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A Brief Look At The 'Pathfinder Online' Sandbox MMO On Kickstarter

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Pathfinder Online is a Kickstarter project aimed at translating the popular tabletop game into an MMORPG.

Pathfinder is currently one of the most popular pen-and-paper RPGs in the world. Created as a modified version of Dungeons & Dragons 3.5, the game utilized gamer feedback to at once adapt and enhance the rule set, while staying true to the basic concepts present in D&D 3.5. Basically, it was a reaction to what many role-playing gamers saw as a huge disappointment in the fourth edition of D&D.

Now the tabletop publisher Paizo is teaming up with game developer Goblinworks to create a Pathfinder sandbox MMORPG, and they're running their second Kickstarter drive to get the game funded.

The first Pathfinder Kickstarter set a modest goal of $50,000 in order to make a tech demo of the game. "The Technology Demo will be fully playable, integrating account management, character creation, a virtual world server, multiple simultaneously connected clients, middleware used for rendering landscapes and characters, basic game mechanics, and player communications," read the Kickstarter's description.

Apparently fans were pretty excited about this, funding it to the tune of $307,000 and change, well above the project's goal.

The second Kickstarter is designed to help fund the actual game, and this time Goblinworks and Paizo are shooting for a much loftier $1 million. The 60-day drive is nearly halfway over, and it's raised just $316,000 so far.

The game isn't relying just on Kickstarter funds, however, with much of the funding already having taken place. Rather, the Kickstarter money "is the difference between a 4 year development plan and a much faster, much larger plan," according to Goblinworks.

Pathfinder Online is described as a sandbox MMO, where players explore a high-fantasy frontier where they can be basically whatever they want to be, and can forge their own kingdoms if they want to. It sounds pretty great, though anytime anyone says "sandbox MMO" my excitement is tempered by the fact that this sort of game is extremely hard to do right, and ambition alone is never enough.

MMOs are also hideously expensive to develop, and I worry that developers eyes are sometimes bigger than their wallets.

Goblinworks is hoping to host the entire game on one server, meaning all players will exist in the same game world at the same time. This would be great, but it ups the stakes even higher still. Pathfinder Online will also be mostly PvP, with only a few areas that restrict players attacking one another. This is in keeping with the EVE-style sandbox nature of the game, which is described thusly:

Pathfinder Online's robust trading system puts players in control of the world's economy with player-created items, consumables, fortifications, and settlements. Character-controlled settlements can grow into full-fledged kingdoms that compete for resources as they seek to become the dominant force in the land, raising vast armies to hold their territory against the depredations of monstrous creatures, NPC factions, and other player characters.

Social organizations scale from small parties of a few adventurers to player nations inhabited by thousands. As settlements develop, the surrounding wilderness develops more complex and challenging features, including randomly generated encounters and resources as well as exciting scripted adventures.

Now, I've had plenty of harsh words for the MMO genre in the past. So much gameplay potential is sacrificed to response time, to social mechanics, to that hungry beast that is the MMO.

Just as importantly, the MMO landscape is way too crowded, the games are often a huge disappointment, and the undertaking is a huge risk for publishers and developers alike.

Another red flag? Goblinworks and Paizo are adopting a subscriber model for Pathfinder Online, in a time when that revenue model is quickly losing ground and even behemoths like Star Wars: The Old Republic have been forced to adopt a F2P model. I think Guild Wars 2 may have struck upon a good Third Way with its one-time purchase model and a cash shop, but even there we're seeing problems emerge.

On a more positive note, there's a lot of experienced people working on the title, including Ryan Scott Dancey, the former CMO of CCP (makers of EVE Online, one of the most successful sandbox MMOs of all time) and City of Heroes veteran Mark Kalmes. And I really do like the concept they're working toward.

So perhaps cautious optimism with a healthy dose of MMO skepticism is what's called for here. I'd love to see the MMO genre evolve into something truly organic and fun, but I'm not holding my breath.

As a side note, the reward tiers are pretty cool if you're into the tabletop Pathfinder game.

Paizo has a bunch of veteran game designers working on the Emerald Spiral Super-Dungeon book, and they're unlocking various miniatures as they go along. You can read more about the project at its Kickstarter page or at Goblinworks.com.

Update: I initially said Pathfinder Online would be a subscription-based game, but it turns out there's actually a pretty interesting hybrid system at play. Here's Ryan Dacey explaining it in a blog post at Paizo:

There are two ways that most companies operate the business of their MMO; either subscription or microtransactions.

Pathfinder Online is going to allow players to use both systems. If you wish to pay a flat monthly subscription that's automatically billed to your payment method, you'll be able to do that. Or, if you want to pay as you play in smaller incremental amounts, we'll enable you to do that as well using microtransactions.

[...]

Our goal is for you to be able to play the game at a cost that you're comfortable with, scaling up or down your level of participation based on your purchases.

Our microtransaction system will also allow you to buy some consumables that will make playing the game a bit easier, items that you'll be able to use to make your character look different and interesting, mounts that are distinctive, and other ways of making you stand out from the crowd. Our commitment to the players is that nothing you can purchase with microtransactions will be mechanically superior to the materials created in-game through character activity.

We are also intending to have a system where you can trade game-time with other players for in-game currency. We think systems like this, similar to the PLEX system created by CCP for EVE Online, address a lot of issues with real-money-trading and strikes a good balance between controlling the in-game economy and rewarding players for mastering the game and spending time playing and the interest of some players to increase their enjoyment of the game with real-money purchases.

So this is intriguing to me, especially because it could help foster a robust game economy similar to that in EVE which not only gives more casual players a chance to scale down, but rewards serious players for their time investment. More to come soon.

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