Vogster Entertainment's free-to-play, shooter MMO, CrimeCraft, is about to see its first full expansion, Bleedout! The first CrimeCraft: Bleedout episode will release on Saturday, December 4th at 7:00 EST and with it some great additions to the game. The expansion will be accessible to both veterans and newcomers of CrimeCraft and the first episode will be free! You can also download the game for free at www.Crimecraft.com.
Curse had the chance to ask CrimeCraft's executive producer Michael Mendheim and writer/senior producer Mike Kennedy some questions about Bleedout and the expansion sounds great. Check out our Q&A to learn about what Bleedout will bring to the game's universe!
What are some of the major changes/additions players will experience in CrimeCraft: Bleedout?
This is a huge expansion with many, many changes. We’ve re-envisioned the entire product and defined the Bleedout Universe. All the lobbies underwent massive reconstruction on the art design to support the mood and theme of the Bleedout concept, which is a world in chaos caused by the oil supplies running out and civilization, essentially going insane over night.
Our marquee feature for this expansion is the Bleedout PvE Campaign which explains this story. New episodes appear every Saturday Night at 7:00pm EST (Midnight GMT/Server Time).
If PvP is your thing, one of our most popular features is our daily Tournament and with our increased population over the last few months, the demand was too great not to have a second daily tournament.
We're also introducing a new instance called "Belly Street" - This instance is the tightest, most confined combat instance in the game complete with, a burned out school bus and a moat. Players will earn the right to fight there by unlocking it within the Bleedout Campaign and will be able to play Riot, Shootout and Snatch and Grab PvP matches.
Of course if you want to get away from the combat for a bit, there are always our VIP rooms in the nightclubs. Player's can take the edge off by watching a beautiful stripper perform a dance. You never know… she just might just give you a mission if she likes you enough.
We've also introduced a Reputation System into the game which totals all aspects of the Player’s gameplay and gives everyone an overall rating. Some of the attributes that make up a Player’s Reputation include; wealth, PvP Score, Gang Leadership and time spent in game. This is phase 1 of our Reputation plan and over the next few months the system will expand and grow into its own meta-game. The Reputation System is something we're very excited about and in the coming weeks we'll have many more details to share. This feature is going to expand into something incredible.
Are there going to be any major improvements to existing CrimeCraft content?
The Bleedout campaign introduces much-needed backstory and political intrigue that players can enjoy as solo PvE or with friends as a co-op gang experience. As an online shooter, CrimeCraft offered a wealth of great PvP features and customization options, but we've spent a considerable amount of time focusing on the world itself, developing a dark, unique history filled with twisted criminal agendas and world-scale conspiracies. All of this new narrative detail gives players active and evolving goals to pursue as an alternate to straight PvP. It not only adds character and motivation to the world, but gives players a real framework to define themselves. We've completely re-visualized all of the lobby environments to convey this "New Age of Ruin", as well as a host of new items and options.
The team has worked exceptionally hard on this expansion, aiming to please our community. There are hundreds of fixes and refinements with this new release and we're totally excited about it. It’s a great balance of features and improvements our community has asked for along with some new stuff that can help introduce new players to the universe we’ve created.
What will be unique about Bleedout's missions?
Unlike the current PvP missions in the game, the campaign missions in Bleedout will be story-driven, sending the player through an arc that not only explains the way of this world, but explores where it is going and how it got that way in the first place. Each campaign mission or string of missions will tell a small piece of a much larger story, with specific goals and objectives that drive the story forward. Some of these objectives have led to some new gameplay mechanics, such as stealthy spy misisons, defensive missions, demolition missions, bank robberies, etc. Many of these missions will evolve over time as scripted events force an updated agenda or directive. Its not just run-and-gun (although there is plenty of that, as it is a core feature).
Each episode will consist of 8-10 brand new PVE missions that are bookended by animated cut scenes illustrated by some of today's hottest comic book artists -- Nathan Fox, Howard Chaykin, Ben Templesmith, Glenn Fabry, Trevor Hairsine... it's an impressive list of talent all contributing their unique story telling styles to this gritty conspiracy the Player is left to unfold. And like individual episodes of an ongoing television drama, they will build on each other to tell the larger 10-week story.
Will Bleedout's content be able to be enjoyed by both new and veteran players?
It was critical for us to make sure the content was playable for all players, regardless of what level their character was and how long they’ve played the game. The missions difficulty scales with the character level. We have 4 tiers of difficulty based on character level that effect enemy AI, the number of enemies and their stats. To further customize the experience, the player can select between the easy, normal and hard in Game Options menu. So, regardless of your character level and your ability as a shooter player, there is a setting that will offer you just the right amount of challenge with mission rewards scaling with level of difficulty.
How can players go about aquiring CrimeCraft: Bleedout?
CrimeCraft is totally free and can be downloaded at www.CrimeCraft.com the Bleedout expansion will be free to all our current and future Deluxe or Premium subscribers. The first episode will be free for everyone and free players can purchase the subsequent episodes individually off the in-game Black Market for 40 Gold Bars ($2.00).
When will the episodic rollouts begin?
The first episode will premier on Saturday, December 4th at 7:00 EST (Midnight GMT/Server Time). Then we will be releasing episodes every Saturday for 10 consecutive weeks culminating in a season finale on February 5th. Players don’t need to play according to our schedule, you can take as long as you like, but we expect our community to gather and complete the episodes during the week they are released. Players that join the game part way into the campaign season can get caught up by playing more than one episode a week.
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