MMO legend Raph Koster has announced a Kickstarter campaign for his next game – "a living galaxy sandbox MMORPG" that he describes as the "spiritual sequel to Ultima Online and to Star Wars Galaxies."
Koster certainly knows his stuff when it comes to MMORPGs. Beyond serving as the creative director of Star Wars Galaxies – an open world Star Wars MMO that existed long before Star Wars Outlaws, and survived for a solid eight years before its shutdown in 2011 – he was also the original creative lead of the fantasy MMORPG Ultima Online. However, when he first announced his new game, Stars Reach, he said: "This is the game I have wanted to make for nearly thirty years."
Stars Reach has been in development for five years now from Koster's own studio, Playable Worlds, and up to this point, it's been funded by investors. Explaining the decision to launch a Kickstarter, Koster states on Bluesky: "We're doing this because the climate for games investment is terrible."
After five years of development, Koster says the team is "reasonably close to the finish line," and the game is already a hit with those who've been playing it over the last six months, as he notes: "I haven't seen feedback this positive since when I did Ultima Online." Based on its Steam and Kickstarter descriptions, you can understand why – the galaxy itself is "vast," and "no two planets are the same." Players can permanently reshape the space around them, with shared multiplayer environments "fully persistent, and fully modifiable." Whether you chop down a tree or construct a building, you're making a massive impact on the world.
Beyond exploring and living life on the various planets, you'll also be able to craft items, fight aliens, and even be elected as the "mayor of a town or the governor of a world" thanks to the leadership skill tree. It sounds incredibly ambitious, but Koster says: "We are true believers in what we are doing."
The Kickstarter campaign hasn't begun just yet – as highlighted by Massively Overpowered, it was revealed in a Fireside Chat earlier this week that it's not planned to start for another month, but those interested can sign up to be notified when it does.
