you have reached with the gods. When the reward system comes, there will be rewards for the overall victory, but also individual prizes like statues for a certain amount of wealth points that I can place in my kingdom and that help me with crafting.”
These paths lead to success in the Dregs
MeinMMO: To win a Dregs campaign, do I have to collect points through the cards or are there standard points for killing opponents, conquering, or something like that?
J. Todd Coleman: “There are two tiers of points. The campaign cards exist throughout the campaign in each season. These are general challenges, for example: whoever has the most points by holding certain places gets X power points. The points are scaled. In the top 20%, I get something from the top 20% of points. These are available for each of the three types:
- Glory is generally about sacrificing things to the gods
- Wealth is about building
- Power is about controlling land and tearing down other players’ buildings
In the campaign, there is then a generic card for sacrificing, one for building, and one for taking and owning the most stuff. Among those, there are random cards for each season. In summer, you might have to build a specific building to get bonus points.”
Crowfall does not want griefers, but cunning
MeinMMO: What about griefers? It sounds like there could be groups of players actively trying to prevent others from achieving their goals.
J. Todd Coleman: “That is part of the game; I wouldn’t necessarily call it griefing when you’re playing a competitive game and everyone knows that this is exactly what it’s about. Griefing is when you force people to do something they never agreed to. Forcing people into PvP who are just logging in.
Stuff like that is then protected. The worlds where players start are completely safe. The Dregs and the deeper level areas are the competitive experience that people want who venture there.
What we’ve seen so far are small groups showing up during a siege. Their goal is not to take the castle, but just to annoy the participating groups to influence the outcome. They’re probably doing it for their own reasons. They know that one of the teams has built the same number of statues as they have, which they need for the wealth victory. They don’t care who wins the siege; they just want to destroy the statues.”
MeinMMO: Do I have to fight other guilds, or can I choose to trade instead?
J. Todd Coleman: “That is entirely your choice. Some objectives will require fights. Technically, you could conquer unoccupied areas for the power card, but realistically, that’s unlikely to happen. People aren’t just wandering around leaving areas unoccupied. For power, you will definitely have to fight.
Other things, such as wealth, can be achieved that way. You might have to defend yourself, but with the right allies, you might be able to get other people to do that for you. Glory will be what you are most likely to achieve without conflict. But even those are designed to generate conflict.
If the glory card appears that you should sacrifice the most spider eyes, you know that they can appear in three places. You’ve scouted those beforehand and know where they are. You have to go there. When the spider queen appears, providing the best eyes for the most points, a message will pop up that notifies everyone in the area. Could you then go there, grab everything, and disappear without a fight? Sure. But will that definitely work? Absolutely not.”
Fair chances for all guilds
MeinMMO: Is there a danger that a single guild will lead the leaderboard for years?
J. Todd Coleman: “That is certainly a danger. We have seen many guilds that have done really well in all campaigns so far. But ultimately, the reason these guilds play is to dominate. […] However, it’s unlikely they will win all campaigns because there are so many campaigns happening simultaneously. It will be difficult to spare that many characters for it. But I expect some guilds to be highly competitive.”
Crowfall will not chase the mass market
A few days ago, I talked to Florian Hofreither from Last Oasis. The survival MMO boasted about its PvP, but even there, they now want to focus more on PvE.
However, Crowfall remains optimistic as Leya asks how they view the matter regarding PvP and competitive play.
MeinMMO: Crowfall is quite centered around competition and PvP. We have seen in recent years that many MMOs that went in that direction did not perform well. The upcoming New World from Amazon, for example, has completely flipped from hardcore PvP to open-world PvE.
J. Todd Coleman: “One lesson that these people have learned is that if you want to reach the mass market, that’s the right direction. But it also means that’s one way to go. Because they leave the area where we are alone. Here it’s empty. If you are a big company, it’s hard to ignore the mass market. It’s challenging to say: ‘Hey, we are making a niche game.’ You have so much mass that you have to decide to gather millions of players. While that would be nice, and I certainly wouldn’t tell those players to leave, I also will not change the vision of what we created to chase these players.
I’ve tried to design Crowfall to be customizable enough to appeal to a wider range of players without sacrificing that. That’s why there’s God’s Reach, a fully protected area or crafting for items that can be taken into the hardest areas. I’ve tried to create really dangerous areas and make them important by placing the best resources there. I created the Eternal Kingdoms so that guilds have a real server they own. It’s not just a player’s house, but the homes of all players with a castle.
In the end, you are right, it’s a competitive game. We will definitely attract such players and want to make them happy.”
MeinMMO: Thank you very much for the interview!
Assessment from the author: I’m really looking forward to it!
Crowfall is one of the most promising new MMOs and MMORPGs from the West. I’m incredibly excited about the game, and the new info from J. Todd Coleman makes me even more impatient.
Previously, I saw great potential in Crowfall after initial tests. The idea with gods and favor looks great to me as a story; the classes play differently and fluidly, and the cooperation of fighters, crafters, and explorers is a great approach I’d love to check out all three sides.
The Dregs as “the endgame feature” sound like the right feature for competitive players like me. I can imagine I will be fully immersed in the struggle for the top – provided I find a guild. If not, I already see myself diligently expanding and decorating my own kingdom.
However, if enough players dare to tackle Crowfall and discover their way of playing there, I see a strong future for the MMORPG.
Benedict Grothaus
Freelance author at MeinMMO
