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Caravan Livestream and A2 Numbers
Tacquito
Member
Livestream was amazing.
I had always planned on purchasing A2 access, so I don't want to be overly dramatic or anything, but that last livestream made me insta-buy into A2.
Looking so good. I can already feel they danger and heart beating as I am transporting high value goods to a far away node. And this is just one system. I really like that IS are not revealing too much about the game. There will be so much to explore.
I had been delaying my A2 purchase because I figured I would wait until the last minute, which I more or less did. I know there are many, many people who have been, and are, doing the same thing. There are also many people who wanted to see a viable game before purchasing A2 access. I believe the Caravan livestream accomplished that.
And so my point. It was what, a year ago (?) when they said they had 100K A2 subs? The $250 purchase has been significantly de-risked over the past year and I'd bet the 100K has nearly doubled by now. I'd bet they got 10K more as soon as they announced sales were ending and last Voyager+ pack dropped. They are probably picking up another 5K from the caravan stream. They are probably going to get another 25K from now until deadline.
200K, maybe 250K, A2 subs. x $250 = $50 mil. + cosmetic sales.
In any case, this is going to be the best game of all time. Steven is making a masterpiece. My daughter was 3 when I started following this game and I was worried I wouldn't have enough time to play. She's 10 now and will probably be 13 by launch. She'll think I'm lame, ignore me, listen to music all night, and I'll be in the other room playing Ashes until 3am lmfao. Let's go.
If you haven't purchased A2 access, think about it this way. A2 will probably last 1-2 years. Plus you get 6 months game time after launch. So 18-30 months of "play" for $250. Cue to the Forum Guard telling me that if I bought A2 to play, I will be bitterly disappointed. It's not for casual play, it's for testing, it's going to be a lot of work, server wipes, bugs, limited content, etc etc. Idgaf I have been following for 6+ effing years and I am not going to miss A2.
I'd really like to see nodes 3. And the last two in the Know Your Nodes series (Military & Religious). I really want to see the secondary archetype system.
I wonder when they are going to open up the Character Creator? Maybe it will be opened to A2 people after sales end in January?
Just rambling because I'm super hyped to have A2 access. Choose happy and I'll see you in game.
I had always planned on purchasing A2 access, so I don't want to be overly dramatic or anything, but that last livestream made me insta-buy into A2.
Looking so good. I can already feel they danger and heart beating as I am transporting high value goods to a far away node. And this is just one system. I really like that IS are not revealing too much about the game. There will be so much to explore.
I had been delaying my A2 purchase because I figured I would wait until the last minute, which I more or less did. I know there are many, many people who have been, and are, doing the same thing. There are also many people who wanted to see a viable game before purchasing A2 access. I believe the Caravan livestream accomplished that.
And so my point. It was what, a year ago (?) when they said they had 100K A2 subs? The $250 purchase has been significantly de-risked over the past year and I'd bet the 100K has nearly doubled by now. I'd bet they got 10K more as soon as they announced sales were ending and last Voyager+ pack dropped. They are probably picking up another 5K from the caravan stream. They are probably going to get another 25K from now until deadline.
200K, maybe 250K, A2 subs. x $250 = $50 mil. + cosmetic sales.
In any case, this is going to be the best game of all time. Steven is making a masterpiece. My daughter was 3 when I started following this game and I was worried I wouldn't have enough time to play. She's 10 now and will probably be 13 by launch. She'll think I'm lame, ignore me, listen to music all night, and I'll be in the other room playing Ashes until 3am lmfao. Let's go.
If you haven't purchased A2 access, think about it this way. A2 will probably last 1-2 years. Plus you get 6 months game time after launch. So 18-30 months of "play" for $250. Cue to the Forum Guard telling me that if I bought A2 to play, I will be bitterly disappointed. It's not for casual play, it's for testing, it's going to be a lot of work, server wipes, bugs, limited content, etc etc. Idgaf I have been following for 6+ effing years and I am not going to miss A2.
I'd really like to see nodes 3. And the last two in the Know Your Nodes series (Military & Religious). I really want to see the secondary archetype system.
I wonder when they are going to open up the Character Creator? Maybe it will be opened to A2 people after sales end in January?
Just rambling because I'm super hyped to have A2 access. Choose happy and I'll see you in game.
2
Comments
For different reasons perhaps, some to actually test some because they want ANY new game with owpvp (even if it's in progress) but most because they want to figure out their class/weapon combo, group composition and progress path.
I hope AoC A2 can handle the volume, because we are coming.
January 17th is the last day for Alpha 2 pre-order, Tacquito. That's 2+ months away ... so your version of "last minute" raises the eyebrows a bit.
Also interested in your interpretation of "the eleventh hour" and "under the wire".
(It's the enthusiasm that counts, though. Kudos for hopping aboard Alpha 2. Should be a great time.)
If the time from when I started following Ashes to the close of A2 sales were a 24-hour clock, it's currently 11:24 PM.
I'm considering it but the next dev updates better woo the shit out of me lol
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I get that what you're going for is an evolving world with a dynamic economy based on player input but i've never ever spoken to another gamer that has said they enjoy doing escort missions. Honestly, online escort missions with pvp involved sounds like a huge waste of my time...unless the rewards for doing so are THAT significant. I've got a feeling that if this gets implemented into the game, few people will play it.
It works just fine in eve online and people did it during the AA/L2 era. Plenty of people like the logistics experience or want to role play a caravan guard (im not one personally) and it's good that people have to risk their goods moving them in large quantities. It adds some extra group play.
I'm hoping they kind of implement the eve online way. Where I can contract out the transport of goods for a nominal fee according to distance travelled.
However if they don't add this then realistically it's still no different to an Eve deployment op for supers, and ive only done about a million of those. You've just shoved everything in the cargo slots and grab your friends and you go to whatever node you're aiming for and talk shit and have fun on the way. Sure the occasional ship or caravan will explode and you'll lose everything. But you'll all laugh about it and think, damn, I was stupid risking that. And you'll just get on with playing because that's how it is.
It's not an "escort mission". You're transporting your materials from the point of production, or a market, to another for sale. That's a player economy interaction, not a quest - and people will do it because they want to be merchants, and players will accompany them because they want a cut and they know that these caravans are where the PvP is likely to happen because they're highly profitable. One only needs to look at the games that AoC is drawing heavy inspiration from - ArcheAge comes to mind.
People engaged big time in the caravan system, and a lot of the game was focused around trade packs - in particular, accessing regions with the right resources, fighting over them, harvesting them and then transporting them elsewhere for sale - though in AA the system was relatively rigid (you sold the packs to an NPC and the price varied depending on the supply that said NPC was receiving and distance from point of harvest, which is a reasonable enough approximation of supply/demand). One of the main reasons to engage in PvP for that game, other than fighting over world bosses and farming spots, was to control routes of travel. Back before the game ran itself into the ground, this was highly engaging and a big part of what people did in it.
Nobody likes escort quests in standard PvE MMOs because they're scripted, routine, predictable, and serve no direct personal purpose (you're escorting the NPC because that's what the quest tells you to do and you need to progress the quest, not because you yourself have something you want to do that requires you going from A to B ). They're also slow because the game needs to account for the player being an idiot and therefore wandering around instead of sticking with an NPC moving at full tilt. None of that applies to caravans in AoC.
another person saying "if you do this the game will fail". i wonder how many more people like this will we get even after the game launches xddd.
anyways if u dont like doing caravan runs, do a different activity in ashes .-.