It still has a shot but it's a pretty long shot. I think a vast majority of those who would be interested in this type of game have already seen the KS at this point and made up their mind. Yes those that pulled their pledges would put them back but that's not going to help them get to goal, they need new blood. Plus I think while there are a decent number of people who played EQ who want this and would fund it, I think a large majority of EQ players have moved on for a variety of reasons. I've been checking a number of guild/server websites and even if this KS is mentioned, it's in passing only. Most don't really care. I'm not seeing a whole lot of groundswell support from anyplace else except the KS backers page and here (and here has been 50/50). This isn't to say that I think they should give up. Go through the whole 40 days, if it doesn't get funded then pool all your stuff together, get someone who know how to do a proper KS campaign and come back in a few months.
It's also obvious at this point that he's going to need more investor money just to hit stretch goals than he probably wanted, which means someone other than the fans are going to have a hand on how this game is developed. I think it also matters how much it falls short if it doesn't get funded. If it can't reach even 400k, that's going to be a hard sell to any investor.
The reason there is a lack of interest is because most people do not want to play a game like the old EQ community remembers. I keep hearing some key points tossed around and everytime a game releases that has some of the keypoints mentioned, everyone is up in arms and mad as hell. Examples...
1) People want some form of long travel to get to out of the way dungeons.
Look at every mmo released since WoW had their dungeon finder implemented and tell me how much screaming and crying went on when the newer MMOs did not copy that. Swtor didn't have a dungeon finder at launch and you could manually make groups and run to the instance, but no one liked it. People bitched, moaned, and complained until a dungeon finder went in. The VERY same people in this thread were crying about a "lack" of dungeon finder, yet they want a game with no dungeon finder??
2) No AH system.
Look at the recent FF14 threads...the Swtor threads...the Guild Wars 2 threads...and you will find a common occurrence of where their AH system did not work properly at release. It didn't stop people from manually trading, but no one could be bothered to do that. They just hoarded their goods until the AH was working and keep bitching about the AH not working.
3) Very hard and long dungeons
Very few people like long and hard dungeons anymore. People will find the fastest dungeon to grind for the fastest experience possible. Other games have proved that as well. Look at the people complaining in the NWN forums. They had some pretty decent dungeons there, but most of the population went to do the player created dungeon with the 40 ogres in a box that couldn't attack to level up to cap within a day or so depending on your playtime. Same exact scenario in every game. Whatever is the path of least resistance and the quickest mode to level to cap is what will be used. Long and hard dungeons don't get used, but the quick, fast , AE snorefest dungeons that can be repeated and reset every few minutes gets abused.
4) Some form of some super long leveling grind
Every game that has come up with a long leveling grind has become automated. Look at Aion. When that game released here once you hit the level 30s or so, the experience grind was brutal. So instead of playing the game, everyone downloaded MacroGoblin or some other form of automated bot and went to the zone that only had PvE enabled and they would set up their paths to grind for days / weeks at a time.
The majority of the original people from the FOH / Uber guilds back in yesteryear did everything possible to exploit every system available to them to cheese any and all content to give them a leg up on the competition. I know, I raided with them for years. Content the could be exploitable was, crafting that was exploitable or automatable was, program injectors that could be used and not detected were used.
Basically anything people could find to use to bypass the systems that people swear they want to see again here were used.
It's also obvious at this point that he's going to need more investor money just to hit stretch goals than he probably wanted, which means someone other than the fans are going to have a hand on how this game is developed. I think it also matters how much it falls short if it doesn't get funded. If it can't reach even 400k, that's going to be a hard sell to any investor.[/QUOTE]
