I don't know very much about this project, but some http://youtu.be/m9nvnrP0j8U?hd=1 was released today. What do you think?

The game is scheduled to be released in June 2013, although I've also read that the studio is currently undergoing some financial difficulties, so perhaps it will be delayed.

I played the Kingdoms of Amalur demo and it seemed to be a fun game overall, with some interesting and rather detailed lore. Not sure which aspects of the MMO will be similar to the single-player game. Perhaps someone a bit more familiar with the project can elaborate.

Interesting timing, what with all the http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/05/18/bottom-of-the-ninth-38-cant-pay-state-or-employees/. The Amalur license could potentially end up in the hands of... The state of Rhode Island. A state owned game IP, now that's one I haven't heard before.

I hope they make it out alright. Maybe a huge epic RPG wasn't the best project to start this company off with, but I'd be interested in hearing what's next.

"Kingdoms Of Amalur" is a great game.

It gets away from the obsession of the "gritty RPG" in favour of the magical and the fantastic, much like "Morrowind".

The lore is both detailed and interesting as opposed to being disposable lore as found in something like "Dragon Age" (that's how it seemed to me at least).

The combat is smooth, fluid, simple yet feels deep. The special powers you unlock are both impressive and visually satisfying.

That being said there is an air of casualness to everything that makes it both pleasant to play while at the same time leaving you wishing it was a little (or alot) deeper.

I'm not sure how well this would translate into an MMO.

In "Kingdoms Of Amalur" you could be maxed out after about 60 hours.

With a monthly subscription you'd want more than that out of an MMO wouldn't you?

Az

Way too early to tell, but I do like the lore and tone that Amalur set. Questions which come to mind, given my experience with KoA:

1. How's the combat going to work? I'm hoping it's something similar to KoA, since I enjoyed the feel of combat, but it's going to need to be way deeper. By the end of the game I was getting tired of it because there were only so many abilities available. It just sort of got repetitious, and I can't see myself playing that for long.

2. What is balance going to be like? There were a lot of screwy balance issues in KoA, enough to hamstring an MMO. I remember having 14k gold, and going to repair my armor, only to find I had a 17k repair bill! Just to make it a bit wonkier, repair kits only cost 60g each, so there was zero downside to just using them instead(when there should be a trade-off for being able to repair "in the field") Mark of Flame was seriously IMBA when I first got it(and actually held back on upgrading that spell because I didn't want to make it too easy). The system used for lockpicking was completely borked, since the quality of reward wasn't linked to difficulty of the lock. And so on. It just felt rather untested, and I'm a bit concerned that if the same people are working on or supervising Copernicus' development we could see similar issues; which go from annoying in a single-player game, to game-breaking for an MMO.

Id hope not, i was reading about the company, yeah good move when you basically owe money to everyone, and if your going to make an MMO you really need good people working for you to answer questions and if the mods on their forums are an example of the quality of people they hire then they need help, but having EA doing your technical support no wonder their in trouble. They dont have one patch for their game even though they have known issues, and i think it was released in February.

Interesting, although I'm in a bit of a pickle with all these MMOs coming out, definitely in terms of time, possibly in terms of cash if they all have subscription fees.

Between Star Wars: The Old Republic, thinking about playing World of Warcraft and EVE: Online again, The Elder Scrolls Online, Wildstar, Guild Wars 2, and now this? Sounds like what little social life I have is about to disappear. Not to mention my wallet, which is already sitting in the corner crying, mumbling "please don't beat me daddy" to itself.

This is a bit like supply and demand, isnt there a glut of MMO's and with TES MMO coming online as well how many can they possibly think will be supportable, it would have to be the most revolutionary MMO to compete against the mass thats already active, to be able to draw enough of a crowd to make a dollar out of especially if your a company thats basically in debt up to their eyeyballs, and if their going to have EA as their tech support well good luck with that, thats going on their current situation with the game.

When you try to get an answer from a company on an known issue, and EA tells you to ask go to the forums of the company that makes the game, who then tell you, to go back to EA, who then tell you to go back to the forums, who then tell you, well you get the idea, but then get sick of you, and tell you its your fault for not saving the game every few minutes, this does not seem like a company organised enough to do an MMO, yes its a small issue, but if you cant do something as simple as that in any company well big problems are going to well a problem. And if its just the case of not wanting to deal with little problems well then they need to look at WOW, because its made of lots of little problems.

wat.

I've never had issues with EA's tech support, and I usually don't have trouble with tech support in general either.

Anyway, wasn't Reckoning supposed to be an MMO to begin with?

No, but they were planning from the beginning on making a KoA MMO, with Reckoning acting as a prologue. By the looks of things, they were counting their chickens before hatching, but even so, I say that project was always doomed from the start.

Reckoning feels like a MMO turns last-minute single-player because they lack the time and money to continue.

True. Especially the 'collect item (0/10)' sidequests.

Bit of a missed opportunity from my perspective: I enjoyed Reckoning a lot and would like to see more of Amalur... but not from the perspective of an MMO. As others have commented, there's a real glut of MMOs at the moment with every publisher and their dog wanting a piece of WoW's success, but I'd rather see more single-player campaigns. I'd be interested if this was a SP follow-up to Reckoning, but as it stands, I'll give it a miss.