em-8er

Official Site: EM-8ER

Firefall will officially sunset tomorrow

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Did our article yesterday on MMOs in limbo knock one loose? Probably not, but one of them is sunsetting all the same: Firefall. Late last night, an unknown Red 5 staffer posted the sad news.

“With heavy hearts, we regret to inform you that after much review and analysis, Red 5 Studios have decided to suspend the Firefall efforts on 7th, July 2017. Thank you for being an important part of the Firefall experience and for your loyalty and dedication to the online community. Your efforts and loyalty will not go without recognition, however. Firefall is currently developing a mobile version of the game and all of Firefall’s founders and players will be rewarded greatly in the new game. We will be sure to provide everyone with more updates as we have them. Thank you for your support and enthusiasm throughout the years; we will see you at the next battle.”

Yay, a mobile game. You could also head over and pick up your credit toward Mark Kern’s new game, Em-8ER.

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Make My MMO: Star Citizen sells 14K concept ships in 24 hours (June 24, 2017)

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This week in MMO crowdfunding, Star Citizen followers once again proved their game’s dominance by purchasing 14,000 of its new Nox concept ships in less than 24 hours, bringing the game’s UEE Fleet up to 1.3 million ships total. The cheap version is $35, if you’re wondering.

Meanwhile, Ashes of Creation began its summer crowdfunding drive, Mark Kern’s Em-8ER funded again on Indiegogo, Dogma Eternal Night has a new test site, Chronicles of Elyria players created a handy race map, ROKH deployed a new crafting UI, The Exiled posted a state-of-the-game missive, Exile Online is running a GoFundMe, AQ3D is taking the grind out of its leveling curve, and Elite Dangerous players are staging an event to put pressure on Frontier for bug fixes. Plus, over in Crowfall, devs talked up their cell size changes and planned out their influencer program.

Read on for more on what’s up with MMO crowdfunding over the last week and the regular roundup of all the crowdfunded MMOs we’ve got our eye on.

(Thanks, fastcart, Francis, and Stuart G!)

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Em-8ER funds on Indiegogo and adds new stretch goals

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If you were worried that Mark Kern’s Em-8ER (properly pronounced “eem-eight-er” for those willing to die upon snarky hills) wouldn’t fund on its latest Indiegogo push, good news! It’s already funded and looking toward stretch goals. Of course, one could argue that since the game has already had one successful Indiegogo campaign and is now having its second in a series of “serial crowdfunding” pushes, this is already a stretch goal, but let’s not split hairs. The point is that you can pay more money and get more stuff; that’s what the campaign is focusing on.

The newest stretch goals allow for model fights against a new beast, more emotes for players, and motion capture. “We will be modeling the ‘beast’ form of the Tsi-Hu aliens,” says the game’s newsletter. “This deadly creature is what Tsi-Hu can transform into for brutal melee combat. The next stretch goal is to animate it and have it fight the players! There are lots of great perks to unlock, including color changing CHROMA jumpjets, glowing Omniframe skins and even a full motorcycle. In response to player feedback, we also updated our $500 tier to include better rewards, like the Turret #2 Pet robot, and having NPCs salute and greet you by title.”

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Mark Kern will share Em-8ER’s design vision – for a price

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Em-8ER, Mark Kern’s attempt at subverting game naming conventions (and also something about giant mechs), is launching its next limited fundraiser on Monday to finance the development of a few more features for the pre-pre-alpha version. The goals include the funding of the creation of a weapon system, more interactive frames, the first little slice of actual gameplay (on an ice field) and both male and female character pilots.

To give fans incentive to part with their money, Kern has posted a batch of perks that will be familiar to anyone who has seen a crowdfunding tier reward system. Some of these perks include a PDF of the game’s newly created vision book, 3-D printer toys, forum tags, mech skins, and name reservations.

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Em-8er creates 20-page ‘pitch’ book to sell the game concept

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Mark Kern’s Em-8er project has reached another internal milestone, with the team achieving a few small (and decidedly quirky) goals such as creating an art demo with the THMPR mech and 3-D printing some tiny THMPR models as backer rewards. The team also put together a 20-page full-color design vision pitch book to sell prospective gamers and publishers on what Em-8er is all about (other than revolutionary titling, of course).

The small team continues to grow and will head into its next fundraising phase next week with a focus on creating male and female models. Kern said that interest in Em-8er continues to grow, with 8,300 people on the game’s mailing list.

“All these milestones (we anticipate 3 more or so), will combine to create the ultimate playable mockup of the game,” Kern wrote. “The mockup will include a sample THMPR encounter with attacking Tsi-Hu shapeshifting aliens, gliding and jetting Omniframes with basic abilities, and a frenzy of sample ranged and melee combat. This demo will be used to promote our eventual Kickstarter and future funding of the game.”

Source: Em-8er

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Make My MMO: Elite’s Commanders, SOTA’s R40, Starfighter’s AMA (April 1, 2017)

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This week in MMO crowdfunding, Elite: Dangerous rather unceremoniously announced on social media that the 2.3 Commanders update will launch around the middle of April — this is the huge update with multicrew ship functionality and the character creation system. (Thanks, ThatLanteshGuy!)

Meanwhile, Shroud of the Avatar launched its 40th update, Sweden jumped into small-scale equity crowdfunding with FundedByMe, Dual Universe reassured players about its video graphics, Edengrad hits early access this coming week, and Starfighter, Inc. held an AMA to promote its ongoing Kickstarter.

We also hosted Legends of Aria founder Derek Brinkmann on a special edition of the podcast this week, so if you’re curious about the large-scale future of what used to be the more small-scale Shards Online, give it a thorough listen. Then read on for more on what’s up with MMO crowdfunding over the last week and the regular roundup of all the crowdfunded MMOs we’ve got our eye on.

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Mark Kern’s Em-8ER on omniframe classes, THMPR animations

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Mark Kern’s crowdfunded MMO-shooter Em-8ER has a slew of new videos out this week featuring animations for the THMPR, finishing off the mech’s “basic animation set.”

“Next up is our test terrain and skybox, then importing the animations into Unreal and wiring everything together,” Kern says. Over the weekend, he also posted a “draft spec” on the powered armorsuits in the game known as “omniframes.” They’re basically the game’s equivalent of classes; Kern likens them to building a deck in a collectible card game. Warframe-ish, maybe?

Back in February, we covered how the name “Em-8ER” came to be, but that’s probably not going to stop you from snarking, is it? Kern himself is well-known to the MMORPG genre thanks to his involvement with Firefall and the vanilla WoW community. He has previously discussed his plans for this shooter, including “serial Kickstarting” and a Firefall-esque foundation that doesn’t “drift over to ‘WoW with guns’ again.” Studio Crixa has raised $23,000 to date through crowdfunding and has since offered Firefall players credit toward the new game.

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Mark Kern’s Em-8er lore combines Nazis, ghosts, and terraforming

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“Welcome to the world of Ember, or as star charts designate it, Em-8ER (‘E-M-Eight-E-R’),” says a new dev blog from Mark Kern’s Em-8ER MMO shooter. Yes, it’s a lore blog, which is going to make teasing it for its ’90s leetspeak name that much harder. It turns out that Em-8ER is the code name for a newly discovered planet in a vast network of systems discovered through humanity’s use of D-shift travel gates — and Em-8ER is haunted by and home to a hostile and ghostly sentient species.

The lore piece is massive, clocking in at just under 7500 words, and worth a look if you’re into spooky sci-fi built atop WWII alternate history where the Nazis win (or just wanted some assurance there’s more to the game than navels and guns).

Kern is a decidedly controversial (his word) figure to MMORPG genre veterans thanks to his involvement with Firefall and the vanilla WoW community, among other internet movements. He has previously discussed his plans for this shooter, including “serial Kickstarting” and a Firefall-esque foundation that doesn’t “drift over to ‘WoW with guns’ again.” Studio Crixa has raised $23,000 to date through crowdfunding and last month offered Firefall players credit toward the new game.

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Em8er steps gingerly across its fire and ice tiles

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Virtual landsapes are made up of thousands of tiles that are shaped and forged into landmarks and obstacles. The first steps to making Em8er’s alien world are complete, as the art team has produced some ground tiles to use in the making of the zones.

“Em-8ER is a icy/volcanic world. Volcanoes with lava flows exist next to freezing snow and ice. The idea was inspired by the moon Io, which orbits Jupiter, and the fire and ice terrain of Iceland and part of Russia,” the team posted. “To create the look, we first had to create some terrain textures that would let us have snow, ice, volcanic rock, lava and snow/rock combinations.”

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Mark Kern offers Em-8ER credit to Firefall players and founders

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If you’re a former Firefall player — or a current one, since technically it’s still alive — and you are looking forward to Mark Kern’s next big thing, then there might be something in it for you.

Crixa Labs today announced a “Firefall Founder’s Credit Program” for Firefall players migrating to the upcoming “massive planetary wargame” Em-8ER. Kern was a founder and CEO of Firefall’s Red 5 Studios until his own board voted to oust him in 2013. He offered to buy the game from The9 last year; in the meantime, he’s building and crowdfunding Em-8ER.

“We are offering you a full credit on your original Founder packs for Firefall towards Em-8ER,” says a newsletter blast today. “Also, any Firefall player prior to the end of 2015 can receive a $10 credit by verifying their account” — on a validation page provided by the studio.

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Mark Kern’s Em-8ER posts a new THMPR modeling video

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Em-8ER, the Mark Kern-led “massive planetary wargame” shooter formerly known as (and still pronounced like) Ember, has a new video out today showing off the THMPR — don’t look at me like that — model in Unreal Engine.

“The model you see here is being rendered in real-time in the Unreal Engine. We use a texturing/material technique called PBR or Physically Based Rendering to make materials like metal look much more realistic,” the team writes in the blog post. “Now that the THMPR is modeling, we’ll need to animate it and build a background scene.”

Kern is a decidedly controversial (his word) figure to MMORPG genre veterans thanks to his involvement with Firefall and the vanilla World of Warcraft community, among other internet movements. He has previously discussed his plans for this shooter, including “serial Kickstarting” and a Firefall-esque foundation that doesn’t “drift over to ‘WoW with guns’ again.” Studio Crixa has thus far raised $23,000 in the first of its planned miniature crowdfunding campaigns, exceeding its goal.

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Mark Kern renames Ember to Em-8ER, picks up Nostalrius programmer

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Earlier this month, Mark Kern’s “massive planetary wargame” shooter Ember got a new name and logo: Em-8ER.

“While still pronounced ‘Ember,’ we changed the official name to Em-8ER after other companies came out with games called ‘Ember‘ on mobile and on Steam,” Kern told followers of his new website. “We wanted to avoid any confusion and carve out something unique for our own name.”

More recently, the game’s team picked up a member of the Nostalrius WoW emulator team, Etiakor. “Hiring Etiakor was made possible by Em-8ER exceeding its prior milestone funding goal by 467%,” explains the introductory dev blog, referring to the game’s recent Indiegogo campaign, which raised $23,000. “With a server programmer on board, Em-8ER will be able to begin laying the foundation for multiplayer, which is scheduled post-Kickstarter early next year.”

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