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.
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https://youtube.com/watch?v=G0Y0FaAfiZw
That is not dead which can eternal lie. And with strange aeons even death may die.
Everquest - Literally killing the gods to which people have prayed the entire game - that's a real big one, the amount of time leveling (while extraordinarily long) did provide for many meaningful encounters with other people throughout the world
WoW - Being the only guild on the server past Mother Shahraz pre-nerf BT, felt cool at the time
my fondest and greatest memories in gaming were some of the most impactful ones in game at the time aswell
where my shields and abilities saved countless teammates when we were getting clapped at crucial moments
they basically decided weather we lived or died
clips: https://streamable.com/g12bka
https://streamable.com/ac5hu4
https://streamable.com/0k5bjf
The best part for me was large guild vs guild wars and castle sieges. The pregame moments, post victory celebrations, and intense action during large scale organized fights was the best.
The grind was team based and raids guild based so you definitely spend a lot of time building relationships with your people. Leveling our support chars was a real effort for the guild, and while it made PvE harder, it made PvE all the better.
With my very first MMORPG being Final Fantasy XI back in like 2003, you were locked into the character you chose. Your name, race, and gender could not be magically changed by throwing money at it. And here's why it matters...
Final Fantasy XI leveling was entirely done out in the world, grinding mobs on maps alongside dozens of other parties. There was little competition for mobs because of the time and effort it took to take each one down, until one-too-many parties joined in and had to wait for a spot after another disbanded or relocated to more rewarding mobs for their level. Because of this and the time investment that was required, while I don't expect Ashes to implement this type of grind (as much as I loved it) the reputation of those who caused problems for other players was something that MATTERED.
In Final Fantasy XI the only way to change your name used to be: 1) create a character with the same name on another server, 2) pay for a server transfer to that same server, forcing a name change, and 3) if you wanted to transfer back to the same server, pay the fee once more. Not having the ability to change one's name meant that your tie to that name became quite important, and along with it - your reputation on that server and among its community. However, in Final Fantasy XIV, should you become a problematic person who disrupts the experience of multiple players -- no problem! Buy a Name Change and throw in a Fantasia for good measure to become someone else entirely, and all was forgiven! They no longer know who you are or who you used to be unless they kept a very small friend list and communicated with them regularly.
Having the ability to change one's name might make more money, but I don't see it as somewthing that should ever be provided in MMORPGs - or at the very least, allowed only once. If players find themselves blacklisted by the majority of their server and unable to complete content because they were being a toxic individual, let them endure the consequences of their actions. They can roll an alt on the same server or try a different one, but they should not be able to continue doing the same things repeatedly with a clean slate for $10 and no running track record.
If name changes are decidedly a thing that is already going to be possible, allow players to see each other's previous name(s) upon inspection / examining of one another. Let it be a running record that can be traced on the game's character search. If I ignore or blacklist a player - which is a feature I use incredibly sparingly in the first place - I would like my decision to ignore that player to be permanent until a time when I decide to remove them myself. Not because they circumvented it for $10.
Alternatively when blocking a player, let it apply to that person's ACCOUNT including all alts on all servers - and not just the character or server itself. I don't want to see chats from other characters on their account, nor end up in dungeons with one of their alts. When your player reputation matters, this is indeed one of my fondest memories from my very first MMORPG experience: That who you are as a person is represented through your character and gameplay, positive or negative, and you had to own that reputation for better or worse.
Google Photos don't always load - which is why I stopped using a signature, for the AoC forums. If these pictures show up as code instead of images, you can try looking at this thread another time. They're working for me right this moment, but they don't always; sometimes it looks like long lines of code, instead. At least Google Photos is still free to use, though; Photobucket has several cherished images of mine that I no longer have direct possession of otherwise, and they won't release them unless I subscribe to a package....
A briefing before a battle. In 2008, yours truly hosted a 7-part battle series for Space PvP, that ended up tying at 3-3 at Battle Six. The final battle was a come-from-behind victory for us, featuring a very unique Battle Seven. Here, I brief both our own community's pilots, as well as a few other pilots who made the briefing. This was issued as a public "server space-war", led by our guild against Orion Sol's JEDl, on the Bria mainserver of live-production SWG.
The single best space-PvP screenshot I ever took, during Battle Four of our series. A couple of Rebel Alliance pilots really handed me my rear-end. This series was the defining moment of many career-pilot players' time in the game, with many of them finding me later and relating how they'd never taken part in anything else quite like it.
The series included a few RP elements. Here, a bewildered Admiral Ahl-Vinn comes upon what he can only assume is some kind of cult meeting, having been unfamiliar with the Jedi. Ironically, he is present to deliver the first shipment of a fleet to arm his soon-to-be enemies. My RP tied into actual events, the vast majority of the time; The first shipment really was a delivery of 40 "ship kits" that I'd manufactured for use by the ever-dominant JEDl community, on Bria.
Running a shop was a great source of pride, in SWG. There were odd mechanics of the game I knew about, too. Here, if you look carefully, I've collected all 3 of the "ship pets" from the SWG TCG. If you didn't collect the deed, then you could drop it as a physical item for decoration. If you didn't know to do that before collecting a deed, however, then you could NEVER use the item as a decoration - even if you came into possession of another one, later! Loved having the Naval Trooper look come in, with the City Sieges that were a late addition to the game.
It's greatly my hope that housing will change from static decoration to free-form placement, in AoC; it's not currently slated this way, however. Some people were genuine artists with in-game decoration, and I even recall hiring 2 separate players to decorate different buildings, for me - though did a great share of my own.
At any rate, I'm hoping to bring my events-hosting experience to AoC in grand fashion (150+ player events in SWG, and 100+ events in SWTOR)! Yours truly will lobby for ever-more events-support and tools with which we can host unique events in AoC.
But sticking out are surely the moments when one made a difference. For instance being a hunter of newbie killers in L2 making sure beginners could do their first grinds in (relative) peace and seeing the PKers leave the zone as soon as your character name showed up in the list...
Be it as a crafter/shop owner in SWG (pre NGE)/EQ2 (early) when a difficult and/or dangerous craft with a rare component became a pristine item and did not destroy the rare (EQ2). And the result was an item that MEANT something and was not replaced by a stupid fetchquest item within a level.
Even though they were a horrid grind and -- in retrospect -- were a lot of stress, the late EQ expansion raids, EQ2 world raids. It was a sense of achievement even if you were only a cog in the machine of 2 raid groups trying to take down a boss.
World PvP in EQ2, making sure that the Commonlands and Freeport were safe from enemies ... doing a bit of RP on the side and fulfilling the will of the Overlord.
I wish I had saved some of those moments as screenshots, but I was never much a collector of tangible memories in MMOs.
from whem we get the capital and winned the season
[img]file:///C:/Users/Jose/Pictures/Conqueror's%20Blade/snapshot_2020_12_05_22_42_45_653414.jpg[/img]
no ideia how to put screenshots here LOL
Activities from multiple guilds. Being a member of multiple guilds provides a way to experience a variety of group activities. Some guilds focus on resource farming versus gear farming, or market trading versus combat fighting.
Social guild events. Housing decoration contests, furnishing yardsales, auctions, clearing bosses in a zone, collecting skill points, and areas of interest achievements.
Helpful guildmates. Guilds with enough members so there is a guildmate online anytime of day, so whether you need a hand with a boss fight or someone to craft you training gear, they're there for you.
Lately, I have been torn between two games because one game has very high realism, physics, and immersion but lacks guilds, and another game with a strong community of guilds but lacks realistic gameplay. Well, I spend most of my time in the one with guilds. The people in the game make a difference. Without them, it's just not as fun.
I used to play World vs. World in Gw2. We were a hardcore guild who enjoyed outnumber combats, 20 organised players vs. the world... I have never felt the same thing again at any game.
After Arenanet politics of empower casual players and banish the hardcore community, we quit like most of hardcore WvW guilds. It was impposible play like that anymore, the game turned to large zergs of people pushing the autoattack, and eventually, the maps started to be empty of players.
After that we try BD, Teso, Archeage... but we couldn’t find any game with a combat system like that.
That period was probably my best experience on videogames.
Note: I’m not the guy in the video, I was there with him, but I didn’t use to record gameplays.