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
Each player will have it's own node where he would be mayor and have a very hungry dragon.
Half joking also thinking if players have to join into one node, then it becomes the cult of the hungry dragon.
I doubt AoC can function well with low population. Which reminded me which question I have to ask for the Q&A
As games like EQ and EQ2 have shown, it is a reasonable expect a game to get full new expansions every year for decades, even at populations that some people seem to find low enough to consider "dead".
Between the two EQ games, at the end of this year there will be a combined 52 full expansions. Other developers really have no excuses.
Some may want to argue that games today take more time to make more content for - but with the tools available to developers today, I would disagree with that argument.
Edit to add; in relation to our discussion about EQ being larger than EQ2, it is also worth pointing out that 80%+ of EQ2's population is considered long term (defined as 3 or more years continuous subscription), while EQ only has 65% long term.
My understanding (talking to people in the industry) is that 80%+ of your players being continuously subscribed for 3 or more years is basically a wet dream for every other MMO on the market - it just doesn't happen.
Though even then, as we've discussed before, your definition of what's "good content" is different from the majority's. You're fine with invisible animations, hidden mechanics, huge complexities - all on mobs that are quite similar in their looks.
From everything that I've seen of the "majority's" feedback - none of those things are attractive or interesting to them. People want bright, flashy, dumb-easy to understand, completely visually unique content. You have a few mobs that look/function similarly? - you're a lazy fucking dev that should die. You make a complex and intricate combat system? - too fucking hard, I'm leaving. You hide some mechanics or make them not super obvious? - wtf is this, I need 20 addons to even know what to do.
We're still heading into a, seemingly, mmo renaissance. We're getting several titles from several different big and not-so-big companies, quite of few of which are supposedly using the tech you mentioned. There's a chance that we'll have at least a few amazing mmo by the late 20s. I just hope that world economy doesn't collapse by that point
https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561199146215646/recommended/2325290/
They have a sub that went up in price? What does it provide for the players?
Most people turn spell effects and such down while playing.
And it isn't as if EQ and EQ2 expansions don't contain new, unique and visualyl interesting content every expansion - they just don't *require* it for *every* raid encounter.
That said,
If EQ is on it's 30th expansion in 25 years, with the next well in to development, and are only able to really use the tools they have developed in house, what excuses do other developers have that have access to those newer tools?
Even if we were to assume the developer wanted unique models for all bosses, and wanted flashy shit that people were going to turn off to be redone for every expansion, the tools at developers disposal more than make up for that additional effort.
There really is no reason at all for a modern MMORPG to not be releasing a full expansion every year - one that is worth paying $40 for. Players should be able to expect enough content to keep them entertained.
I should have found another way / other post to quote.
Sorry.
Like I said, not all of us played a game that was well-managed from the bottom to the top, while also being liked by the players. Supposedly OSRS is similar, though iirc osrs was also a response to the stark decline of RS3's popularity (if I'm not messing up my timelines here).
GW2 seems to be doing things well too, but afaik their content putout is nowhere near EQ's.
In other words, EQ was the only old game that could support the kind of pace you want, while any newer game requires the current tools, because the industry has notoriously slowed down due to higher demand of "quality" from players. All the other old games were severely mismanaged and/or greedy AS FUCK (which is pretty much the same thing), and it's only now that we're seeing indie-ish companies getting into the mmo sphere, exactly because the tools finally caught up to the good content release pace.
EQ and EQ2 were developed as a subsidiary of a publicly traded company. They have execs pulled from the same pool of people as other game studios.
EQ and EQ2 use the "greed" factor of the company they are under. They point out that the insane retention the games have is purely due to constant new content, and so that content needs to keep flowing. But they also charge that $40 for it, and often have bundles for expansions costing $250 or more.
It really isn't as if Daybreak Games aren't just as greedy as other developers, they just know the way to satisfy that greed is constant new content.
The desire for more polished content is t really a factor, as the tools developers have now save more time than that polish takes.
The only (and I really do mean *only*) excuse I can see for developers today to not maintain EQ levels of content creation is the cost of those tools. However, if a game has a stable population of 100k or more, that really shouldn't be a factor (nor would it be a factor if subscriptions were increased to $20 a month).
The only other things I see in other games is a lack of desire to add new content at this pace (XL had no desire to add content to Archeage at anything close to a reasonable pace), and total mismanagement, neither of which I consider acceptable excuses.
JP companies are usually better, which is why FF14 is the way that it is, but they're usually an exception to the industry "standard".
You might not consider this an acceptable excuse, but it's a reality for a shitton of companies. We all want to live in a perfect world where this shit is not the case, but sadly we don't.
I'm very glad that you just so happened to love the, seemingly, only game in the world that satisfied all your needs, but, outside of maybe Mihoyo, I don't know any other company that can do the same, though even Mihoyo get shit on by their overfed fans now, because some patches are "filler"
In other words, you have 1st-world-gaming privilege and you should check it
Initial purchase, sub, expansions and cash shop, yes.
There is not, as far as I know, a way to purchase currency.
The one good thing both games do (or did, when I played them) is only require purchase of the most recent expansion for new players - you get all previous expansions with that. While this has become more standard now, it is what SoE have always done, right from launch.
Even with box, expansion and sub cost though, at about $150 a year on average (cheaper subscription if you get 12 months), it's still cheap entertainment.
Indeed it is, and that is why I am not currently paying any game subscriptions right now.
Mismanagement being a reality does not mean I need to accept that and hand my money to a mismanaged company that is not providing me with value for that money.
If you want to call it "first world privilege " to be in a state where I refuse to pay a subscription for a product that is sub-standard, then that is fine. At the end of the day though, I do indeed refuse to pay a subscription for a product that is sub-standard.
If others are willing to spend their money on products that are sub-standard, I would consider them having the money to waste like that to be a first world privilege.
As an example from my own life, McDs are considered the trashiest food in USA, but here it's been a "treat once a month", due to its cost in relation to other food and base quality of it (obviously in the context of a low-mid class people). And even when I was in the US for a summer, I still loved eating McDs, because I know could afford it more often, so every other meal was a "treat".
And it's always cool to say "but don't you want everyone and everything to be up to my lvl of standards", but that's simply not realistic for most situations. It's very nice when it happens (stuff like B3 or Helldivers 2, etc), but that's still exceptions to the general rule, rather than an industry standard.
Funny you should mention this.
When BG3 came out last year, developers at other studios tried to point out that this shouldn't alter the expectation players have of other games. The argument was that the developers of other games had restrictions and requirements that Larian didn't have. Swen Vincke basically came out and said that players should have higher expectations due to BG3, and while the people working directly on other titles may have other restrictions, those restrictions are not inherent to the product, they are artificially placed on them by the board or CEO. Players expecting better games doesn't mean everything has to come from the developers, it means the executives also need to step up.
Essentially, games like the ones you have mentioned prove that if you make a damn good game, you end up with a shitload of money. Since that is what every company wants, there is no reason to not make a damn good game. It results in the players getting what they want, the developers being proud of the work they did, the company making a lot of money, the shareholders making a lot of money, and the CEO probably also getting a fat bonus.
Like, that result is what everyone wants. The way to get that result is fairly clear - make damn good games. Don't make excuses.
The problem is there are very few CEO's of game companies that both understand games, gaming and gamers, and are also good at the actual job of being a CEO (which can be summed up to "keeping the shareholders happy", when talking about a publically traded company).
As far as I am concerned, that is where the issue is. The few CEO's that know games can't manage to keep shareholders on side long enough to see those games fully developed, and the CEO's that have the ability to keep shareholders on side have no idea what makes a good game.
This isn't a valid excuse though. If someone at my work produces poor results, them just saying "sorry, I'm shit at my job" doesn't excuse the poor result.
And as Swen (and a lot of JP companies) proved - the best way to make best games is to keep the same group of devs and keep grinding. Except this only works with already good execs, so the only way to make this a standard in the industry is to replace all execs and ideally even shareholders, which I highly doubt will happen any time soon.
And it won't happen soon because the dumb majority of players will just keep buying all these fucked up games that make insane money and all the dumb execs will see that and keep saying "copy that!" And it'll always be "copy that" in the worst way, because devs will try adjusting the "that" to fit their game in the best way possible, but execs won't let them either by directly telling them or fucking them over through budgetary means.
In other words, we need a revolution that topples the upper echelon of management, except when was the last time when any industry had that in a successful way? Cause I don't remember if I've ever heard of one. And I'm all for that revolution and am only paying money for the games that I believe in or want to see more of, not like that matters though.
Us demanding better from the company includes the boss. It STARTS with the boss.
That is what Swen was saying. A developer working on a game is doing their job, within the restrictions they are required to work within - it is those restrictions that determine the bulk of the quality of the final product, and they are set by the people at the top. As such, they are not valid excuses. Someone working on the game can use it as an excuse to absolve themselves of how poorly the game may be, but since those restrictions still come from the company, the company itself can not use them as an excuse.
Us demanding better games is us demanding those at the top allow those working on the product to do better quality work.
Like I said, we need a revolution that will never happen. We've been "demanding" good things for decades, but things are only getting worse. And now the pendulum is swinging back to the small companies making semi-indies, which is kinda the entire point of this game and why we're here (well, at least some of us).
And if we believe Steven's claims of super low turnover at Intrepid - they'll supposedly succeed at making a good game and then keep it good for a long time. So, just as I said from the start of this convo - the currently developing games might be able to replicate the EQ model of content release pace, or at least be close to it. But we'll need to wait a few years to see that.
The EQ franshise has more than $2 billion in sales - despite not having released a new game in 20 years. Even Google would keep that alive.
If a CEO is needing to get a product rushed out the door in order to keep shareholders happy (this is the core reason a number of games have been unsuccessful), that is a shit CEO.
Being shit at your job still isn't an excuse. I don't.
Try and work out how many of the 11 non-Steven, non-John people on the Kickstarter page are still there. While it has been a fairly long time, that was a fairly long time amid a pandemic and economic downturn which saw most people in the industry staying put if they had the option to do so.
Also, Intrepid still listing UE4 experience as a "major plus" for half their currently advertised roles, while listing UE5 for the other half really doesn't fill me with a whole lot of HR based confidence.
The example of BG3 and EQ will never work, because, as you said yourself, execs are not gamers. They'll see BG3, hear that it had a ton of cutscenes, a ton of voiced characters and a ton of money that it made. They'll buy some random dev company and tell them "to do the same thing", except they won't realize that "the same thing" requires over a decade of experience of developing this exact game, the same devs that worked on that game for that decade, a ton of money and a ton of time. So instead the exec will say "I'll only give you a bit of money and even less time, so go make it".
And then the game fails and the company either gets sold or dissolved.
Yeah, it's not an excuse for having shit games, but go and try telling random joe who played 2h of CoD a week that he shouldn't be doing that, cause it promotes shitty industry practices and gives an even shittier example of what's popular to the execs. The only excuse here is the sorry excuse of a gamer that the majority of "gamers" are.
I dearly hope that Steven succeeds because it's the only way a game like this could succeed. And even then, I fully expect some form of p2w by the end of the first 6 months after release, if not sooner.
I take Steven's words as "in the last year we've had this turnover", not the last half a decade. And I take it that way because it's the only logical PR move, considering the current industry climate.
Considering that Intrepid was mismanaged at the start - no wonder that a ton of people left. And considering that they only started really onboarding people in ~2020 and later - I can only hope that the turnover numbers are not only for the last year and at least a bit longer, cause at least that way the UE5 update woulda been worked on by the same team.
Either way, we haven't even heard from the new Lead Designer, so it's definitely difficult to believe anything really. And don't even start me on "office tour" and "know your nodes"
Which is why I am not telling them what I think - I am telling other players to expect better.
Again, sales proof is all that is needed. The sales of Pillars of Eternity prove that a million people will buy an average RPG game - just as many millions will buy an average FPS.
However, the existance of BG3 proves that many times that number that will buy an average RPG will buy a great RPG.
Yes, CEO's of game development companies often don't know their own product. That isn't an inherent issue to game development though, CEO's in other industries also don't know their product (do you think Chris Kempczinski knows how to make a Big Mac - let alone knows how to make many of them?).
How they resolve this is that they listen to people that do know. That is what is missing in most gaming companies - the CEO's tend to have far bigger egos than their ability suggests they should have, they think they know whats best, and so that is what gets done.
Half decade turnover is what counts here.
I will not necessarily enjoy a game because many others play it.
A game which maximizes profit will design the game for a certain audience and might exclude me.
In the last stream Margaret said AoC is a niche mmo.
That means they are ok with not having the largest possible number of players but to offer for a certain smaller audience the best experience that audience wants.
Developers need change just like we change mmos and games in general.
Those who have a lot of energy and enthusiasm in the beginning, will seek out a new beginning.
When they leave, the less enthusiastic developers stay and become team leads.
Also young developers focus on job more than later when they have family and children.
While I can see how you may have come to this conclusion, this isn't really the point.
Game genres have their audience. There are people that play FPS games, people that play RPG's, people that play driving games etc. When you release a game, your main audience is the people that play that type of game, but people that play adjacent genres would also happy to pick up an exceptional game in a genre they don't usually play.
A BR game will be of interest to people that play BR games. A great BR game will also be of interest to people that play FPS games, and perhaps RPG games. A MOBA will be of interest to MOBA players, but a great MOBA will be of interest to RTS and RPG players.
An PvP MMORPG will be of interest to PvP MMOROG players, but a great PvP MMORPG will be of interest to BR players, FPS players and MOBA players, as well as potentially some with fight game backgrounds (depending on the combat style). Baulders Gate 3 was thought to be a niche game as well.
If a game is truely great, it isn't a niche game.
People that want Ashes to be the best game it can possible be should want the game to be wildly popular - not because that means more players, more servers, longer life, more additional content and all those things - but because if the game is truely great, it will attract a large audience. If it is average, the game will attract a percentage of the PvP MMORPG population. If it is exceptional, it will attract a percentage of the BR, FPS and MOBA population as well.
If the game remains niche after launch, it the population remains small, that means the game is average - even if a handful of people really like it.
I don't know if Baulders Gate 3 was thought to be a niche game. What features they added that made the game interesting to so many players outside of it's "niche" target audience?
A large audience for AoC would be possible only by making it more attractive with some features to those outside of the current audience. The typical example are the PvE players. Those would be theoretically the easiest to bring but then you would remove much of the existing audience.
What else could you bring? To make it a survival mmo? We have fishing, wood cutting, cooking... would the current audience stay?
Then how a large audience would help players? If a server requires just 10K players, then actually AoC needs just 10K players. They do not interact with players on other servers. The presence of other servers do not make the game more interesting for them.
The "feature" that attracted others to it was the simple fact that it was objectively the best example of a game in it's genre to ever exist.
Making a game better doesn't mean adding features - more often than not it means removing extrenuous and/or superfluous features.
You are missing the point with why we should all want the game to be popular. We don't want it to be popular because the extra people would make the game better - it is literally the reverse. If the game is great, it will be popular, so we should want the game to be popular because that means it is great. If it is not popular, that is a sure sign that it is average at best.
Basically every word in this paragraph should be reconsidered.
First of all, a server doesn't "require just 10k players", servers can have 10k players on them at one time. This means servers will likely be populated by 20 - 25k players (not everyone is online at the same time).
Second, the game will have at least a dozen servers at launch, if it is reduced down to nothing, that essentially takes it off the radar for MMO players. This means the game won't have any hope of replacing natural attrition of players.
Third, a game coming out now that has made the statement that all additional content will be free and have a frequency based on said games population will simply not see any additional content added to it. Prop that playre count up to a few million, and we could expect content additions every 3 months.