It boasts the following (from the Kickstarter page):
- Experience limitless content. It's a game that lets you experience hundreds of different worlds with just one client! You can play on official Citadel Studios servers or join any of the hundreds of community run servers. Each server has different rules and content, allowing you to find a game universe that fits your exact play style.
- Become a creator of worlds. It's the first game that legitimately allows you to host and moderate not just a single game world, but an entire universe of connected game worlds with the potential to support thousands of users at one time. Customize every aspect of your servers' gameplay experience from character development, to combat, to items and equipment, to monsters and AI.
- Explore the Multiverse: Out of the box, it's a complete game experience with an immersive storyline. It’s about vengeful gods that fight for supremacy in a multiverse of worlds that span many genres. (More info about Shard worlds here)
- Blaze your path: Your fate is not predetermined by class selection or levels. Your skills and abilities naturally evolve as you use them. With a virtually unlimited number of skill combinations, no two characters are the same.
- Recruit the local talent: Your hirelings and tamed companions have their own lives, but they will develop their unique skills and abilities as they fight and work for you.
- Build your home: No instances here. Build your house or guild hall in the actual game world on one of the 'home' shards and decorate it with the spoils of your adventures.
- Experience live content: Server admins have the tools to generate content on the fly like the ability to possess creatures and spawn items. Citadel Studios official servers will have regular live events where your interactions will change the course of history.
- Play by your rules: Play on Citadel Studios servers with our official rules and content or find a modded player run server with custom rules and content that suits your play style.
- Create your world: With our powerful world editor, you will create completely original game worlds. Use the built-in assets we provide or import your own. New built-in assets become available with each expansion pack.
- Never log off: With the Shards Online mobile companion app for Android, iOS and Windows Phone, you will manage your hirelings and receive notifications of important in-game events. Imagine the possibilities... Is your guild hall being attacked? You can send your hirelings to defend without ever logging in.
- Award Winning: Shards Online was voted "Best Indie MMO" by mmorpg.com at PAX East 2014. This same award was given to Shroud of the Avatar at E3 this year!
End date for this project is 12/12/2014, with a goal of 50,000, and they've hit 46k so far.
It certainly looks interesting, and kind of along the same lines as I was hoping Neverwinter would be like when I first started playing it, but then, I haven't played any of this either. This is all for working toward an alpha release of the game, so there's that. The ideas of the game though are interesting.