Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Intrepid studios and Mycom Discord Latest News
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**Below are the discord news posted by Mycom and our sandal god Steven respectively**
***EDIT for Typo's***
***Additional EDIT to Bold topic Points by MyCom***
Pay-to-Win
***EDIT for Typo's***
***Additional EDIT to Bold topic Points by MyCom***
Pay-to-Win
As previously communicated, we at My.com are, and remain, fully committed to supporting the creative vision that Steven and Intrepid Studios has for Ashes of Creation. Their vision appeals to the desires of western MMORPG fans, and we are fully committed to bringing this non-Pay-to-Win vision to the European players.
In the past, My.com has published and developed primarily titles that were, from the ground up, built around a Free-To-Play model. This is not the case with Ashes of Creation, which is fully tailored towards a subscription-based business model. We want to make sure the game reaches our players with a business model and monetisation options that matches the expectations of the fans and backers of Ashes of Creation.
We are fully supporting the Non-Pay-to-Win vision that Steven and Intrepid Studios have, and we will implement the same model for the My.com version as they implement for their version.
We believe that Ashes of Creation will be one of the largest MMOs ever to be globally published, and as a publisher, we are excited to help lead the charge , together with Steven and our friends at Intrepid Studios.
Customer Service
While My.com is always striving to provide the best possible Customer Service for any of our titles, we may not always be meeting the players’ expectations in this regard. The feedback about Customer Service is traditionally one of the toughest parts of publishing an online game, but this will not deter us from improving. We are continually working on getting better in this area, and we want you to keep on telling us about your expectations.
In order to provide the best possible Customer Service for Ashes of Creation specifically, My.com will be working closely with Intrepid Studios to establish global procedures and policies for our players in the European and CIS regions. We will also establish joint service level expectations that My.com will commit to fulfilling.
As a first step to underline our commitment, we will already begin providing a base level of Customer Service for the European and CIS region, starting on the first of September. This will give us some head start on making sure that everything is set up for the times when players in Europe will have actual issues with which they contact us. Should you want to get in contact already - we are looking forward to hearing how we are doing there and where specifically you would want us to improve.
Account Security
Intrepid and My.com will be working closely together on bringing the account protection services to an even higher level. As part of that collaboration, we at My.com are happy to announce, that we will be providing additional account security mechanisms, such as Two-Factor authentication, that will help to protect all our user’s accounts. This will allow us to further expand security and control over accounts and data for all users and we hope to share specifics on these plans in the near future.
With the most recent implementation of the GDPR changes for European users, we have already solidified the security of your account and personal information, and given all My.com users more direct control over their data. These recent upgrades together with the plans we are pursuing with Intrepid will ensure that our data security is now up to the highest standards of the industry.
In addition to this, we will also closely collaborate on providing the client-server technology that will support this account security. Intrepid Studios will remain in full charge of compiling and providing the Ashes of Creation client through the My.com / mail.ru infrastructure, so that the process is as concise and secure as possible.
Localisation
In contrast to the titles that My.com was able to publish in the past, we now find ourselves in the very positive situation of working with a game that is in active development, and which is being built by a team that has internalized the requirements for localisation and has considered this from the get-go.
Intrepid Studios is already providing us with the necessary localisation tools that will allow My.com to focus on the actual localisation rather than having to work around a missing infrastructure. This will ultimately allow us to provide a localisation quality that meets our own expectations as much as those of the Ashes of Creation community. Additionally, the benefits of cooperating so early with the developers as in this case, allows us to provide feedback on matters of translations before things are set, which will further benefit the quality of translation in the game.
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NOTE -BELOW IS STEVENS DIRECT COMMENT FOLLOWING, REGARDING THE CONTRACT WITH MYCOM
@everyone Official My.com statement above, I would like to add, that in the discussions I had with every major publisher in the EU and CIS regions, My.com/Mailru were the ONLY ones willing to put words to ink on those fronts. In my meetings on Friday with them in Amsterdam, I saw the dedication and commitment from their team for these issues, and believe they will rise to the occasion and provide our EU and CIS family with the level of service that Ashes deserves ❤
Server Quality
In order to provide the server quality, uptime and general operations stability that we all expect from a game like Ashes of Creation, we will once again work closely with Intrepid Studios who, by building a solid and robust infrastructure and the necessary tools for managing them in the first place, will lay the foundation for what will be a high quality server environment for the European and CIS players.
In addition to the close consultation with Intrepid, our IT teams are already now beginning our technical planning. Working with our five, globally distributed data centers, we will be able to provide local servers that allow for the best possible connectivity, while working with cloud server providers such as Google and Amazon we are investigating possibilities for quick and efficient scaling of resources to quickly react to changes in demand of computing power.
Also here we will be able to benefit from working on the technical backbones early on in the development process, which allows us to make sure that the game and the infrastructure can work harmoniously instead of having to find ways to “work around” server structures that are developed for a more centralised market such as can be found in Asia. Intrepid supports the needs of a European infrastructure so that My.com can focus on providing the best possible service.
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NOTE -BELOW IS STEVENS DIRECT COMMENT FOLLOWING, REGARDING THE CONTRACT WITH MYCOM
@everyone Official My.com statement above, I would like to add, that in the discussions I had with every major publisher in the EU and CIS regions, My.com/Mailru were the ONLY ones willing to put words to ink on those fronts. In my meetings on Friday with them in Amsterdam, I saw the dedication and commitment from their team for these issues, and believe they will rise to the occasion and provide our EU and CIS family with the level of service that Ashes deserves ❤
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Comments
Intrepid maintains full creative ingame rights.
Intrepid is self publising in NA but could not in the EU due to EU legal hurdles.
Intrepid has clarified all user concerns for EU players regarding it
Now does this garuntee perfect service? Of course not, but no publisher I've delt with has been all that great with fixing ingame probelms. I think mycoms reputation has more to do with that they have usually provided for p2w games than their actual service. Not that they dont have a track record for data issues, but so does every publisher.
But at this point that Mycom was the only one willing to put to ink in contract to not try get creative rights or anything else shows they are sincere in moving away from that
Alot of games do this instead of building an entire new infrastructure and hiring all new staff to go over there and purchasing property, and different EU licensing for publishing, etcc etc.
This was the best decision they could work with to get the game to release on its proper timetable in the EU along with everyone else
There are some out there spreading some misinformation. Just clearing the air and all
Long live Steven!
But honestly what would you do? The other publishers refused to put in ink contract for Intrepid to have full creative ownership. Thats tell me they are even worse than mycom is because they dont support No Pay To Win because they want to implement it themselves, and therefore wont sign it in ink on contract.
Thats how I see it. At least mycom is willing to have it in contract and openly aknowledged they need to shape up and are implenting real time policies with physical iterations of it (dual security account login method is notable)
I agree that Verify vigorously is the way to go.
which will be far easier since Intrepid has such a tight control over most of the leggwork in the contract, and Mycom is mostly engaging in customer support and Server Infrastructure maintenance. With Intrepid buying their own specific ones from what I understand
The customer support is the big one though. At least they aknowledged it, which is more than can be said for alot of companies
but choosing them just cause thers nobody else is not very encouraging to me..this is a game where ppl spend so much time and im not willing to lose months off my life playing on EU just to find out that they are still the same useless team that whee all know.
Even if the ping is not the best i wold rather play on NA with intrepid studios then on EU with my.com.
The only other option (Since the other publishers refused to sign on for NO pay to win, and would not sign for only Intrepid to have full creative rights) would be to delay an EU release until Steven could lawer through the EU laws, setup an entirely new compound and support staff+Regional translators+ servers. Then this was probably the best bet to have a consistent global release on time.
Just be aware though that ping issues may arise from transatlantic Servers though. But you will be welcome of course my friend!
All in all if the gaming experience is bad I can always quit.
However I think that AoC will deliver what I have been looking for
I figured most of the EU playebase wasnt as upset, just the vocal minority. But still it was important that Steven went above and beyond to address everyones concerns. As the EU playerbase is part of our community and I'm glad you guys got the attention to detail you deserve as part of Ashes!
I too think that ashes and mycom will deliver well, but if there are EU players who want to come across the pond to play please do
I trust Intrepid but still do have concerns that my.com will screw Intrepid (and us) over in some way, but this is all very impressive to see. This is not the kind of love and care a community is usually shown in the MMO genre these days, and it says a lot.
The man has already earned his place as one of the best developers in the Gaming inudstries just from pure work ethic alone.
I understand from a sympathetic point of view as well. I've had some bad experiences with companies myself. But if I'm being honest it also sometimes was due to how I wasnt satisfied with the game itself either. I suspect that a portion of cases has this fair share with Mycoms unfortunate history with Hosting pay to win games. And this is their first true attempt to move away and into greener fields so-to-speak. Anyways I'm equally impressed with their willingness to sign on contract for no pay to win and contractual agreement for server hosting and customer support only. And their willigness to openly admit past faults was comendable. We'll have to watch to see how their new policies take place though of course
Also @Yaviey and his announcements
Regardless I think, given the new measures and account protocols, that mycom will be able to live up to expectations. Intrepid is still handling all packet data info and has 100% control over any and all content for EU players. So they wont be able to put in cash grabs even if they wanted to. But from what I've seen from Mycom so far they are genuinely interested in improving their public reputation and image for the EU playerbase. The account authentication method was a good step in the right direction along with everything else. Even in the US account dual authentication methods are rarer.
So at this point given they were the only ones willing to sign on contract that they would surrender any ingame privelages was pretty signifigant to me. 👍🏻
I may be in the US but we still genuinely want you guys to have the same service as across the pond. Ashes is for everyone after all
But I really hope they have turned over a new leaf. If not there ist still the possibility to migrate my account over to Intrepid (and hopefully back after they self-publish in the EU).
But lets hope for the best.