- A Letter To All Our Friends and Supporters - 20 February 2017
Hey dudes. We won't be significantly updating Year Zero in the near future. While most developers would consider "making back the money it cost to develop" to be a significant success, I think we can all agree that one staple of MMORPGs is that they're expected to be updated with new and better content regularly and that just isn't something that Year Zero is going to be able to self-fund buried ten miles deep on the Steam store ten tectonic-plates beneath candy-crush clones. We've appealed, been rebuffed, and we just don't want to stress out about it anymore. The upside is that through developing Year Zero, we made advances to Divergence's core systems that we wouldn't have been able to otherwise such as the ability to create, customize and maintain vehicles of all types, in addition to domesticating and riding creature mounts. These, like all of Divergence's features, are things we ca…
- A Letter To All Our Friends and Supporters - 20 February 2017
Hey dudes. We won't be significantly updating Year Zero in the near future. While most developers would consider "making back the money it cost to develop" to be a significant success, I think we can all agree that one staple of MMORPGs is that they're expected to be updated with new and better content regularly and that just isn't something that Year Zero is going to be able to self-fund buried ten miles deep on the Steam store ten tectonic-plates beneath candy-crush clones. We've appealed, been rebuffed, and we just don't want to stress out about it anymore. The upside is that through developing Year Zero, we made advances to Divergence's core systems that we wouldn't have been able to otherwise such as the ability to create, customize and maintain vehicles of all types, in addition to domesticating and riding creature mounts. These, like all of Divergence's features, are things we ca…
- 30% Price Drop Incoming - 24 November 2016
The system both of our games are built on; The foundation of features we simply just call "Divergence", is huge. It's huge, elaborate, and carries the potential of making truly groundbreaking MMORPGs. Ever since January, we'd started getting more and more interest from other studios willing to hire us as consultants to basically "teach them how to do what we did". As you can imagine, we rebuffed the vast majority of these and resolved to continue our goals of using the franchise as the means of self-funding development. Six-months later the writing was on the wall that while some players were racking up an obscene 800+ hours spent on our little Early-Access game, and while technically it was a commercial success and made back more than the cost of development, that amount was simply just under what we needed to expand the team to a usable size and finish the game. So we launched Year Ze…
- 30% Price Drop Incoming - 24 November 2016
The system both of our games are built on; The foundation of features we simply just call "Divergence", is huge. It's huge, elaborate, and carries the potential of making truly groundbreaking MMORPGs. Ever since January, we'd started getting more and more interest from other studios willing to hire us as consultants to basically "teach them how to do what we did". As you can imagine, we rebuffed the vast majority of these and resolved to continue our goals of using the franchise as the means of self-funding development. Six-months later the writing was on the wall that while some players were racking up an obscene 800+ hours spent on our little Early-Access game, and while technically it was a commercial success and made back more than the cost of development, that amount was simply just under what we needed to expand the team to a usable size and finish the game. So we launched Year Ze…
- Halloween Event LIVE - 2 November 2016
Our Halloween event is finally live! We decided to run it starting today and for a week or two to avoid the mass of commotion of all the other events going on. The result though, we think you'll enjoy! Our event centers around a ghost town. An actual ghost-town I mean. Scattered around this town are several pages to a cryptic book. Finding and assembling these pages into chapters, then the chapters into the full book grants the player the ability to exchange that tome for any of several new quest rewards. Among these rewards are an Ennie costume, two new Halloween-themed crystals for discordance blades and a new hilt called the "Brimstone" hilt which generates a hellfire-infused blade. Make sure you craft and bring ammunition that causes EM damage though as the ghosts inhabiting this region can only be damaged by electro-magnetic ammo! For those using an AK this ammo is dubbed "Spangler…
- Halloween Event LIVE - 2 November 2016
Our Halloween event is finally live! We decided to run it starting today and for a week or two to avoid the mass of commotion of all the other events going on. The result though, we think you'll enjoy! Our event centers around a ghost town. An actual ghost-town I mean. Scattered around this town are several pages to a cryptic book. Finding and assembling these pages into chapters, then the chapters into the full book grants the player the ability to exchange that tome for any of several new quest rewards. Among these rewards are an Ennie costume, two new Halloween-themed crystals for discordance blades and a new hilt called the "Brimstone" hilt which generates a hellfire-infused blade. Make sure you craft and bring ammunition that causes EM damage though as the ghosts inhabiting this region can only be damaged by electro-magnetic ammo! For those using an AK this ammo is dubbed "Spangler…
- The Phoenix - 25 October 2016
We knew in advance about the launches of two immensely huge games Battlefield 1 and Civilization 6 occurring more or less simultaneously, which is why we attempting to launch the game much sooner than it did. However there is a new approvals system which requires several additional review and approval steps before you're allowed to launch. Probably a good idea of Steam IMO and we support their decision to do so. However by the time it was our turn in the queue three weeks had passed since the day we originally wanted to launch and sure enough, it ended up launching late night pretty much the same day both of these huge goliath games launched. Now I know how Weird Al must've felt finally launching UHF at the same time as Indiana Jones, Honey I Shrunk The Kids and Lethal Weapon 2; A sapling among the redwoods as it were. But it didn't end Weird Al, and it won't end us. In Divergence's 300…
- The Phoenix - 25 October 2016
We knew in advance about the launches of two immensely huge games Battlefield 1 and Civilization 6 occurring more or less simultaneously, which is why we attempting to launch the game much sooner than it did. However there is a new approvals system which requires several additional review and approval steps before you're allowed to launch. Probably a good idea of Steam IMO and we support their decision to do so. However by the time it was our turn in the queue three weeks had passed since the day we originally wanted to launch and sure enough, it ended up launching late night pretty much the same day both of these huge goliath games launched. Now I know how Weird Al must've felt finally launching UHF at the same time as Indiana Jones, Honey I Shrunk The Kids and Lethal Weapon 2; A sapling among the redwoods as it were. But it didn't end Weird Al, and it won't end us. In Divergence's 300…
- Base Building Made Easier! - 24 October 2016
Medium and Medium-Wide bases have been moved to Novice Artisan to help people get their feet wet building homes. Since the tutorial videos were made previously for Divergence: Online, some people are having a bit of difficulty drawing the connection between "base building" and "hoppers" described in the Housing tut video. For this reason, we've renamed the "hopper" menu in the crafting schematics panel to "Hopper / Base" to make it easier to understand. Bases now require wood (and will benefit from the strength of the wood species used) and will show correctly. Bases are unlocked through the Artisan profession (Large bases requiring Architect) and Cabins require Scout. What's the difference? The major difference is that "Bases" contain only a basic starting tent, whereas cabins are pre-built structures common to other survival games. It comes down to which you prefer; Starting from scra…
- Base Building Made Easier! - 24 October 2016
Medium and Medium-Wide bases have been moved to Novice Artisan to help people get their feet wet building homes. Since the tutorial videos were made previously for Divergence: Online, some people are having a bit of difficulty drawing the connection between "base building" and "hoppers" described in the Housing tut video. For this reason, we've renamed the "hopper" menu in the crafting schematics panel to "Hopper / Base" to make it easier to understand. Bases now require wood (and will benefit from the strength of the wood species used) and will show correctly. Bases are unlocked through the Artisan profession (Large bases requiring Architect) and Cabins require Scout. What's the difference? The major difference is that "Bases" contain only a basic starting tent, whereas cabins are pre-built structures common to other survival games. It comes down to which you prefer; Starting from scra…
- FREE GUNS AND PANTS FOR ALL! - 21 October 2016
Day one of Year Zero: It's a pyramid of priorities beginning with the most critical and in need of attention to the least, so to thank everyone for the bug reports we've been getting, we decided to make your lives a little easier and hopefully more pleasurable! While some tutorials are still missing and we're still working to spawn loot in the various locations of the world, we've decided to very simply start giving out game items to anyone and everyone who wants them free of charge. It's absolutely true that this isn't a "typical zombie apocalypse game" and as such, people logging in expecting the typical mechanics of "walk around naked, find pants, run from zombies until you can find a stick" simply do not apply. This is a big system that allows for big features but the straight dope is that it's definitely hard to "learn how to do it on your own". In an ideal world, we'd have a ton o…
- FREE GUNS AND PANTS FOR ALL! - 21 October 2016
Day one of Year Zero: It's a pyramid of priorities beginning with the most critical and in need of attention to the least, so to thank everyone for the bug reports we've been getting, we decided to make your lives a little easier and hopefully more pleasurable! While some tutorials are still missing and we're still working to spawn loot in the various locations of the world, we've decided to very simply start giving out game items to anyone and everyone who wants them free of charge. It's absolutely true that this isn't a "typical zombie apocalypse game" and as such, people logging in expecting the typical mechanics of "walk around naked, find pants, run from zombies until you can find a stick" simply do not apply. This is a big system that allows for big features but the straight dope is that it's definitely hard to "learn how to do it on your own". In an ideal world, we'd have a ton o…
