Admittedly, "rewrite all the net code" is still a thing. Part of this is supposed to land in 2.6.2 ("soon"), while the bulk of it is targeted at 3.0 later this year. They're perpetually behind schedule in a lot of areas, but at the same time they're showing of some pretty impressive stuff.
I was a $20 backer on the kickstarter campaign and have since gone in for about $100 total. Obviously I wish it had come out years ago, but I'm still optimistic about the project, and fine with the drastically expanded scope. The alpha releases are far from perfect, but I've already had more fun with it than some other games that I paid much more than $20 for. That's what pushed me to back it further. There's just something incredible about the level of detail of the world, going from first person through a space station, out the airlock, walking over to the landing pad, hopping into a fully detailed spaceship (not just a disembodied camera in a cockpit), and flying off to fight space pirates.
This is a game that wouldn't be possible to make with the traditional publisher driven funding systems. Maybe it'll turn out to be impossible to make this way too, but I don't think so.
If you have a couple of hours to put videos on in the background, the last three "Around the Verse" studio updates have been pretty good:
Elaborating on the netcode, that comes back to their choice of CryEngine back in 2012. It's really geared toward smaller scale shooters where "Update every client with literally every state change" is a reasonable choice, and can't scale to an MMO. If CIG had known then that they'd get funded to the tune of $145,000,000 and make a much bigger game, they might have decided to make their own engine instead.
On the other hand, CryTek's financial trouble over the last several years was an enormous benefit to Star Citizen, because it let them build the Frankfurt office with a bunch of CryEngine experts who were tired of not getting paid on time. They're the folks who made the full scale and crazy detailed procedural planets possible.
When alpha 3.0 lands later this year (hopefully...) you'll be able to fly down and land on these from orbit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uU0hDriMqXo (short excerpt from one of the studio updates linked above)
I was a $20 backer on the kickstarter campaign and have since gone in for about $100 total. Obviously I wish it had come out years ago, but I'm still optimistic about the project, and fine with the drastically expanded scope. The alpha releases are far from perfect, but I've already had more fun with it than some other games that I paid much more than $20 for. That's what pushed me to back it further. There's just something incredible about the level of detail of the world, going from first person through a space station, out the airlock, walking over to the landing pad, hopping into a fully detailed spaceship (not just a disembodied camera in a cockpit), and flying off to fight space pirates.
This is a game that wouldn't be possible to make with the traditional publisher driven funding systems. Maybe it'll turn out to be impossible to make this way too, but I don't think so.
If you have a couple of hours to put videos on in the background, the last three "Around the Verse" studio updates have been pretty good:
March 2 (Frankfurt) - Hurricane and Character Customization https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGzDI2wUqf0
March 9 (Austin) - Weapons: The Game's Arsenal https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_v-hMu_h5s
March 16th (Manchester) - Level Design https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-c2DogQL95o (watch past the credits for in-progress ships)
Or for a quicker coverage, here's a list of short excerpts from the last video. Quality isn't great, but it gets the point across: https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/5zu3of/atv_gfy...