Firefly Studios – they of the castle building/sieging series, Stronghold – are making an MMO, Stronghold Kingdoms. The game will encompass medieval Europe and allow players to build a series of castles, and their attendant settlements, in a wide-open strategy game in which crushing your enemies will no doubt play a vital part. Firefly describe the game as “a mix of real time gameplay with long term planning”, in which there will be opportunity to “Build, Besiege, Pillage, Farm, Explore, Research, Vote, Trade, Banquet, Fight and much, much more.” The game is apparently being developed by Firefly Studios independently of a publisher, and is due some time in 2010. There’s a smidgeon more detail on the official site.
Rock, Paper, Shotgun
My MMO Is My Castle: Stronghold Kingdoms
Posted by Jim Rossignol on May 28th, 2009 at 3:43 pm.
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Stronghold and Stronghold: Crusader were awesome, and a persistent-world version of them would be even better. I want. It sounds like the logical extension of so many of those build-and-raid-and-farm browser strategy games.
I really like the idea of this. The previous Stronghold games held my attention for a long time considering what they were. If this is well thought through it could be a nice enjoyable change from the current MMOs.
This is actually a really damn cool idea!
This is a very cool idea indeed. The game will probably be too advanced for my caveman brain though.
Another idea to scratch out of my “games I’d design had I the money” book!
Wishing them great luck, and looking forward to it!
So it is a MMORTS instead of the usual MMORPG?
jon: complete with tech trees, yes.
Excellent idea but my trying it would depend strongly on the payment structure. Given that I’ll inevitably get bored, suck and die a lot it’s not something I’d necessarily invest a lot of time into, especially if I was having to spend a lot too.
Wish them luck with it though, a great idea for a game it seems.
“you have failed to wipe the cullnean empire from the map becuaes he logged out”
“Castellation” – In the research tree screenshot
YES!
Intriguing idea. I could certainly see this being a hit.
Aren’t/weren’t Stardock planning something similar?
Hope this is made right. OGame was a game where too much attention was needed. Age of Conan force the on the castle sieges a “window” where the attack must be made. WAR has not window (maybe has been added now?) but suffer from engine/server limitations that crashed stuff (reported, I have not suffered it). Darkfall castle sieges has it about right, but is oriented towards sandbox “life”. Saga has sieges/attacks limited to “wild” areas, If you don’t have wild areas, you are safe from these attacks.
Hmm, question – does NetStorm count as an MMORTS or not? If so it was definitley a bit ahead of the curve. I supose it’s quite Guild-warsy realy though in that all the actual action took place in instances.
Isometric graphics = sale. There’s something just so intrinsically lovely about isometric graphics. I don’t understand why.
I’ve got a feeling this is going to fail horribly.
Either A) They will put in a system that constrains how much you can do each day, ala Travian or
B) They WON’T Constrain how much you can do in one day and people that play more often will dominate those casual gamers that don’t because they’ll be sitting there playing 24/7.
Even if the gold comes on slow it will just create a slow downed game where you can only do so much in one day and then you gotta wait for ever to do anything else.
*Squeal of pure glee*!
At first I got excited, then I remembered stronghold 2’s multiplayer. Tragically bad path finding, random crashes, memory leaks and dozens of units stacked into a tiny little square.
Weren’t the Tilted Mill guys working on something like this too?
I think that might of been one called Society, can’t quite remember though.
RTS? Not interested.
I’m waiting for a turn/tick-based 4x MMO.
Something like Cosmic Supremacy, but better …
There are not enough online banquetting simulators, so I heartily approve of this game.
This will be a massive WANT if they can convince me that the castle building aspect is more detailed, varied but less cumbersome than the games, and if the RTS part scales to people like me who are crap at RTSes, but love turtling with intricate base/castle set-ups.
Well turtling is what stronghold is all about so I’m guessing that will be a huge part of it. If your land stays online while you are not then building defences will be the only way to survive after all. In Travian there is a lot of politics and friend making ect so that people don’t squash you with their giant armies, that will probably be the case here as older players get more and more powerful the newer players will be crushed (unless there is some sort of protection)
It could be very interesting. I think my earlier post about how this will fail was a bit harsh.
@Ian: Couldn’t a game like this charge $5-$7 USD and still make piles of money? Payment structure must be key to creating the MMONextBigThing.
Yea, a persistent online game for the non-core.
Along with Heroes of Might and Magic I learn two of my most beloved alternative strategy series are having MMO renditions being made on the same day.
Nice
So this is a desktop based graphically prettier version of the web based Travian game? Sweet.
You’re telling me I can spend hours and hours lovingly building up a town and castle, all so the sociopathic, unemployed bully who plays the game 20 hours every day can waltz over and raze it all to the ground? Pass, thanks.
MMOPvP is great in theory, but as with many other great theories, the reality falls far short of the dream — primarily due to the predations of masses of unwashed rage-nerds. I’d rather sit on the couch and pick lint off my dog’s nose than return to the pathetic geekfest of something like this game.
Come on AIMs, is that all you’ve got! :-J
/Altho I do agree that if this ends up as a prettier Travian/Ogame, I will probably pass on it too after getting wiped a couple times.
But also I’m looking forward to the two splinter cells of RPS-ites and the endless waging of war between the Jim/John vs. KG/Alec camps. (Assuming its still based on the briton landmass, obv.)
Fantastic idea, but persistant RTSs are a tricky beast. I love Stronghold + Crusades, and I liked the look and feel (yet not the bugginess) of Stronghold 2. I hope they can place this model into an MMO setting well, but I have very low expectations given thier last few offerings.
…and I think “self funded” really means, “our last games tanked and we can’t find a publisher”
Stronghold is a great game. I can see potential in a good mmorts. Although I do wonder how they’ll do it. AI managed when you’re not online?
I LOVED Stronghold, but their more recent title was a huge let down. I see promise in this one, though. Firefly is capable of great things.
But I want a Firefly RPG.