Skyrates Beta

[netmonkey]

Hey guys,

Long time no foruming.... and now I return to spam the forums:

Some of my classmates at my school (The Entertainment Technology Center) have been working for two semesters on this game called Skyrates (http://www.skyrates.net/), which is kind of like sky furry pirates or something to that extent. Anyway, they've released an open beta today and they're looking for people to try it out, and I thought the brave folks at the Idle Forums wanted to try something different.

Skyrates has a lot new things that have never been done or that haven't been done as much like:

- It's a web-based MMO. Everything runs on a website with Flash, no need to download.

- Sporadic play. This concept where instead of constantly playing the game, you just log in to the page, queue up a bunch of actions, run, leave, and come back in a few hours when it's done. They say it's kind of like checking your e-mail.

- It's not a typical MMORPG, if it's even an RPG. It starts out as a trading game; you fly to an island and buy goods, and go to another island and sell them. Later on as you progress your skill tree, you can combat planes and join factions and it gets a bit more political.

So, try it out if you're interested. It takes a little bit to get it but once you do it's actually kind of fun.

[manny_c44]

The link doesn't work, chum.

EDIT: Oh, it's just because you had the last parenthesis as part of the link. Might want to fix that.

EDIT #2: And the gameplay server is down! How dare you pedal these questionable wares?!

[netmonkey]

The server goes down for a sec sometimes... just reload the page and it should come back online.

[Wrestlevania]

Anyway, they've released an open beta today and they're looking for people to try it out, and I thought the brave folks at the Idle Forums wanted to try something different.

Indeed -- Air Force W is now patroling the skies...

[Roderick]

Bah, I want to play but the servers have been down for 15 minutes now. I'll try again in an hour or so.

[miffy495]

I'm in. Sounds like a cool idea, hope it pans out for them. The only major problem I can see arising is simply forgetting to log in and do things. With sporadic games like this, I'll often start, think "OK, so I'll log in again tomorrow" and then just never remember to. Hopefully when I come back online tomorrow this thread will remind me to go check on my guy.

And I'll admit it. I chuckled a bit at "unobtanium."

[netmonkey]

Oh, btw, my Skyrate name is Threepwood...I fly the Air Monkey.

Also, I hope that you can stand some of the server downtime... it should be more stable next week, but for now they're fixing some crazy bugs, and every time they do that they have to restart the server. It's the first time the game is handling more than a few people so it's getting a lot more feedback.

[Roderick]

I'll just try again tomorrow. My character's name is Marduk by the way, and my vehicle is the Ziggurat Zeppelin.

[ysbreker]

I've joined aswell, I'm a gerbil called klontje::boter and I fly the airplane Minerva! Pretty decent game so far. Lets hope I don't forget to log back in over 6 hours to queue some more actions

[Roderick]

Right! It works now. I've made my first shipment to a neighbouring skyland. Haven't formed an opinion yet. Nice touch that flight times are realtime. The fighting went horrible but that's probably just my crappy plane, so I'm skipping it, focussing on trade for the time being. I'm hoping the game deepens out after a while in, and that I'll get some interesting interaction with other players.

[MrChlorophyll]

Snubs and the mighty S.S. Epiphany take to the skies!

I like it so far. An entertaining diversion.

[Roderick]

Hmmm, I'm on school again and the servers are down. Could it be the internet connection here, or just coincidence?

[MrChlorophyll]

Maybe I'm lucky and just catching the tail end of it, but I've never had the servers down on me for more than 30 seconds.

[Roderick]

I think I can safely say it just doesn't work when I'm at school. I've tried for two days during the entire day, and it's always down. I then go home and play in the evening and it works fine. So it must be something with the connection on school that's buggering it up.

[Roderick]

Question: is there any more to do right now than check which resources are scarce, then fly to another island to sell them for petty change and let the computer do all the fighting because it's damn near impossible to do yourself? At this rate it'll take weeks before I have enough cash to buy another plane. And where does the multiplayer aspect of the game come in? I feel like I'm really missing a bigger metagame or something.

[toblix]

Hey, nobody tell him about the secret metagame!

[MrChlorophyll]

Rodi, you make it sound so stupid when you say it like that. Why'd you have to go and point out the pointlessness? Now I feel stupid while playing it.

[Roderick]

Well don't be. At the moment, it amuses me. I just have the feeling I'm missing something right now. To give you a frame of reference; I didn't feel that when playing Knytt, because that felt terrifically comfortable with its simplicity. Skyrates just begs for something more complicated, deep, involved.

Also, they really need to make the login-process smoother. Everytime I want to play I need to log in and wait for the world to load. May not seem terribly cumbersome, but if their aim is quick play 'like checking your email', then it needs to be a heckuva lot more streamlined. Store my account in a cookie, or make it a downloadable applet that I can optionally put on my desktop or something.

[netmonkey]

You can always ignore the combat... because first you have to learn some maneuvers and improve your skill tree (if you click on your avatar, there should be a tab for it). Yeah, I guess the game is still a bit of a Massively Single Player Online game... they've just started on the more multiplayer components.

Also I did talk to the Skyrates team and they said that indeed they are having a problem with some proxies, probably your school is not able to connect to it.

They're still working on fixing those problems.

[netmonkey]

Anyone playing? It's getting pretty crazy... when I started the thread it was breaking about 100 people registered, now there's 1000 people registered, just in a week or so. Usually, I see about 75 players online chatting.

[Roderick]

Good thing I made it to the top of the all-time profit list before all the others. Must be doing something right.

[uPDATE] Wait, no, I've been uncovered. They've taken away the 1.000.000 I so craftfully cheated out of the game. How dare they. That is no way to applaud my skill in pirating. If they're really all about pirating, they'll restore my fortune in honour.