Free MMOG Planeshift breaks 100k Players!

FREE MMORPG PLANESHIFT BREAKS 100,000 PLAYER BARRIER
Groundbreaking MMORPG is developed as open source software with developers from 11 countries worldwide and free to all players.

Turin, Italy (October 28, 2003) - The PlaneShift Development Team announced today that their pre-alpha technology preview of the MMORPG, PlaneShift, has exceeded 100,000 unique player accounts in less than six months.

PlaneShift is unique among the wave of upcoming Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPGs) because it is being built by a volunteer team of programmers, artists, musicians and gaming experts from around the world that share the same passion: building an RPG game with no boundaries. While commercial MMORPGs have constraints based on budgets and schedules, the PlaneShift team relies on a worldwide community of talented developers to expand their game endlessly. The current technology preview, codenamed "Molecular Blue" was released to test the base networking infrastructure and to give the community an indication of what is to come.

"PlaneShift has been embraced by fans around the world because we know the developers share our passion for MMORPGs," said Vicky Hoskin, a moderator in the PlaneShift fan community. "They love the genre and bring their professionalism to this project in a way anyone can see."

This phenomenon marks the first time an Open Source 3D RPG project of this size has been delivered to the public in any meaningful state of completion. PlaneShift comprises more than 800,000 lines of code even at this early stage, including the exceptional work done on the 3d engine by the Crystal Space team. PlaneShift is in a category of software among the largest, and normally most expensive to produce pieces of software in the world. "We are not aware of any other Open Source MMORPG project at this stage of completion, nor any with even 5% of our user base," said Luca Pancallo, Director of the PlaneShift Team.

PlaneShift was originally designed as a graphical MUD in 1994, being presented in two big computer expos in 1996 and 1997. The PlaneShift 3D version, in development since early 2001, is implemented entirely in C++ using OpenGL. All the source code for the game engine is licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL). Both client and server will run in Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. "We have been gratified and happy to have good support from ATI and Apple in getting our cross-platform capabilities up to speed; the team is committed to delivering a cross-platform game," said Pancallo.

"The first time I saw some screenshots from PlaneShift I almost couldn't believe that they created that using Crystal Space. They are really pushing Crystal Space to the limits. " said Jorrit Tyberghein, director of Crystal Space. "Working together to complement each other's strengths is what Open Source collaboration is all about."

The next technology preview of PlaneShift, codenamed "Crystal Blue", is expected to be released around end of the year, although the team expects at least two more releases before the game is close to feature-complete.

"PlaneShift has attracted great developers of many different talents," said Andrew Craig, leader of PlaneShift Client development. "Having people who are true professionals at what they do working on this in their spare time has proved that high standards of quality are their own reward, but we are always looking for more help."

Having broken 100,000 accounts on a preview that essentially allows players to chat together and engage in a 3d virtual "easter egg hunt", the team hesitates to estimate how many people may try out a playable game with combat and magic. But that is not slowing progress toward Crystal Blue. "We have designed the architecture of our system for maximum scalability and maximum hardware flexibility; we want a distributed server approach where we can leverage whatever hardware is available, running different parts of the server on different machines across the world" said Keith Fulton, leader of PlaneShift Server development.

"We have been amazed by the huge public reception to our little technology preview," said Director Pancallo. "That we have crossed 100,000 players world-wide with no budget and no marketing is quite an achievement and only motivates the team to work harder toward final release."

About PlaneShift
PlaneShift was started by Luca Pancallo in 1994, as a graphical Multi-User Dungeon (MUD) customization project. A playable version was presented in 1996. In 2001, work restarted from scratch on a 3D version of PlaneShift-work that is still going on today. PlaneShift is an Open Source project, with all its source code released to the public under the GNU GPL copyright license, hosted on sourceforge.net. When complete, PlaneShift will be a fully functional fantasy MMORPG with character roleplaying, combat, magic, progression, trades and crafting, merchant classes and other occupations taking place within a fully immersive and realistic world simulation. PlaneShift is hosted on donated servers and no developer receives any compensation for his/her work on the project. No money is charged to download or play the game. For more information on PlaneShift, contact Luca at info@planeshift.it.