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.
How did you wind up here?
As a point of curiosity, I'd be very interested in hearing the various stories of how all of us found our way into this community. Obviously, it can be as brief or as long winded as you'd like, but bear in mind that my intention behind this is nothing less than learning about each other, and possibly finding common threads. That said, as the guy putting this up, I'll go ahead and tell you what brought me here and why the timing.
Before a few days ago, I was vaguely aware of Ashes, and had more or less written it off due to the town siege stuff being what was hitting Youtube at the time I was looking. I saw how games like Conan Exiles and the like turned out, and have had a long enough history of dealing with griefers that it kinda left a bad taste in my mouth.
By chance one of the Youtubers I still afford some attention to did a video talking about, for lack of a better term, the life and times of the Everquest franchise. I had looked into Everquest 1 for quite awhile back in the day, but only played it briefly. Everquest 2 was where I stepped into the franchise, and had done so on launch day. My D&D gamemaster had encouraged us to take the plunge with him and to attempt our own personalized narrative campaign inside the game world. Sadly, he got so sucked in just playing the game that he kinda ditched the idea, and I joined one of the two RP servers shortly thereafter. Thus began my embarkation into MMO Roleplay, as well as my aspirations to go from one game to the next building fantastic digital homes, which eventually led to my obsession with Landmark years later.
The closed beta experience in Landmark was amazing. I loved it every step of the way, and people like Omeed and Georgeson made every one of us contributors feel like we were truly family. That would soon end, however, with the sale and subsequent dismantling of the lions share of SOE as they switched hands and became Daybreak Games. I followed Omeed to Blade and Soul for a stint, but had essentially lost track of the other persons of interest from SOE.
This brings us back to the Youtuber I mentioned. His video discussing what all became of Everquest including those working on Next led to him mentioning the fate of some of those staffers. That they came to work for a little known company called Intrepid. This video was posted two days ago, and that, my friends, is how I found my way here.
Before a few days ago, I was vaguely aware of Ashes, and had more or less written it off due to the town siege stuff being what was hitting Youtube at the time I was looking. I saw how games like Conan Exiles and the like turned out, and have had a long enough history of dealing with griefers that it kinda left a bad taste in my mouth.
By chance one of the Youtubers I still afford some attention to did a video talking about, for lack of a better term, the life and times of the Everquest franchise. I had looked into Everquest 1 for quite awhile back in the day, but only played it briefly. Everquest 2 was where I stepped into the franchise, and had done so on launch day. My D&D gamemaster had encouraged us to take the plunge with him and to attempt our own personalized narrative campaign inside the game world. Sadly, he got so sucked in just playing the game that he kinda ditched the idea, and I joined one of the two RP servers shortly thereafter. Thus began my embarkation into MMO Roleplay, as well as my aspirations to go from one game to the next building fantastic digital homes, which eventually led to my obsession with Landmark years later.
The closed beta experience in Landmark was amazing. I loved it every step of the way, and people like Omeed and Georgeson made every one of us contributors feel like we were truly family. That would soon end, however, with the sale and subsequent dismantling of the lions share of SOE as they switched hands and became Daybreak Games. I followed Omeed to Blade and Soul for a stint, but had essentially lost track of the other persons of interest from SOE.
This brings us back to the Youtuber I mentioned. His video discussing what all became of Everquest including those working on Next led to him mentioning the fate of some of those staffers. That they came to work for a little known company called Intrepid. This video was posted two days ago, and that, my friends, is how I found my way here.
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"Where did you get those eggs?!"
I really hope IS can join the ranks of studios like Blizzard, Bethesda, CD Project Red, and Rockstar Games. Regardless of what anyone may think of some of these studios games, they are fantastic studios who are constantly setting or raising the bar on the way gamers should be treated by the industry.
Before anyone rages about the previously mentioned studios, I want you to list the times you were, or could GENUINELY claim you were scammed out of your money by any of those studios, or flat out lied to. I certainly can't come up with any of those times. I am not that big of a fan of Overwatch and prefer Skyrim and Fallout over Witcher.
I was pretty active in the game community for that game. I was in the second wave of the original beta and I was also picked as a beta tester for JtL. I was heavily involved in discussion in the Teras Kasi forum (it was the unarmed combat profession) and at one time they voted for community representatives for each profession. I didn’t get picked but I came in close (I think second place).
Anyway, shortly after they started working on something called the “Combat Upgrade”, an infamous term for anyone who was a player of the game back then. The different combat professions were terribly unbalanced and combat itself was kind of a mess. The plan was to revamp all of the combat professions, give them all something unique and useful and level the playing field. 5 players representing each combat profession were picked to join a special alpha test and give feedback on the changes, and I was picked to join the Teras Kasi group (of course).
We all gained access to a hidden discussion forum where the developers ran ideas past us and led discussions. It was really cool and exciting. They had things worked out very well and it all looked cool. We were told we’d be able to test “soon” and meanwhile kept us apprised of planned changes.
But eventually the devs went silent. They stopped posting anything and it was just us players chatting. We wondered what was going on and when we’d get to test. Weeks went by, then more than a month.
Suddenly they announced that they were releasing the new upgrade after extensive alpha testing (which never happened). None of the cool stuff they proposed was in it. Instead it just nerfed some professions. There was no “upgrade”. We were humiliated because the community was told we were testing this thing and representing them in doing so, and what came out was garbage. The suspicion was that they hurried to release a new expansion to coincide with Episode III which came out in theaters at the same time.
Soon after that was the huge revamp that changed the game into a class-based, level-based game, took out everything that made the game unique, and made it EQ2/WoW with lightsabers. I had already quit before that though.
Anyway, yes the developers/publishers/whoever completely lied to everyone and crashed the game into a brick wall at the same time. It was the worst experience I ever had as a gamer.
Been lurker here and on discord for while, but recently decided to against my nature and be more active.
I was appalled. Most MMOs are crap, and have been crap, and probably will continue to be crap. This is the only one aside from Archeage or Guild Wars 2 that looked remotely interesting.
I was a bit sore I missed out on the KS and the Summer Backer project but was overwhelmingly impressed with how Ashes is being handled. I'm still dancing back and forth on whether or not I make the $375 commitment for a weeb hut and weeb boat but I'll definitely be playing either way.
I've done lifetimes for LOTRO, DCUO, CO, STO, and the only one I still play is LOTRO. (Yes, Lord of the Rings Online is 11 years old now and many of us still play it. Best F2P setup I've seen.) But, for this one I figured it would be a very worthwhile game and had to drop the money to get it.
I even bought a new computer a few months back in preparation for being able to play this game sometime this year, among others.