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.
steven, is this you?
Depraved
Member, Alpha Two
found this old video. i think this was your clan xD funny music haha
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6kPM9T16VI&t=1s&ab_channel=Sharlanna
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6kPM9T16VI&t=1s&ab_channel=Sharlanna 1
Comments
biggest private server community of any mmorpg after wow ;3
Just goes to show that when Steven says "lower lvl players will still have an impact in the siege", he speaks from experience and not just from the point of "they'll have a siege weapon to sit in".
This is why people say L2 is dead.
Helps support what I was saying a few days ago that Sieges and Caravans don’t cater to Max Level Adventurers.
There will be a mix of Levels.
Yeah, instead the developers of L2 have sat and watched it die as an empty shell of it's former self.
Honestly, L2 being more popular on private servers than official servers should serve as a warning to developers - even if your game generates a good amount of nostalgia, attempting to increase your target market will still alienate your existing playerbase.
Classic servers are popular because all games with classic servers have made a change in their design somewhere along the way, but what exactly made them change? I'd assume it was falling playerbase numbers and revenue values.
This is why I said that not all companies are ready to sustain a game that goes down to the bare minimum core audience that utterly loves the game, but barely keeps the lights on. I tried googling how many players EQ2 has and from what I could find it seems that EQ has more than EQ2, with EQ2 subs at around 20k and EQ's at around 40 (at least back in 2021).
I guess the best way to develop a game is to change as little as possible, while also minimizing your expenses on the development side. That way you can keep making the game indefinitely and catch nostalgia-ridden comeback players. No need for a "classic" version if your current one hasn't changed since the game began, right?
The thing is, developers don't make changes like this because they think their players want a change, they make these changes to try and attract a segment of the market that was not the games original target. Usually this is because the game needs to bring in more revenue.
Some developers opt to try and change up the core of the game to attract a larger audience and generate more revenue, some develoeprs opt to add in a store to try and generate more revenue from existing players. What I don't get is - why have no developers in the last decade and a half (perhaps 2 decades) simply increased their subscription rate? We've been paying a fairly standard $15 a month for over 20 years, increasing that would go down better with most players than either of the above options.
Also, in regards to EQ and EQ2 population, the only information at all to go by is a one off presentation when Daybreak was purchased in 2020 (which the Wikipedia comment I assume you are talking about is from).
The thing to keep in mind with that though, of all Daybreak titles, EQ2 has the second highest revenue per active user, and the highest conversion rate (essentially return subscriptions). Basically, EQ2 is the stable title, and the other titles Daybreak have all fluctuate a lot.
To be fair, while EQ is well behind on revenue per active user, it was only a little behind EQ2 in terms of conversion rate - although that is due in part to the expansion that was being worked on at the time.
The expansion for EQ leading up to that presentation (as in, the time the data was taken from) was based around Veeshan. That caused a similar jump in numbers to the game that WoW would see if they titled their next expansion "Return of the Lich King". The expansion about to be released for EQ2 at the time was Reign of Shadows - not exactly anything to pull players back. They only had their stable playerbase being represented in that presentation - yet even then the conversion rate was the highest, and revenue per active user was still much higher than EQ's.
Edit; your last point is only correct and accurate from the perspective of some PvP games.
From the perspective of a PvE game, there is always going to be a desire to have progression servers after a few years of your game being live. This isn't necessarily due to any changes to the game (although in some cases it is), it is because PvE obsoletes content to the point where it isn't viable to go back and run it - not even on a new character. The only way to run the content is to be at the appropriate level, and unable to level further.
I'd say that in recent years Genshin seemingly succeeded at "increasing the sub cost". They started off with $10/5 battlepass/monthly sub and have shifted up to $12/6. Obviously this is purely optional, but it's effectively a sub that gives you the best benefits in the game for its price.
I think the best way for Ashes to do this would be to announce that their current sub price would only last as long as the highest testing bundle provided. Once that time runs out - they'll go up some amount.
By that time I'm sure people will be more fine with paying more for a game (they kinda already are), especially if the game is good.
While this may seem like semantics, it is an important point. Games-as-a-service have had no issue in raising subscriptions, just as companies like Netflix and YouTube have had no issues raising subscription prices.
It's just MMORPG's that seem to be stuck.
As to how to go about a price increase - what you have said is kind of on point. The timing I don't think matters, what does matter is giving players plenty of advanced warning.
They'll have to learn at some point. I think everyone still relies on WoW when thinking about what they can get away with. And considering how fucking deep WoW has gone down the shitter, while still not increasing the sub - no one else is increasing it either.
Yeah, I picked the end of bundles simply because that's the logical cutoff point for when it would be "fair" to do. If you do it sooner - people will get angy that oldtimers get a better deal. I doubt that many people would even pay attention to that, but there's no point in risking it.
Even more of a reason to not play it.
And I'd definitely say that you're missing out on a great story and enjoyable combat if you don't play
they didn't increase their target, and they didn't let their game die. it still generates hundreds of millions lol. it just became more p2w...so lots of players from places like latinamerica and russia cant keep up $$$ and play in old patches private servers (or even new versions of the game, like l2 essence, but private servers remove the p2w elements)
you also have publishers in Europe (inova) who add even more p2w xD so yeah...
now when is the game dead, when it has a million players and doesn't generate a lot of money per year, or when it has 10,000 players but generates a billion per year? just a question, how do you consider a game dead, revenue or amount of players?
For players revenue doesn't matter. Game is dead when there are not enough people to fill it. Even if it generates some money off the weirdos who still stick to it.
The big flaw of La2 was the fact that it was run by the players. When there were people everywhere, random fights, random boss farms, doing obscure quests, spoil expeditions, small fort sieges, minor fights between midwar clans for spots/bosses (and not just the top ones) etc etc - this was the best game.
But when people are not enough it is lacking sadly.
Lineage 2 was perhaps the best defitinition of MMO - by the people, for the people. You cannot play it solo, literally (well in late chronicles you can but thats another story - for me La2 died with GoD).
While La2 lore was deep it had no real story, basically the stories of that game were written by players There is literally nothing to do solo or if you play with only few people on server. That is very different from other modern games- e.g. Newerwinter of TESO. There might be 100 people playing on server or 10000 - you will never be able to tell. And honestly you won't even need those people for most content.
In La2 you literally -=FEEL=- when server is full, when it is half empty, and when it is dead/semi-dead.
This is the answer I was going to give.
This is also in part why PvP games generally die faster than PvE games. In a PvE game, if I have enough people in my guild to raid, and enough people wanting to join that I know we could recruit new people when existing people leave, the game is not dead.
I have the people I play with, and I have the content. The population can drop by 75% and as long as thise above two points remain true, the game is fine from my perspective.
In a PvP game, if you lose 75% of the population, you lose 75% of your content. The game feels dead, feels boring.
I expect Ashes to be somewhat similar, because people's activity will siphon them all into 1-2 places and they'll be playing with each other at all times (either with or w/o competition).
I agree with the story part and all that, but a game is dead when the servers shut down.
l2 still has about a million players spread all over all offi servers in different regions (which is about the same as most other mmorpg) and in the different patches (god and beyond, classic and essence).
just because you don't like the game after GoD(and lots of people don't but lots do) doesn't mean the game is dead xD
last time I logged in, there were 1-2k players and 3-4 for siege (few years ago). according to this website https://www.playerauctions.com/player-count/everquest/ eq has 300 player daily (lol). new world is more alive than eq...
"That 25 year old game is so shit that a game 2 years old has more players than it does" is a really odd thing to say. How valid a statement it is really doesn't matter - it is just an amusing thing to think.
With that out of the way, as a metric to assess how well a game is going, the number of players on Steam is about as valid for EQ and EQ2 as it is for L2.
That last statement is why I have long since said there is very little variation in PvP - you tend to be fighting the same people over and over again.
With that said, in my experience, when a server has 2 sides like this, as soon as one starts having a fairly consistant edge, the whole thing unravels down to nothing fairly fast.
You may have different experiences, but I have seen it happen a number of times.
This also comes down to design, which can be then used by players in different ways. Boss respawns with floating timers (or however you call a +-few hours ones), combined with a varied environment layout, let a group, that might've lost a few previous battles, win the current fight because the boss spawned slightly sooner and this "loser" group was gathered in just the right time, or managed to repel an attack from their opponents just in time for the spawn.
The loot value, quantity and scaling also matters, because if all of that stuff is tightly balanced - even a few wins won't immediately put you way above your enemies in power.
Mob farming pvp always comes down to player availability and personal approaches to each fight. Sieges come down to leader strats, at which point playing against the same group could be seen as beneficial cause you'd know their usual strats better and would try to use them to your benefit.
Those kinds of pvp servers usually become big families that just like playing the game together (while also competing). I've heard a ton of stories from people who played on a non-progressing server (as opposed to those who go through several versions of the game, like the official one did) for years, with the same people - and loved it all the way through.
It's simply a different mentality to what you're used to, where you want constant new content to consume to be happy with the game.
didn't say it was shit. i just said its dead. lts of games from back then arent
also, FYI, l2 is harder than eq, and that's absent pvp (by ur metrics, harder = better, somehow). i was gonna reply on the other thread but I was like nah I keep taking the bait, and I just did now fml
From Noaani's explanations of EQ2's skill trees and all that shit, I'd imagine it's waaay more complex, so if it had group pvp akin to L2's - it'd have infinite potential.
L2 only began to have somewhat complex pve once it introduced more instanced and semi-instanced content.
I'm mostly pulling from my experience in Archeage in relation to this. The game had set events that were listed on the in game calendar, so people knew exactly what was happening, exactly when and exactly where.
I don't doubt at all that having non-static spawn timers on mobs would slow down the attrition I have seen happen, but I can't see how it would do anything other than slow it down.
The point I was making is that a PvE game is still 100% as much fun with 25% of the population, where as a PvP game is less fun with less population. It may still be some fun, but it is less fun. In order to be as fun as it's design intended it to be, it needs that population, where as in order for a PvE game to be as fun as was intended, you just need your group or raid.
Well, at least in my old experience. Maybe these days everyone's a fucking suck-up that can't even imagine themselves opposing someone (as a ton of people keeps saying).
But it's inverse on the other side. If you have the people but don't have the content in a pve game - the game dies almost immediately. If you have the people but don't have the content in a pvp game - the game can live for years and years w/o any real issues.
This is why I hope that Ashes manages to combine the two, cause then we'd have a game that can live for a long time and be good for both sides of the spectrum (even if these sides are closer to the middle than in other games).