The time is here for brave Gorgoneers to suit up, face curses, and brave the lands of beta testing. Project Gorgon has officially gone into Steam early access as of today, bringing the game out of its years-long public alpha and into its next phase.
The MMO is 25% off through March 19th, meaning that you can pick up this buy-to-play title for $30. The website also received a facelift to mark the occasion. Early access is planned to run for about a year, at the end of which players will be able to retain their characters and skills, but items will be wiped for the launch.
For the uninitiated, Project Gorgon is “a fantasy MMORPG that features an immersive experience that allows the player to forge their own path through exploration and discovery. You won’t be guided through a world on rails, and as a result there are many hidden secrets awaiting discovery. Project Gorgon also features an ambitious skill-based leveling system that bucks the current trend of pre-determined classes, thus allowing the player to combine skills in order to create a truly unique playing experience.”
Massively OP’s Choose My Adventure just wrapped up a lengthy trip to Project Gorgon; you can get caught up with our impressions right here:
Choose My Adventure: Starting fresh in Project Gorgon
Choose My Adventure: Yes, Project Gorgon is a weird game
Choose My Adventure: Brain bug mischief in Project Gorgon
Choose My Adventure: Grinding away in Project Gorgon
Choose My Adventure: Wrapping up our adventures in Project Gorgon
Choose My Adventure: Farewell to Project Gorgon
I tried it, rather liked it. However I will be waiting until they add some sort of customization options. Three ugly races with the same faces just kinda puts me off.
I hope the game does well but I’m going to wait until the summer sale to buy it.
The price has now been reduced on Steam, so I pulled the trigger. I am concerned about the graphics, but I think a game like this deserves support and could be a lot of fun. The price is ok here in the UK, even with the bad exchange rate (£23).
Installed over night, played ten minutes this morning, then had to go to work (hehe). Looking forward to playing more tonight.
While I applaud the ambition and tenacity of this team, it seems like they have a bit of an uphill battle in front of them. Full disclosure: I have not paid much attention to the CMAs on this site about the game or followed anything but the most superficial news about it. So my impressions are probably like those of most Steam customers, at first glance.
It’s silly to call hesitation at the graphics “shallow”. In a market saturated with gorgeous games of high quality, you have to knock it out of the park with other features in order to compensate for what is a serious perceived deficit. Love of graphics is not indicative of shallowness of character. (Otherwise, we’d all be playing Dwarf Fortress and Rimworld.) Games like Minecraft showed that people are willing to look beyond high fidelity gfx, but that game is clear in its appeal and in its innovation.
The promise to “revitalize the MMO genre” is a tall order, especially when the games it compares itself to are EQ2, ST:O, and AC. All good games, to be sure, but very niche in their overall appeal and, in the first two cases, hardly encompassing a class of games that reinvented *anything* in the genre. But looking deeper into the game, it seems like a lot of the awesome improvements and features are things that are just deep-dives into existing options within games. So I think it’s a bit misleading to say they are “revitalizing” anything so much as they are “revisiting and complexifying” them. YMMV, depending on how much investment you already have in these features. But the best case scenario for this game’s audience is “niche”, based on what the promises are.
I’m rooting for this game. But that’s a steep price. I think MMO die-hards will pay it, but it obviously has a long road ahead. I think a marketing focus on its strengths would really help them: the sandboxy elements of this game seem amazing and ripe for uptake among the sandbox set. But they’re given fairly short shrift next to some pretty unusually described and random things on the Steam description. I think this team should focus on how sandbox RPGs are marketed, and go from there.
By definition it is shallow. Shallow being not exhibiting serious consideration and being synonymous with superficial which is that it is at or on the surface. A valid point of interest? Maybe, but shallow it definitely is.
Poppycock. This is based on a heavily weighted assumption that aesthetics have no “depth” or meaning relative to content.
Again, if aesthetics were that meaningless to a substantive appreciation of games, we’d all be playing chess or checkers or Go. This is not a credible position to argue from, as it removes the “video” (from Latin videre “to see”) from “video games”.
Poppycock to your poppycock. Just because something is desirable doesn’t mean it has depth. On the contrary, if aesthetics were as deep as you seem to believe they are then they could stand on their own, but they usually don’t and something more is needed to flesh out the experience. It is perfectly credible to argue that video games are deeper than their visual surface, otherwise why not just stare at a static picture or watch videos instead?
Besides this, again it is BY DEFINITION shallow. Visuals are the first layer of a game’s complexity with which you interact, stopping at that level and failing to consider the layers beyond it is both traditionally and definitively shallow.
I don’t think you know what “definition” means. And nobody is talking about any one element “standing on its own”. That’s your definitional issue: you’re arguing about things in isolation.
Definition is the meaning of the word, something you clearly don’t understand yourself. Feel free to seek how shallow is defined and see if it matches with what I have been saying since you don’t think I know what a definition is.
I am arguing about things in isolation because that is the issue in question. To quote you “It’s silly to call hesitation at the graphics “shallow””. It isn’t because hesitation at the graphics in consideration of the whole IS shallow. It is shallow because as it is stated, no other consideration is given. It is the video game equivalent of judging a book by its cover. It doesn’t matter if YOU aren’t talking about any one element standing on its own, the statement you call silly is simply not.
Maybe just accept that you and/or others are a shallow instead of trying to bend definitions to suit your own tastes.
This reminds me of boys ignoring the “plain looking” girl in school, for the aesthetics and personality of a cheerleader.
I find this particularly interesting, given the counter culture nature of MMO players.
$40? Well, good fucking luck.
Even after five years of alpha, it doesn’t look very good, runs like shit, sounds awful, and plays worse than EQ.
You can’t go very far with good ideas if everything else see no progress.
They should have focused on modern mechanics, at least circa 2004 MMO tropes, rather than the meager “content” that they put out.
\o/
Now to just wait to see all the negative, shallow-minded reviews lambasting the game for its graphics. :/
As is befitting of the Steam trolls.
I dunno. Is it *that* shallow? They even admit in recent Alpha “state of the union” notes that the graphics are not in a good state.
Judging a book by its cover = shallow. The Early Access FAQ has a section admitting the graphics are rough and that there are a lot of placeholders, but that it will be changing over time.
Well personally don’t feel like it’s generally “shallow” to point out terrible graphics.
Overall game graphics are getting better and better and it’s not “wrong” nowadays toexpect a certain quality. There’s a reason we don’t play text adventures anymore. I know there are games who sell good even without “AAA graphics” (Factorio, Rimworld, Minecraft, Terraria, all of which I have played for dozens of hours). But all these games feature deep and interesting mechanics, so I’m willing to “ignore” the bad graphics (by the way all these games are still better looking than P:G and, most importantly, cheaper).
Now P:G has shitty graphics AND (as far as I could see) nothing overwhelmingly new and interesting beyond that. Which makes the terrible graphics seem ever worse…
How exactly are you defining shallow? I don’t care about project gorgon one way or the other but it seems more like people are looking for an excuse to be shallow, rather than shallow being an inappropriate description.
Well I feel like there’s a tendency that whenever you criticize any game for (bad) graphics, people will immediatly call that criticism “shallow” (as in: “Your criticism is superficial and unimportant because you talk about graphics rather than underlying features and mechanics”).
All I was trying to say is that I think you can generally criticize a game for bad graphics without your criticism necessarily being superficial. I think you judge a game as a whole and graphics are an important factor for many players. And that’s okay. It doesn’t make you shallow, superficial or a bad person when you write a bad review partially based on the fact that you think the game “looks bad”.
I would agree to an extent. Graphics are a part of a game and are valid grounds for criticism. It isn’t what I would consider comprehensive criticism but valid criticism none the less (in other words it should be but 1 part of the evaluation).
Given that you have a smoke show at home, Al, but have no interest in her…
?
When you judge a book by it’s cover, that’s considered being ‘shallow’. Whether you like it or not, detracting the game because of its graphics is indeed shallow-minded judgement.
Project Gorgon offers plenty past its surface level and is an incredibly deep/rich experience. But much like MineCraft, Terraria, etc. you have to actually give it a try rather than just dismissing it from its lackluster presentation.
Congratulations to the P:G team!
Congrats on killing the game right out the gate.
A indie early access MMO made by two people asking for $30 is laughable. Charging thay much and calling it a sale is down right hilarious.
I expected this to be $10 and at that price point worried about it’s chances.
While I do agree that the price is high and too high for an early access launch on Steam, I think they deserve a congratulations for getting the title this far. I backed the project years ago and am quite happy with their progress, which I can’t say of other relevant titles.
Agreed, paying this much is too much. You don’t get that much in return. You only get to “test” the game and hope they don’t give up on in and there are enough players. I wish the game the best, but this price is too high.
$15 at the highest is reasonable, anything above that is just developers being delusional and self-absorbed.
Given the history of this project and team I think its a relatively safe bet they won’t be giving up on it. They failed on kickstarter and persevered on their own anyway, making pretty good advancement given their limited team size.
While I agree it is high, much higher than I expected, saying you only get to test the game fails to take into account you get the game itself. and 30 bucks for a buy to play game isn’t unreasonable.
I find it interesting that people want the work of another for free.
Smaller musicians and game makers are taking a major hit, because of the Steam mentality.
How much do you spend on a movie ticket? I’m sorry but 30 dollars for potentially 100+ hours of gaming/entertainment is nothing….if you can’t swing that you probably shouldn’t be gaming at all
I just spent 30 dollars reupping my ff14 sub and will be spending the same amount on the new crown crates in ESO later tonight. So the question isn’t about if I can afford it, but instead if I see the value in it. From what they showed me on the trailer I stand by my comment saying it’s price point should be 10 dollars.
@serenity, I am commenting from the view of a huge modern MMO fan which is part of the demographic they want. I have read about this game but it looked rough as hell so I was in the watch and wait phase, but seeing the price tag made me laugh at loud and not just an amused smirk while laughing quietly to myself while I typed “lol”.
It’s a niche buy-to-play game with considerable dev costs and ongoing server and operational costs. Do the math. It’s probably as inexpensive as they could afford.
You clearly haven’t played, and have no standing to make statements about it’s value (or perceived lack there of).
$40!
I second this, while I still think it is a terrible name, I guess they are stuck with it now. I hope they are able to grow and continue to expand on it, even if it doesn’t quite scratch my mmo itch.
What’s wrong with the name? I love adding Gorgonzola to my risotto
That price seems steep for Steam EA
It’s basically a Buy to Play game that’s going to have an optional subscription, from what I understand. It’s also not intending to rope in everyone and their grandmother. So guess we’ll see how it does but they need to get more money to fund the thing somehow, and Kickstarter backers paid $25-$30 for the base game as well.
I’ve played the game for a bit. Ending up getting to 20 in several classes, then beyond in specifics. It’s a fun, great game, but they can’t ask the Steam crowd to do what their niche group (of which I’m included) did with helping out a cool game that shows awesome potential, but still needs a lot of help. I wish it all the best, but at that price point, the reviews are likely to send it into that negative review abyss for a long time.