Due to the nature of Without_Pause's response, I find myself required, once again to clarify the elements surrounding the existence of Valiance Online, and the other project that share a parallel development structure.
I've worked on my game, Legends of Etherell, for 5 years as of August 11th of this year. My friend and business partner worked on his project for around 3-4 years at the time of our partnering. We were essentially working separately, but developing our projects along the same guidelines. So we decided to form a mutual partnership in an effort to pool our resources to ease the burden of development for both our teams. We then began sharing our assets, he and his wife assisted me with coding, and granted my team access to their code-base, I in return offered the same thing as well as access to my artists, coders, and sound designers. We've worked together for the last 2 years developing our tech/games together, and are still doing so now.
Both games are still well into development though I've had a media blackout on mine who getting ready for a big media blitz in December with a huge announcement. Neither product has faced any unexpected setbacks. My game is indeed a fantasy game, but that has absolutely nothing to do with the MMO tech it utilizes. At it's core is a foundation built around many development parameters/principles inspired directly by City of Heroes. My game's leveling system features what is called a BREAKOUT, the ability to opening up an individual attack, to level up individual properties of the attack. The entire idea was inspired by me love for CoH's enhancement system. So ultimately, a fantasy game is carrying forward seeds laid by CoH regardless of it's genre.
When City of Heroes closed, I lost an important part of what inspired me, and I formed the Valiance team to work on a successor. However, this was done only after reaching out to other spiritual-successors, and that's something I have on record. They decided not to use the tech, so when nobody else would use the tech, I found a group of developers that were interested in it. I've been programming for 20 years now, I've worked for various companies on applications based around network solutions, network security, advance aeronautical solutions, and I know what it takes to make applications with features as complicated and intricate as an MMO. My intentions were to provide a helping hand to a group of prospective developers to assist the, in completion of a spiritual successor.
I worked for a company that secured 7 million dollars in funding to develop an MMO, and they recently cancelled the project after 4 years of development do to financial shortcomings. After combining all our documented work hours across the last 8-9 years of combined coding, the coding side of our MMO tech alone is worth well over a million dollars, had we all been paid our standard fair for hours spent. This is no easy feat, and I offered the Valiance team the most valuable thing a prospect MMO dev-team could be offered, and asked only that they remain true to the spirit of the game. I've worked my day-job, come home and spent 12 hours coding for them; sometimes even before my own game. I haven't asked for a dime and they can account for that. They recently even offered to pass along some financing to me for all the help I've provided; money which I attempted to turn down repeatedly. They firmly insisted that I take it, until I finally acknowledged their want to give to me as I have done to them.
Valiance is a genuine product, and it stands now as a genuine product. Everyone one is entitled to their opinion, and that's something we embrace and encourage. But we'll continue towards our release, and that's something that won't change. Much like with sports, there are those that will choose their team. We love and accept that, and hope to see more people give Valiance a chance in the future. I've seen a lot of people refer to Valiance as a reskinned fantasy game, and that's great... I laugh every time I hear it. I mean... Counter-Strike and Team Fortress were "Half-life Reskins"; turned out really great for them. I mean... these reskinned helped finance one the biggest game publishers of this era. Haha, those reskins, gotta love 'em! Or you could say each new Call of Duty is a reskin of last year's release, it's been working out great for them it appears. Starting from scratch when developing a single-player game is hard. Starting from scratch on an MMO (without millions of dollars on tap) is considered madness in the eyes of those that know the road. When you can make an actual game with a proven, and tested tech in a few years, there is no real reason to start from nothing. Valiance has basically shaved 60%-70% percent of its development cost off by using the tech, and that's an enormous advantage that has already paid off for their team.
So please continue to cheer for your team as you desire. Never let it be said that the Valiance team discouraged anyone's freedom to support any of the other successor, because we've never done such a thing. One thing that can be said is that the game has already achieved a level of success that few indie MMOs have, and it will continue to do so. Keep in mind that long before Kickstarter, games were being created and published without crowdfunding. This supports an idea that says Kickstarter doesn't dictate a product's potential to succeed.
