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
You'll play it and you'll like it!
If AoC is really a year or more from release and they wind up showing us something that is more polished than Tera in A2, I really don't see what the problem is. I mean the dungeon gameplay video that was made for the kickstarter looked more polished than No Man's Lie and Fallout 76, so what are these so-called problems people have?
My concern is publicity going forward. Since Apocalypse is out and playable that is what will start drawing in crowds.
Games you can play draw larger crowds than games you are waiting to play. Larger crowds playing games means more people flaming social media with negative responses. Not all responses will be negative, but we all know the nay-sayers always scream the loudest.
So as this 'new blood' comes in looking for a BR/Apocalyse style game, and are not interested in PvE or PvP with potential consequences, like corruption, there is a chance that a large number of new members will be against IS devoting resources to the MMO.
In the end, this is all speculation and worse case scenario thought trains (at least this particular post of mine is). But you are my new community/family and I feel comfortable expressing my concerns here.
All in all I do think the testing aspects for sure helped. I'm just not sure why it has to be persistent. Once combat is finalized and all data gathered it will become a resource sink. That said, if peeps be paying for it they should have access to it.
Apocalypse also includes the Castle siege and Horde defense modes as well. They are making leaps and bounds in their testing, and making preparations that wouldn't have been started for months if they had restricted themselves to only working on what was originally planned. As far as the MMO is concerned, despite making a separate game and working extensively on their servers, the MMO is on pace with the original Kickstarter schedule. The pay model in Apocalypse is just so that they don't draw resources from the MMO and become the next Fortnite.
Probably many ways to obtain low level cosmetics that look "insane".
But, yes, skins have tiers that are associated with the actual item tiers.
You can't put a Tier 2 mount skin on a Tier 1 mount, for instance.
And to all of you saying it isn't monetized... you are wrong. They are adding a legendary path to unlock the majority of the cosmetics for the mmo that costs 10 bucks. Alpha 1 backers will have lifetime access to this legendary path. So anyone that didn't drop $500+ will still have to dish out $10 a season to access most of the unlocks in this game for a different game.
They use the figures of 20 cosmetics for free users and 70+ for the paid users.
Second - this "flimsy excuse" that you're talking about is flimsy... but that's because it's just factually incorrect. Apocalypse is less about testing combat than it is server capacity. Initially, it was meant to test the action portion of combat. That is absolutely true. But their continued efforts into Apocalypse are designed to push as many people through their servers as possible in order to make those servers functional for the MMO upon release. The easiest way to get a couple hundred thousand people into your servers is with a BR, which was also the easiest way to let players initially test out some action combat.
Third - perhaps you picked up on this in my previous paragraphs, but Apocalypse is not just a BR. Apocalypse also has the upcoming Siege and Horde modes included as playable game modes. And those "BR mechanics" are literally just the added storm that closes in on the players, and the special item effect/loot spawn mechanics. Everything else directly translates into work on the MMO, as the BR and MMO are created within the same virtual environment, the only difference being scale.
There has already been so much written on the topic - instead of reiterating all the points that have been addressed in different places on the forums, do a quick search and save people the trouble of repeating themselves, please. :P
Quoting the email about the Apocalypse open beta:
"There will be an optional Legendary Path that players can purchase. Both paths provide daily quests and weekly quests for players to complete. These quests give lore that relates to the story of Verra during the Fall, thousands of years before the start of the MMORPG."
The point is that we are setting a precedent. I get that this is not AoC, but a standalone game. Which is even worse, you have to have a second game to play some of the PvP modes.
I should mention that if the quest lines for the generic and legendary paths are the same, then my point is moot. Perhaps someone from IS would like to weigh in?
Let's put it this way instead. If Blizzard released some "DLC" for Diablo 3 that was ONLY stuff like "kill 100 demons" for a cosmetic item, I would be grabbing my torch and pitchfork.