The game will feature two major parts – the action map, where you (and your friends) do missions from stealthily infiltrating a secret Renraku research facility to punching the lights out of a major Aztechnology outpost with guns blazing. Hacking, magic and gunfights are all part of that and will be done simultaneously (so nobody needs to go for pizza while your hacker battles Black ICE for two hours).

The second part will be the legwork and mission preparation. This will happen on a city overview map, where you can try and use your contacts, skills or resources to gain info on the mission goal, acquire blueprints, bribe guards or prepare the right soft or spell for your endeavor. This will be closer to rolling the dice on an action and getting a short narrated outcome. Each of those actions will cost action points (and if you want to get better odds you may want to spend more action points on a specific objective).

So if you don’t have the time for an extended session, you may just want to spend a couple of AP to prepare and make sure you get the most out of your mission when you actually want to tackle it.

Listening to what Shadowrun fans and gamers want, Shadowrun Online will now be available as a dedicated client for PC, Mac, iPad2 and up, as well as Android Tablets. This level of community engagement also resulted in the decision to add an additional, completely new way to play the game: The Campaign Model. It is a Pay-to-Own revenue model, similar to Guild Wars or classic pen and paper games.

You buy the game once for the going price of your typical game, or for just 25$ for Kickstarter backers. Then, you can play it forever, just like any single-player RPG. And, unlike most MMO's, which charge a monthly subscription fee, or sell in-game items, you can instead decide to later acquire expansions such as new campaigns or additional cities.

“Our Kickstarter project was off to a good start, but some fans were hesitant to back it due to the way we wanted to deliver the game or our revenue model.” states Jan Wagner, Co-Founder of Cliffhanger Productions. “We have added the campaign model and client as an alternative to address that. Some backers stated that they preferred different gameplay styles to the classic MMO or PvP games.  We want to emphasize that you can play the game any way you want - as a single player game by hiring NPC runners for your team and experiencing the story, as a co-op Multiplayer with your friends or as a mission based PvP. The feedback has been really valuable for us and we dedicated a lot of our time trying to answer questions and discuss the great suggestions by the community. People were looking for something more physical and closer to classic games, so we found a way to provide that and we also added a bunch of cool new goodies for backers” he adds.

Shadowrun Online will differ from the standard MMO fare of “Kill 5 enemies, kill 10 enemies, kill 100 enemies” in so far as the mission goals are always part of the greater player driven plotline, with distinct and diverse goals. Missions may also feature so called legwork, where Runners gather intel on their target and try to use it to better plan their runs in advance.

Michael Paeck, Co-Founder of Cliffhanger adds: “Cliffhanger is serious about listening to fans. The campaign model allows players to get a Retail Box version of Shadowrun Online or download and play it like any other classic single or co-op multiplayer game. So, however players choose to enjoy the game, they will still be part of the persistent and evolving world and player-driven story that makes Shadowrun Online special.”