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Wraithbane
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With AoC being a real time game where monster and dungeon instances don’t really occur, I have some skepticism for the release day. With a limit of 10,000 players per server, I am in concern for contested content for the first month. Without instances bosses and dungeons I could very easily see a divided community of the “haves” and “have nots”. This could be a problem early on and even later down the road. Any thoughts on this? Also I fear this could be situational with mobs, as well as crafting supplies being monopolized. Like rare supplies or loot that people just sit on.
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My understanding of the design is that this is explicitly the intention.
I don't think you can count it as a problem when the designers make it part of the gameplay loop unless you're saying who exactly it is a problem for.
Expressed through the words of Steven.
"There will be winners and loser".
"Not everybody will be a winner"
Scarcity and competition is key
Obviously different people will have different amounts of time they can play, so anyone who has a ton of time will be leveling up both themselves and their nodes. And they'll have high lvl content in those nodes. This will most likely be a fairly limited amount of people (cause leveling will take a long time).
And the higher you go, the fewer people there'll be at that progress lvl. So I think that this will not be as much of a problem as it was in all the previous mmos that had preestablished leveling locations that could only fit a certain amount of people at any given time. But even if this doesn't work out perfectly, as Azherae said, the rarity of things is an intended design choice.
This spreading out is further enabled by each node - close to a hundred of them - having low level mobs. In other words, there will be LOTS of places for new players to go. This is different from many other games which began with a very limited 'starter area' on each server which crowded all the players together when the server first opened.
Therefore, it is true that there will be conflict by design. But well-informed players will quickly transit out of the starter areas once they do the handy quests and heard towards the more distant and remote nodes on the map. This will work great since a lot of different nodes will then start to grow.
Once we do Alpha 2, we will certainly know more about how this will shake out. Personally, I hope we will be in Alpha 2 before I have to turn on my air conditioner next year.
It won't only be about securing boss kills or dungeons. It will be about making money in the several different avenues the game gives you. Grinding mobs in the world, the artisan/crafting system (gathering, processing, taming/breeding mounts), fishing, caravans, farming on freeholds.
It will all be contested to varying extents. But not 10,000 people all contesting each other in dungeons or at a boss mob. It will be spread across the world, across multiple different types of activities.
go herbing or do a quest do something else with your time. Also best gear in the game is the one that is crafted so while those people that are farming the dungeon to get a resource will probably need other resources to craft that so just sell it on the AH for a good
Cough cough
"Damaged gear can be reforged at a player stall using a portion of the materials that were necessary to craft the item.[93][94][89]"
Either way you really should focus on the adventuring part of the game rather then the leveling of the game, because there wont be a end game.... so the more knowledge you pick up just exploring will better you off in the long run.
PS
Also there might be "cartographer" (person who makes maps) Idk have to read the discussion to see whats it all about here