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
A game company should always be mindfull of what games in their genre are doing as far as releases go. Movie companies do that. You don't release your indie film in the same time period as a blockbuster franchise movie.
BFA will come out in the latter part of this year and WoW most likely will not have another expansion for another two years after that. 2019 would be a good year to not worry about WoW.
AOC will be the next level of mmorpg wow will not come close to it. i have nothing against WOW but nothing last forever everthing get out and dies and new things starts and be grater.
I also think these days there are so many bad games out. people getting bord of waiting people who not a fan of mmorpg or never played them they will join and play AOC. This game is not just going to changed mmorpg but will change games as a whole and remember why pc rocks all over console.
AoC is a completely different game under the same genre, it will have no direct competition with WoW. If Intrepid continues to involve it's community at all levels of this game, I feel that it will continue to pull more adventurers from all walks of life into it's fold.
WoW 2.0? Maybe.
maybe
They still can release their Vanilla/Classic WoW Server in 2019/2020
I still have it in my Inventory. I will never sell it or disenchant it.
What are you going to do about WOW
I'll stop using WOW and start saying AMAZING!(•_•) / ( •_•)>⌐■-■ / (⌐■_■)
They all fucked themselves. They all had horrible, horrible practices in their games that turned people off and not even the Star Wars name could save it from going down.
WoW was once amazing 9/10 material and I am sure that older MMO players will disagree and loath WOW for what it did, but it opened a door to a realm people utterly enjoy.
That's the base of every good game and as long as Ashes strives to reach that door I don't worry about it.
It's true WoW Vanilla server has me intrigued and if I don't have to buy anything to play it aside from the sub, I will be there, reliving a world I loved dearly.
Every perpetual game is a "threat" to Ashes, but as I and many before me said as long as Ashes does it's game justice there will be a good player base to play with us.
Make a good game, reap the rewards. It's that "simple".
Or we could flip it right side up and just say MOM
However, WoW will soon exist in 2 variations, one of them being vanilla reboot.
Many non-casuals gonna roll that one.
Its like im reading my own opinion
- First thing they need to do is make sure they don't slip into the same themepark leveling experience that WoW offers. There is a vacuum in the character focused sandbox MMO market and the sandbox experience can offer something completely different than anything WoW can offer. Hell, this is why I play on an SWG emu server and why I even started following this game.
- Second, community. One of the things that has kept successful MMOs alive through the years is the community. I'm not just talking about forums or even guilds, I'm talking about actual real-life friends and online friends. AoC HAS to have systems in place that let friends do content together, and it has to be flexible. There are many dead MMOs out there that have group content, but they still have dead communities. AoC has to find a way to let players of different levels, different power, and different levels of dedication play together. WoW has been getting better at this by letting zones scale to players, and by letting dungeons be ran by players of various levels. Other MMOs have done this better than WoW but it is ABSOLUTELY vital to AoC having the staying power that everyone here wants it to have.
- Third, the combat and PvE group content has to be engaging. Hate on WoW all you want, but Blizzard has the absolute best group PvE content ever made in any MMO. There are various difficulties for players of different skill levels, there are various sizes for the dungeon and raid content, and their boss mechanics are at the top of the industry. Other games have been good, but WoW has been great for a long time and the bar is raised. The combat in AoC is what worries me the most honestly. I know it isn't developed yet, but it is something that can easily break the game. WoW has great tab-target combat, TERA and Black Desert Online have great action combat, and Guild Wars 2 has a good hybrid system. Each has their own faults, BDO's boss mechanics and enemy AI is a joke for instance, but at least AoC knows the bar it has to reach.
- Next is character customization. This is the easiest content to make that pays off the most when it comes to keeping a player base playing. AoC is supposed to have pretty solid pre-creation character customization, and even though less is known about post-creation customization, it appears they are aware it needs to be a full featured system. I know I've personally played several MMOs well beyond my interest in them simply because of customization. There are droughts in my interest for content in WoW that ends up being filled by character customization pursuits.
- The final thing I'm going to bring up is the world building/lore. Blizzard succeeds because of the recognizability of its franchises and characters. SWTOR only exists thanks to the Star Wars license, because it is a horrible game outside of its license and story-telling. AoC is going to have a difficult time making a world full of characters and lore that people care about while maintaining its sandbox style. I believe they can pull it off, but it is still something to keep aware of. Right now the game looks gorgeous, but I honestly couldn't give a shit less about anything they've released lore-wise. They have a good opportunity to use the racial heirarchy and civilizations as a vehicle to deliver good plots, and they also have the questing system. I wish them luck because I know I've personally quit genuinely okay MMOs simply because I couldn't care enough about the world to log in and do anything.
Those are just my opinions, so take them with a grain of salt like I said. Anyone who honestly believes WoW is dead is completely ignorant to reality. AoC has soooo much potential to be the king of character focused sandbox MMOs and carve out its own space in the market, but it also has the potential to just be an average Tolkien fantasy grind that market completely ignores.
/discuss
But we won't find out if we don't give it a honest try .
As for the WoW fanatics, they will always go back to Wow. Who here hasn't returned to an old game just for that nostalgia?
Those that are hating on WoW, who cares? I tried to play it, not my style.
WoW will likely always have a player base until they kill the servers. Let's just hope Ashes goes the same route and isn't a WoW, BDO, SWTOR copy-cat.