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
Indeed, some people will. It would be foolish for anyone to think otherwise.
However, it would be just as foolish to assume that the ocean state, no instanced content and such wont see other people play elsewhere.
To me, as I have said to you in the past, Ashes will be the best version of itself if it attracts some people that play MMO's primarily for the PvE content. This gives Intrepid more money, and PvP players more people to PvP with.
This makes it a better game for literally everyone.
I am 100% sure that the vast majority of those that say "I won't play" will be here at launch. Feel free to believe that the vast majority of them will choose not to play. Not much more to say about that that hasn't alrdy been said.
I mean, you say you want them to do something different, while also saying you want them to make the same game as L2, Tera, Archeage, BDO et al.
I mean, the average time a subscriber stays in a PvP game vs a PvE game should be screaming at you which of them is designed as the lame product for short term consumption - the thing you claim to want to avoid yet also advocate for.
I agree that someone should make a game that isnt just the same old lame shit. Since every game above is basically just lame ass PvP, and since WoW and FFXIV is just lame ass PvE, the game that does things different is the game that manages to combine these two together well.
I dont like any of them. I liked Teras action combat, that's all. AA seemed to me like pointless PvP and profession slavery. L2 was the perfect mmo, even though it didn't had much in the realm of professions and housing/shipping/caravans. Making a gaming without those would be boring.
The rest also is POV, not a fact. We are going in circles. The fact is that we alrdy have too many failed mmos. Why copy their philosophy.
You define combine differently to me. I've talked about what PvX means in essence elsewhere.
Would love it if Ashes could make and sustain 30k per server like I beleive EvE has the capabiltiy to do..around 10k still worries me..
They need to make sure the leveling process is fun from 1 to end game. Older mmorps aren't important they were ether killed off by wow liek every single other mmorpg, had p2w, bad gameplay practices with gambling, etc. Anyone trying to compare them is trying to be disingenuous right off the bat so I wouldn't trust them without criticism.
We live in a different age as i've stated before with how new world and lost ark both popped off, people are hungry and will play what is out there, wow doesn't have the same pull it did years ago.
In order to pvp, one had to pve.. UNLESS you were very, very good and managed not to die.. and that fortune was probably only limited to half a dozens pvp`ers on the server.. and when they stuffed up in pvp and died and had to get their xp back like the rest of us, their roar of complaint in chat made every personal loss all the more joyful.
You see in L2, I could lose 2% of my level xp in 2-5min of pvp.. that could take me 4-8hrs to recover in pve time.
I lost 10% one time, defending the doors to for a boss raid, took me 40+ hrs to recover the xp. FOR ONE RAID that I defended for the guild but was not required to participate in (wrong class)
Losses in PvP were hellishly impactful. But there was sooo much PvE required to PvP alot.
It was a PvX game but really 95% pve, 5% pvp (if you so chose)
Comparitively, with Ashes being sooooo easy to get to level cap, I cannot see XP loss being impactful at all.. so then if your good at making money on the market.. you have little to risk in PK, PvP
I am starting to see a bond between this whole lose mats on death both in pvp and pve, the goods transportation systems as well as the content progression based on the nodes being the real breaks of progress, as opposed to grinding 8h to get back 0.2%.
Perhaps IS is serious about getting people to be involved with node progression. Perhaps there will be lots more pvp than L2. Perhaps even though it is stated that reaching max lv will take 45d with 8h per day, it will take a lot longer due to all the fun obstacles.
Testing will tell, but I am starting to feel hopeful that the lv cap and all the gear and skills that are locked behind that will become a lot harder to attain.
So far no other mmo has managed to make the journey better than the destination than L2. And that is why with every new expansion in L2, you had a full year of gameplay TRYING to reach the next lv range cap (and all the skills and gear locked behind it).
However, once learned how to say mostly out of harms way, doing a materials run from one settlement to another highly laden, running the back roads, on high alert, and managing to get the scarce materials to the different settlement and make good coin was a high reward.
With the short runs between nodes in AoC, I can see many negating the caravan system and just "drug running" themselves!
And a skill from that were a certain class could stealth and go unseen, same class could track the trailing footsteps made for some really fun pvp..
But dead, not so social server was the death of that game for me!
I remember AoC, i played on the hardcore PvP server. I jumped off the boat from the tutorial and saw a cleric aoes and knocking back like 10 lowbies and killing them all right off the spawn. I was like i can dig this kind of pvp lmfao
I wanted to try warhammer but ya it was my dad's pc and he was picking the mmorpgs at the time lol. So age of conan it was. I had my own guildy pk me i was pretty pissed as well. My guild picked up some new people since we were moving from shadowbane to AoC at that time.
To be honest, I never even thought AoC was going to have pvp.. did not cross my mind. I was just migrating from L2 with the guild that was up for trying something new.
And.. from that experience, I hope helps a few of the non-pvp`er in ashes.. when thrown into the deep end.. if able to try for a while and overcome previous reservations.. pvp can be quite fun! it was just pvp at every corner until past the beginner zones. then levelled out..
Made all the more fun if done with others on same side in voice chat! And, with guild members that have the same level of competitive spirit..
That competitive collective spirit being
a) play to win or
b) play to have go or
c) play just to mess around and don`t give a dam if win or lose (my guild)
I am non-competitive so...
I'm curious, you claim that Archeage had pointless PvP - what is it that makes PvP not pointless to you?
AoC is a PvP game ? no
They said they wanted to do high end PvE content, but, so you need people to reach it... if there is nothing before, no step, just have to jump the wall... sure not lot of people will simply TRY to do it.
What i hope for the game after wiki information : an open world, with various PvE activities, from the simple quests, to high end boss... and including mainly some territory with elite ennemies everywhere, not even need to be a dungeon, but lets imagine a village of those snakeman, with no real "boss" (or nothing strong enough to be consider a "boss" outside the lore)
In such area, getting on PvP is risky... sure it is easy gang, but it can also fast turn to a disaster due to respawn, or skill to redirect some hate or what else (could be fun ranger to be able to do it to any other PC even if not a party member :') )
Also, about the good old time games... People should need to stop the need to stick to it... i mean if L2 is so perfect why simply not continue to play it again and again ? not even need for throne and liberty or what else.
I want Ashes of Creation to return to old basis, including the need to travel for example, the loss of all change to please the large casual public could be an easy way to list most problem for current MMORPG in my mind. But i also want AoC to be a really new game.
Yes, old games did lot of good thing, but it would be a poor and soulless project to not do a real new game, fitting the current possibility, but also take in consideration what was bad, and what more recent manage to do good.
I don't want AoC to be a "2025 L2" but to be Ashes of Creation. This is also this way that this game could prove to industry there are other way to do MMORPG...
Again, you saying that I said those things doesnt make it true. I dont know what you are talking about, I dont want AoC to be like bdo, AA, or Tera.
Then why is it that every argument you make is for Ashes to be more like those games?
Also, you claim that Archeage had pointless PvP - what is it that makes PvP not pointless to you?
And at this point I'm not sure if anyone would be willing to make a "new" mmo. Pretty much every mmo out there (and just games in general tbh) are just either copies of older stuff or are heavily inspired by that old stuff (not even counting all the remakes and remasters). And because of that we have ourselves a stale genre that's barely moving forward and quite often just moves back. But imo moving back to try and do "the old stuff" can be good because it can show that the old stuff is still good, which could potentially break vicious cycle. Old stuff liked to try new shit and experiment, so if a few games prove that this old experimental stuff still works, it might show to execs/investors that it's ok to experiment again (though I doubt it).
That being said, it's great to have a game that focuses on hardcore PvP.
Of course, that is not going to be a game for everyone.
As long as the game can maintain a high enough population to keep the servers going... that's great.
I might play the flip of that suggestion: normal flagging rules for the majority of time and an Event that auto-flags the Open Seas until the end of the Event.
Keep in mind that you are basically trying to convince me to play on a PvP server. And I'm already reluctant and skeptical to play on a PvP-Optional server. Corruption might get me to agree to play on what is essentially a PvP-Optional server.
People who have played L2 say that Corruption should be a sufficient deterrent for PKing that players who aren't so PvP-avoidant that they can never be PKEd should be comfortable not having a PvE-Only server.
I was open to testing that in Alpha 2 (and I will still be testing features in Alpha 2), but I don't need to test to know that I won't play on a server that has zones that auto-flag me as a Combatant.
If a PvP server is a 2; a PvP-Optional server is a 1 and a PvP-Only server is a 0...
Your suggestion is still primarily a rank 1.5 PvP server that sometimes drops down to a rank 1.
And I'm already skeptical about playing on a rank 1 PvP server.
It's not really worth it to suggest any alternatives because there was already a good chance that Corruption would not work to my satisfaction.
And I consider that ruleset to basically be a rank 1.5 PvP server.