Apparently it's the working title of an upcoming MMO, so who knows what it's final name will be.

Anyways, it's being developed by 38 Studios (Curt Schilling's company), and has names such as R.A. Salvatore and Todd McFarlane on board for this project.

Website is here : http://www.38studios.com/products/copernicus
Most recent interview with Salvatore (at GDC) is here : http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/2764 ... rnicus.php

Not really much news on this yet, but I think it's definitely one of these "watch this spot" scenerios.

The website sure doesn't give off the best first impression.

Um..to say the least.

Apparently some of you don't visit the FoH forums...

http://www.fohguild.org/forums/mmorpg-g ... stuff.html

This is the second thread started by Schilling himself as the first thread he started turned into 1 large ass nuclear flame war.

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Anything good in that thread? Quite a few pages there to catch up on. I'll admit having McFarlane heading the art is a good start.

I stopped reading fohguild like 2-3 years ago with all the mindless hate on Vanguard because people tried to run it on EverQuest computers. I'll take the cliffsnotes as well.

Plus F13 has a long ass thread, I've followed them both. To sum up, the threads are contentless. We know virtually nothing about this upcoming "Copernicus" other than, well, it's a MMO, it -probably- will be fantasy, and they're going to talk about it "soon." And that's what we knew in 2006.

Supposedly something solid is being dropped this month, but I've chalked it up as vapor until a little something more substantial than "it's gonna be awesome" is known about it.

BZ is correct.

There is nothing of note in the threads except a few mindless ramblings from Schilling about what he wants to try and accomplish with an MMO and every possible Armchair Video Game Designer flame warring him. The original thread had a few pieces of solid information if I recall but I don't feel like digging through it.

Anyway, the only reason I point out the FoH thread(s) is because its the only place Schilling has actually attempted to talk about it. Until Salvatore at GDC, there has been 0 public flow of information. I really think it is all a huge pipe dream and Schilling should invest his money elsewhere.

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http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/67967

from reading this interview I think RA Salvatore will bring back the magic we had in EQ when it first started out

I think this game will rock the MMO world

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Jake Rivers - Senex Legio
Get off my Lawn alliance

Nice interview. The mud man story was great.

I remember the first time raiding in city of mist and the black reaver black'ed out my screen and I was like crap, there goes my video card, and rebooted the pc.

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Jake Rivers - Senex Legio
Get off my Lawn alliance

Don't get your hopes up, Mira.

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World of Warcraft: Kallaystra, Gweila, Steakumn, Tarathia [ Feathermoon/Horde ]

It was a good interview, but it said very little about Copernicus (Well of souls) and it wasn't meant to. It was more a talk about him and his views, and a lot of hopeful fans were disappointed the interview wasn't about what they wanted it to be. Regardless, it's a flight of fancy to stretch this interview into anything indicative as to what the game will be like, as I am still not convinced the whole thing isn't vapor.

Given the lack of any real concrete information on the game, I can't imagine it seeing the light of day for at least 3 more years. Will anyone care in 3 years?

R.A. Salvat..Zzzz

guy can put out books like john grisham, and with comparable quality.

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Came across this one today:

http://ps3.gamespy.com/playstation-3/pr ... 775p1.html

To avoid confusion, "project mercury" is the working (fake) title of a single-player game they're working on; "copernicus" is the working title of the MMO.
Both are to be set in the same world.

... and neither will see the light of day within the next 4 years.

Yep, very possible. Not championing the game or crapping on it at this point, as I'm pretty impartial. Just happened to come across this and thought I'd post away, as I know there are several die-hard Salvatore fans in the Lanys forums.

Schilling has been digging himself an even deeper whole in the FoH thread and everywhere else ever since E3 and their complete lack of a presence there...especially after he promised numerous times they'd be there with something.

Even better, they're moving 38 Studios to Rhode Island and securing a 70 some odd Million dollar bond from the state. They've basically got the RI tax payers paying for vaperware as far as I (and several others, most notably on FoH) see it.

On a funny side note, the last 2 or 3 pages of the 38 Studios thread on FoH Schilling has thrown in his two cents about RealID and all that nonsense...

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I don't understand why they would even announce it before revealing something. Seems like if you start trying to drum up hype too early on an mmo you inevitably set yourself up for failure and vapor-ware accusations.

Well, supposedly 38 studios is supposed to have something in some show soon (I think connecticon) but he actually has a track record now of failing to fulfill these supposed reveals now. I check the FoH forums every now and again just to check up on that thread. No info, but seeing this one poster get banned time and again in a psycho-cycle is perhaps the most entertainment anyone will ever get out of Schilling's Schillings. (god damn I'm witty AND original!

The problems are Schilling's ego and his big mouth.

Look at this awesomeness:


http://www.massively.com/2010/07/08/sch ... ncept-art/

Not to down this MMO or anything, but, we get a new rendition of Shadowmoon Valley as the first concept art leak?

That's kind of a let down.

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There is no such thing as right or wrong; only pleasure and pain.

Yes, because clearly a zone with a greenish hue MUST have been stolen from WoW's Shadowmoon Valley.

Green liquid everywhere, polluted looking sky, weird ass statues.

It's pretty much Shadowmoon Valley.

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World of Warcraft: Kallaystra, Gweila, Steakumn, Tarathia [ Feathermoon/Horde ]

Uh huh.
Should we also make an argument that Shadowmoon is Skyfire painted green instead of red, in that case?

Not really.

Finally a place to put all those gay Drizzt Salvatorites. Enjoy them Rhode Island.

The FoH thread has been out of control for a good long while and offers very little in the way of game discussion. It's very much like when Brad tried to shrill Vanguard to the masses but got called out because he didn't know shit about his own game. Salvatore, on numerous occasions has been caught spewing random bullshit about the game, ranging from there existing a full playable copy "in house builds" to incorporating it into Forgotten Realms. I could find links but I don't want to go through that thread.

They'll crank something out in 4 to 6 years and get crushed by whatever World of Warcraft expansion we're waiting on at the time.

Cracked, broken, shattered land with greenish polluted lava spewing over the place from what appears to be some great sundering, complete with the statuesque remains of whatever civilization was there pre the disaster that made the land.

That concept art could almost be taken as someone's painting of what a river of lava in SMV looked like as they flew over it during Burning Crusade. The only difference is, if you look closely, the shape of the statues appears as a metal ventilation system. Except, wait, that isn't a difference, Shadowmoon Valley has a pipe system too. These might look prettier, but not that much different.

Sorry to burst your bubble there.

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There is no such thing as right or wrong; only pleasure and pain.

C'mon, that picture is clearly Shadowmoon Valley. In fact, I can envision the exact place that picture was probably inspired by. Where I used to farm the green fire elementals.

^-- that.

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World of Warcraft: Kallaystra, Gweila, Steakumn, Tarathia [ Feathermoon/Horde ]

/sigh.

My point I was trying to suggest (unsuccessfully it would seem) was that we could speculate all day on what zone this is, what the green stuff is (whether it's toxic, or lava, or water), what the green haze in the sky is, and what the statues are.... but to say with absolute certainty "Zomg, they ripped off SMV!" seems a bit far fetched at this point. There's similarities, sure, but the conviction with which everyone's so quick to assume it's a blatant ripoff speaks volumes of just how hardcore WoW you are. Shit, we didn't even get our panties in bunches like that back when EQ came out and half of it *was* a blatant ripoff of D&D.

The end result is that we haven't the foggiest effing clue what we're looking at here, and it could have been inspired by any one of ten million fantasy artpieces or pieces of literature.

No, really.

It's not just the colors or the sky or statues. That scene is almost 100% *exact* from a particular spot in SMV. I might just go home and screenshot it just to illustrate.

It's what the spirit of Gul'dan has looked at for the past 4 years every day.

Shhh, you'll ruin the surprise!

Cipher of Damnation can still go suck a dick. Fuck whoever designed the tuber part of that questline.

Alright great and might hero. In order for me to grant you the knowledge to save our world, you must first...

BRING ME A SHRUBBERY....er, tuber...

The guy perched on the left pillar looks kind of like a broken even. Saying someone copied world of warcraft is akin to saying someone copied lord of the rings. Yes, that scene could have been inspired by shadowmoon valley but I don't think its fair to rule out that this is a setting from an R.A. Salvatore novel that some warcraft dev read and brought to life when they were making outlands.

Statue looks like a Murloc too.

HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM....

I think you are unfairly accusing blizzard devs of inventing fish people. Everyone knows they aren't creative.

Interesting cinematic movie for the game.

And by interesting, I mean "graphics look decent, but we still have no concept of what the actual gameplay is like. And the oversized weaponry is completely ghey. If I wanted to look like FF7's Cloud with a sword bigger than I am, I'd play FF7...".

They didn't want "art for art's sake", yet they're content with a full-plate wielding warrior dodging blows like he's an acrobat, and wielding a hammer that a giant would struggle to lift?
Uhhhh....yeah.

The only interesting part of that video was the "fatality" moment with the blue Psylocke-esque psi swords, which would be really cool if that were a possible choice of weaponry in the game. It would be the closest thing to D&D soulknives as we're likely to get, because DDO is almost 5 years old already, and we're STILL waiting for Druids and Half-Elves in that game.

Judging from screenshots, it looks good, but I'm more likely to go with Dragon Age 2 tbh. At least we know DA1 was a tried and tested good game.

They are going to have some live gameplay footage at PAX east. Or some live gameplay or something. Either way, next week we'll have a better idea about what what kind of game it is going to be.

I believe we already have a pretty good idea about what kind of game it is going to be.

So the honeymoon with Copernicus is over?

Care to share with the rest of the class?

It sounds like it's less about l33t beta infoz and more about Neesha the Necro's infinite skepticism of new MMORPGs. Can't blame him, though.

You are correct, sir! Usually when there's so little information (such as screenshots and/or videos of even the tiniest bit of gameplay), that speaks volumes. Reckoning is a "single player companion" to Copernicus, a game that will probably never come out. Go ahead and look at the progress they've shown on their website since this thread was originally started almost exactly one year ago. I'd love for the game to succeed. They certainly have the right talent on board (McFarlane for the art, Salvatore for the story). But it takes more than 2 talented people to make a game that works, ESPECIALLY when you're talking about a MMORPG (or a "companion" game). Reckoning will suck, Copernicus will never come out, and Schilling will still try to convince people he's a hardcore gamer and will be making the 'next great thing' 5 years from now.

There is a difference between something not existing and something being kept underwraps.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/vi ... f-Warcraft

There is a demo of Reckoning available on xbox live at the moment. I'm downloading it now. We'll see if its any good.

The Giant Bomb guys looked at a pre-release build with stacked saves a month or so ago and it looked pretty good. If you want something completely unique, you ain't got it, but it looks like a middling God of War that looked like Orcs Must Die. If it's $10 I'll probably pick it up.

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After playing through the demo I would call it a solid Fable clone at least as far as the character customization and gameplay are concerned. It obviously doesn't have all that good vs evil stuff going on. I don't know how big the world is going to end up being and what all you will be able to do in it after finishing all the quests.

Sorry Curt, I'll pay 5 bux for this on steam this Christmas. Thanks for the useless Mass Effect 3 items tho!

lol just saw this was $60 on steam. Re: buying this game: nope!

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I'm not getting the price complaint guys. It's a full sized stand alone game at full sized stand alone game price.

From what I've seen it doesn't look like it brings enough to the table to warrant another $60 for a game too similar to every other game.

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It will also be $5-$20 on Steam by Christmas.

Gushing review from Gabe at Penny Arcade. I don't think I've ever seen him write such a long review before...

I'm glad he's excited about the combat system, but I played that out when it was called Fable.