Kickstart My (blackened lump of a) Heart: City of Titans Jolts Kickstarter

As of this moment, the two day old Missing Worlds Media kickstarter for City of Titans has collected $260,268 toward their proposed $320,000 development budget.

While I'm hopeful for all three 'spiritual successor' games, City of Titans is the one exactly on my wavelength- instigated by forum regulars, staffed by veteran CoH volunteers, and devoted to as explicit a recreation of the CoH mise en place as copyright law allows.  Which is why I unlimbered my wallet & dug out a bit more than I can afford just now & pitched it into the crater of Mount Diable, a dark offering to Bat'Zul in pursuit of bringing CoH back in a new body.

Given my druthers, I'd like to simply turn CoH back on.  I'd log in the Goat, hit the Sharkhead Isle Black Market to check my traps, then pull up my global tabs to see who was doing what and where.

Since that can't happen, City of Titans strikes me as the successor team with a vision closest to my own.

It is heartening to see them pulling down these big numbers, digging a big, gloved thumb right in the eye of serial MMO killer NC Soft, who murdered the game and orphaned the community not because we weren't profitable, but because we weren't profitable enough.

Positron (aka Matt Miller) had some interesting things to say in this article.

Start small. You do NOT need to ship with every feature under the sun; that's setting yourself up for failure in the long run. If you can't support a feature for the long run, don't cram it in just to have a bullet point. Add it in when it makes sense to add it to the game. Concentrate on making the game FUN and ENGAGING first, then you'll be able to add the features you've always wanted when they are ready for primetime, not because you need to get them out the door.

Which got me thinking back to CoH's launch when there was basically nothing to do except make characters & wander around beating things up on the streets, in warehouses & office buildings.

Which I LOVED more than any game I'd ever played up to that point.
If they can nail the character creator, give combat that specific CoH feeling & provide a couple of zones to explore & baddies to thump at launch, I'll be ecstatically happy.

I've seen negativity regarding the spiritual successor groups generally and Missing Worlds in particular, having to do with the "impossibility" of what they're attempting, or how "crazy" it is.  It's the same sort of naysaying that went on after the shutdown announcement when TonyV and the Titan crew were agitating to keep the game going.

Why bother, it doesn't matter, nobody cares, there are lots of other games, blah blah blah blah.

While I've been aware of the Phoenix Project almost from the moments of its formation, reading their Kickstarter page really opened my eyes to what they're about.  It's basically an MMO co-op, staffed by volunteers.  The Kickstarter money is earmarked for licensing fees on the tools they need to build the game.  I remember thinking out loud on the forums about what kind of MMO I'd be comfortable playing in light of NC Soft committing MMO genocide on a profitable title, and that's where I ended up- a game beholden to no corporate paymaster, a superhero game infused with the spirit of CoH, a game by players, for players.

Why should the success of City of Titans be any less likely than City of Heroes existing in the first place?
I see some people complaining that they don't have professional game devs.
Well, they've got a lot of talented people from our community....and this goat remembers when Big Professional Game Developer Dr. Aeon was just a guy named Fearghas, paying his $14.99 a month to play superhero like the rest of us.

I've seen this community work miracles before, and I'm confident we can do it again.
Viva City of Titans!