What is Mechscape/ Stellar Dawn?

As you may know, JAGEx is the creator of many worldwidely popular games, especially RuneScape. They are located in Cambridge, England, and have two popular websites, RuneScape and their gaming portal, FunOrb.

But, the main topic this is about is Stellar Dawn, or Codename: MechScape, the new MMO being polished by JAGEx. There has been a lot of confusion surronding the game, so I would like to clarify this.

Mechscape was thought of in 2003 and started development in 2006 and the game then started its polishing stages in early 2009. It has been in the polishing stage for a year, which is very underhyping for the game. JAGEx has a tendency to overhype, as their latest minigame for RuneScape, Mobilising Armies, was over hyped, delayed for 3 months, then was a total failure, with very little people playing it.

The domain ‘StellarDawn.com’ was then registered in January 2008, sparking debate about the name. Some people thought that if they were to call it MechScape, it would scare off players that have played RuneScape, and quit because of various reasons. There was the other side of the argument thought, because by calling it MechScape, various fansites wouldn’t have to change their name, and RuneScape players will go to the game if it is called MechScape.

Stellar Dawn was pretty much confirmed with a new game engine, as sometimes the screen would say ‘ Stellar Dawn is loading ‘ instead of the usual ‘RuneScape is loading’. MechScape World was the first to find this out.

The development motto from day one seemed to be ‘ This is not RuneScape in space ‘, and it has seemed to live up to that with several sketches and concept art being released to fansites, in particular, MechScape World.

The main problem, is the hype. Lots of people get interested, and then as the project gets delayed, people lose hype. Some RuneScape users are even saying not to release Stellar Dawn, because they think it may cut the RuneScape players, and the staff will head over to MechScape. It has been clearly stated many times that MechScape does, and always will have a seperate team.

Recently, the Head Of Content for MechScape, Henrique Olifiers, was supposedly sacked or resigned, for reasons unknown. It is hard to see why, although the CEO of JAGEx stated that he was ‘crap’. It seems as though Alex Janaway, former assistant Head Of Content has been promoted to the Head position.

In all interviews about the game, it has said ‘it’s going through polishing’, ‘its ready to go through the final stage of polishing’, ’so close it hurts’, and the word most spoken in the articles, is ’soon’. Quite clearly, JAGEx and the fan base has different definitions of ’soon’, as it has been coming soon for about a year.

I hope cleared all the confusion about Stellar Dawn.

Please visit www.mechscapeworld.com for more info about Stellar Dawn.