Ashes of Creation Kickstarter Campaign Closes Big

Ashes of Creation has reaped Kickstarter success in a pretty big way.

Something about this logo says “Ashes of EverQuest Next” to me

The campaign brought in more than $3.2 million on a $750K ask, largely by running their campaign by the numbers… numbers which included a long run of pre-campaign news and updates and plenty of warning that the Kickstarter was coming.  The Choice/Change/Consequence message about the world they intend to create seemed to resonate as well.

The final tally when the campaign closed early this morning was:

• Amount Pledged: $3,271,809
• Total Backers: 19,576
• Avg. Pledge: $167

That is a serious haul, representing 436% of the campaign’s base goal.  That number puts it ahead of other such Kickstarter campaigns like:

• Camelot Unchained –$2.2 million
• Star Citizen – $2.1 million
• Shroud of the Avatar –$2 million
• Crowfall – $1.7 million
• Project: Gorgon – $74,781

I actually wonder what Ashes of Creation brought to the table that let it out-pace some of those campaigns.  Part of my view of such campaigns is that a big name in the industry is needed to get attention and bring in the backers.  Certainly the top four campaigns on the list above were driven by the names involved.

And then there is Ashes of Creation.

Let’s be honest here.  There is nobody listed on that campaign that has anything like the history or notoriety of Mark Jacobs, Chris Roberts, Richard Garriott, or Gordon Walton (and Raph Koster, whose name was tossed around during the Crowfall campaign).  They don’t even have a Brad McQuaid level of name.  Not even a Mark “Sad Trombone” Kern to hang their hat on.

What does this mean?

Is the star power of famous names overrated?  I have always assumed that having the draw of a known name was a key aspect to success, but what should I think now?  Do such names come at a cost?  Certainly both Mark Jacobs and Lord British had to spend time explaining away past mistakes during their Kickstarter runs. (Jacobs gave us a mea culpa with some blame for EA, while Garriott just pointed fingers at EA and NCsoft.)

Without a name did Ashes of Creation just do a much better job of laying the groundwork for success before launching their campaign?  Certainly there was a long string of articles about the project before it hit Kickstarter.

Is Ashes of Creation really offering something different, something that would spark this level of success?

Or has the environment changed?  For a stretch there was a whole cloud burst of MMORPG Kickstarter campaigns, including the five I listed out above and more.  Since then things have quieted down.  Was the market just ready for another run at the fantasy MMORPG holy grail?

Personally, I have too many undelivered projects to consider investing in yet another one, but clearly others were not held back.

Whatever it was, it was certainly op success.  You can go see the Kickstarter campaign for details or look at the campaign on Kicktraq to see how the funding progressed.

Now to see if they will have anything to deliver come the December 2018 date listed.

And, of course, we shall see how far their post-campaign funding goes.  The asking for money never stops with these projects.