Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Comments
The previews of AoC are breath taking and the concept intriguing. As i do not watch television I am looking to make it my new "gaming home". (counting the days till release
I loved the people and the maps. Even though it was all 2d there was a lot of places to go and there was always something to do. The only trouble with it was the battle system. That was why I could no longer play it.
The social side, the clan wars, the raids, the pvp, playing the markets, even the insane grind!
I think the one that stands out among the rest is Final Fantasy XIV--and I don't mean 2.0, but the original 1.0. Cause for all of its lag and bugs... It was a wonderful game. The community was tight, the experience-- when they were behaving, was fun. The control you had over your character was wonderful and there was so much to explore without limit.
Following that would have to be Istaria, but for a similar reason. It was the exploration and oh man, the flying. The fact you could be a dragon, do a quest (which was not easy) and then become an adult dragon that could fly /everywhere/ was amazing.
Then there is my first MMORPG, which is Everquest, which I had some grand adventures in and-- did some stupid things just to see if I could. Sometimes they paid off-- other times-- it was trying to figure out how to drag my body to a safe place or asking someone to lend me a hand!
But yeah, in the end, its somewhere among these three and its the kernel within these three that I hope Ashes can fill. That exploration, that adventure, and that sense of freedom.
1. Fantastic PvP from large scale battles to 8 mans running around the frontier battling it out.
2. The community was fantastic. So much so that I played the game for 8 years and had a blast the entire time.
3. Was always something to do PvE wise from Darkness Falls if it was open to you to killing the faction dragon and everything in between.
4. I really enjoyed the crafting system believe it or not. Really had to put some time and coin into it to if you wanted to be any good.
These are just a few of the reason why that game is my all time favorite MMORPG. Hopefully this one takes it's place.
Star Wars Galaxy- Definitely had the best crafting/resourcing. How the quality was random you really had to watch, search, listen and pay attention. There used to be a website that you could check to see where the good resources were on your server. Crafting was definitely a one or two skill time consuming grind. Once you mastered your crafting skill you dang sure didn't want to go change it. The game was great until SOE killed it. You can still play it as it was originally but there just isn't the player presence it once had.
SWToR- I love the story arcs for each class. If you are a Star Wars Nerd the class quests felt alot like making your own SW movie. Going to free to play drove a lot of people away. Also the P2W isn't as drastic as some other games but you can feel it. I do like the ability to send your companions out to do resources so you don't have to spend all your time grinding for them.
WOW- Is just WOW. It is one of those that you just have to come back to every now and then to see what they have changed. I stopped playing when Myst's came out and have only now picked it back up to check out Legion. It is OK but it just isn't what it once was from Vanilla to Wrath. No more twinks or multi-specs which used to be some of the fun since you could make your toon the way you wanted it and not be restricted.
http://www.micknroz.com/IslandsOfDesire/index.html
http://www.micknroz.com/IOD/default.asp
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neverwinter_Nights
Many here will remember the game and how it built a huge community of gamers because of the opening of the tool kit which allowed for "legal" modding and creation of individual worlds and servers. Mods for the game where up loaded allowing everyone to test out many and varied scripts again a forerunner to addons of games today, found in curse client et al.
Friends of mine ran our server for many years and the server had persistent crafting and player made housing managed by collecting resources from the game and this was over 12 years ago. It used an sql lite daba base and for its time was very far ahead of what was going on in other games. Sadly Bioware released NWN2 and it was pretty much a flop. In saying that NWN was still played happily for many years even after it was not supported by anyone other than players.
I can't wait for AoC to get going and fingers crossed I get access to an alpha key.
http://www.micknroz.com/IslandsOfDesire/index.html
http://www.micknroz.com/IOD/default.asp
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neverwinter_Nights
Many here will remember the game and how it built a huge community of gamers because of the opening of the tool kit which allowed for "legal" modding and creation of individual worlds and servers. Mods for the game where up loaded allowing everyone to test out many and varied scripts again a forerunner to addons of games today, found in curse client et al.
Friends of mine ran our server for many years and the server had persistent crafting and player made housing managed by collecting resources from the game and this was over 12 years ago. It used an sql lite daba base and for its time was very far ahead of what was going on in other games. Sadly Bioware released NWN2 and it was pretty much a flop. In saying that NWN was still played happily for many years even after it was not supported by anyone other than players.
I can't wait for AoC to get going and fingers crossed I get access to an alpha key.
It had many things I would love to see:
A player run community
Many guilds and subpath classes (Out of 4 main classes, each had 4 subpaths. 3/4 of those subpaths were player run) had community events. Some for fun, others for legend-marks, and some would be working with the developers to basically "launch" events. Roleplay was so strong that developers would use different player-run events to launch some of its events!
Unique Items
Quite often with new events there would be new items with new and different stats on them that wouldn't appear anywhere else. Sometimes crazy strong new items would come out, but the only people that could get them were way stronger than the people that could use them - basically created a market for them, but very very limited so they couldn't be farmed. After the event, those items would never be found again, except through circulation (people buying and selling them). Quite often they would also be "break on death" items, which basically meant that after a little while, it was very likely that item would be "extinct".
Class/Path Balance
There were 4 basic paths in the game: Warrior, Rogue, Mage, Poet.
The Warrior had the highest armor and was known for it's very devastating attacks that would do a very high amount of damage at the cost of the warrior's health. Even without those attacks, they were able to attack all creatures around them, essentially able to hit 3-4 creatures at once.
The Rogue had less armor than the warrior and had its own set of devastating attacks at the cost of health and mana, though less damaging to the creature and to the rogue compared to the warrior. However, the rogue did more damage on a single target, but could generally only hit one target at a time.
The Mage was generally evenly balanced between health and mana, but its main focus was on paralyzing or blinding creatures so they couldn't attack. Quite often, this would be essential to the party. Creatures often hit very hard, and if a warrior was about to use one of his most devastating attacks, a rabbit sneeze would kill him - so making sure the creature was paralyzed so it couldn't immediately attack back was crucial. The mage could also put creatures to sleep every now and then, which would increase the damage of the next attack against that creature.
The Poet was the healer. Every class has their own healing spell, but none of them nearly as strong as the Poet. Creatures hit so hard, most classes heals were generally only for recovery outside of combat or when retreating to try and save yourself. Only the Poet could really heal you in combat and deal with the devastating blows of the Warrior and Rogue. A Poet could also give all of the mana he had to another player as well. Even though they were the weakest in armor and could very easily die, they also had a "harden body" spell which basically made them immune to all damage for a very brief amount of time (maybe 12 seconds). It had an instant cast rate, but had a very high failure rate and often needed to be cast multiple times before a success. The fail chance and delicacy of the class led to some VERY exciting and heart-pounding moments!
Every class had their strengths and weaknesses. Any one of them could also "solo" most content with the right amount of skill, but this often took way too long and had a much higher risk.
Even though I've been playing World of Warcraft for a while now, I miss those old days. The main reason I stopped playing was the community was slowly dying and the roleplay was basically down-played to something that was marginal instead of essential. Outside of that, WoW just had a more exciting combat system that made it more enjoyable to me. Despite all the wonderful gameplay elements of Nexus TK, I'm very much a visual person. I would go back to Nexus for many reasons, but it's still a subscription-model game, and I don't have the time or money to pay and play two games at once. Real-life catches up to you FAST and barely allows for free-time as it is!
Still love the game, but I'd like to see what else is out there. This is the one game that appealed to me the most. I hope ashes of creation is as good as it seems.
I currently work in the gaming industry and have a deep love for MMO's! ,
I have spent plenty of time in the WoW, Guildwars, and Everquest universe's and enjoyed each one. Now I'm currently playing ESO which is turning out to be another in depth PvE experience. So far my utmost favorite has been WoW. The lore for one is incredible and they have succeeded in writing amazing stories. The story of King Arthas for one is a story that should be a movie. Aside from me enjoying the lore i also enjoyed the extremely active and engaged community weather your a PvE player PVP, role player etc. there was tons of people there for you.
I played the PvE progression heroic raiding on WoW doing about 16-20 hours a week making server first achievements. I absolutely loved how ever encounter, from heroic dungeons, to 25 man raids were so thought out and original... every instance out of tons of raiding content was unique and equally difficult. I know 100% you guys have graphics and PvE questing down, but please please think about late game raiding content. After you are max level there needs to be progression raiding and PVP aspcets!
Much cheers,
Travis
And perhaps like SWTOR did the storytelling part and PvE like WoW, also there you have my top 3 MMORPGs of all time.
With WoW as the best one, SWTOR as second and WAR as third.
If it werent for all the bugs in SWTOR and WAR I wouldve still played them(altho they killed WAR)
DaoC for the RvR
As others have said, I've enjoyed many games over the decades, but each one brought something different to enjoy. For an overall "favorite", I'd probably have to go with DAOC just because our community held together the longest. I was in a guild with friends, and the wife, for a very long time, and PvP was a blast because of it.
SWTOR had the best story (overall), but gameplay and the gear grind just became unbearable... otherwise, it would probably be my favorite.
As an aside, I'd like to point out Ultima Online just because of the fun I had RPing in that game. Everything else was meh... any game that allows people to macro their skills up gets a thumbs down from me.