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indigohaze wrote: »

Just wondering where that was announced or indicated to players? Cause I didn't know until I watched some high level just beating the crap out of noobs in the starting areas cause someone drove a cart through there....

From 2017 (pretty much the start of it all)
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Caravans

And if you're talking about Alpha. No, Alpha does not have first-time-player systems, because it's not interested in first-time-players who got no damn clue about what they're supposed to do in this test. This was one of the main reasons for the high cost of testing - it would weed out the people unprepared for the test.

Otr wrote: »

Thread title and OP title don't match.
What I understand from the post is that some people wait for ArcheAge Chronicles and will go and play it.

But the title is about long development time.
Even if no other better mmo is released, player count goes down overtime.
What is pushing people away?
What is bringing them back?
What is keeping them in the game?

People want to try new games out and streamers sponsored to advertise them pull them away too.
Many are here now because they can afford paying and want to see something new.
They'll get bored once they explored everything and they know all the game mechanics.

There will be a core playing but how large will it be compared to other mmos?

This happens because there is a specific type of player that plays MMOs and lobby games purely for the social 'feel good response'.

Those are the players you will find in the world chat or forums of any game that does not retain 50% or higher of its playerbase, giving some equivalent of 'ded gaem? kek' as their main contribution.

Unfortunately I can tell you, not all of those people are trolling. In my experience, not even 'most of them'. Some people are just not as good at logic.

Devs handle it better now, since YoshiP basically paved the way. "Go play other games and come back."
So now MMORPG devs can focus on making a game that you 'want to log into but don't because there's nothing to do right then', or a game that 'is just comfortable to be in, and triggers nostalgia or has some slow things you can do'.

But those people I mentioned don't care about that, they care about 'wherever the biggest other group of people is'.

So when dealing with those players, the #1 thing you need to maintain to retain them is 'a large population'. If another game takes that from you, those people will 'declare your game to be dead' and then go around making sure 'everyone else knows that'. Because they are informing other people about what they value (and implying that other people should value it).

It does not matter to those people how much fun the thousands of players of Mortal Online II are having, it only matters that there are not 'enough people'.

indigohaze wrote: »

So I should have go to a wiki (that seems fairly obtuse every time I've looked at it) read it in detail before deciding that it's something I should invest time/money in and all the other data sources that show interesting crafting, a fairly expansive level of character customization and what is shaping up to be a large world (including the Website) which has all been thrown to the forefront of the attention grabbing 'marketing' should be secondary or even ignored? I would have figured that some of this info would be more prominent on the website itself as opposed to buried in a Game Design Document that no one outside of Auditors and Insomniacs is typically going to read

Ah, the suffering of trying to make an MMORPG (honestly, open development or not) in the Information Era.

In the end, there are over 1250 'hours-worth' of data on AoC, no one is expecting you to know/read it all.

And there have been many reasonable arguments about the 'way Steven sells the game'.

But even then, there's little that Steven can do about it. If he says anything to anyone, some Content Creator will roll with it, add their own spin, talk about how fun they think it will be, and give an impression of the game's goals... whether they line up with reality or not.

So I think yeah you're kinda required to read the wiki a little for this project.

The resolution seams fine. I think is needs to be more colorful and have more style.

Nah.

With ArcheAge Chronicles releasing in 2026, did Intrepid miss its opportunity?
TL is out already, and regardless of how you perceive 'success', if a large number of people who don't hate P2W are still interested in Ashes, it's probably not because they're desperately clamoring for Nodes. i.e. those people are here and not in TL for the same reasons they're mostly probably not going to flock straight to ArcheAge (I think TL is technically closer to Ashes than ArcheAge will be, too)

If ArcheAge Chronicles is not pay to win is Ashes done?
Subscription model? Otherwise there's basically no chance, it would end up being New World style. An MMORPG that has no Microtransactions is either going to constantly make you pay for expansions (probably fine) or have only minor content updates. Just the nature of the game type. Unless you're including Battle Pass/Cosmetics charges, the sustainability of the game type is challenging if your definition of "Pay To Win" is even slightly strict.

With ArcheAge Chronicles releasing on both console and computer will the player base be so large that Ashes can't compete?
Console audience does help a lot, but this isn't even a playerbase size 'issue'? If we're assuming that ArcheAge is incredibly attractive to most console players, it would probably be people that... played AA before on PC but prefer to play the next version on Console? I could see this, we console gamers do be gamin'... but no, I have around 20 years of data to tell you that this shouldn't be too big a deal relative to AA, because many of the bigger non-WoW MMORPGs are available on console. You'll find a lot of people who aren't used to console MMOs thinking this will be some sort of change, but this is really just 'how it's been since 2002'.

Will it have superior graphics to Ashes being on UE5 and them putting so much effort into graphics?
Yes. Not even taking 'style' into account, ofc a big studio will have better graphics than a smaller one. But better graphical potential only matters if your artistic direction works well with it, and a lot of players don't care about how well your god-rays bloom if artistic direction is good enough.

So, no doomsaying plz, there are many things that could 'kill Ashes', but 'the release of other MMOs that aren't too similar' (and apparently even one that is kinda similar) probably won't be it.

Yes
or
No
We will find out!

I lean towards no.