Price

[idFREEK]

What price will this game be on the app store?

[Leedot]

Empire of the Eclipse is a free download but requires a $1.99 a month subscription to play.

[Ezze]

I hope the first month is free....unless you want people to trash your game as soon as they find out they have pay to try and see if they like the game in the first place.

[zarkwizard]

I hope the first month is free....unless you want people to trash your game as soon as they find out they have pay to try and see if they like the game in the first place.

We don't include a free month, since it's a free download. We also don't hide the fact that there is a subscription to play. We are specifically looking for a niche audience, and we didn't want to have people pay to play on a different device. We fully expect some people to pan us with 1 star reviews because they couldn't play for free.

Included with the download is 40 mins of tutorial videos that explain the game in great detail, and we also have a youtube channel that shows them as well. For now we hope people watch the videos and then make a choice to play or not. Sadly games of this nature (real back end MMOs - not web MMOs) cost a large amount of money to make. If we allow all the "free" people to play we need to support an even larger back end for 1000's of users that could end up in dead space, and wasted server costs.

We are a business, and have to approach it as such. Hopefully our main audience looks past 1 star complaints because they couldn't play for free. Not much we can do about that. We would rather those playing have a positive experience, rather than have a game filled 90% with free players that won't continue the game past the first 10 minutes, and then have the other 10% get fed up because the other 90% quit.

Here is the games description as will appear on the app store, we have no desire to mislead anyone when they download the game:

Note: While EotE is free to download a monthly per player account subscription is required to play the game. This allows us to run our servers, and provide a competitive online strategy experience without ruining the game experience through the sale of powerups and other in-game advantages.
__________________________________________________ ______________

Set in the distant future, Empire of the Eclipse tasks players with establishing an interstellar empire and using diplomacy, economic acumen and conquest to thrive.

If you've always thought playing a game like Civilization or Master of Orion on a massive scale would be incredible, but you've been continually let down by the scores of so called 'Freemium MMO Strategy Games' on iOS, then Empire of the Eclipse is the game for you.
Key Features:

•Play to Win, not Pay to Win: Players can't buy their way to victory with in app purchases unlike other 'Strategy MMO's.

•Massively Multiplayer: Fight, trade, scheme and vie for universal domination with thousands of other players per game.

•Epic Universe: Games can range in size from 2,500 to 90,000 sectors. Explore, conquer and exploit hundreds of thousands of planets.

•Explore: Fog of war and dynamically generated universes require exploration and reconnaissance, key components of the empire building experience.

•Streamlined Interface: Jump to any controlled planet or fleet from anywhere in the galaxy with just a few touches.

•Diplomacy: Enact a state of Peace, War or Embargo with other players. A rich array of interpersonal player dynamics awaits.

•Many Ways to Win: Win by the application of brute force or economic superiority. Transcend the stars or collect ancient alien artifacts. Whether warmonger, diplomat or explorer, there are always ways to win.

•Skill Trees: Utilize a diverse and flexible selection of over 40 skills that allow you to do anything from creating black holes to swindling other players in trade deals.

•Player Communication: Robust in-game mail and chat systems feature private channels and item attachments to negotiate trade and arrange covert operations.

•Retina Display: Stunning visuals are tailor-made to support both Retina and traditional iPhone displays.

•Universal: A single account may login from any iOS device you or anyone else owns.

•Supports 2nd Gen devices and higher!

[Ezze]

Well, I have watched all the videos on youtube and they have definitely sparked my interest. I have told a couple friends and my little brother about the game, because it looks very very fun and competitive.

The only reason I brought this up is because I look at your forums and they are very sparse compared to the forums I have joined of other games before they hit the market. I hope your game isn't too niche, because I would really like to see a game like this succeed.

Also, are you going to have a dedicated website to the game with the games name as the website header? I honestly have to say I have to keep on coming to this website to even remember the name of this game that looks so fun.

I genuinely hope Empire of the Eclipse does well : )

[DickDastardly]

I think after playing people are likely to love it or hate it. I don't think there will be any middle ground. I wouldn't worry about the sparseness of the forums, because there is a lot of interest there for this type of game, and once word spreads people will pick it up soon enough.

Can you opt out on months, or is it an automatic rolling subscription. I'm sure i remember it being said it was the former but i'm not sure...

[zarkwizard]

Well.. I can't really speak for other games and their flow of posts on their forums... You have to remember we are an iOS game, and there are not many iOS games that even have forums, so users in general don't post. A lot of the web based MMO games on iOS have very low forum posting from what we have seen. Our posts have moved in spurts, usually there is more traffic while people are playing. Currently no one is playing. Hopefully that will be resolved in the near future.

We aren't that niche.. When we say niche we refer to strategy players, not a specific style of game play (unless they have a specific issue with the theme). Our "niche" market is strategy game players that would like to play a game on even terms basing their skill vs that of others, rather than have people in the game "buy" their way to first place. If you like playing strategy games, and you would like to play other people then this game is for you. :) We also take player input seriously. To make the game better we pay attention to our user base, and are here for the long haul. Obviously if you like playing, then you are more likely to get people you know to play.

We have pruned close to 3,000 posts on the forums that were related to beta. There was a lot of traffic during the various beta's. As we moved closer to release we wanted to prune that down so people don't get confused with beta information.

We will be doing something for the web in the near future. I am sure LeeDot will announce that when the time comes.

As always we are open to input, and suggestions. If you ever have any thoughts or questions about the game feel free to post, we love getting the feedback, good or bad. Hopefully we can fix the bad feedback. :)

[Jester]

I for one and THRILLED with your subscription model. $1.99 /month is very reasonable. I'm so sick of the 'free to play, but here are some microtransactions' model, it always feels like a complete and total scam. Especially with the pricing some of these companies are putting out there.

I'm looking forward to trying the game, wish I'd found out about it during Beta I would have been all up for that and then some!

[idFREEK]

Empire of the Eclipse is a free download but requires a $1.99 a month subscription to play.

Wow US $ 1.99 = £1.25 British pounds. This is as cheap as chips here in Scotland. Come on Apple get a move on…


I hope this is available for download in Scotland

[zarkwizard]

I think after playing people are likely to love it or hate it. I don't think there will be any middle ground. I wouldn't worry about the sparseness of the forums, because there is a lot of interest there for this type of game, and once word spreads people will pick it up soon enough.

Can you opt out on months, or is it an automatic rolling subscription. I'm sure i remember it being said it was the former but i'm not sure...

The sub model used is the auto renew. You can stop the sub through iTunes. Since we will not be pruning accounts if you wanted to stop for a while because you'll be away you can resume your sub at a later date and whatever your status was when you stopped will be retained.

We are in your boat, we figure people are either going to love the game, or hate it.. Pretty much any strategy game is that way. We'll also encounter the "No single player, no play" as well. I did make a comment in a dev meeting once that I could let the player choose at the start if they want a single player experience, if they enable that I'd disable the e-mail, and chat systems so everyone seems like an alien. :)

[zarkwizard]

I for one and THRILLED with your subscription model. $1.99 /month is very reasonable. I'm so sick of the 'free to play, but here are some microtransactions' model, it always feels like a complete and total scam. Especially with the pricing some of these companies are putting out there.

I'm looking forward to trying the game, wish I'd found out about it during Beta I would have been all up for that and then some!

Amen brother.. We played a lot of those games during the development just to see how balanced they were. Basically if you don't pay huge gobs of money you just can't compete. The fighting is totally imbalanced in favor of the people spending a ton of money. Also when we played those games they just didn't feel right.. Like they are just put together to try and make a ton of money. They all seem to lose support after a while, and you end up getting stuck on a server that kind of just dies...

We wanted a game that was a real iOS game designed on a real MMO back end. Sure it cost a fortune, and took us 3 years, but now we have an engine that we can grow in the future and apply it to this game, and any other game we make. We want people to feel like they are playing a game where they are the ruler, and they prove that. We are all looking forward to playing with everyone.

One thing we found in beta is the hard core testers would kick our butts.. We often would find ourselves amazed at how the players would play, and do the things we NEVER expected.. Probably true with every game.

As for missing out on Beta, don't worry about it.. there were a lot of bugs, and changes. I know since we have uploaded to Apple we have found a couple of bugs we missed, but have since been fixed. We are also constantly working on improving and evolving the game with player feedback. We also have tons of things we are looking forward to adding to the game. We have a ton of art that hasn't gone in yet, and then there are other skills, and specialties we are looking at adding. It should be a fun year, and we hope you all enjoy the efforts we are putting in making a game for everyone. :)

As I have said a ton of times, feel free to suggest things to us. We are always open to discussing changes for the future of the game. After all, the game you will be playing ended up evolving in to what it is with the feedback and input from the players. Things they liked, and didn't like.

[Marked]

•Supports 2nd Gen devices and higher!

What does this mean for Ipad 1 users ???

[zarkwizard]

•Supports 2nd Gen devices and higher!

What does this mean for iPad 1 users ???

They are fine. Just means it doesn't support the early device set. We decided to remove support a bit ago because some of the stuff we were doing required iOS 4.3+, the next version will actually support 4.2+ which will being the older devices like the 3G and 2G back in to the mix. Since the oldest iOS they support is 4.2. So if your device supports iOS 4.3+ you are fine.