(This piece has been updated at the end with stream notes.)
Throughout its long (long) development history, Camelot Unchained has been almost mechanical about its weekly updates – on Fridays. Even when there’s not much to report, or at least nothing of broad interest, City State Entertainment does a weekly roundup of the mundane progress its multi-studio devs are making. It’s a good and a bad thing, as we’ve noted before: People want to see progress, but most progress turns out to be incremental and also boring, leading to the belief that everything is moving slowly. Which… it is. Game dev, in other words.
Well, the team appears to be shaking things up this week with a separate state-of-the-game stream starting at 4 p.m. EDT today; a tweet from the team says CSE boss Mark Jacobs will be helming the episode. We’ll update this piece with whatever the big news is that merits a Halloween showing!
In the Q&A portion, Jacobs said he expects to have a better idea of a release window early next year, within three to six months (for when he’ll have a clear picture on launch, not for the launch itself). More employees and engineers are being onboarded too. More classes, crafting improvements, better lighting, CUBE buffs – these are considered mandatory features that need to be finished an in place before launch is on the table. He also notes that while people are likely to be angry with him and the delay right now, he’d rather eat that anger now that next year (which is part of why he thinks continuing to issue refunds to those who ask for it is the “right thing to do”).
Jacobs also points to the ongoing “Linuxification” of the game as evidence that the team is serious about finishing the game, pointing out that if they weren’t serious, they wouldn’t bother with that, that they’d use those engineers on something a lot more interesting instead of on something fundamental to release.
We spoke to Jacobs this past summer to ask him about the ongoing beta, knowing that the game was Kickstarted over six years ago and is now many years behind schedule. At the time, he wouldn’t confirm that the game was being delayed past 2019, suggesting there was still a chance if enough engineers were secured, but now we know for sure.
We still love you. Dont let the negativity get you down. <3
I hope i live long enough to help my grandchildren decide if they wanna go betatest Star Citizen or CU.
I’ve mostly lost my enthusiasm for this one. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll definitely be checking it out when it’s released, but at this point the only further update about it I care to hear is that it’s done. And after 4 years, or close enough, I’m starting to feel the same way about Crowfall. No one has to tell me that MMO development is not a quick thing, but at this point in my life I have to seriously wonder if I’ll live long enough to see some of these releases. ;)
If developers, hungry for kickstarter donations, were honest and upfront about the time they really expect it will take them to release their games, they probably wouldn’t meet their funding targets. Pay now, play a decade from now? That’s not an easy sell. The dishonesty is necessary, I suppose.
ITT: people who haven’t taken the time to log into the game during the “beta”.
i mean i don’t blame ya, it’s tedious at best.
but wow.
wow.
so many of the people defending this jump on every other kickstarter online game for the slightest hint of a nothing burger like it’s second job. games that don’t have NDAs have legit gameplay/ingame footage posted from teh Devs if there is an nda, etc
but not CU.
not the game that hasn’t had game play footage posted in over a year and has some of the most hilarious streams of the remaining kickstarter mmo set.
well.. suit yall’s selves. i mean… idk man… yall just really clearly don’t know the state of the game looooooooool. oh well. have fun with that.
Ahahaha I love internet tough guys. Funny how deekay shows up to criticize the man and his game after MJ says he won’t be able to respond for a few days, LOL. And stressing the NDA as if it’s a bad thing…
Is it disappointing that the game won’t be launched any time in the next year to year and a half? Absolutely. But I can wait and call it a good thing if the game rocks. If it doesn’t rock then I’m fairly certain MJ and the folks at CSE will fully expect the blow up that occurs.
okay tough guy.
👍😂
i didn’t know massively op comment section was mark jacob’s personal public relations forum. my bad. i’ll see myself out.
mods can yall go ahead and just like delete my account?
And why is DK wrong? I respect Jacobs putting his face to be hit with criticism, and it’s one of the reasons i respect him and his project more than anything that CR might put it, but DK isn’t wrong here. The game is still under a NDA, it’s delayed for a LONG time now, and even Jacobs admit it.
He earned that criticism. Your apologetic guilttrip won’t work here.
I keed, I keed.
I suppose if you are looking on the bright side at least this is one of the few western mmo’s that has a chance of a release in the next three years .
If I was a betting man I would make a guess at 2022 .
least this is one of the few western mmo’s that has a chance of a release in the next three years .
2022 .
lol. no.
looking at your comment below you seem to also think it could release in 2022 even if you think 3 years is the minimum .
:P You are not exactly consistent with your comments are you lol.
3 years is really beyond ideal conditions. that aren’t going to happen.
in other words i was being nice anywhere i said less than 5+ years here.
i mean that’s to release to advertised specs. they’ll likely not meet those specs. if they manage to release at all.
Nothing to see here. It takes 7 to 10 years to make a mmo. So 2021 is within reason.
you clearly have not logged into this game during “beta”.
under the most ideal conditions possible (which aren’t going to happen) 3-5years minimum.
at current pace of development 5+ years minimum.
Are you sure you are not confusing it with Star Citizen lol ?
i don’t think star citizen will ever have a clear “launch” point.
but at least it doesn’t have NDA on video footage and shows in game footage for their regular vid based spam.
Yeah I tend to agree with you about Star Citizen . I wouldn’t even think about investing in Camelot Unchained before the NDA was lifted . I do know a couple of people in CU and they seem reasonably confident in the release window I mentioned above which is more than I can say for the people who I known in Star Citizen ( all of which seem to be pretty much resigned to it being at least the mid 202o’s now if ever ) .
I mean it was not a surprise, I think anybody who played in the recent tests knew that. And while I understand that people are disappointed that they can´t play the game this year there is no reason to be “mad”. How many times this year we got lied to by studios or publishers how many times there was an outcry when people found out about a game who´s release was rushed, the game was empty and full of absolute shameless microtransactions.
And there we have CSE who are not hiding and just telling things if they don´t work out for whatever reason and how the consequences gonna be. Sometimes I think CSE is a bit too open. Because all the necessary tech that needed to be implemented is so damn unsexy to tell and I also think most people, for example, do not really understand what kind of a big step linuxification really is to keep costs maintainable in a cloud-driven environment compared to a Windows OS.
They even let people still get a refund, what company does that. For example, I also backed Ashes of Creation and when they decided despite promised otherwise that they will not self publish the game in Europe and basically sold the European players to an absolute horrible publisher My.com, I decided to get a refund. Which was denied because it was more than 30 days ago I pledged. That´s how other companies handle refunds. So what CSE is doing is nothing but fair.
I won´t request a refund for CU, I don´t want them to hurry, I prefer to get the game that was promised. If they can´t deliver that, then there will be plenty of time to be mad. Until then, I have patience.
I think the tech which is being implemented for CU is very sexy. Thank you anyway, good sir.
mark jacobs is all over the comment sections of this site and his streams getting in people’s faces for calling this news over the past year.
so yes, CSE is “hiding things” i mean ffs there’s still an NDA on the game for the most part over a year into it’s so called beta with over a year since CSE has shown in game footage of their own.
and “linuxification” is not a positive sign of “serious bsnz” but a redflag of meandering development in the face of the reality of the state of the product.
the state of the product being blatantly oversold on numerous fronts on a routine basis.
I disagree, there are streams every week with the progress being made so i don´t know what you think has been hidden.
NDA is in place for good reasons. In the state that the game is now presenting it to an audience beyond backers would have a negative effect. The problem is that all the tech they developed is not representing visual in a pleasant way and this is unexplainable to people. It´s funny that you bring up “Beta”, you seem to have no experience how Betas used to work before they were Demo versions of games.
And your statement regarding linuxification and the importance for CU. Dude, I don´t blame you if you do not understand tech, but please for god’s sake simply don´t talk about stuff you do not have a clue of.
Not surprised, personally. So long as it’s released eventually I’ll be happy ;). There’s really nothing else like it on the market in my opinion, which is a double edged sword as I have no mmo I enjoy playing right now
P. S. Mark has been behind the mmo games I enjoyed the most, daoc/war. So, I have some faith.
Hey there, I know you! :)
And yeah, there will be nothing on the market like it based on what we’ve seen to date. That’s doesn’t mean we’ll be the “best game evar!” but we have a lot of unique and risky things we’re trying to put together into one game.
With this, I bid you all a good night and as per below, I hope to be on over the weekend but a wedding and all that jazz.
Thanks again MOP and everybody that took the time to post here.
Good night and have a great weekend all!
I wish I’d live in a world where WAR had been a smash hit and is still laudated by the press and played by millions of fans. Best damn battlegrounds I’ve ever played, thanks to ingenious classes and a clear PvP focus.
I was going to object, but some of the best times I ever had in MMO PvP was playing my adorable dorf ironbreaker shoving people off bridges with my shield, so…. carry on. :P
Thanks Bree and MOP, as always, for the coverage.
I’ll be at a wedding for the next few days so I probably won’t be able to answer any questions people have here but since I’m bringing my laptop, who knows? :)
I’ll try to get through all the comments/questions tonight but it’s been a looong couple of weeks and I’m exhausted but I’ll give it a shot.