BitCraft Online

Think it is fair to warn everyone the game has a entire mechanic that is just relies entirely on real money. That being the Empire mechanic, to form one you pay a upfront fee with Premium Currency, after which you'll need to spend a amount of said Premium Currecny to maintain the Empire, costing more and more depending how big you go. But then also to attack and defend your claimed land you fight by spending Premium Currency, who ever spends more wins the Siege.

While the game is very enjoyable for just gathering, crafting, and socialising. It is hard to ignore the premium side of the game, while the map already have a couple empires covering the whole world. And them choosing to monetise their game this way first instead of having a cosmetic store is very questionable. Paying for anything regarding mechanics in a Craft/Trade MMO like this just shouldn't be a thing at all.

I took a long time to decide what kind of review to leave. I have 170 hours in the game, and 500 hours in the alpha! I’m in a T6 village that’s gathering materials for T7. We used to have 100 players. Now there are only 8 left. We had to add two extra professions each just to keep the village progressing. The devs are planning to add even more professions. If they work the same way as the current ones, don’t do it — there aren’t enough people for that.

The game’s main Discord — I think it’s full of fanboys, because anything that could actually keep people playing, any feedback, help, or inspiration, is immediately bombarded, destroyed, flagged.

Right now the game has between 1,000 and 2,000 players. And it’s no surprise that the devs seem more interested in how many people have the game on their wishlist than how many are actually playing. It’s absurd! The entire game economy, in this beta, is falling apart: there are no hides, because the hunter mechanics (animals running away, carting, climbing, descending) are broken; rare item prices are dropping, but no one is buying them; no one uses the TP because it’s too expensive. Villages have found a workaround — they just keep their goods for themselves. There aren’t players to make T1 or T2, which is always in short supply.

I have several classes leveled over 50/60. I changed professions to help my village and to ease the grind. But you know what? It doesn’t really work, because a few hours later you feel the same boredom and burnout. In RS3 I’ve got hundreds of hours and I never felt this drained mentally.

I’m leaving a negative review because of the devs’ attitude — making the game harder instead of making it more enjoyable. Because they’ve made no moves to keep a reasonable number of players in the game. Without people, the villages are empty; empty villages mean no goods, and in this game you can’t produce everything yourself. The largest villages are collapsing, shutting down, fading away. It reminds me of Blizzard’s approach with WoW — only after players left for FF14 did they finally change something. Here, maybe when there are only 200 players left they’ll act. But of course, no — what matters is how many players have the game on their wishlist, because that way the engine can be sold for more (stress test, mech engine etc).

If you’re looking for a similar game, play RS3, OSRS, even an MMO like FF14 — you can focus on grinding, crafting, or try RavenQuest if you want something more combat-oriented. But stay far away from this game. It’s a waste of your time, because no one here respects your time. And yes, I love grinding — I’ve had this game running on my second monitor for 12 hours a day. That doesn’t change the fact that this is a “second monitor” game, and whatever you do, it’s ultimately pointless.

I have never left a review before, ever. But I cannot recommend this game in its current state. The game is fun, its a great 2nd screen game or even a main focus if you're doing some of the more active crafts. As someone with almost 1000hrs in it, this game was for a while very fun. As I type this, I'm still playing, but i no longer have the drive to. The Devs are trying? Maybe? Geniune suggestions for things that should have been fixed ages ago are now getting deleted from their discord instead of being received as feedback.

- There are still resources lacking from the game (T4 Mushrooms needed for quests and cooking.)
- When Sailing Exp came out, people macro'd it which was bad (Sailing exp got turned off and punished the rest of us, but the botters got to keep their exp and new shiny boats they earned - that's still turned off to this day.)
- Hunting is not up to par with the other crafts. While they've done some work to repair it, it hasn't fixed it. Instead when people suggest hunting fixes (from one of the top hunters on the server mind you) The ticket feedback gets deleted and he got muted.
- The tickets people get responses to (I never got a response to my own ticket - 2 weeks after release) have mods stating things are okay, which are clearly stated in TOS that are wrong (Griefing stuff - Blocking resources, blocking caves, etc.)
- They picked up some poor guys terraforming work on a road that he worked on for hours and called it griefing, because a big empire contacted a mod and cried. Later he was apologized to in an "oopsie" format.
- A streamer just got a chat ban for sharing her stream name in the chat. Not a link, a name. But Bitcraft runs drop promos on twitch. Make it make sense. That poor girl was 'sharing' the game. (The chat mods are very uneven in fairness - Where one person got banned for something for 1 hour. A different person was banned for the same thing for 10 days. Both players deserved it, but there's no consistency.)

I understand it's in early access, but with all these issues and bugs, (little bugs here and there that really need QOL fixes) they'd rather add a furniture pack each patch, a cosmetic, a pet and completely disregard the feedback that they made a channel for on their discord.

So many players have fallen off since release and I just keep hanging on, but I think its about that time.

Mind you, I'm not a player who has ever spoken to a mod, a dev, or been banned or disciplined in the game in any way. This is completely from a regular player on the outside looking in and I don't like the direction its taking. It stinks! Its really a great concept and the plans they 'have' for the future seem awesome. But when there's not a good team behind it, I no longer want to give it my support.