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.
Comments
My best experience in an MMORPG was when I took a group of level 3-6 players to tackle a zone called The Warrens in EverQuest 1. Depending on what paths you took in The Warrens, you could get completely overrun and swarmed by endless enemies and elites. Had to prioritize targets, move carefully, deal with runners and adds. For every boss we had to come up with a strategy for how to clear the room and get to the boss. The two hardest challenges was a pair of bosses and a particular room filled with wizards. For the pair of bosses, the entire room continued to swarm us with adds plus we had to fight the pair. Took us a few tries, but we managed to kill a level 24 and 29 with our level 6 party. For the wizards, had to pull and clear the room in a very, very precise way or all of the wizards would bumrush and insta nuke the tank down. We didn't necessarily earn that much in rewards and the exp wasn't the greatest due to all of our deaths, but nobody in the party left and it was a ton of fun. This dungeon got a lot of people to join me on future dungeon runs in other areas.
Early EQ2, for example, was a great roleplaying community. But because roleplayers were relegated to RP servers instead of part of the foundation of the game, as soon as the first server merge happened the community collapsed under the demands of end-game content. I would honestly still be playing EQ2 if that had been successfully managed.
While not related, I would also recognize original Everquest as having been very successful in the "exploration" element. I know I'm proooobably in the minority here, but I loved that traveling from one end of the world to another was time-consuming and provided opportunities for druids and wizards to profit from mobility spells. Quick travel completely ruins games for me because you lose the sense of openness. I recognize that gamers with limited playtime, myself included, want to be able to jump right in and experience whatever content they enjoy. But distance in MMOs is a really interesting obstacle to me.
SWG largely succeeded in "distance" too, you were linked to the major hubs easily for a small fee (rooted in lore, so reasonable) but there was a massive amount of space in-between that was worth exploring, both for player cities and for locations of interest.
Player cities and housing in SWG were incredible. What other MMO encourages city planning nerds? The ability to "claim" a piece of land was so satisfying and, like, what other game have I ever hosted dinner parties in?
the deadly traps in Dungeons and dragons online and being able to dismantle em (as a thief) succesfully after navegating through some of them so the party could continue. that feeling of interactifety (sorry mispelled) and specialisation was great. because of the interactivity of the traps and the wide range of them it really gave a sense of emersion
worst experience:
feeling forced to do give a item while i know the npc is gonna backstab as soon as I give the item (had all the tells.
thank you so much for making this game (the mmo part is gonna be great but) I saw the beta battle royale stuff and it looks so much like fun. I hope there is still a oppurtunity to play that game (maybe at launch looks like so much fun). was a bit dissapointed to learn that battle royale stuff is probbaly already over
The idea of sieging/defending nodes and having it be an anticipated event with real impact, and that serves as a focal point for everything else we do as players, has me excited for the possibility to finally scratch that itch again.
As far as bad experiences, the number of ways that MMO developers can bring disappointment has been staggering.
-Excessive RNG based progression: Some RNG is necessary to prevent predictability. Killing raid bosses for a non-guaranteed chance for relevant loot? That's fine, either I stay as powerful as I was, or I make a leap in progress. The outcome of a duel being decided by a lucky crit? Maybe they won't be as lucky next time. But when games start layering on multiple levels of RNG-dependent mechanics, it becomes a massive, depressing distraction from things that should be enjoyable.
When I'm crafting or upgrading gear, I want to work hard to collect the materials with the knowledge that I will be rewarded for that work. Having a chance for a craft/upgrade to fail and completely invalidate potentially weeks of work is godawful game design outside of survival MMOs where the possibility of total loss is a main selling point (and if someone gets ahead of you due to luck, you can force their progress to reset too). Learning about ArcheAge's crafting system once I hit max level was a major reason I gave up on it shortly after launch, and the P2W element to protect yourself from it was an extra slap in the face. Other games can be even worse offenders, throwing in expensive but highly random gear enchantment systems where a few lucky rolls can create massive gaps in player power/wealth and make the game feel like a trip to Vegas, except the guy who hit the jackpot after putting $5 in a slot machine is using his winnings to beat you in pvp.
WoW's legendary system in Legion was also a killer that made me lose faith in their decision making, due to the possibility of having an extremely rare and powerful item drop for you, and being genuinely, justifiably disappointed that it dropped because it wasn't better than one of the two you already had and reset your accumulating chance for another one to drop. And these items were balanced in such a way that people on certain classes who got lucky with BIS legendaries in the first few months would have a straight 30% output advantage over people with average luck, which is a staggering margin in raid dps rewarded based on no more than a dice roll.
Moving on from RNG but sticking with criticism of WoW, the idea that every casual player should have an entitled right to experience all of the endgame content a game has to offer is a great way to cheapen the experience for players with the willingness and ability to work for it. The LFR system they implemented at the end of Cataclysm was the start of that game's downfall in many people's eyes, because it destroyed any sense of mystique that raid content would have when there was no choice but to endure the trials of progression if you wanted to see the last boss and last room in a dungeon.
Many classic/BC bosses that had very little in the way of story or uniqueness (in many cases not even having a unique model, just being a bigger version of existing trash mobs) would still have a reputation and be respected by players because there was no 'easy' version of the boss to slap around. Anyone that overcame that particular boss knew what it meant to do so, and you wouldn't have to specify difficulty when telling the story. Even loot was more memorable. There was no normal, heroic, mythic, or titanforged version of Dragonspine Trophy, there was just one version. And when it dropped from Gruul, every physical dps in the raid got excited because they knew they were one step closer to getting a best in slot item that won't just get sharded when the group moves up to the next minor bump in difficulty.
The hardest bosses wouldn't even be seen directly by most players, and that was fine because that served as a source of motivation for people to get better and work together to experience unseen content as a guild. I never got to see Illidan Stormrage or Kil'Jaeden during the BC expansion, and I was perfectly ok with that because it made those bosses seem that much more powerful and important to me, and reinforced the idea that I had accomplished something special by seeing the likes of Archimonde, Vashj, and Kael'Thas. When you can effortlessly put yourself in those environments and see the expansion's major antagonists fall at the hands of a crew of random braindead monkeys behind keyboards, a lot of the magic is lost and most bosses become a forgettable blur even when you go through the same encounter on a higher difficulty.
Based on AoC's old school approach and deliberate move away from excessive 'conveniences' like fast travel, I'm not too worried about the latter points. I just hope the crafting and upgrade systems in the game focus entirely on the challenge of gathering the materials rather than the eternal battle with RNG that makes every attempt at progress feel like gambling.
The Bless Online launch. It was an absolute mess.
My best experience:
The open world, especially the naval areas, of Archeage. I really loved to do trade runs with the guild back then, not knowing if pirates, the enemy faction, or the kraken would make our trip to an even better advanture.
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The worst & best MMO I've played.
Complex multi-stage crafting, e.g.
- in Ultima Online mining colored ore deposits to make colored ingots to make armor of that color
- in Eve acquiring multiple types of materials in different ways to combine and make modules, ships and deployable structures
- crafting that focuses on the work piece and lets you see it take form as it is developed rather than focusing on the static image of the tools you are using
- maker's marks on items in UO and Star Wars Galaxies and gaining fame for high quality items
- setting up npc vendor stalls so other players could come and buy your goods
- in Horizons unlocking world content through cooperative crafting
In Shadowbane, characters singing musical notes to cast spells
In Age of Conan, adult themes and nudity
In Dark Age of Camelot:
- holding off a fort or castle siege with an outnumbered force by good use of defensive positioning and abilities
- having 3 balanced factions so any 2 could gang up if one got too powerful
In Warhammer Online capturing meaningful points of interest on the pvp map
Worst:
Going through hours of work to craft items that were inferior in every way to semi-rare dungeon random drops
Random ganking from stealth where you are stun locked and can't use a single ability before dying in 2 seconds and your killer has no risk
In guild wars, huge keep battles where the only thing that matters is having the most people
Anarchy online being released too early with unbearable latency and crash issues
Questing in crowded areas with long respawn timers then having people with ranged or faster attacks steal your kill and having to wait even longer
In Everquest 1:
- having quests with no hints or backstory that required giving an item to an NPC; no way to know what to do without researching out of game
- huge death experience penalties
- meditating for mana with the spellbook blocking view of the game
In Sims Online, decaying skill levels
The worst? NCSoft (well, most online IT companies at the time had this issue actually) had really piss-poor customer service stemming from a lack of empathy. I could go into myriad details as to why I never went back to play their games after a while, but for brevity I will mention only one. Perhaps I’m jaded due to the many years of training and education in service excellence, service recovery and guest conflict resolution while working in the lodging industry. Risk/reward being what it is, there are some minor disputes that simply were not worth losing my business over. So what if there is no way to verify if an issue occurred at their end or my end? The piffling small amount of ingame xp/currency involved amounted to “funny money” and they wouldn’t actually lose anything tangible by just fixing what glitched at the time and resulted in a loss of hours of work toward gains at my end. It wasn’t important enough to lose my faith over, just to make certain they were not being gamed by me somehow (they weren’t, of course).
Here’s an anecdote: The gift shop in the lobby of the hotel where I used to work was remodeled to be more inviting for people to casually wander in and browse, by tearing some walls down and making the space more open. Did this increase the risk of shoplifting? Sure, but it more than made up for that risk with the vast increase in retail sales by seeming more accessible.
See the forest for the trees, please.
Very interested in Otherworld mmo only to find out that the tutorial is bugged, work around that only to find out that I'm the only person playing the game. If I'm not the only person playing then I don't see anyone else.
Best MMO experience
Friend introduces me to the MMO genre with Evercrack. I'm curious enough to play WOW and another friend makes WOW interesting enough for me to become a fan of the genre, then I buy City of Heroes and it takes over my life
My worst feeling ofcourse has to be the abysmal state of modern World of Warcraft these days. The artistic side of it is still incredible, but the overall design direction has been very anti-player lately, and it reeks of Activision's influence. I don't think I can ever go back to modern WoW... not when games like this are on the horizon.
My best experience was the Rebels vs. Lord British's troops on the Lake Superior shard of Ultima Online. IT was an entirely player designed scenario that ran for months. Staged, group fights with fixed objectives, all role played. It drew a lot of attention (and players) at the time and was an amazing event.
Worst feeling was when I playing WoW and I used to love that game and play all the time. Then the company would come out with some clever plans to keep people on line. That really insulted my intelligence and my love for that game they did not even have to do that. Plus In my opionion the classes that they made ( which I consider to be masterpieces and works of art.) Were destroyed by the prune and pvp balance and game balance. The classes now are half the classes they used to be and that is classwide. Plus they would put gold sinks and time sinks in the game. I mean is was so obvious really no room for debate. By the way not that intelligent. Really sad to watch that game kill itself.
Do not mind less than ideal business models I understand money and all. It just all the stupid mind games devs perform on player base.
But hope is in the horizon Ashes of Creation will come soon Thanks for making this game Steve looks overwhelmingly good.
Didn't like: GW2 farming politics: you need to farm to have legendary items, you can't farm so we nerf all farms, also farming was low on profit, oposit of this was in black desert where you was farming for rare item and getting special junk item that was worth if you collected like 100 or 200.
A very close second was being able to adopt a player's character in Ragnarok Online if you were married (they had to be below level 10). It was mostly just a vanity option, but it was so cute. Their size and stats were halved, and couldn't advance to any reborn classes, but being a pint sized mounted paladin or hunter with a hawk was so adorable.
My worst experience is the RNG mess of horse breeding in Black Desert. I don't even want to get started griping about it... If felt that planning and leveling were a wasted effort.
My best, Runescape. I was the RNG god when it came to rare loots from killing monsters. I hit items that had chances of 1/20,000 1/32,500 and 1/50,000. This may not seem like much, but read this. First one was a Dragon full helm from Mithril dragons, Second one was an Abyssal Dagger from Abyssal demons, the third one was a Third Age Plate legs from a clue scroll. People who know runescape know my luck. (also have had tons of other luck on other games such as Tera Rising and Bless online.
*Bringing down that hard raidboss you have tried to bring down for weeks together with your friends.
*PvP in Dark age of Camelot. 3-Side PvP is still the best system for PvP.
*In genral, an mmorpg is only as fun as the people you play it with.
Worst:
*Dumbing down of mmorpgs since World of Warcraft.
Everything beeing way to easy. Getting to max lvl in 1 week when it used to take half a year.
*Frustration with having to grind way to much for a single item.
*Adding "hard mode" "nightmare mode" dungeons to mmorpgs. So insanly boring killing the same enemies and bosses, just with more HP. Thats just lazy programming.
A BIG part of mmorpgs are to explore new areas, not to grind the same area over and over.
*All mmorpgs going action combat, and trying to bring in stuff from other game genres, mainly FPS, that never works
*Lack of endgame content to do BESIDES raiding and PvPing.
*Not a fan of setbonuses since it severly limits customization.
*Every class can do anything. It creates a huge problem for raiding guilds when everyone wants to be DPS even though they joined the guild as healer/tanks.
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Worst experience: Running into some nasty players but that's a problem of any game. I might mention region locks though; I have a friend with whom I enjoyed to play BDO, but then they decided to lock some IPs behind specific servers and we could play together no more.
My best mmo experience overall has been runescape. It beyond all else has always kept my interest with in depth and consistent quests that have puzzles and great content both during and unlocked by the quests. Not to mention the gratification I got from finally grinding my favorite skill "Slayer" to 99. Oh man so pleasant.
Man you just brought back so many memories from my childhood
Finding out that some of the "top PvP'ers" resorted to using hacks.
Best experience:
Being a GM and actually interacting with the players (through in-game live events) by being a giant death tree or dragon or whatever. lol
My best experience would be joining BDO as it launched, joining a guild, and getting my first real experience with PVP. Becoming one of the top PVP guys in the guild until we reached the 4th biggest spot on the leaderboard. Just hanging out with the guild mates and trying out new recruits in the duel pits. I liked how fair everything was at the beginning, with everyone having similar gear scores, only having one level over other people, or those psychos that were 2 levels over everyone else. I liked how the time you put into the game felt rewarding and fair, knowing that you couldn't compete with the psychos without a couple other buddies. This brings me to my worst experience.
I don't know when it started exactly, probably after the first month, a new area opened up and the level cap along with it. This was fine and all, but then the guild started to see less and less people. Nobody was joining because we didn't enforce gear scores, making us a weaker guild. It was around that time when I really started to get annoyed. The amount of time you spent trying to get better gear would be thrown away by RNG. No amount of black stones would ever be enough. But you only had to wait a month and that gear you worked so hard to get would be completely outdated and worthless, since now you had to get the upgraded version, only to break it in the process and have to start everything over. I don't know why anyone would want to waste their lives on RNG, it just doesn't appeal to me. This was the biggest reason I saw people leaving the game in general, they couldn't be competitive with the time they had to play, which was just a shame. Heck, at that time I had all the time in the world, and I still couldn't keep up. Perhaps I'm just more casual than most, I don't know. All I know is I want to have fun in an MMO, not spend months trying to catch up to everyone else.
And there you have it. I've played and enjoyed the story of GW2, so that's another good experience, but other than that I can't think of another big bad one. I hope to see more information on gear in the future for Ashes of Creation!
I think most will agree (well, those who tried it), that Bless Online was my worst experience. So many optimization issues, terrible lag, dungeons that were not challenging and with very little rewards, the eternal grind for gear, the famous "PVP" farming where you can't reach an area without dying a million times..etc. Worst experience of my life and did not regret letting it go for greener pastures.
I love MMOs. You create a world where you can escape for a few hours from RL. I think that is what most people want. A world they can create an extension of their fantasy self, have epic battle and not having to worry if they can log that day or will it be so laggy that you can't even move your toon in town.
The worst: Take your pick anytime trying to return to WoW. Groups no longer talk to each other, CC was thrown to the wayside, dungeons and raids are nothing but a zerg-fest, and everything seems like a time sink rather designed to be fun. I haven't returned for every expansion, but every time I do it just seems bland, uninspired, and designed to be nothing but grindy.
Second best had to be spontaneous pvp in wow. I remember getting ganked several times by a rogue in WoW. So, I decided to hop on my main and give the enemy faction a little payback. By the end of a three hour play session involving killing lowbies and avoiding geared mains, the entire zone had become a pvp zone with raid groups on both sides just hashing it out.
A similar event happened on a RP server when current world events pitted the two factions into direct, armed conflict. Players of both factions organized a "recreation" of events, including naming generals, encampment sites, "NO-GO" zones to stop 12 year old gankers from messing with lowbies and a planned time and place for the "real" battle.
WORST experience has to be ilvl/gear score. Nothing leaves a sour taste in my mouth more than picking someone to play with based off a number generated by the number of slots you have filled on your avatar rather than testing their skills with that class (i.e one dungeon run), especially at the very start of an xpac.
Second WORST is Always. Always. ALWAYS the crafting experience. There is no satisfaction from spending hours making items, because they are either relegated to a vanity item for the rpers or were nothing more than a good starting weapon to run dungeons, because that was the highest you could go with crafting, instead of being able to work and perfect it to the point where you could sell items powerful enough to rival boss drops.
Wildstar Dungeons/Raids.. knock what you want about how the devs handled everything else, but those are the most challenging and epic times I've had in an MMO since 2005. The constant movement, precision mechanics and the general laughter in progression I got with my guild made those times amazing. Also being a healer meant more than just playing the stare at health bars game while mashing everything off cooldown. The spreadsheets alone needed to form groups to pass even the first raid boss and mini bosses still baffle friends I know that never had the chance to try it.
-- ALSO any game that allows for extensive UI choices and movement. Makes a healer happy to have things where they want in a glance at the correct size needed.
Worst
When devs in a game somehow managed to have to change the gear/socket/etc system not once, not twice, but three times in a year because they didn't think through the changes and consequences to new and old players. Nothing is more terrible than a complete overhaul having to be overhauled again due to laziness and bad math.
Good
Planetside 2- Start with best guns and weapons are side-grades. Voice coms have proximity, Squad(12 ppl) Platoon (4 squads) and, guild (Outfit). These are all in game and dont require me to use Discord or TS3. Easy to join groups and see objectives. Lowest rank can compete against highest rank. NO P2W
Black Desert Online- Combat feels amazing, Art style is realistic/fantasy(odd I know) Open world sandbox, exploration character creation, started non P2W Node management amazing
Elder Scrolls Online- Can fight along side all levels of players as the game scales players up or down. Lore, exploration, NO P2W
Firefall- Combat, crafting, color palate, exploration Started non P2W
Bad
Planetside 2 bugs, crashes, optimization, lack of good endgame. Devs/parent company not listening to fans for the first couple years
Black Desert Online- Don't care about the Lore as I have to read too much, Became P2W, Only way to compete with high level characters is to grind for a ridiculous amount of time while also praying to RNJesus. Game relies on Gear Score first, then a players skill.Voice chat nearly non existent
Elder Scrolls Online- Color Palate doesn't line up with true TES games, Building models too large, Combat slow even for TES game, Hard to join random groups. Voice chat sucks. crafting feels dumb, Inventory system nearly requires you to maintain a membership
Firefall- P2W after leadership change, everything heavily monetized, servers shitting out, lack of support from parent company after acquisition.
I am kinda hoping that your game will capitalize on most of the things I have highlighted as good while steering away from the bad.
The least favourite was Archage, with the blatant cheating of top guilds that was not being punished when minor infractions of "lower" players ended in instant bans. And the walking back on promises which caused me to successfully get back my money for the founders pack and leave the game behind (stuff they promised as part of the package you bought and then claimed never did, and even edited the web pages to remove that content. Yay for screengrabs).
Also, on the negative side WOW, they actually managed to not make me want to log on any more, and I rather spend my evenings playing something else while chatting with my guildies on discord. I went from a hardcore player and raider, with max level alts in each class for both factions, to one max level char on Horde side in this expansion and simply not finding it fun anymore to play.
I spent a LOT of time enjoying this type of content as it was not only a very rewarding and fun system, but was also something very fantasy like, unique, and memorable. The likes of which I have never seen in another mmo since.
Edit: I’m just going to add that I hate mmos that make you play through a “main story” that puts you as the hero in the game and doing all these crazy things as if you are the chosen one. Everyone is then the chosen one, it breaks immersion and feels like the quests must be done to progress. Vanilla wow is a great example of having the feeling of being part of the world by having local quests guiding you allong. Low level players help with simple tasks allowing the player to learn and begin as an average person. They then build up to take on more epic threats, to show off their experience and progress, rather than making the players goal only quest X/230 to participate at all.
NB: Not a native EN, have mercy on my writings.
So obviously one of the most reccurent problem, P2W, nothing to add.
Poorly optimized games, makes your gaming sessions an hell and breaks motivation when crashing multiples times a day.
The overuse of RNG mechanics, be it in Crafting, item's stats, loots etc... Don't take me wrong, it is normal to farm to get a rare item, but having the good item with useless stats for your build makes the whole concept of farming useless. The reward needs to be on par with the time commited, this is one of many exemples, the list is long, I hope this one will be enough to have a proper look at the whole picture.
Some MMO's lacked a properly made class kit or simple mechanics, it's not about balancing classes in pvp and other things like this. For exemple there is no Auto-Attacks, this is truly a shame and an abomination above all things. The classe's kit is giving a lot of skills but there is almost no CD, meaning you can literaly spamm your skills like some brainless ape, to me it shows a lack of depth in the classes design.
Having a multitude of skills is fine, but having short & long CD's is necessary and it makes the player obligated to think about the consequences of his choices before using said skill. It requires to have a good skill management and you can make a proper skill rotation combined with weaving for an increase of dps, different animation speed on skills will make the weaving counter-productive in some situations, there is a tons of possible things to do to add depth. A good MMO makes the player practice and master the class he plays to achieve better results. It is needed to make a good balance between the numbers of skills usable and their CDs.
In some rare times MMO's had Oneshot mechanics, it speaks for itself the concept of having a classe and even a gameplay lost it's interests. The fights were meaningless since eveyone could take out everyone in a split second. A nice fight is not short neither long.
Limiting the skills the players can choose in a multitude of skills is also a bad thing in my opinion, what makes a good player is how he makes uses of his ressources not what he chooses out of a limited choice. Restraining was rarely a good thing in my eyes.
Having little to no customization possible on the way you play a class is bad. When you get the feeling to fight the same dude, yet different evertyme because the game forces you to play on a one and only way. I thrive on the endless possibilities of builds a game can provide, and making exotics and non-meta builds is extremely fun.
Devs making unfruitful changes/nerf/up (pvp wise) to classes making once a far overpowered class into a weak one, and the other way around the weak one becomes completly broken. Solving a problem to make another one appears. When there is many ways to mitigate the power classes have. It feels like they do not play their game. There was also classes with no weaknesses that are good in every aspects, the apex of poorly designed classes.
It could be fine to listen to the players to try to resolve an issue but not all players. I think that having experts pvp players could maybe help by giving their impression on the matter, as long as it's critical. Also some classes could literaly perfect you sadly. I think that is natural to have very good & very bad match-ups against some classes, I do not want equal chances to win, but a little one.
Some games felt empty upon reaching the endgame. Since you achieved almost everything you start wandering aimlessly in the capital making a circuit only for disconnecting later.
When the game limit your growth to only one or a few ways.
When the games gives flashy skills that splits the earth in two on the early levels, but it does 30 damages, visualy stunning but incoherent. A bit of restraint never hurts, at least when your character is low level.
Now the best experiences I had.
Practicing our classes with my friends dueling & group pvp, arenas etc... for hours, gaining more mastery little by little. Memorable moments of epic fight and fails. Learning how to properly play a game gave me a lot of satisfaction.
After months of farming, having all the items I wanted and ready to focus on pvp and hard PvE content.
Exploring to discover hiddens things, and looking at some very well designed areas, it gives a good impression of immersion, you can feel it took time to make such things.