Hi all! I’m the developer of Harling, a fantasy MMORPG I’ve been building on my own. It runs natively on Linux: the launcher comes as a .deb for Ubuntu and Debian and as an AppImage for every other distro, and once installed it keeps the game updated by itself.
The world is Orand, a continent of 58 regions (these tests will focus on just one of them) where four ancient Labyrinths are starting to give way. There are six classes (Knight, Mage, Archer, Barbarian, Monk, Assassin), group dungeons and voice chat with the players around you.
Harling is in an early stage of development and still in testing, so not everything works well yet: expect bugs, balance that needs adjusting, graphics to improve and more. I’m looking for testers who enjoy playing and telling me what works and what doesn’t. Spots are limited and invites go out in small waves. The server is in Europe, so the ping is best from here.
Sign up here: https://playharling.com/#partecipa
I’ll be in the comments for any question, Linux ones especially. Thanks for reading!
Hi all, dev here. First, sorry for the silence yesterday: I posted and then wasn’t around, and on a brand new account that looks exactly as bad as you say. Most of the criticism here is fair, so here are straight answers.
Who I am and what this post is for. I’m GianLuca, an independent developer from Italy, not a studio. Harling has been in development for several months and will need many more. I wasn’t looking for players yet: I was looking for people who’d enjoy helping with testing and development at a very early stage. I should have said that more clearly.
AI. Yes. AI has been used throughout the process, both to support the art direction and to write the code. I should have said it up front, and calling AI images “concept art” on the site was a poor choice.
Real screenshots. Six in-game screenshots, only cropped to hide the HUD: https://cecchigl.itch.io/harling
Privacy, terms, contact. You’re right, they’re missing, and I’m adding them to the site. Until then the contact is info@playharling.com, and if you made an account and want it gone, write there and I’ll delete it with its data.
What the launcher connects to. game.playharling.com (game files and updates) and realm.playharling.com (login and game server). Voice chat uses Cloudflare’s STUN server. Nothing else.
Money. It’s free, there’s nothing to buy, and no crypto or NFT of any kind.
If you’d rather wait until the legal pages are up and there’s more to see, that’s completely reasonable. Thanks to those who actually tried it and reported what they found.
I honestly prefer dog shit art over AI slop because it’s actually art that someone took the time to create, not some amalgamation of theft.
Slay the Spire is an excellent example of having shit concept art, after a certain point you can toggle it on over the final polished art. It’s amazing, I love it, and I wish more games would do that.
No response to any legit questions in over 9 hrs. Looks promising.
Solo dev running an MMORPG? Does this use science based dragon breeding?
I’ve been waiting for this comment, finally somebody said it, lol.
See that makes me want to ask WHICH science based dragon breeding MMORPG you’re referring to. The one by “Glitchless LLC” was a joke from the get go as I understand, which is why they haven’t removed it from their website when it’s been obvious for 2 decades that it’s not going to happen. They do have another MMO with a significantly more sane set of proposed features out and it’s browser based. But I suspect you mean the one from reddit, which contained the exact keywords to get a gazillion upvotes on reddit (science, dragon, 26 year old lady) and the OP of that hasn’t posted a single comment in 10 years :(
Passing off AI-generated images as concept art is certainly a choice.
Launcher in Italian only. Release notes, etc in Italian. Installs game in ~/.config/… Was not confident in continuing. No opion for account removal, so does not comply with gdpr, or local Italian privacy laws (AGID).
Thanks for actually trying it, this is the most useful report in the thread. The launcher only talks to game.playharling.com (game files and updates) and realm.playharling.com (login and game server); voice chat uses Cloudflare’s STUN server. It should follow your system language: if it came up in Italian on an English system, that’s a bug and I’ll look into it. You’re right about account deletion: until it’s in the launcher, email info@playharling.com and I’ll delete the account and its data.
The appimage (was really not gonna use a .deb for this) immediately makes many connections to sus domains.
As someone who plays a lot of MMOs and in very early devolpment states, this looks extremely suspicious. How are you ready for a playtest without a single real screenshot? Your site and post basically says nothing. It seriously looks like this was thrown up in an hour tops, very likely ai. Very likely a scam or malware. No responses in thread fron dev.
Do not download.
Will it run on a stream deck?
Lets see… no privacy policy, no TOS, no legal info, no replies to anyone in 3 hours since posting this. Pass.
Not to mention brand new account. Yeah, nah.
Interested for your responses to the valid concerns other commenters have brought up.
I’m not, I’ve seen enough
To what extent was AI used to make this game?
As I mentioned in my comment above, AI was used throughout development, both for writing code and as support for the art direction. I’m not an artist :) and the “concept art” shared on the website is the base used to develop some of the places in the game. Today it’s standard practice to use AI extensively at every level of software development, from solo devs to large studios. It still doesn’t make a game on its own (not yet at least XD): there have been months of design, manual adjustments, testing and fixing behind this one, and that’s exactly the part where I’m looking for help.
What do you mean? I don’t think a human was involved at all
Idk man, this whole thing looks sus to me. Ai-text and pics, no contact info, no terms of use or privacy policy. I remember a while ago there was a person promoting their (non-disclosed ai-vibecoded and pay-to-win) browser game, posing as a young dev that wants community feedback. I hope this is not the same but for now it doesn’t look trustworthy.
Yeah, agree with this. We’ve already seen a handful of scam-MMOs.
Not trying to accuse them, but I do think it’s a valid point to bring up, and it’s valid to ask them for more information and for them to show off more of what they’ve prepared.
Hey, if you could make a 5-30 minute video of just gameplay showing off some systems, going through a few levels to see what the gameplay is like, that would really help.
I’m excited for innovation in the genre but I’d like to see some “real substance” before signing up for a test.
Fair ask. There are six in-game screenshots at https://cecchigl.itch.io/harling for now. A gameplay video will come when there’s something worth showing in one.
So much this. There’s only concept art on the website. If this is ready to playtest then there ready should be a video and screenshots of the current state of the game.
Otherwise it gives bad vibes like those weird NFT “MMOs” that never showed what the game actually liked like on their website. Like one wants to trick players into downloading rather than enticing them to by showing off the possible experiences.
This just reminded me, what ever happened to Earth 2? I couldn’t believe people were getting sucked into this one in particular
EDIT: Did a quick search and seems like not much has changed. Still nothing that resembles an actual game, and still people can’t get their money back out.
Domain registered 2 weeks ago. Hm.
Well… Yeah? Doesn’t say anything about how long this has been in development for, could’ve just waited until they were ready before buying a domain.
Lemmy user, 1h ago. Hm.
Username is for the project, so again, just waited until they were ready.
Fam why you excusing them. Let them answer.
Hi Pomal, I bought the domain when I started putting things online, and the realm went up at the same time. The Lemmy account was made for this project. The game itself had been in development for about 4 months before any of that (it started as an experiment and grew day by day). Any other mysteries I can clear up? 😄
Im not the biggest MMO fan, but I’ll give it a shot when im back home from my trip :3
