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Crowdfunding is a scam.
Raising capital is the point of stock sales. Crowdfunding is like a stock sale, except you don't get stock. The guy doing the crowdfunding keeps all the gains without any kind of obligation to anyone. If you want to make a good product but don't like dealing with the bloodsucking speculators that have destroyed our economy, then don't list your stock on an exchange, vet all potential buyers and monopolize all voting stock. But don't come to a crowd with hat in hand and pretend you're doing them a favor by begging them for cash. Crowdfunding, as a phenomenon, grows out of the same "take my money please" mentality that has poisoned the minds of American consumers.
The premise of the game itself is interesting, but I have to say I am just not impressed by what I see.
The white papers for the game seem to do the same thing GW2 did, which is promise that the game will be everything good and nothing bad, it will borrow the best from all genres while taking the worst of none. It mentions the notion of a Roman Empire in space, but it doesn't flesh out what the heck that means. The game talks about continual expansion and harvesting resources (which sounds awfully like "china game") but it doesn't specify what the limiting factors in the game will be - money/resource sinks/competition/pvp/etc.
Reading the part about ships seems vague and uninformed, like it was written by a sixth-grader who watched A New Hope and played Descent then wrote up a paper with the help of his tutor. The sci-fi of the game is uncompelling and (again) lacks clear limitations, in part because its basic premise, sublight engines effective enough for combat, powered by compressed solar wind, is juvenile and unrealistic. And why would fission, fusion and antimatter-powered vessels all be available during the same time period? That's like sailing ships being contemporaneous with nuclear vessels. The technical description of the vessels is filled with superlatives but isn't compelling and doesn't seem to offer much in the way of comparison other than sheer size.
Most space sims break down ship class along certain standard rational axes: starfighter/capital/freighter/support, broadsiders/assault, escort/cruiser/carrier/support, etc. Instead the white papers suggest ships that have all the abilities of each and the respective tradeoffs of none. The game mentions hardpoints but it doesn't mention firing arcs. The game talks about guns and missiles but it doesn't mention mines or more creative forms of attack (examples: the Lyran ESG, VUX limpet launcher, Andromedan tractor-repulsor, Umgah zero-inertia drive).
I tend to be inclined to compare the game's premise and substance to Star Trek Online: you are a freelance agent of a galactic power, going around exploring anomalies and such. In STO this is pretty boring and limited and the only thing that makes it interesting is the decent space combat system and other elements of the game pacing. But this looks more like a watered-down Armored Core clone, or like Earth 2150 with a GUI and world environment.
I'd like to like this MMO...but I'm just not impressed. Sorry =/
That said, if one had $10k to blow, buying a top account could be a good investment. On the off-chance the game is successful, could turn it over, just like a Vanilla CE.
(and yes I lost money on GW2 CE, blow me)
Aestu of Bleeding Hollow... Nihilism is a copout.
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