Chaoscraft is developed on the basis of an experimental philosophy, which can be simply termed a form of experimentalism. This methodology follows specific principles. These principles inform our work on the game. It’s worth noting we extend this same philosophy to Castle of Nightmares, though this webpage is dedicated solely to Chaoscraft.

It’s useful here to define the term experimental. In the broad sense we use it for our games, it essentially denotes a quality of willingness to explore novel features, unknown territory, and risky equations.

Experimental, in this sense, can be both experimentation with a specific purpose in mind and experimentation with no specific purpose at all. This is to say, it can be either, “Let’s assess this design’s function.” or, “Let’s see what happens.” Either way, this approach is based strongly on an axiom of fearless determination to see the outer limits of gaming. Which is, above all, exactly what most gamers want in a developer. Most gamers, if they’re being honest with you, want a studio willing to experiment without fear over one who only settles for safe, standard models.

Experimental Principles

We’re going to outline the core principles behind our experimental philosophy. We take experimentalism seriously. These are actual principles with a direct connection to the designs we plan to implement.

Uncalculated Risk

Historically, the term calculated risk is used in corporate lingo to mean risk taken with a balanced plan. To put it frankly, this approach is boring. If you only take risk because you think it’s safe for your investment, your product will invariably be gilded in a “safe” aura.

Chaoscraft is a form of uncalculated risk. While we do prioritize competitive balance and analyze every part of the game on each level, we do not require a version be 100% fully “calculated” to go live. Testing, we emphasize here, is not necessarily the same as calculation. We know there is going to be chaos.

It’s in the title.

When we implement the features we outline below, we do so with a philosophy of open-ended risk. This risk exists both for us, as a developer, and, in some respect, for players who pursue some of the riskier paths. When you step foot into hardcore, for instance, you do so knowing there may be parts of HC that aren’t fully 100% calculated. This is to be expected both because the deepest depths of HC become very extreme and hectic, and because the universe itself is.

The universe is uncalculated. So is Chaoscraft.

Unconventional Method

We follow an unconventional method. One of the clearest forms of this method involves our approach to the classic fantasy trinity. This unconventional design sees melee, magic, and tech classes tangle in a skillshot-based world. This can be extremely difficult to balance. You have to imagine an MMO where melee weapons, magic spells, and guns and tech coexist. This is very, very unconventional, especially in a skillshot game.

We are not deterred by how challenging this may be for us to balance. We invite the community to provide input on this model, both in this current early stage of development and in future live versions.

This form of the classic trinity alone is a phenomenal example of unconventional method. This is not a game with locked autotargeting. All the classes and weapons of MMOs exist, creating massive dynamism and an atmosphere of novelty and individuality without peer.

Chaos as a Design

Chaos is a very interesting word. Commonly, it’s often associated with a kind of negative energy. The reality is that the entire cosmos is chaos. This is an unavoidable conclusion, after examining it closely for long enough.

Chaos can, like just about anything else, be positive, neutral, or negative, relatively speaking. In our approach to game development, we see chaos as a profoundly invaluable force to be evolved and cherished.

History has shown us many of the games popularly regarded as the funnest and most beautiful are those that embrace chaos. It’s not about structuring a multiplayer game into an ordered architecture. It’s about setting the stage for an open-ended play.

This is chaos. This is, let’s be honest, a bit of a scary force for studios, especially big publishers. Who wants to stake millions of dollars on total chaos? You might as well walk into a boardroom and tell them you want to set all their money on fire. At least, this is how it comes across. Well, sometimes, when they look at you like you have three heads, it’s because you do.

We take the opposite approach. Chaos is the future of gaming. It will prove to be the most valuable asset of the entire industry. It is the heart of life. When you look around at kids playing their imaginative games, they follow the same philosophy. They couldn’t give a damn whether their little games are “safe investments”.

Ya dig?

Art as a Business

So then you have to ask yourself. What about art?

Where does it all fit into place?

Truth is, when a game studio embraces not only chaos and raw beauty, but a method of pure art, this – and this must be stated in the absolute strongest, clearest terms:

This is what gamers want to see.

They want to see art. They want open-ended chaos.

They get bored of the same old, same old. The reasons for this are obvious. Thus, it takes a kind of experimental philosophy to break this cycle. You have to be willing to think and create outside the box, even if it means real risk and a potential for untold discord.

As we hire developers, we’re looking to hire artists who want to create in freeform fashion. This means, to a great extent, when artists on Chaoscraft create, they do so with their own artistic direction in mind. Why is this so valuable? Because players can see the art. They can feel its aura. When you empower your artists to work as they see fit, within the infinite scope of a vast MMO verse, art itself becomes part of the appeal, and thus drives interest and engagement in the game.

It can be said this is experimental in the sense it is very unconventional and, on this level, with little precedent. Ordinarily, there is quite a bit of oversight of art teams, for one reason or another. When we talk about freeform infinite creativity, we mean so literally.

We tell an artist:

You like this kind of character. Why not make it?

This kind of world appeals to you. Show us a version.

You have an idea for a monster. What is it?

This is freeform art. Players can see it and feel it. When you make art itself part of your development model, it becomes part of the game’s signature and presence.

Etiquette Irrelevancy

Now this is the part where you may want to cover your eyes. Here’s the real truth about the gaming industry.

If you want to make a kickass game that takes the genre itself to the next level, you can’t give a fuck what anyone feels. If you offend someone, or ruffle common sensibilities, or open doors that fluster everyone and their sister, that’s the price to be paid.

Etiquette is one of the banes of the modern industry. By this, we mainly mean what can be described as a near-universal commercial etiquette akin to a baseline terms of use. Studios believe they have to put on a “professional” appearance and follow a kind of unspoken code. What results is a series of heavily structured, sugarcoated releases with a distinctly industry aura. Most of these would never go anywhere near some of this territory.

For a game to be truly new and cutting edge, you do, as a developer, need to relinquish any sense of common etiquette. This is a way of saying, aside from keeping it real and telling it like it is, you cannot let backlash, displeasure, or sensitivity influence the core heart of the game. Games have a spirit. Chaoscraft’s spirit exists independently of anyone’s feelings about it. More specifically: It takes a sort of coldness to make a game of this caliber. We aren’t here to hold anyone’s hand. That’s no fun, in the long run.

Experimental Design

Having outlined the basic precepts that form the foundation of the game, we’ll dive into a number of the parts of this game that can be considered experimental. We’ve showcased many of them elsewhere on the website. Here, our intent is to make an effort to elucidate what it is about these features specifically that makes them so experimental. Let’s take a look.

Fantasy Trinity

We’ve mentioned a few times the classic fantasy trinity of melee, magic, and tech. This is a trinity that’s existed for centuries in some form, having taken on more solid life in the modern era. Tech, in this sense, can be classified to range from basic bows and bombs to advanced technology like energy weapons and jetpacks.

Chaoscraft fully enshrines this trinity. Classes range from traditional and new forms of melee and magic to tech users. Part of what makes this specific design experimental is that these three types can blend together. Melee can use certain forms of magic and tech. Magic users can use melee and tech. Tech users can use melee and/or magic. In this way, we’ll see melee classes tangling with tech classes, with magic aligning far closer to precision than it ever has before.

This can be very difficult to balance. Except we do not profess Chaoscraft will ever be perfectly balanced. It is possible there will be imbalances to a degree, even as we fine-tune classes.

Much of the “balance” in a game like this involves situational factors like terrain, comp, external chance, and even weather or monsters. It is not all a simple straightforward fight on a flat ground without cover. Worlds evolve. Maps randomize. Dragons fly…

Balance, here, is better understood as an approximate.

Character Customization

This is a point very, very central to this game. We see a future Version 1.0 where you can create practically any kind of character you imagine. This requires a deep investment in not only resources but artists.

As an old saying goes: We have the technology!

It’s all a matter of using it. We see players being able to customize every aspect of their appearance, including skin, eyes, hair, facial features, attire, accessories, tattoos, maybe ass size, and also height and weight.

Our initial model will explore allowing selection of height along a spectrum of tall and short, and weight along a spectrum of heavy, medium, and light. Each of these selections have their own stat builds. If you’re taller and heavier, you’ll move slower but be stronger with higher defense. If you’re smaller and lighter, you’ll move faster but be a bit more susceptible to damage.

In this way, the spectrum of character becomes virtually boundless. While we do anticipate this will likely add internal challenge to the balance equation, it doesn’t stop us from wanting to see what happens. Which is exactly what we explained in the introduction.

We know this is unusual. That is the appeal. It’s for the fun of it. Nothing else. If it’s a bit wacky, it is what it is.

Class Customization

As we release classes and expand spellbooks, we’re going to see an eventual return of classic talent trees. Talent trees that allow for wide-ranging pure and hybrid builds are great, and deserve a place in this game.

We also plan a form of universal grimoire, or a spellbook all classes can select five slots from. This further broadens class and build selection. This grimoire itself appears to have little if any real precedent, further solidifying why we classify it here.

Weapon Selection

One of the most iconic weapon build models appeared some decades ago. Originating in the Elder Scrolls universe, this allows adventurers to combine an array of possible weapons, including both melee and magic.

Chaoscraft seeks to cultivate this approach. We see, as unconventional and even distasteful as it may seem, melee classes being able to create hybrid magic builds with staffs and wands, magic classes being able to wield melee weapons and guns or bows, and tech classes having the same choices. This exists solely because it expands player options and potential for fun. While we do respect the tradition of class fantasy, there’s nothing to stop a wizard from picking up a sword or shotgun.

Gandalf himself wielded a sword. A little funny, then, wizards in the modern era tend to shun them so…

World Evolution

It is very common now to see new MMO worlds deemed a living world. While there is certainly life in every MMO, a true living world must be just that: living.

What does this mean?

We’ll tell you how we see it.

A living world is like our own. People come and go. Shops pop up and go out of business. Seasons change. Weather shifts. Storms emerge. It rains… It snows…

In Otherworld, this means you may see a travelling alchemist come into town, only to disappear for a couple weeks or even a month or two. What happens if they’re killed? Does that same alchemist ever appear again? When dragons roar down from the skies, the townsfolk react. Flowers grow. Trees fall.

This is a living world. You see it, don’t you?

This is not all that tough to make, believe it or not. It takes determination. It is not a question of possibility.

It also means new monsters can appear at any time. Some monsters also exist solely in specific subdimensions like Slayer, Labyrinths, and Terminus. These monsters can only be found there, and may carry unique loot obtainable only from them. Monsters form a central part of the world’s ongoing evolution.

A living world is a world without a set definite structure. It evolves. It expands. It shifts erratically. You never know what you’re going to find today, or tomorrow.

This is a living world. This is, in some ways, one of the most experimental parts of the game. When you let a world simply be, and follow its own story as it does, without trying to “make it” anything in particular, this is when it gets juicy, and you have no road signs in sight.

Dynamic Personality

In living worlds, there can in some places be found individuals who are not player characters. It ought be mentioned, if it hasn’t been made clear already, some of these characters you encounter may have a mind of their own… For traditional non-player characters, we’d like to tinker around with AI a bit and give life to denizens with their own dynamic personalities and speech. This is also, believe it or not, quite easy to make.

How many “NPCs” stand around doing nothing for years on end? This isn’t what a living world is about, as charming as this is in old games.

When you come across that travelling alchemist by their wagon outside town, and you say, “What’s good, G?” they take a look at you and talk back. Why not?

“Oi. You lookin fer potions? Gots me plenty.”

Why not? Is this not possible to make?

So what’s up with all the mindless NPCs holding dick?
Not a very “living world” to us…

Let there be wacky alchs with accents! Let there be bumbling ogres who stumble over every word! And above all, let there be dragons!

But we’re getting to that…

Global Rank 1

We’ve shared our development plans for Rank 1. We discuss it in the light of experimentalism to detail what it is about this feature that fits this category.

For one, being able to compete on any class ladder and any division ladder for actual Rank 1 titles with exclusive rewards is, at the very least, highly unconventional. This is, to put it in simple terms, because it is thought to be bad business to allow players to fall short.

Clarity: Rank 1 titles exist in some games. But to compete both for class Rank 1 in any bracket, e.g. Arena, TDM, BR, or any ranked HC, as well as global titles, and to define Rank 1 as actual R1, is not universal. Our point? It should be. This term has one meaning.

For Chaoscraft in particular, Rank 1 class ladders are markedly distinct from the more familiar mode ladder. Here, we see classes themselves compete with their rivals for seasonal prestige. Non-seasonal will be an option for some divisions. Rank 1 is also not something you get mid-season and then get a title for. You have to reach Rank 1 at the season’s end. No cupcake shit.

Real Rank 1. Let’s see it. This is pure drama in the making. Popcorn sales are going to go through the roof. And they should. It’s not just about the game. It’s about the spectacle of the game. It’s bigger than individual competitors and their personal journeys.

When titles become so prestigious and arduous to attain, it creates conflict and vast competition. This is engaging and exciting for viewers. People want to see players compete at the top level. You, as a dev, incentivize the most skilled and ambitious gameplay by reserving the top titles for the actual top competitors. Attaching unique illusions, exotics, and mounts and vehicles to R1 titles makes them all that more sought.

True Hardcore

Hardcore is one of those topics that can be revisited recurringly. It will be discussed and debated for centuries to come. Some people, ourselves included, are very passionate about HC. It’s more than a genre. It’s become a lifestyle, movement, and community.

There is a reckoning coming in the hardcore world. One of the most unpleasant truths yet to be accepted is that a number of industry forms of hardcore are not in any way genuine hardcore. They use the name. That’s it.

If you die, you get a free transfer to another realm. You keep your bank alt with all your gold and spare gear. Spin up another toon with your stash and level, or transfer and play the one you died on in another realm.

If you die, you lose an icon status next to your name. Big fucking deal. You didn’t actually die then. You just lost an icon. This is not death. This is not hardcore.

It is, at best, a quasi-hardcore. We all still tend to call it hardcore because the biz uses the term. Nor should this section be taken as disrespect for the legitimate commitment fans of HC hold in their hearts. Just because the operational definition of HC is questionable doesn’t mean the spirit of HC isn’t alive in existing games and communities. In fact, some fans of the genre remain personally committed to keeping their dead characters a ghost even if the game itself doesn’t force true permadeath. Such players can be said to be playing legit HC, even if the game itself isn’t true HC.

But the truth is that hardcore, in the most genuine sense, must be permadeath. It should not surprise you we’re even thinking about a future optional hardcore core mode where your character actually dies permanently, and you lose access to your account for the rest of eternity. Why wouldn’t we offer this? If you want to play that kind of hardcore, so be it. We’re not the ones to decide.

Survival is also a popular type we’ll see at some point, especially in Terminus and Magic Realms.

Hardcore, as a genre and community, is due for a critical reassessment of what hardcore itself actually is. It is not dying and getting a free transfer to another realm. It is not dying and losing a mere icon status beside your name. It is death. It is straight up death.

This is what a hardcore warning should actually read:

Caution: Above all, death is permanent on any hardcore adventure. When you die in hardcore, you lose your character, your possessions, your wealth, and your rank. It becomes a ghost, sent to the Graveyard to rest in peace for eternity.

To speak bluntly: It is disrespect to both the original one-life tradition of hardcore and death itself for devs to use the term hardcore and make it anything but actual character death. This is the future of hardcore.

We embrace this future. As skeptical as some are of HC itself and its market viability and appeal, we’re confident once players see a true HC world that doesn’t play games with HC, they’ll love it. It’s about the thrill.

It’s about adventure, story, and permanence.

This is HC.

World-Unique Legends

World-unique legendary weapons hold a place in this overview for the simple reason legendary weapons of MMOs tend to never, ever be world-unique like those of old. We touch on this in Dev Log III. Legendary weapons being world-unique – wielded by a single soul in the world at a time – is extremely experimental and completely unprecedented.

Yet, just like Gandalf wielding a sword despite being a wizard, that sword Gandalf wielded had a single name, and was, at that time, wielded by Gandalf alone.

It became a legendary weapon, known to this day.

This is very, very uncharted territory. Yet it can be given a form that makes sense, and is highly intuitive. It will.

You have to give it time.

When a seeker finally completes their epic quest to attain the ability to wield a legendary weapon of their choice, if the weapon has yet to be claimed, they’ll be the first to grasp it. If it is in the grasp of another, they can challenge the current wielder to a duel to the death, a legendary showdown in a secluded realm. Such duels decide the fate of the weapon, and those who seek it.

This is the essence of Chaoscraft’s legends. Long quests… Peril at every turn… Then, finally, an ultimate showdown between two powerful souls…

It tells a story. Legendary weapons are not printed out and sold like candy. They’re earned, as they should be.

See the terms: uncalculated risk, unconventional method, chaos as a design… All of this is very real. These are not mere words or abstract principles. They provide a foundation for truly cinematic events.

Magic Realms

Magic Realms are infinite sandbox worlds we plan for release in 1.0 or some time after official launch. We go into great depth on these worlds on our Magic Realm exposé page, where we reveal our sandbox model.

In these special subworlds, players will be able to create their own wholly original dimensions, each with unique denizens and creatures, governments and laws, physics, climates, textures, aesthetics, and other settings, including, at some point, custom races and classes.

Magic Realms can be considered experimental on the level of their intended use of extremely vast dimensional and architectural settings, combined with in-built functionality of governments, variable climates, and even contrasting textures and visual qualities.

This is planned as an epic evolution of the sandbox genre, where players create their own worlds either softcore, risk, or hardcore, and forge new paths and stories, in effect hosting what can be classified as a dimensional underworld of Otherworld’s overworld.

Magic Realms will go one step further, come official release. While it may take years to perfect the engine, we want to offer players the option to use specially programmed AI to generate or refine whole Magic Realms, bypassing the need for acute textural prowess.

We see these worlds being a central hub of the game’s community, one day. Sandbox of this nature diverges heavily from the historical static or semi-static overworld of MMOs. Instead of one the developer designs, each Realm is its own idiosyncratic place, with its own inhabitants, customs, and lore.

Infinite Expansion

MMOs commonly follow a set expansion model. This model can be roughly defined as a dated release of a preset world with a specific foreknown name and type. Using this structure, publishers generate steady annual revenue via strategic release of expansions at specific favorable times in the market cycle.

We use a model we term infinite expansion. Not to overuse the word infinite, but it is very applicable here.

Infinite expansion is a form of MMO expansion that sees the sporadic, unannounced, undated appearance of new worlds with new beings, factions, quests, and other allures. These new worlds appear out of the blue. They are not publicized or advertised ahead of time. They simply show up one day or night, out of nowhere.

They may appear on the world map, or they may be accessible by portal or other form of travel. Whatever they are, and however one reaches them, such expanded regions emerge without any foreknowledge on the part of the population. They can appear at any time – literally any time. In this way, Chaoscraft undergoes a continuous infinite expansion, branching off into other dimensions big and small at any time of the year.

This is also very unprecedented and unconventional, and thus extremely experimental. We emphasize its experimental nature because we honestly cannot say for certain what will come of this expansion model. We will not here state we will never release an official expansion, but, for the most part, when expansions do emerge, they do so like this. We would rather none of these kinds of expansions be paywalled. However, if we find a publisher who requires this, we will probably be required for pragmatic reasons to do so.

It is a valid point that people with work schedules would ordinarily rather know of expansions or similar patches ahead of time. This is one of the trade-offs to be made when making a game that exists in a state of unforeseeable flux. It will mean people can’t reliably plan ahead, but it will also mean the world remains full of surprises, flavor, and speculation forever.

Infinite expansion is an MMO model that thrives on the thrill and romantic wonder of the unknown. Expansions can be of any scale or scope. When they become known, it is without any sense of planning or, e.g., EA or PTR. They are 100% uncharted regions.

Full-spectrum Aesthetics

One of the most beloved parts of game development to us is the universally recognizable language of aesthetic. It is our aspiration that, with the right team and materials, we’ll be able to support what one can call a model of full-spectrum aesthetics.

By this term, we mean the aesthetic selection of characters, worlds, and even spells spans the entire spectrum of aesthetic styles and themes. Whether traditional high fantasy, science fiction, Wild West, goth, steampunk, anime, cartoon, or other kinds of aesthetic and fashion, your selection of style ranges across both your personal style and even, we hope, your chosen texture. In other words, we’d like players to be able to choose their own character and spell textures. Textures can be chosen and modified from categories. If you like one type of texture or style in particular, this could be overlaid.

Imagine an MMO where everyone isn’t the same set texture. They vary so widely, players of the same race and class could appear vastly different.

We extend this same interest to the aesthetic of worlds. You could travel from one region or realm to another and find the appearance and quality differs so dramatically it’s like stepping from one genre into another. This is, like other development goals, very doable with today’s technology, and time.

On a small note here, we do recognize the possibility of such wide-ranging aesthetic variation potentially being a little visually jarring, in certain forms. We will do our best to blend styles seamlessly, making the game amenable to the eye while preserving self-expression.

Map Randomization

We’ve mentioned map randomization at points on the site. It has a section here to talk a bit about what it is we specifically envision for map randomization.

It is possible in principle and, with solid tech, in practice, to randomly generate thousands of possible worlds with massively unique terrains and layouts. This tech we see being extended to the likes of Arena, TDM, BR, and other modes like Slayer. Here, one can imagine many kinds of dimensional structures, color schemas, tactical layouts, and even physics and climates. Maps may be balanced and some may be imbalanced.

All of it exists solely to foster an atmosphere of novelty and replayability, where you aren’t limited to the same set series of maps all the time. Named Maps have a place in the game. Mystery Maps bring competitive gaming to the next level. It becomes that much tougher to solve and metagame a map. You have no idea what you’re going to get half the time, and you don’t know the comp of enemy teams either.

This is map randomization that goes beyond shifting a few bits and pieces around. One reason this doesn’t typically exist in practice on this level is because it takes quite a serious investment to sustain. We think, in the future, when the game is better known and has had time to build resources and develop, we’ll be able to sustain some form of Mystery Maps. If we take it far enough, you may even find some maps have their own weather, whether rain, snow, or storms, influencing gameplay.

Skillshot-based MMO

It goes without saying many MMOs are not skillshot-based, or if they are, the movement/mechanics often feel somewhat janky or non-fluid. It’s also notable many MMOs are third-person. Third-person POV is not innately bad. Some of the best MMOs are third-person.

For this game, first-person immersion fits it best, though there will be third-person options in Magic Realms. As part of this POV, skillshot is a central focus. Just like real-life combat, you have to aim and move, counter and dodge. There is a powerful fluidity and kinetic torque, forcing fast-paced close encounters.

In turn, some of what makes this design so atypical is the coexistence of melee, magic, and tech like guns. Some tech or magic can be used long-range, creating an asymmetric dynamic with short-range classes. To compensate, we often see melee with a great deal of mobility and gap-closers. Short-range and medium/long-range classes engage in a kind of tactical dance, maneuvering across the battlefield and exchanging attacks until one finally finds checkmate.

This is where we ask readers to remember our commitment to uncalculated risk. We do not pretend it is a guarantee Chaoscraft will be 100% perfectly balanced. It is conceivable the game will never be perfectly balanced. It is a common sentiment now that some form of imbalance can actually make a game fun.

We do seek perfect balance, in the end. We do so in the recognition we may not calculate every single microscopic aspect of the game and its complex dynamics. What happens when a Slayer and a Witch face off against two tech-specced Rangers? What havoc unfolds when a Trickster and a Demon happen across a Nightmare Mage and Vampire?

Chaos. That is your answer.

Even with the assistance of the world’s top experts and advanced AI, we still think there will likely be some degree of uncalculated chaos. It’s in the title.

Extreme Realism

Realism is a word we’ve used multiple times. This is because it is, in some ways, very extraordinary to see actual realism in a modern MMO, and so it’s worthwhile to shed so much light on the motif.

Firstly, let there be no semantic ambiguity about our use of the term realism. By this, we do not mean it is a 1 for 1 copy of our universe. This is not what realism means, necessarily. There is one version of realism that does mean this, and exists in a number of life-based games.

Chaoscraft is a form of magical realism. It imaginatively blends elements of physical life as we know it with elements of magical lore. There are several lifelike elements the game adapts to its Otherworld.

Of these, we can name a few. Spells and attacks do not autotarget enemies. Abilities utilize precision. Dodge is, mostly, conscious, with a small sliver of avoidance based in unconscious instinct. Mounts and vehicles can be killed or destroyed. Regions can be physically affected by disasters like fires and storms, or dragons. Denizens can talk and have actual personalities and conversations. Damage takes a real toll and can affect perception, fluidity, and movement. Death has graphic effects on the demised, leaving a vivid mark.

Realism can extend to other elements in some future parts of hardcore, such as hunger, thirst, or heat or frost. In Magic Realms, homes can, depending on Realm settings, be destroyed, and cannot be restored to their previous state in a simple snap. There is, broadly, an essence of permanence throughout the game.

This is almost as close as a fantasy game can come to realism. We’re headed there, whatever the outcome.

Skill Emphasis

Gearing takes a new form. Traditionally, a player levels up and gears. This can be a very fun classic form of progression. With no levels, progression in Chaoscraft involves the player’s long-term journey and experience.

Gear in this game is, largely, exotic. It is scarce. It is tough to come by. Looting real gear is a special event.

In both PvP and PvM, especially PvP, there is a much stronger emphasis on pure skill. It is no fun being one-shot by someone with ten times your power in gear, nor is it all that fun to everyone to one-shot like this. We see gear being more like weapons, equipment, and trinkets and gizmos seen in anime, or, in other words, pieces of one’s arsenal that flavor combat and drive character.

In ranked versus, gear plays absolutely no role. Ranked versus is and should always be based in pure skill. When it comes to seasonal titles, who has more time on their hands – or more luck or connections – to grind better gear should not influence the outcome of formal ranked matches. These matches are pure competitive talent.

So while gearing is and will probably always be a part of MMOs, skill is the name of the game. Gear is, in some MMOs now, treated as more of a commodity or carrot-on-a-stick than anything else. You can’t just copy a great classic MMO and print out gear like candy.

Recall the moment Bilbo bestows his trusty glowing sword to Frodo, Middle-earth’s version of an exotic weapon. This is not a cheap dopamine hit. It’s a poignant and memorable exchange, among flesh-and-blood mortals. This is how we see gearing, in essence.

What this means is, gearing takes skill, but skill does not take gear. If you want gear, you can seek it. If it isn’t your vibe, or you don’t have time, skill will suffice. We find this a fair, balanced design that values both.

Shroud of Secrecy

Mixed into all these exploratory tests, we hold fast to a perennial shroud of secrecy. This means, above all, no matter what, there are some parts of the game we absolutely will never speak of, or even acknowledge. There are parts of Chaoscraft unprofiled on this website. This is the shroud of secrecy approach, or, as mentioned in the first Dev Log, the magician’s creed.

What fun is a game that tells you all you want to know?

When you go to a magic show, half the fun is not knowing how the magician does the trick. Chaoscraft is a magic show for the ages. When you step foot into Otherworld’s regions, you can feel in the air an elusive mystery, something you can’t put your finger on or see. It is a world that provides no external guidance, or convenient pointers. As you journey through it over the months and years, it holds a potential for surprises at any turn, whether friendly or otherwise. Beings and magics you’ve seen in one place could as easily disappear in the future, ones unclassified to you in their place.

Unknowns can appear in familiar regions you’ve travelled or unexplored expanses. When they do, we do not tell you when, how, or why.

This is the magician’s creed in practice. It is up to you, the individual, the thrillseeker and adventurer, to wade out into the outer limits of the unknown, perhaps even the deadliest reaches, and stake your claim. What awaits you there is only something you will know personally.

And when we say only you will know, we mean it: That region catalogued on the wiki? With the database of denizens and monsters and magics and labyrinths? When you travel there next, you’ll never know what you’re destined to encounter, and how it will unfold. It could be completely different than you last saw it.

This is mystery. This is magic.

Intelligent Bosses

It is not necessarily all that easy to give life to intelligent bosses in a way that balances challenge with fairness. To some extent, when a developer’s philosophy is so committed to freeform evolution, one may not be able to secure full fairness if bosses are so intelligent.

Intelligence is more than boss skill. Bosses are on track, with the advancement of AI, to become individuals in their own right with their own “minds” and personalities, and an ability to strategize and adapt.

You and your Guild figured out how to best that boss you faced last week? They remember your encounter and have been talking to their minions about how to beat your Guild. Maybe they even remember your faces.

Why not?

“People want faceroll content. Get lost, buddy.”

This is actually true. In fact, I enjoy some faceroll myself from time to time. Nothing wrong with that. Believe it or not, I may not even step foot in a hardcore raid much. Not if I want to keep whatever I’ve collected.

Chaoscraft is next level. There’s nothing more to it. We invite readers to browse the internet to find any MMO willing to take raiding to this level. You will not. One big reason? Studios think this model won’t sell. They think it’s dangerous and people will ragequit.

Guess what. They will.

Hardcore is just that: Hardcore.

Unknown Bosses

Bosses, whether raid, world, or others, are both intelligent and have unknown spellbooks. This means raiders do not know the abilities and passives of a boss. They have to fight and chronicle a boss to study it, and that same boss can evolve and gain new powers and gear over time, just as raiders do.

We’re going to explore some means to protect against data-mining, to enshroud bosses in as much mystery as possible, even if this means they shift so frequently with mini-updates and their toolkits can vary randomly from encounter to encounter it becomes impractical to data-mine them in a way that’s as reliable as it could be.

There is no handy-dandy adventure guide. This is how MMOs did it in the old days. We’re bringing that back. You cannot rely on the wiki because the wiki is at best an approximate and powers, gear, minions, and raid architecture can evolve season to season and even week to week. What’s funny about all this is that, historically, this is exactly what magical villains are in lore.

They are intelligent unknown beings. They have their own powers and secret weapons. Raid bosses do not just sit around in their lairs acting evil. In fact, you’re likely to see them from time to time in the open world. All of it is aligned perfectly to exactly what we expect beings like this to be in a magical world.

Unscripted Villains

Now, here’s where we’ll cloak our words in the magician’s shroud a bit again, and make a little nod to the literal sense of the two words above.

We’ve already nodded quite a bit at it.

Can you guess?

Unannounced Alterations

Perhaps one of the most meta-breaking approaches of our studio, the use of unannounced alterations in Chaoscraft is – we must state emphatically – extremely experimental in industry terms. This is not standard in major MMOs in any way. For good reason, financially. It tends to be far stabler market-wise – or so it is thought – to advertise a game’s updates, versions, and expansions well ahead of time. Let everyone know, of course.

We find this much more interesting, for this game in particular. This means, when you play Chaoscraft, a major alteration to the world, classes, or other parts of the game could occur on any given date, day or night.

Some of what makes this such an intriguing and potentially lucrative model is what we call the internet. Imagine it now. A new Chaoscraft version appears out of nowhere – new dimensions, new quests and factions, perhaps a new race or class, even a raid. Who takes notice first? Content creators who want to be the first to profile the event, and chronicle what unfolds. In a way, the game markets itself. This creates a content cycle driven by speculation, anticipation, and live exploration, echoing the old eras of exploration. In those days, when a civilization discovered a new part of the planet, they did not know what they were going to find. It was a big deal in the news. People grabbed whatever they could to follow the story, and it became a spectacle. Chaoscraft is going to be a spectacle.

We’re certain of that. It is so spectacular precisely because it cannot be reliably predicted. When you, as a dev, tell your audience exactly what will release on what date, people know what to expect. What happens when nobody knows a thing? And can only guess?

Magic!

Equitable Trade

In our observations of MMO RMT and bot farms, one of the driving forces we’ve noted is the very existence of unrestricted trade itself. Now, on Earth, free trade can have some great qualities. But in an MMO verse, what happens inevitably is that cheaters/botters take advantage of free trade to offload supply (e.g. gold) to clients for a fee. This fuels RMT and, over time, ruins the economy, the game, and its spirit.

We made the solemn decision to employ a market model we call equitable trade. What this means, in practice, is that, when a player makes a trade, for instance of an exotic, it must trade that exotic for something of equal value. Value will thus be roughly defined by tiered categories. You cannot just give away an exotic for free. This would open the door to serious RMT that would drastically undermine game integrity.

Gifts exist, but high-value items follow equitable trade. This signficantly lowers financial incentive of RMTers to invest in the game, especially when they risk lifetime bans. One of the only options this leaves is for RMTers to deliberately die in HC to offload fractions or all of their banks. We think there are ways to counter this as well, some of which one might not imagine at first.

Unable to trade high-value currency and items for free or otherwise without some form of fair trade, RMTers will be forced to die in HC to do so. One of the reasons this disincentivizes RMT compared to other MMOs is that HC death incurs the total loss of all one owns, setting an RMTer back to zero and forcing them to grind from scratch again. Further, while they may attempt to offload supply using this method, and while they may attempt to do so without a public website, all it takes is a single sting operation to prove an account is involved in RMT. At that stage, given the use of Real ID and authentication-based log-ins, we could safely ban that account and that user would be unable to make a new one using their Real ID for life. So although cheating is to be expected in the early existence of the game, over time, as cheaters get life-banned, there are fewer and fewer cheaters, further deterring new cheaters from investing time and money in accounts. It may all sound theoretical currently, but with a real team and serious commitment, it can be done.

Equitable trade is a simple, no-nonsense measure to mitigate the very real impact of RMT. The trade-off is that items like exotics exist in tiers with fixed value. This is practically necessary in today’s world to prevent RMT. Some players will spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on whatever they want. This would utterly ruin the game and is completely counter to its spirit.

Equitable trade can be understood as a hybrid of free trade and anti-RMT economics. There comes a point you can only prevent direct black market trading by limiting trading itself and ensuring equal value trades. This is an exchange we are willing to make.

Scorched Earth

We’ve disclosed our planned security and anti-cheat system, Scorched Earth. This name originates from the historical military tactic, which can be executed by either an offensive or defensive force. In this case, Scorched Earth is an offensive measure, designed to target contemporary botters/cheaters who make money abusing games like MMOs.

Another phrase to describe this stance is no quarter, or take no prisoners. In other words: No bullshit.

Real ID is a security system we will only implement at or after 1.0 launch, when we’ve taken an extended period to review privacy protection and encryption, refine and safeguard Scorched Earth, and test it to ensure 100% functionality and security. Chaoscraft will not feature Real ID until that stage.

When Real ID is implemented, we will make it clear in our terms biometric data is not stored in any database and instead generates an encrypted token attached to each account, ensuring one account per user.

Now, it’s at this stage I want to speak personally as the game’s creator again, given this is a system I devised for very personal reasons some years ago. I don’t want this to come across as an indie company requesting data. I’m a real gamer, believe it or not, and I’ve dealt with my fair share of cheaters before. I am well aware of how controversial this could be and the data security questions involved in using full-fledged Real ID.

There is one very basic, common-sense reason I am so adamant about pursuing a Real ID Scorched Earth model: Cheaters have shown time and time again they will make laughing stocks of billion-dollar companies. They bot, hack, and RMT their games to ruins. Companies claim they’re doing all they can, yet this is deeply questionable and, year after year, banned cheaters simply make new accounts and find ways to sneak back into the system to keep breaking rules.

Cheaters are relentless. So are we. If you don’t do all you can to prevent ban evasion, they will just keep coming back like roaches. You have to go full Scorched Earth on their asses and implement both equitable trade and biometric accounts. I want you to take a step back for a moment and consider the reality of this.

We are talking about a game with Rank 1 titles and rewards, world-unique legendary weapons, and hardcore exotics. In MMO terms, these are very serious forms of prestige and legacy, with real competitive and skill-based natures. We do not want any of them – or any part of the game – to be ruined and tainted by the likes of cheats. Some of these are extremely difficult and risky to obtain, and so extremely valuable. In some ways, they are priceless. So much so, we could easily see them going for tens of thousands of dollars on the black market one day, if there is a black market.

How do you counter a black market? How do you minimize RMT, life-ban botters, and prevent easy account sharing/selling? Scorched Earth. That’s how.

You ensure, as a developer, each user has one account, and that account is tied to that real individual. Not some faceless bot farm. Not some online account seller.

Real gamers. Straight up.

How do you do this? Ask yourself that.

If you don’t tie accounts to real users, rulebreakers will make a laughing stock of you. They will make a business out of your game, decaying it for everyone else. Nope.

Not this game. This game is an exception to the rule.

One account per user. One account for life.

This is how you make a great game pure. What does that mean? It means extreme measures, possible controversy, and even data security issues. What do you get at the end of it? Slowly but surely, we ban every single person who decides to dishonor the game, and what it symbolizes in history. Eventually, after years, it reaches a state of authentic purity, free of this scourge. Will it be perfect? Probably not. Will it be badass? Will it be a game you can play with confidence in legitimacy?

Absolutely.

To do it, we have to be willing to play ball. That means building trust in a publisher and their security system. It means making a trade-off: Committing to a one-of-a-kind MMO based in real identity and fair play.

Real ID, of course, is completely internal and private. Players do not share any of their data with anyone but a licensed security company. I state in the most certain terms: This is the price that must be paid in a game of this nature. This is not your typical release. Rank 1, legendary weapons, hardcore, exotic collectibles, Magic Realms… All of this is extremely precious and rare. It is not just about competitive integrity. It’s about ensuring those who pursue these epic quests do so with true legitimacy, and RMT is infinitely less profitable.

As odd as it may feel to show your face to a game company’s system in today’s gaming world, it is for your protection. It is to ensure these people do not continue to destroy the beautiful spirit of great games. We say no more of this shit. There’s a way to deal with it, and it isn’t just identity authentication. It’s about making the biggest and baddest anti-cheat you motherfuckers ever dreamt of. It takes real investment. Why?

Because some things are worth more than money…

Collision Physics

In the physical universe, collision physics exist. When two individuals cross paths, they can collide, whether in combat or otherwise. This has almost always been discarded in MMO design, mostly for convenience.

Chaoscraft has a form of collision. When players encounter each other, they have actual material bodies. Entrance Orbs provide a means to circumvent e.g. blocking of doors etc. In general, players, mounts, vehicles, structures, and objects can and do collide.

This further illustrates how far the game goes in terms of channeling the spirit of the oldest anthologies like Middle-earth. It isn’t only that collision (and friendly fire) complexifies combat. It creates room for drama.

In the old days of EverQuest, Ogres used to band together to make mischief and blockade points of travel. It became a whimsical drama and war, with devs back then embracing what chaos comes of life.

Collision is a physics equation that will have to be worked out in time. In sanctuaries, there’ll be some ways to travel freely on foot without getting trolled too hard. In the open world, it’s all fair game.

Ranked Raiding

Raiding has for a very long time been chiefly an unranked weekly venture. It brings Guilds and friends together, forming connections and memories. In the old days, raids felt like very novel, exciting challenges. As the decades went on, they became more and more routine, eventually reaching the status of weekly tasks more than cinematic challenges like the world-famous fights of high literature and film.

Raiding in Chaoscraft is both ranked and hardcore. There are no softcore raids. This is for the reason raid-like battles of classic fantasy are never softcore. (Transcendental beings like Gandalf being a notable exception.) For the average mortal raider in such stories, when they battle an evil enemy, they do so with a single life. This is the true spirit of fantasy.

Every season has its own ranked raid scene. Rank calculations and definitions remain under review. What we can say is: Raids can become a global competitive division, beyond the world first races already seen.

Guilds coordinate each season to study deep, treacherous, one-life raids, evaluating their enemies and rivals and planning moves. Of the raiders who defeat bosses and raids, those who defeat the most and survive to season’s end earn a Rank 1 title and unique treasure.

1.0 will likely see the advent of some form of Treasure Raids. In these initial raid proving grounds, 40-man groups bring special materials to summon one of thirteen Rift Bosses. Each Rift Boss has its own powers, backstory, and loot. On the Treasure Raid circuit, raiders who defeat the most Rift Bosses in a season without dying, with the best clear time, earn Rank 1.

This is one form of ranked raiding. Raiding evolves beyond a more or less clockwork weekly endeavor – commonly put on farm in short order – and enters the territory of a high-stakes, high-intensity odyssey, closely echoing the spirit of pre-modern tales.

Being able to compete in both Labyrinths and Raids is a very exceptional offering the MMO community remains largely unaccustomed to. One is not required to play on any competitive level, of course. For the option to be there at all is shaping up to be an evolution in both hardcore and raiding, fusing the two together in the form of a leaderboard-style circuit.

Meta Paradox

Meta is a very common word now. It’s become widely observed games tend to develop a meta. The opinion a meta is inevitable has been shared.

To some extent, game metas can also be manipulated by devs. One of the most prominent forms of this is the history of racials, and the incentive to pay for race changes in order to play a “meta” race. This can obviously be directly manufactured.

This is the reason we will not be using combat racials. While there may be racials one day, one’s race should not determine one’s viability in any ranked circuit.

Meta itself is a separate question. We’ll tackle it with an eye toward asking: How does one minimize meta itself?

Meta, over time, leads to uniformity, conformity, and peer pressure to play what’s expected to play, or, in other words, what’s currently considered optimal. This is, by and large, an atrocious atmosphere in any game. It leads to a community centered around a structured, hierarchical system of class/race/comp tiers.

Shit’s bunko. Well, there’s a way to work to resolve it.

Our theory is as follows:

Meta tends to develop for two main reasons: 1) developers try to create broader class/race/comp/build diversity by drawing sharp design contrasts between each; and 2) in some cases, developers take this one step further, deliberately making some classes/races etc. stronger (even slightly stronger) than others in order to incentivize in-game purchases. Scummy stuff, basically.

Meta thus develops mainly because certain classes/races etc. are deemed by the community to be stronger, to some degree, than others. In the course of this, it’s widely held imbalance is inevitable, and even fun. “You can never find perfect balance. Players will always find a way to exploit edges.” This is the essential premise behind why meta is seen as inevitable.

Why do such imbalances exist, on a core level? And, better yet, how can greater balance be found, in a form that minimizes the prevalence and pull of meta?

Imbalance, it can be theorized, typically exists in competitive games due to the sharp design contrasts implemented by developers. Devs want players to have as much choice as possible (or so this is how a game is presented), and so create classes/races etc. that differ from each other in ways players eventually exploit and thus establish a meta from.

Following this logic, if a game’s classes are designed using what can be described as a mirror method, or in other words, if class spellbooks mirror each other to a great extent, closely counterbalancing each other on the level of their core fundamentals, power levels can in principle be so closely aligned, they are near equal. If this ideal state can eventually be attained with enough testing and tuning, the influence of meta could be significantly lessened over time.

What this means is: Classes contrast each other aesthetically and thematically, while closely mirroring each other’s powers on a core balance level. This is of course something many MMOs try to do, or claim to, but there is a level a developer can take this method to that creates spellbooks using a mirror-like architecture.

While they visually, energetically, and spiritually differ and appeal to their own audiences, their abilities and passives constitute such direct dualities, engineered on a similar spellbook template, their power levels are likely to be as close as they can be in a game like Chaoscraft.

Here is the crux of it:

When developers try to create sharp diversity and contrasts, this diversity/contrast leads to imbalances that in turn lead to a meta – this meta in turn paradoxically stifles diversity by pressuring players to select choices that fit the current meta of the month. Despite all the colorful offerings, a handful stand out as the strongest, and so become some of the most played and most dominant in competition.

“Wouldn’t the same be true of Chaoscraft?”

It really depends on how seriously we invest in fine-tuning spellbook balance, among other elements like comp rules designed to prevent overpowered comps. At the end of the day, it tends to be funner to have a fair fight than to steamroll or be steamrolled.

There are two forces at play in this MMO, here. One is the use of the mirror method, with spellbooks based on a core template designed to foster balance. With enough core power equality, classes become so similar in power level – while preserving aesthetic and thematic variance – players will probably feel less pressured to play “meta” ones, in part because their favorite main can plausibly compete with “meta” mains in the rawness of practice, which always, always diverges from theory.

Another force is what can be classified a type of incalculable complexity. There are so many classes, so many spellbooks, so many talent builds, so many body builds, and so many thousands of possible comps, there is a plausible argument to be made it is not easy to fully calculate comp strength. Even winrate doesn’t necessarily indicate comp strength itself, as wins and losses can be influenced by many other factors. For instance, it could be that certain winrates carry their values because the players playing those classes are simply of a higher skill, and could attain similar winrates on other classes, even “non-meta” ones. This is an established phenomenon, where the top-tier players in the world can play and win at more than one main.

In practice, Chaoscraft will likely be remarkably complicated and even near-impossible to calculate, given all the thousands of possible comps and the great degree to which comps will likely be equally viable, especially in the hands of dedicated, mindful players.

So the equation is twofold. Toolkits carry such fundamentally equivalent power levels on an individual template basis, balance is that much closer to equal, and the game is so radically complex with so many possible setups and builds, it becomes hard to calculate actual strength or anticipate future anti-meta setups/builds. If executed well, after some time, whether months or years, balance becomes so real, players actually play a broader assortment of mains because more mains are viable and it isn’t as easy to outright deny viability.

Paradoxically, we ourselves can’t necessarily calculate the entire game, so this problem’s very existence does complicate the balance equation, but it can be posited the mirror method preserves such a central balance on the level of individual class toolkits, at an absolute minimum, players could viably attempt to foil metas. Even if a meta does develop, and one probably will, there could and probably will be ways to break it.

It’s a bit messy, but in the end, the takeaway for the ages is that, the closer in power level you align classes/races, the more diverse the playerbase actually tends to be. People do not feel the same pull to follow the meta. They strike out on their own paths, forging their destinies as they see fit and following their heart instead.

Mounts and Vehicles

Mounts have been a part of MMOs for a very long time. Interestingly, FPS-like vehicles tend to be much less seen, at least in MMOs based in traditional lore. Chaoscraft is in development to feature both mounts and vehicles. These include both ground, flyers, and, possibly one day, ships. Before we go any further, we want to note we’re well aware of how flying mounts have widely been seen to lessen the prevalence of organic encounters and world PvP in other games. This is true. Flyers can definitely make a world feel less alive.

This is why mounts and vehicles in general, and especially flyers, are costly or risky to obtain, and, in the case of flyers, very rare. Not everyone is going to be able to get a flyer with ease. They will likely also require some form of resource/fuel, and can be damaged and destroyed. So while there will be both ground and flying mounts and vehicles, flight is far less prominent.

Vehicles in particular will strike some MMO fans as out of the ordinary in MMO terms. Here, we’ll see many kinds of vehicles, conventional and otherwise, with the ability to travel alone or with a party in the open world. This gives you a better idea of how fun and wacky Chaoscraft can be. But just like your real car, you have to treat it as something you own, and not go crashing it into trees and cottages willy nilly… Easier said than done, we know. And be sure not to let any bumbling Ogres smash their clubs on your engine!

Crafting and Professions

In the same way we’ll make new takes on old themes, we see crafting and professions taking the form of skills that involve close contact with complex materials and attention to detail. This isn’t something meant to be a “second job” as heard sometimes now. It’s closer akin to the creative joy of craftsmanship, where a crafter finds personal fulfillment in taking time to make an item their way, with their personal touch.

Whether mixing potions in a lab or tinkering with gears and gizmos in a workshop, professions aren’t “afk” activities (not that there’s anything wrong with that). As you progress in a crafting tree, new recipes, schematics, and other skills are learned, with added modifications and an ability to create the same item in multiple ways. All in all, keeping in the spirit of magical realism.

Live Poker and Chess

We talked a bit about minigames in Dev Log IV. When poker and chess are released, players will be able to sit down at live felts or boards to play for stakes. Hat and shades optional. With voice immersion and local ambience, a game makes you feel like you’re really there. Played using in-game currency, it gives a chance for fans of these classic games to play in a parallel universe.

When a player sits down at a poker table, they hold real cards in their hands, their cards shrouded in shadow from the eyes of others. Poker tables can be found around the world, both in Arcadia and taverns across the region. Down in Endville, there’s a saloon with a bit of… higher stakes… for those who like a showdown…

When a player plays at a chessboard, they select pieces from visual focus, moving them live. Betting optional. We hope both poker and chess to have leagues. What’s funny about these minigames is that, while they may feel experimental in the context of the industry and MMO releases, they’re not actually that hard to make at all. Card games with physical qualities appeared in a game or two a solid decade ago. This is not new or outrageous tech in any way. It just takes a willingness on the part of a dev to make it happen.

Voice Modifiers

This is one of the features it may take some time and testing to get just right. Ideally, voice modifiers wouldn’t just be a set number of base selections for each race and class. It’s possible to create modifiers with highly personalized settings that mold naturally to an individual’s voice. We’ve no doubt, once we get this one down, Chaoscraft will be the first MMO in history to support such an expansive selection of voice modifiers.

For every race, every class, and every character, a unique voice will be possible. Combined with attractions like live poker and chess, this creates phenomenal space for cinematic roleplay and lasting memories.

Live High-fidelity Faces

In later stages of development, we want to use existing technology to allow players the option to both morph their face onto their character’s face and connect their camera, giving a player the ability to match its character’s expressions to the player’s expressions, live. This software already exists in use. We’re going to adapt it and give a whole new meaning to the word emote.

Arena Book

What we see in just about every PvP MMO is some form of Arena or other versus. What is pretty much never done is an Arena Book – a way to watch ranked Arena/TDM live and bet on matches with essence.

Arena Book is something we find fascinating for both its entertainment value and embrace of gambling. Gambling itself is its own controversy and question, and a potential vice, especially when played for real money. Gambling is a fun pastime. We don’t shy away from it for any reason. It’s your essence.

It can be said what makes this particular feature experimental is mainly that it’s never really been done on this scale before. We mean being able to watch regular season matches live in-game, not just on stream. This is not something with much reference to go by. So we’d be making it up as we go along, so to speak. This does not deter us. Controversial views on gambling do not deter us. It’s all fun and games, in the end.

Racing Circuit

A ranked Racing Circuit is in the works to open some time after 1.0 launch. Following the same model of track randomization, the Circuit has a mix of Named Tracks and Mystery Tracks. In racing genre terms, this spices things up. Even more so on the Hardcore Circuit, where one false move means sudden death, just as racers die on tracks in real life.

In the spirit of Speed Racer, racers buy and mod their own custom craft. Craft can be fitted with a number of styles, attachments, and other mods, also echoing Mario Kart. We would likely implement a balance system to ensure racers/craft are matched against similar racers/craft. There may also be a mode like Any Craft where any racers at all can be matched against any other.

Some Racing Circuit matches are broadcast live, like the Arena Book. Viewers watch races, betting on racers of their choice. (Half the racing fans watch just to see something go up in flames.) Commentators could cover some or even, at some point, all races.

Arcadia Radio

Music is at the heart of many iconic classics. To this day, many of us remember certain tunes from years ago.

An original soundtrack has a place here. This could be a jukebox-like OST where players unlock tracks on their travels and can play them anywhere they go, or keep their ambience to regional defaults.

We’re toying with the idea of an Arcadia Radio. This would begin as three live radio stations, one for classical, one for trance, and one for spooky. We’d like to hire DJs for each station when we eventually have a funding surplus. DJs could take song requests and invite guests to interviews, some from the population.

If it sounds too good to be true, it isn’t. This too wouldn’t require very much of a setup from us. We’d plug DJs – in-studio or remote – into an in-game broadcast, and load tracks. We’d love to license a few of the best songs, and also offer new artists an opportunity to get their tracks played live on radio.

We’ll work on a similar radio station for Castle of Nightmares at some point, where denizens of Maldrax can tune in while they note logs and unravel secrets.

Just like tech and vehicles and poker and chess, radio fits perfectly into this MMO. It’s a fusion genre, grown from decades of the greatest traditional MMOs. Radio gives the game a sense of live action and society, and a sense of being connected to friends and strangers alike.

Realm Stability

One of the chief complaints of MMOs is the eternal bane of lag. What we’ve found is that lag often exists for two reasons: Servers typically aren’t equipped to handle high amounts of their populations in one location, and companies aren’t willing to invest in better servers. We want to treat realms – of any global region – with an approach of realm stability.

This approach is founded on the principle that a realm should always be able to smoothly handle its entire population in any one single location, no matter what. This means, no matter how many people amass in a place, anywhere in a realm, and regardless of what transpires there – even the most epic battles and scenes – a realm should be able to accommodate it.

What does this mean, in practice?

It means a developer has to place hard limits on realm populations, limits that specifically align to what a realm can actually handle in live operation. If a realm can only support, say, 80-100 players in a single location without lag, then a realm can only have 80-100 players. If we can obtain better servers to support higher populations, we will, so long as it doesn’t undermine core game integrity by subtracting from other actual development goals.

This also means there are no layers on any realms.

While this means a realm may feel a little less populated than it could, it also means that same realm can support large-scale events and engagements with ease. So… If a great foe were to appear there, or two armies do battle, this fight is not plagued by lag. This is a very basic measure that only requires a dev be willing to make the trade-off between realm stability and the subjective appearance of higher activity, which tends, over time, to lead to higher levels of unplayable lag.

Device Specs

There is a valid point to be made that an MMO with the engine quality aspirations of this one may only be playable on the best PCs. While we do want textures and mechanics to be beautifully vivid and fluid, we hope there is a way to balance this against the demand to play the game on a wide range of PCs.

This is not an experimental feature so much as a commitment to experiment with whatever we have to in order to make a beautiful game without pushing it so far only some PCs can run it. If this means realm limits, texture compromises, or other modifications, we’ll do whatever it takes to ensure most decent computers can play. This game is by no means meant to be unrunnable.

Given the nature of skillshot, it is possible one may require an MMO mouse to play optimally. Precision demands the ability to move freely during engagements. This is a point we intend to inform the community of ahead of time, if it does prove to be the most viable.

Loot Extraction

When a player secures loot in the open world, a challenge like Slayer or Labyrinths, or elsewhere, they must return alive to town in order to extract their loot and deposit it into their bank. This applies to softcore, risk, and hardcore realms alike.

Looting monsters in the open world involves proximity grasping orbs of ether that spawn randomly above the ground upon a monster’s death. Anyone can grab these orbs, identifying their contents by their inner icon. Once secured, you have to make your way back to town to get out with your loot. What this means is, even on softcore realms, there is a kind of mini-HC involved in looting, where death still matters even in SC.

In HC, this means you cannot yoink another player or party’s loot just by looting a body first. You’ll have to also make it out with it. This further channels the essence of medieval archetypes like thieves who might try to quickly nab a dragon’s treasure after it’s dead while the dust settles. In the open world, you do not receive loot directly into your inventory, bound to you forever. You have to pick it up and bank it.

Grind Balance

Long grinds are part and parcel of MMOs. Dispositions about grinds differ widely across populations. We see many players who enjoy them and many who hate them. This is one MMO that absolutely preserves the essence of long-form grinds, in multiple forms. One of these forms will be RS-style skills with high-end unlockables.

Grinds are best left optional, rather than hard requirements. While community metas may enforce grind-based power tiers, a player does not have to grind or do anything in particular at all, if they don’t want to. This is a simple priceless joy.

An intriguing note about MMOs is that, on the same token millions of players enjoy long grinds, millions of players refuse to play MMOs because they commonly demand linear, structured, long-form grinds. They want something more their speed. Our mentality as a studio is to balance both of these ideals in a single game.

Void Loss

Some exotics and all elites have special requirements to loot or earn. This means they’re much rarer and tougher to obtain. Upon killing a player in risk or hardcore, part or all of their bank can be secured in a Skeleton Key, which must be returned to town to use.

For certain exotics and elites, when a player dies in risk or hardcore and loses them, they vanish into void dust. This exists both because these specific items are much rarer with special loot requirements and because, if they could be looted from PKs, it would open opportunities for RMT based around private equity exchanges.

Many exotics can be looted from PKs. A few, and every elite reward, incur a void loss. Along with equitable trade, this minimizes the impact of high-value RMT.

Severance Shields

We’ve covered Severance Shields on the Hardcore page. Severance Shields are an example of a basic, easy-to-implement tool that prevents illegitimate deaths to DC. When a player disconnects in HC, a Severance Shield protects them from death. Immediately, it is clear to any who read this that Severance Shields can and will be abused by some players. It will obviously be a rule violation to deliberately abuse Severance Shields. Repeated, clearly deliberate uses will probably result in eventual life bans for those who actually abuse them, rather than randomly, sporadically proc one.

This is a worthy trade-off to prevent legit players from dying to disconnects needlessly. Disconnects are totally immersion-breaking deaths that have no place in real HC. There is a way to counter them, and one form of that is Severance Shields. Severance Shields will last for a limited duration, providing players an opportunity to return to the game and continue alive. To any who find this counter to HC, you have to remember how many thousands of players have died to DCs. It shapes the game world’s events. External issues like this shouldn’t play a role. Thus why we want to trial Severance Shields.

Time Stasis

Continuing the theme of immersion insurance, we all know DDoS is almost inevitable, at least when companies don’t invest sufficiently in actual security and servers. DDoS has resulted in thousands of HC deaths over the years. We’re going to trial a method to counter DDoS which can be termed Time Stasis. This method is designed to minimize DDoS deaths, given our stance to never revive the dead for any reason.

With the right system, it should be possible to detect a DDoS in live time, identify players/regions affected, and activate an automated Time Stasis that freezes time for those players/regions while the DDoS is resolved. What this does, in effect, is twofold. It ensures far fewer players die to DDoS than otherwise would if we skipped investing in real security/servers and just revived the dead – counter to what HC is really about. It also freezes, say, Slayer monsters, or Labyrinths or Raids if the party or raid group is DDoSed. This is to ensure the exact combat scenario in play remains as it is until the DDoS resolves. If the vast majority or any significant portion of a raid is DDoSed, we would probably freeze the entire raid group and all enemies.

This is, despite our principles, a deus ex machina intervention for the sole reason DDoS itself is a malevolent deus ex machina intervention. To counter this, we must use one of our own, fighting fire with frost so to speak, and so neutralizing it to restore natural balance. This is because we absolutely will not ever, for any reason, revive the dead. Ever.

At some point, DDoS would likely lessen in frequency as well, if the system is perfected, because there would be little impact other than a minor temporary inconvenience. No one actually dies. DDoSers externally intervene in the world and so do we. This is to cancel out their intervention, effectively ensuring no actual intervention occurs at all, in the end.

DCs: Severance Shields.

DDoS: Time Stasis.

Both of these measures dramatically lessen the impact of illegitimate deaths. Tight game security makes the margin even smaller. Eventually, we should see just about the only deaths that occur are 100% authentic.

Future Factions

In 1.0, we’d like to see a game without factions, to start. What we see is, in the future, new factions will recruit members. Individuals can decide whether to join a faction. Factions may typically have no race limits, nor can one’s faction be identified visually, unless one chooses to wear its official garb. Over time, this could foster social deduction like qualities, where individuals conceal their faction alignment and may attempt to infiltrate others, much like real factions of history.

All to be tested in the future, with a solid team…

Future BGs

Future BGs, set for release in the year after 1.0, raise the scale of competitive versus. 10v10, 20v20, and 40v40 BGs could all make an appearance. In larger scale battlegrounds, we may explore involvement of monsters and elements like mounts and vehicles.

CTF, CP, and Tower Defense modes remain in development. After we’ve done enough testing and receive broad feedback, we’ll consider HC BGs, where players can join battles either as and against random enemies or as and against premade groups.

World Dragons

We’ve come near the end of this profile. And we’ve saved the best for last, for those of you who have a real interest in seeing the future of the game come to reality.

World dragons make a big return in Arcadia Prefecture. In the brief chronicle on the Brood of Smogbreath, we told you about the ongoing war against the Brood. These are ruby dragon conquerors driven by destruction of their enemies, much like some dragons of old. It is fitting Chaoscraft’s first arc begins with a classic dragon tale. Except these aren’t just any dragons… Just about anywhere in the world, at any time day or night, these titanic menaces come soaring down from the skies, their roars quaking the earth.

This can happen on softcore, risk, or hardcore realms. When dragons appear – most of them Brood, a few of them other kinds – they can and will breathe real fire.

And fire burns. Taverns, cottages, whole towns – all of it can be laid to waste. If you happen to be on a hardcore realm and you encounter a dragon, and fall in battle, your death is HC. In such a hardcore realm, dragons themselves also carry extra exotic treasure… Watch out… They bite…

Tipsy’s Tavern itself burns down from time to time. Don’t bother asking Tipsy how she gets it built back up every week… She’s got some good maintenance folks on her payroll. Thus the Brood war continues, week after week. The Brood, you see, aren’t the type to pace around menacingly in secluded lairs and groves. They’ll bite your head clean off, they will, and they’ll do it again.

Can you honestly say you’ve ever seen this in an MMO before? We say this quite a bit. Why wouldn’t we?

Have you? Ask yourself:

What is the historical significance of world dragons?

What does it mean when dragons finally come to life, as we’ve envisioned them for centuries? As Smaug was described all those decades ago? Smaug did not only sit up on his mounds of gold and gems in his lair. If you crossed him, he’d sail in vengeful flames into town.Have you? Ask yourself:

Will heroes rise to the occasion in this debut arc? Will some of them fall and die? We don’t write the script. That’s no fun. It’s a story waiting to be told, one day.

Chaoscraft Grand Finals

Every Halloween, we’ll host the Chaoscraft Grand Finals, where teams from around the world convene in Las Vegas to duke it out for millions in cash prizes. We hope the inaugural Grand Finals will begin in 2027, a year after 1.0 launch. This is the long-term goal.

Every Grand Finals will feature every versus league, including 1v1, 2v2, 3v3, TDM, and BR. It will also host grand finals for a number of hardcore modes, such as Slayer, Labyrinths, and Gloomwood Curse, seeing a mix of PvP and PvM.

Our current model is to simply invite the highest ranked teams in the world, based on the live season ladder. This bypasses the need for players to use any sort of third-party service or other means of formal application. Instead, you just play, and if you rank high, and qualify, you’ll be offered an invitation to the Grand Finals. We’ll have to work out some of the details of this, but it should generally be doable to use a ladder-based system.

At the conclusion of the Grand Finals, the Hardcore Versus finale begins. In this finals of finals, competitors have the same one life they have in the regular season. All matches of every bracket are broadcast live to a global audience. So get your popcorn out, and mark your calendars. There will be blood.

2027 may feel far away, but time is always closer like that. We’re doing our part making the game, investing in all we can to fuel development. If you find this vision beautiful, and recognize its divergence from history, you have to play a part too, if you want to see it. Buying a copy and supporting the studio is meaningful. It allows us to hire developers. We do not want to ask devs to work for minimal pay. We would love to be able to hire real professionals to join the team.

World Chaos Tournament

As an ultimate test of talent, drive, and sanity, the annual World Chaos Tournament kicks off on Halloween night. This 10,000 entry event brings together competitors from all walks, casting them all into a long, labyrinthine series of deadly trials combining elements of PvP, PvM, Puzzle Rifts, Challenge Rifts, and much more.

Life status remains undecided, but we lean toward this being a hardcore event. People want to see blood!

As phases of the WCT progress, competitors are eliminated, slowly dwindling in number through each flight until only a small handful remain.

Finally, at the show’s climax, the two last survivors face off in an epic duel to the death, with a touch of cinematic atmosphere, of course. We might even see about turning up the volume with a bit of techno syndrome! What’s first place prize?

Well, a million goddamn dollars, of course. What else do you expect? This is what makes for the best fights. We’d also like to hire an artist or two to make a beautiful trophy to commemorate the event – not just any old gold or silver, but something really, really special…

So what are you waiting for? Don’t you want to risk it all in a tournament of total mayhem and madness? Or perhaps you would rather just kick back and watch the show. Either way, keep an eye out for tickets…

Future of Gaming

You could say this all sounds like a madman raving into the Void about what could be, and how. And you’d be right. How else does any of this get made?

Ask yourself how a game like Chaoscraft comes into being. It all originates from imagination, like any other game in existence and for eternity.

Science was born from an experimental philosophy. Scientists began to ask themselves,

“What happens when these particles collide?”

“How is life made? How can we make it?”

To answer their endless questions and test hypotheses, they perform experiments. We continue this tradition in our own way. We know, deep down in the hearts of gamers around the world, they would rather see experiments than printouts. Gamers have, by and large over the years, grown to long for something quite out of the ordinary. Well… Friends…

This is quite out of the ordinary. It’s an MMO, and an FPS, and a bit of a mystery game at that. What can be said most confidently about this game is that it has no real limitations of scope, nor does it need to.

Gaming’s future is much brighter and more enchanted than many today have resigned it to be. Making a game that breaks the meta is not a matter of waiting for devs to make it some day. It’s about making it yourself.

If you like Chaoscraft, and Castle of Nightmares, and our studio’s direction, you ultimately make it yourself. No matter what the internet says about this particular MMO, we are ready to make this entire game exactly as seen on this site. All it takes is a few skilled hands to put pen to paper and write an epic for the ages – one whose characters breathe real air and bleed real blood, and whose dragons bite your motherfucking head off.

– Dev Team