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
What is really happening is they want players to buy pets and mounts because they feel they might not be able
to buy them ever. It is hard for me to enjoy a game when company does scumbag moves like that.
Now what Ashes of Creation is doing with the packs they are selling that will no longer be available in the future is fine. Cause they need the money right now to develope the game. I mean a games launch is real critical so they are to make the game the best game they can before lunch.
See we are some what smart and can tell the difference. Players understand things but not things like preying on the mind of a completionist that may feel like they have to buy them right now or they will never get it. They are literally toying with people minds not mine cause smart enought to see most ploys but still bothers me to no end.
Being involved in the fountain wars in EVE Online was good fun. It was so much more than the big battle that got reported as the largest in gaming history. I was a very small part of a huge event and even though I was on the losing side the build up and eventual take over of the region was such a good experience and fun to take part in. Eventually escaping with a lot of our ships and resources via wormhole space
Guild Wars 2 in the early days defending one of the keeps with my guild 2am in the morning where we was vastly outnumbered. It is still referred to by people in my guild as the Alamo. Somehow we managed to hold on for what felt like hours with dwindling numbers.
Archeage with trade runs, cant say enough how many giggles this produced. Sure there were tears too as we often were attacked, but either if it was making it safe and sound or attacking and stealing from others it was always exciting and fun.
Looking forward to Ashes with large scale battles, castle sieges, caravan trade runs, and more
- Quests on SWTOR (Star Wars : The Old Republic) : because it was the first time in my life I actually enjoyed doing quests and find them fun because of the voice acting, and the impact that your choices have on your character experience.
- Gameplay : Doing raid on WoW (World of Wacraft). As mage on Gruul's Lair. Because a mage had to tank Krosh Firehand in that raid with their "Spellsteal" ability. It was so much fun, and it change so much from the habits !
--> Also : healing in raid in general in WoW, it's like one of my favorite thing ever. I could do that all day long. Healing is really amazing.
The worst? The majority of the time doing quest/farming mob alone in MMO (except SWTOR). It's boring, repetitive, boring, repetitiv, did I say boring? It's like doing administrative paper: mandatory but I would prefer to do anything else.
Worst - Ive played several great MMO's that allowed open world pvp and sadly had to stop playing them right from the start because of noob griefing. The fact that people want to ruin the game for players that could eventually become allies or other wise help the game along just pisses me off.
Best:
My first and longest commitment to an mmo was Final Fantasy XI. Back then i didnt have the elitist min max mindset i have now i just played the game. The world felt alive, you had to interact with people to form parties because of the level of danger in each area. Just to get to a new town or experience camp you had to prepare and tread carefully. Hard work was paid off with gear not everyone had, every character differed and i absolutely loved it. MMO today are nothing like that, look at the dev letter for final fantaxy XIV where they literally said, "we dont implement that because we cant gurantee every player will come prepared". So what? Thats part of the learning.
Worst:
Guild Wars 2
While im all for innovation and trying something new, they failed to me by moving away from the trifecta. What makes MMOs great is having each role bring something to the table, healer, tank, support, dps. If an mmo doesnt have these kind of roles and instead takes on a more action and self sustain play style i am immediately disinterested.
First: Fighting people open world in a daily mission area out of boredom and eventually got to the point they grouped up, so I called my buds to fight their group. Eventually it scaled to where our group and theirs had max group size on both sides and we had an all out war for a couple hours.
Second: Doing a raid for the first time with my guild for progression and we didn't know the mechanics, so we stayed up all night drinking and dying but the sense of accomplishment when we cleared that raid is something I cant forget.
Worst experience is hard to remember so I'll just take one from the top of my memory, also from SWTOR. It was when I got my main character fully geared in the the highest level optimization of stats I could do. It was then I realized, no content in the game was worth doing because I had THE best gear, and then I realized that there was no need to start gearing up other toons because unless in progression or ranked gear didn't matter because your stats are boosted. So my gear didn't affect casual gameplay yet progression didn't reward my main character either.It just felt like there was no point besides being with friends and when they arent on that isn't something you should feel in an MMO.
Worst was when upgrading gear in BDO, you know the drill ;P even tho I did get that TRI Liverto before my friends bwahaha.. Also when people lose hope on getting the boss down cause it's too hard, in like WoW
What's the best experience?
When you finally get that damn mythic boss down in WoW, probably Warlords of Draenor was my favourite ones, then times when mythic was still quite new to the guild and there was the least amount of elitism and we would still take any guildie in even if they sucked and well server second Imperator Mar'gok. BDO pvp was also like the best with some friends.Ton of great stuff.
Best feeling was in BDO when I finished setting up a complex and very profitable life-skilling/trade empire with a number of - at that time - hard to obtain items playing a role (archeologist map, fleet of epheria boats, forest-path wagon, several elephants, golden manos belt etc).
Worst feeling was in bdo when I realized that smart strategies or even high time-investment were only a drop in the bucket in comparison to enhancement luck, which easily can be as profitable as months or years of playtime, or "short-cuts" (P2W/hacking/exploits) or playing the market in general.
the game was not ready!
my examples being WoW patching and re balancing classes like mad men for a while. Warhammer not being done at launch. original HellGate not having their ducks in a row and losing the servers and IP and so on.
No matter how you look at it, the problem was the game was not ready and fully tested. this is why i am ok with Ashes taking longer then expected to come out. The game being X months late and being good is better then every 3 weeks we have to rebuild our characters from scratch cuz updates nurffed us to hell.
Really best experiences weren't the PVP wins, or the raids, or the best gear, or the firsts. it was always the screwing around with strangers from halfway around the world and doing dumb crap . and i mean really really dumb crap. only wielding a dead fish as your weapon, 1v1 fight club deep in enemy territory, no pants allowed level dumb crap.
Story driven group dungeons are pretty horrible unless all the story is unskippable. I'm a lore buff, so I of course delve into all the information I can get. But in ESO's group dungeons, if one person finishes talking, everyone is force quit from the conversation and the dungeon progresses. And of course at least one person is mashing skip without remorse on every scene. I've come to hate group content because of this. Even frontloading the conversations to before the dungeon begins, like in ESO's trials, still gives a sense of unwanted urgency with other people waiting on you. Leisurely taking in the lore is something group play denies due to the inherent impatience of players.
Class/build level rock-paper-scissors balancing is also a bad experience. Seeing your opponent and knowing full well there's nothing you can do to win, ever, because of the immutable class you chose is a... there's mixed feelings of vexation, resignation, and defiance. Rock-paper-scissors balancing is a good thing, but only on universal mechanics, such as dodge beats attack; attack beats grab; grab beats dodge. Losing a fight before it's begun isn't good.
Getting chased by a Revenant across the Wilderness in RuneScape is a horrible-but-not moment. Having powerful enemies specifically designed to counter you hunting you down across a vast expanse is a terrifying experience, but a worthwhile one I'd like to see more of. What differentiates this from the problem above, is it's clear you're supposed to run and you can. You can also fight and win, but it takes planning, preparation, and vast combat stats.
Actually having to operate a mill to grind grain into flour, then mix flour into dough to make the base for a cake is pleasant surprise I'll never forget from RuneScape. Instead of get the ingredients and then craft, you have to go about the task in a moderately realistic way.
Making past the White Wolf Mountain to Catherby is another amazing experience. I was too weak to fight the wolves, and they were hostile on sight to me. After being scared of going near there, I one day mustered up my courage and resolved to make a mad dash through the mountain pass. I lost a lot of HP, but I made it out the other side and to the western half of Gelinor, new adventures waiting.
The Dragon Slayer quest from RuneScape also holds a special spot in my heart due to a misunderstanding. I started playing RuneScape in July 2008, when they implemented a new Lumbridge tutorial where you helped a knight defend a cellar from a dragon that broke in through an adjacent cave. At the end of the tutorial, the knight collapses the wall, burying both him and the dragon in the rubble. Months later, when I took the Dragon Slayer quest, I mistook the mark of my quest as the same dragon that killed my mentor. It was sweet catharsis as I both avenged and surpassed my fallen teacher.
There is one moment from ESO that was simply awe inspiring. Back in 2014, before 1.6 tanked the combat balance and Cyrodiil could take 2000 players due to still being predominantly clientside, there was a fight over an Elder Scroll in an open field. I was in first person and fighting.... somewhere in that mess. There were players literally as far as the eye could see. That undulating mass of endless violence evoked a thrill I have never felt since.
The farmers managed and calcaluted the output of ressources to get good crafting materials and commanded everyone to use their labour points on our huge farm ,breed the best mounts for the powerleveler /pvper group and provided enough ressources for the traderunners to make their runs, even woke up late night to have the optimal wood output xD
The fisher did their best to get to pull the most money on land by fishing every spot in high sea fishing and build up a reputation serverwide for beeing the most ruthless naval pvper.
The traderunners explored the best routes and grinded the hell out of the runs to turn the tradepacks in for valuable ressources, desperately needed for progression .
The powerleveler pulled all nighters in order to be the best pvp guard group to run all those operations smothly and secure some open world bosses for the guild.
The pvpers did their best in the arena to get our guild name a good reputation.
And inbetween everyone tried to level and gear up and was down to help out each other so that we can share the burden of the tasks and make the best out of the situation.
And all this for accomplishing the goal of having the first war ship on the server, which had our guild logo on its sails
I really liked the aspect of shared progression where everyone enjoyed their style of playing the game and contributing towards a bigger and shared goal.
I hope aoc brings that back with node progression
Best: DAOC hands down. The was old clunky but the community was awesome and even though i dont like to pvp i would go out with the realm on pvp missions to take a keep or relic etc.
Worst: Archeage while visually stunning the game was to pay to win and felt more like a part time job in a hostile country then an mmo. It really brought out the worst in humans imo.
Lets start with the bad:
Getting to max level in a game and being stuck: Especially getting into a game late, it is sometimes difficult to get into progressive content that people are not running anymore, but is needed in order to progress. Whether this is a tier of gear required to progress or just experience in general, this is very much not satisfying game play.
Content that is added for content's sake: Quests should be fun, they should be an adventure. In older MMOs, quests were just that. You had to figure things out and find the locations to do them. More recently, they have become more mindless and most people don't even have to pay attention to what they are doing. This could be worse. You could have quest for the sake of quests being made. My least favorite thing in this regards is when quests do nothing but run all over the world and talk to people. This is very not satisfying also. I can think of one game in particular that is bad about this, and I can't get into all the random monotony enough to actually keep reading the quests.
Pay to win, or even pay to have a chance of competing: I don't think I have to say anything here. I am fine with pay to look good, but not pay to enjoy playing. I would rather have a monthly subscription before I did that.
Games with overly slow combat: Games that have nothing but long casts and long global cooldowns that make combat boring.
Overly difficult content: Nothing is less satisfying than trying to do and solo content that no one can solo. I am not saying make world content easy, but make it doable with skill. Conversely, overly simplistic content is also bad. If IO work hard for some pretty loot, then I don't want other people to have it given to them.
And now lets look at the best moments:
Going on adventures: Getting to explore the world is not all about questing. It is about exploring the world, finding hidden things and beautiful things. There have been many hours in games that I was not leveling and finding new nooks and crannies in the world to explore. Hidden quests are awesome as long as they are not so obscure that you need to look for random rocks without even an obscure hint.
Massive battles and pvp grounds: I know I have been purposely not mentioning names, but I am sure many people remember the original AV in WoW. That was epic, not the zerg fest it turned into today.
Difficult but doable content: What is more satisfying than taking out an entire camp of mobs using skill and character utility to the max? I can't think of much. How about downing a difficult boss for the first time and getting shinnies (loot)? That feeling is awesome. How about doing something accidental and stupid and wiping the entire group leeroy style? Honestly, I have had plenty of accidents that caused me to laugh for hours.
Leveling: Leveling itself should be part of the process. I am all for not being able to power level a character in a day or two or even being able to hit the level cap quickly.
Character designs/identity that are not black and white: My favorite games does not have only one or two ways to play a character. I know there will always be the min max build, but other options should be available also. Nothing is more fun than doing something weird like making a plate/tanky healer that can take the biggest beating and kill people.
Combat that requires people to work together and some strategy: you shouldn't be able to run in and zerg everything down without someone tanking or taking the beating.
Loot: What feels better than unique looking items that you can show off how awesome you are, because you killed x or did some super hard trial or event?
I think this turned out long enough, so I will stop here.
Best: Working together with new friends.
I was in a large guild on TBC wow, and I witnessed 200 people kneeling on the slopes around the shrine of the fallen warrior for over an hour, on teamspeak, but in silence, until the guild leader came to give a eulogy for an officer who had died in real life. I still find it emotional to recall how much respect hundreds or people could give someone they had never met, and likely never would.
Close second,
Being invited to someone's IRL wedding who I knew only through questing and raiding together in TBC.... I am still in contact with that person, and we may play AoC together.
Worst.
Realizing that after the end of TBC wow, Blizzard had removed all the nuance and complexity from the healing classes which I had spent years becoming skilled at.... and watching all my friends gradually leave as they realised similar things had happened to their classes... or that the new LFG/LFR system was destroying the community. I mourned for Wow that day, and for a long time after... and although I have tried honestly to play again, I cannot... logging on just makes me sad as I watch them slowly destroy what made that game so compelling for both Vanilla and TBC.
I absolutely urge the developers of AoC not to fall into the same trap... add content over time by all means, but do not radically change gameplay because it is a skill that is developed over time,,, you would not ask a Chess master to "just play these different rules" from now on, and do not sacrifice PvE content for PvP balance. One time when I really tried hard to get back into it I discovered that my chosen class with full "healer" spec was only about 2/3 as effective as a different class in a raid, because it had been "balanced" out of existence to suit PvP... so to be effective I would have to re-roll a completely different class. THIS is how Blizzard killed Wow for any serious players.
The fatigue system. Blech. The retainer system with 0 search function. Yikes. The crafting system that no one knew how it worked, including Square Enix. The fact half the classes were unplayable because combat was broken. You missed more than you hit, making playing an archer expensive because you had to buy arrows, and miss with 3 out of 4 of them.
The fact the company was in such denial their game sucked until launch. Id never felt so let down by a game.
Best: Archeage Alpha server. Hands down the most fun I've had in an MMO. The drama, the guild fights, the competition, the fact people would take huge risks because it ultimately didn't matter made the Alpha amazing.
The best: grouping with my wife + friends raiding, working on new strats, helping each other gear to successfully clear a HARD instance. My 'nostalgic' moments are mostly associated with BC Kara. The core of my raid guild has been together for almost 14 years. Half of them I've never met in person.
The worst: EQ2 - grinding with little to no reward. Especially at this point in my life, I'm willing to invest time, but not with an appropriate return on that investment.
There is nothing wrong with the subscription system... and ashes is a subscription model, which they said since the beginning...
Launch of the DAoC Demo in 2002, Europe
Dozens of highlanders sat or stood around in Humberton... The brave ones died of aggro mobs... So everybody was in town, chilling, chatting and figuring out what the heck a mmorpg is. The simple reason for all that chaos was that no body figured out how to actually attack a mob xD For like 2 Hours or longer xD. There where no maps online, too... Nobody knew how big the world is and where to go. People where forced to work together and the first one in Humberton figuring out that you have to press F6 to go into battle mode, was a hero that evening for sharing his vast knowledge! No body knew how to skill, or which class to play. Or where the class teacher was. You had to pay attention and ask people basically everything.
Worst Moments:
Everything thats repetetive
Dailies... Crafting one thing over and over again... Doesn't feel like a world or even a game. It just feels like work in a boring way...
Too Comfty
You want to teleport? No problem! You want a double EXP rate? No problem! You can do all on your own? Why even talk to others?
What I would like to experience in AoC
More interaction and travelling
I would like to actually talk with the people in an mmo. I would like to get company on my ways, because no one knows if somebody would attack me if I would go alone. I want to explore but also to ask where the next town is in this changing world. I want to actually GET somewhere not to teleport around. I want to go from one town to another and sell rare items/materials/informations in different regions, hanging out in a bar or at the market... actually selling and buying and bargaining, not just putting stuff in an auction house to a fix ("addon controlled") price. I would like to protect caravans, or attack that of rivals...
Maybe buy or even craft a ship some day... To seek out for adventure and gold with my crew... Transporting people for gold or Items or Materials... protecting some trading ships... maybe attacking them in case of a war...
If you liked DAoC, and you did not know already: ch3ck out Camelot Unchained. It is not finished, but looks promising.
Best experience has been open sandbox MMO's that isn't on rails like your traditional theme parks. Having lots of content and places to explore.
While we are on the subject i also do not like easy gameplay and fast leveling in MMO's. I love MMO's that make you work for what you have earned. Some folks call this grinding, but I feel a healthy amount of grinding gives me a sense of work needed to accomplish a well-earned objective.
The best Experience is always when i can help someone out in the Open World who is CLOOOOOSE to/before dying : and then i get there just in time to make the Difference of that Person winning it's fight against one or several Mobs.
One of the worst Experiences - > is being fxxxed over by the own Faction. Getting some horribly incompetent Idiots through a whole Instance/Dungeon during the Time of Cataclysm, WoW.
Only to "THEN" get kicked out of the Group before the last Boss - > which we needed to kill for a Daily or Quest or so. Meaning i got betrayed after struggling through TWO. full. Wipes. of the whole Group because my fellow Players thought they need to pull several NPC/Mob-Groups at once.
Back then -> it made me ACTIVELY sabotage +100 Battlegrounds on the "Isle of Conquest" from Wrath of the Lichking,
stealing a "Gleve" or other Vehicle of Bases we conquered and driving them god knows where, so that we lost the Vehicles Battlepower and since it didn't get destroyed - it was also not able to respawn for someone else. When there were BOMBS lying on the Ground we could use to damage the Enemy Gates,
i picked them up and DESTROYED them instantly in my own Inventar - so i could pick up other Bombs and do the same to them as well.
My Faction was an absolutely unforgivable Ass to me quite a few times. THAT ONE -> was one time to many. It made me seek Revenge for Days until i sabotaged my self-imposed Count of 100 Battlegrounds. I made it very clear that MY Problem with my Faction - was my FACTIONS Problem as well.
-> i never encountered any such Events of Hostility and outright Truculence and Vileness against me, from the Enemy Faction (Horde) i wish to mention here.
It is the only Detail in WoW and the Alliance that bothers me up to this Day. 🙄 . 🙄 . 🙄
Little Daveywavey here in the Forum knows of another One Asshole back in the Day - and decided to sound like he would take the Assholes' Side around January. I hope he would be smarter if push would really come to shove. Because i never forget.
✓ Occasional Roleplayer
✓ Guild is " Balderag's Garde " for now. (German)