Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
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Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
I Think We Have a Winner on Our Hands
Blackthornes
Member, Alpha Two
It’s been a long time since I’ve seen this kind of buzz around an MMO. Ashes of Creation is making waves, and it’s not just among the hardcore MMO players. I walked into my office on 11/18 and heard my coworkers who do not play MMOs talking about the game! What’s even more surprising? Some of them haven’t even played it yet; they’ve just been watching streams and catching highlights from the weekend.
The excitement is contagious. A few of my colleagues who don’t usually touch MMOs have decided to give it a go, drawn in by the sheer passion and excitement they’re seeing from the community. That says a lot about the game’s impact. And guess what? Their response has been positive, even with the bugs and the current state of the alpha. They see the potential and are eager to be part of the journey.
There’s a collective feeling that Ashes of Creation is filling a void that’s been missing in the MMO genre for years. The genre had started to feel stale, with recycled mechanics and uninspired systems. But Ashes seems to be bringing something fresh, something that reminds us why we fell in love with MMOs in the first place.
It’s early days, but I genuinely believe this game has the potential to shake up the MMO scene in a big way.
Just my thoughts. I've loved every minute of it so far, and I look forward to seeing where Intrepid takes us from here.
The excitement is contagious. A few of my colleagues who don’t usually touch MMOs have decided to give it a go, drawn in by the sheer passion and excitement they’re seeing from the community. That says a lot about the game’s impact. And guess what? Their response has been positive, even with the bugs and the current state of the alpha. They see the potential and are eager to be part of the journey.
Update: One has since purchased Alpha access and another plans to in December.
There’s a collective feeling that Ashes of Creation is filling a void that’s been missing in the MMO genre for years. The genre had started to feel stale, with recycled mechanics and uninspired systems. But Ashes seems to be bringing something fresh, something that reminds us why we fell in love with MMOs in the first place.
It’s early days, but I genuinely believe this game has the potential to shake up the MMO scene in a big way.
Just my thoughts. I've loved every minute of it so far, and I look forward to seeing where Intrepid takes us from here.
6
Comments
Hehe, Ashcrack...
Streaming at twitch.tv/blackthornes
The original
Coming soon Ashcracked
Maybe we'll see a video like this one day.
Streaming at twitch.tv/blackthornes
I was already in my 30s beta testing Ultima Online back in the 90s. 'Ancient' feels like an exaggeration, and the knee aching isn't severe - I do miss my 20/20 vision - and I've fully embraced the Mr. Clean power bald look as opposed to accepting that my stubble is grey!
Ashes is very much rekindling that "Oooo a new trail. What's over there?" experience. Hopefully Ashes will do for MMORPGs what BG3 did for RPGs. Maybe they can steal their voice actors?
I'm right there with you. Ultima Online pulled me in, and I've been hooked ever since. Ashes is the first game in many years that has that same feeling.
Streaming at twitch.tv/blackthornes
i dont see what you guys are seeing and i played uo until around aos.
this game is already attempting to do what publish 16 did, which is to divide the community between care bears and pvpers.
every "hardcore pvp" game comes out and eventually caters to people who dont want to pvp. its lame imo. i see this game already moving down that path, even before release.
I wish a game like darkfall online would come out again. Too bad, too many people are addicted to their pixels, and never losing. we have literal metric tons of mmo's that give instanced, or consensual pvp. where is the game FOR the pvpers?
the one where NO WHERE is safe. The one where if you step outside of your starter town, you better have your head on a swivel. There are no more passion projects anymore, they all just want $$ so they cater to the masses that are terrible at games.
to put a point to it, theres always 2-4 threads about how bad the state of pvp is on the front page of general discussion.
The interconnected systems in Ashes—like caravans, player-driven trade, and regional resource control—feel like an evolution of what Ultima Online aimed for. It’s less about just "winning" and more about the journey and the relationships you build along the way, which is something UO nailed.
That said, it’s important to keep in mind that Ashes is still in alpha and has a long way to go. Some systems need polish, and others will evolve as development continues. The foundation is there, though, and I’m optimistic about where it’s heading.
Streaming at twitch.tv/blackthornes
It actually reminds me of Shadowbane too, especially with the open-world PvP and city-building aspects. Shadowbane had that player-driven chaos, but hopefully with more polish this time around. Fingers crossed AoC delivers the best of all three.
Streaming at twitch.tv/blackthornes
I never really got into EQ heavily back in the day, and I regret that I missed it during its prime. AoC's developer chats early on mentioned rare loot and mob farming similar to EQ. I'm curious about exactly how that worked in EQ, and I would really like to know if Intrepid still plans to implement rare loot in that way.
Streaming at twitch.tv/blackthornes
It's difficult to say as we are not sure what's being planed. In Eq1 named mobs would either drop nothing... then sometimes some junk... but then the rare item. What and how rare would depend on the target and the item being farmed. I wonder if that's what they're thinking here; people will setup 'farms' in contested areas. With the added twist, here, there is (pretty much) open pvp where another group can force-ably remove another group from a location.
(Note: I played Eq1 a few months after launch till about a month into Lucian Expansion. Then played Planetside till SWG came out.)
EQ had open world dungeons, and no instancing. Each dungeon had sets of mobs, often of extremely large level ranges, to the point where players level 5 and 25 might be in the same dungeon, just at different areas. Certain mobs were placeholders for named mobs, or a set of different named mobs that each had their own % chance of spawning instead of the placeholder. Or named mobs just had their own unique spawn times and would appear within the area, or maybe wander the whole zone.
The named had their own associated % loot chance for each item on their loot table. This was not well balanced, either. Some mobs were very rare and had shit items of no apparent extra value. Some mobs were not very rare and had great items. Some mobs were EXTREMELY RARE and dropped EXTREMELY IMPORTANT quest items. Some mobs were very common and dropped extremely simple quest items that could be completed within the same zone. Other mobs dropped items for quests that took the whole game world and other rare mobs to complete. Some mobs only spawned at night. Some mobs only spawned upon a quest trigger. Some mobs spawned every time and just had a very low % chance to drop a unique item. Some dungeons had unique gear sets that would drop off any mob at a low % chance.
Anyway In EQ, each location players spent time at within a zone became known as a camp with its own acronym or name that players just ended up knowing. MR, FP, TR, Trainer, Wall, Ass/Sup, etc., often named for memorable features of the mobs that spawned in the area. MR was Main Room, Ass/Sup was the Assassin/Supplier spawn location. It's a similar vein to dungeons picking up acronyms like that in games like WoW, and everyone just knows what it means.
Rather than like in WoW where you would advertise you wanted to run X dungeon, and everyone has a chance of getting gear their character can use, you'd have a group at X location within X adventuring area, but whether or not the drops were actually good for you there was a complete crap shoot. Need before greed was extremely common, you just passed on gear you didn't need as opposed to trying to sell it, but also, if the group stayed long enough, eventually everyone that needed it had it, and then it defaulted to people rolling for greed. The fact that there were NO INSTANCES meant that gear was always in short supply, so the best drops were always of value, or the camps where things dropped were always filled with groups.
All of the groups at all of the camps basically stayed within their camps location. Where camps ended and began could be extremely controversial in some places, and whoever could pull mobs first basically got it, but often camps were within discreet enough areas that wasn't a huge issue, because you could honestly only pull so much before respawns. Typically, your camp had a certain set of named mobs that spawned within it that was the main draw for people staying at that location. Sometimes camps had 50 spawns, sometimes a camp would be a single spawn, if that spawn was valuable enough, and people would ask to be put on the list for who got to camp that location next. When the first person left, they would message the next person until their replacement came, so the camp would never be left open. Any open camp was free to claim as your own, but it was considered in poor taste to take over the camp if the group wiped and was coming back. Generally, there was a "play nice" policy. I expect that will NOT be the case in Ashes at contested locations
I've seen the concept of camps starting to develop in Ashes, but it's all so new we haven't really learned where the camps are gonna be yet, but I'm sure that will come with time. I have specifically heard "Steelbloom Citadel Bears" in general chat as a camp, and I'm sure it will probably become "SB bears" or something soon. It's always fun to see how players name things, even if it ends up being "FP... the room with the Fireplace..." lol
I've have noticed different buildings in Seph seem to support a full group grinding constantly and not needing to move to a different location before respawns, and different rooms in Steelbloom seem to accomplish the same thing. My last group moved from one building the first hour to a different building the second hour to accomplish the goal of getting certain loot as we leveled. One location had a mage type mob that spawned on a timer and dropped a specific kind of ring. Another location was just regular mobs that had certain armor drop chance. The last location had set armors dropping at random too, but also had a named mob that I never actually saw drop something special, but was also on its own timer. I have not yet really seen named mobs be implemented with placeholder mobs, but I imagine that could be the end goal.
The major difference I see in gameplay terms is that in EQ mana regeneration was tied to your character sitting down, so groups were not really mobile at all. I could see camps in this game being a bit more dynamic for the simple fact that players are much more mobile. Likewise, in EQ the tank stayed on location, and there were classes specialized in pulling mobs to the main group location. i don't see that happening in Ashes due to ease of mobility. As a Tank, I always set the pace so far.
In any case, multiple groups I was with this weekend remarked that this is all VERY much EQ type vibes, so Intrepid does seem to be implementing loot drops in EQ type ways.
Almost every Everquest mobs had a common drop and a rare drop and sometime an uncommon inbetween you would pretty much always get a common drop which was sometimes realy good other times meh but there was always like a rare drop that wa slike 5-10% chance which is often the chase item.
DAoC bard was fun too!
Streaming at twitch.tv/blackthornes
I did not start with the intent of the reply being that long lmao, but glad it was useful.
I had some long pulls in Guk and Nagafens lair... all those windy tunnels... I feel like Everquest gave me a great sense of direction in real life. I will go somewhere one time and just know the way by heart, and I figure it must have been developed over years of navigating dungeons in EQ lol.
You are spot on thought about the respawn rate. I understand why they do it that way, but grouping is a bit exhausting because the potential to chain pull for 6 hours is easily met. Which, in EQ when I played monk I was responsible for the chain pulling and so I was active 100% of my game time, but if you weren't the puller there was some baked in slow moments.
Do you think AoC naturally appeals to a more “seasoned” (dare I say, Boomer?) audience? Or is it just that the design choices resonate with those of us who grew up on classic MMO systems?
Either way, I love seeing a mix of players across generations sharing their perspectives here. Let me know your thoughts!
Streaming at twitch.tv/blackthornes
I completely agree. The absence of pay-for-power, pay-for-convenience, and microtransactions is another reason I was drawn to AoC.
Streaming at twitch.tv/blackthornes