Roughly how long until those who don't have their beautiful feather badges get a chance to try out the engine? 3-months? 6-months? A year? Tomorrow?
Will there be any (decent) AIs/bots available?
#1 Probably less than 3 months
#2 To be decided. Coding a good AI is hard work
How can we help out in developing right now? (People who did not donate money when the time was right)
More info on that very soon
How effective will team play (ganking) be in M:BG?
Alfabeta stuff, we'll figure a good balance out during testing
What's your armor system like? Will cutting edge weapons be likely to bounce off plate?
The current plan is that all weapons and all armors have cut, pierce and blunt values. Finetuning in alfabeta
And will damage be calculated like warband with random chances? Will there be "critical" hits based on luck or weapon/armor/hitbox location?
We try to keep luck out of the game as much as possible, if not entirely.
If weapons are physical objects, than two people attacking each other in certain ways should cause their weapons to collide.
Weapon collisions are in, working, and they are pretty cool
Are you willing to outright permaban certain players and online organizations that are notorious for their bad behavior in online communities?
In other words, what is your moderation policy for M:BG. Will it be trollzy cRPG kind, where we can do whatever we want pretty much, which is also the reason why many people don't stick around for more than few days? Or you'll take more serious business approach when dealing with grieving and exploiting by certain/notorious groups of online gamers?
No. we will never ban someone on the assumption that he might do something bad. The forum is a very liberal place, and tbh I like that. There will ofc be very clear rules, we don't want admins to just do things different. Offenses will have strictly defined punishments.
I don't care if it's the best thing for the game, but I will never ban people based on the group they belong to, or what they might be doing in the future. I have my democratic standards.