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
BDO does have some great elements for RP & community (housing, professions, worker node networks, life skills, etc.) yet I don't really feel like I am part of a community. They have pretty much made it all about maxxing out your gear to reign supreme in PvP. The RNG is absolutely horrendous. The cash shop is ridiculously expensive. So, if anything I'll buy decent gear in the marketplace, when I can afford it. I haven't even taken a character above 49 yet (PvP activated).
From what I've read, it appears that Intrepid is aiming to make Ashes enjoyable for fans of all playstyles. I admire and respect this. I believe it will also bring everyone closer as a community with perhaps "dipping their toes" into other playstyles to find out they can be enjoyable & exhilarating.
For WoW itself, I left when unfortunately my job prevented me from being a hardcore raider. I tried playing casually, but after having been hardcore I could just never enjoy casual play enough to want to keep going over the long term.
Unfortunately, not sure there are good take-aways from my experience. I suppose try to develop a variety of different and new content to keep people interested. Hopefully the node system will help with this.
I realize a 13 yr old game cannot survive forever, especially with BAD management and pay2win being the only "content" added to game mostly.
I'm very excited for Ashes. because this seems to be the first game that is going to incorporate the features from my game, and move them forward to today's graphics/systems.
Aside from that, a lot of specifics drove me away. Pretty much any game that starts all characters at 1 zone and requires them to go through that zone is useless to me as a player. I was spoiled with EQ, probably. (Though often games now succeed in later game parts that seem tedious about the old games like no zone level caps ESO/SWTOR etc)
The free to play models of some games are just gimpy. Swtor's is relatively restrictive and ESO's can be as well.
I was driven off by the non-engaging and gank friendly gameplay of Shadowbane way back when. Nice to start off like 2 days into game grinding with a noob group only to have some dude 30 levels above you pickpocketing all your money then laughing about it. Sure, I get it there's freedom to do what you want... It make sense to have an open and fun game but there's also "come on dude don't be a twat just because that's what you want to do."
Some cash shops are generally great (one of the best in the biz is in Path of Exile) but others are just awful unless you're subscribed and getting "free" coins every month with your sub. It isn't always Pay 2 Win, but some games almost require some purchase to have a relatively normal gameplay experience.
I've tried to, at least, but no one wanted to lose more than a couple of seconds before start again grinding on. There's just no reason to cooperate anymore, at least while you're reaching the cap. That's just horrible, I recall with joy those rare times during Vanilla in which, with strangers and other wanderers, we were able to build a good, solid party to raid some instance with. It was an hard, yet challenging process, involving questing together at first to understand if you could trust the other player, and then jump into unknown and tempt the fates. I heartily hope that AoC will create the same tense and need of community.
Apart from gameplay issues, the main problem for me is that I've never experience a game able to let the players tell the tales they intended to write. Usually there is no plot, no narration, nothing saying that the players were playing the game and not the other way around. Gameplay boundaries sometimes are enough to undermine passion and immersion.
Players in a game deserve to -work- for their -upkeep-... Not depend and wait on getting -lucky-. There needs to be multiple roots to achieve the same heights as the majority of players, there can be a Bell Curve to show the lucky ones at the top, but don't make it a exponential value that cannot be achieved.
She found out my address based on getting my real name from somewhere and mailed me a letter. Kinda freaked me out.
What grinds my gears is when you can max level in a few months. Like my comment above, I played Lineage 2. On the release of Lineage 2 it seemed near impossbile to reach max level. It's a good thing, your suppose to enjoy the game as it is and not look too far ahead and want "end game" to come anytime soon, that's when the game quality will die out.
IMO... I'm hoping for tens of thousands of hours of grinding required to max (exaggerated)
The grind to max lvl, raid, PvP for a season for gear that's obsolete in a few weeks then eat, sleep and repeat, gets boring pretty quick.
I stopped playing WoW because I got the CE for the original game and never continued when I cannot find a CE for Burning Crusade that does not involve someone price gouging me. I wouldn't say I have OCD, just maybe.... a little bit.
For other MMOs, it's the basic stuff that others mention: P2W, RNG, ridiculous amount of grind (and I don't mind grind to level, but grind to succeed in every other aspect of a game on top of that is going too far imo), and crazy gear gap.