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Alpha Two testing is currently taking place five days each week. More information about Phase II and Phase III testing schedule can be found here
If you have Alpha Two, you can download the game launcher here, and we encourage you to join us on our Official Discord Server for the most up to date testing news.
Ashes likely biggest launch issue
pattw555
Member, Alpha Two
In all likelihood, with the attention it's getting, ashes is going to have absolutely insane player counts at launch (true launch, or hell, even beta). New World had >700k concurrent players at launch, ashes will likely have more, my money is on 1M+ easily.
Let's say intrepid is able to grab that hot potato, and they have enough servers for everyone to play with reasonable queue times. That's not even the real problem.
The real problem is what happens after, as player counts drop and you now have a (still massive) player base scattered over too many servers.
So much in Ashes depends on having a healthy server with a healthy server population, even more so than in most MMOs. That player drop off is inevitable, it happens in every game 1-2 months after launch, no matter how good or successful the game is. Given ashes unique systems (i.e. nodes) that drop off could be an unrecoverable deathblow to many servers / players.
Just calling out there needs to be some plan for server transfer or server merger going into big launches / big influxes of players. It is absolutely not something that can be kicked down the road post-launch or solutions created as it happens, by that point it'll be too late. There isn't going to be a "perfect" solution to server merges either given the node system, and that's fine, some solution allowing players to get to a server with a stable and playable population is required though.
This isn't something that needs to be solved now obviously, but it needs to be on the radar / road map.
Let's say intrepid is able to grab that hot potato, and they have enough servers for everyone to play with reasonable queue times. That's not even the real problem.
The real problem is what happens after, as player counts drop and you now have a (still massive) player base scattered over too many servers.
So much in Ashes depends on having a healthy server with a healthy server population, even more so than in most MMOs. That player drop off is inevitable, it happens in every game 1-2 months after launch, no matter how good or successful the game is. Given ashes unique systems (i.e. nodes) that drop off could be an unrecoverable deathblow to many servers / players.
Just calling out there needs to be some plan for server transfer or server merger going into big launches / big influxes of players. It is absolutely not something that can be kicked down the road post-launch or solutions created as it happens, by that point it'll be too late. There isn't going to be a "perfect" solution to server merges either given the node system, and that's fine, some solution allowing players to get to a server with a stable and playable population is required though.
This isn't something that needs to be solved now obviously, but it needs to be on the radar / road map.
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Comments
They should have a plan jn place for this by now.
Just zoning in on the numbers. I really doubt Ashes will reach these numbers, especially in comparison with New World, for various reasons.
* New World had a very large marketing campaign supported by Amazon's money which brought attentition even to folk who're normally not very interested in MMOs. Many of my friends, of whom several never really touched an MMO before, bought New World because it had so much publicity at the time of its release. I don't see a similar marketing campaign happening for Ashes.
* New World was buy-to-play. The MMO genre has been in decline for years, even more so oldschool sub-based MMOs. I'm not convinced that there are too many people willing to subscribe to a game on a monthly basis outside the MMO niché anymore. For lots of folks it's more attratice to pay 40$ once and then owning the game instead of knowing you have to commit ~15$ / month for the next couple of months or years. Most of my friends who gave New World a try back then will certainly never touch Ashes for this reason.
* New World enjoys a larger visibility due to Steam and even a larger visibility outside of steam, because they were constant news about New World, e.g. regarding its good sale numbers, etc. and this publicity was based on steam. Also being able to put New World frequently on sales would push it to the top of Steam Shop every now and then. As Ashes will have its own financial ecosystem, it won't get any visibility on Steam, e.g. you'll never see a popup mentioning that your friend just started Ashes. Given the dominance of Steam, this will also hampers Ashes publicity outside of the MMO niche.
* ... and let's be honest. The MMO core audience isn't getting any younger and if you want to succeed, you need a healthy playerbase whose average age isn't 40+ and who can tell stories about the good ol' times in EQ1 or DAoC.
So, I disagree. I'm pretty sure Ashes will do fairly well at its released - when it's released - but I doubt it'll reach the numbers New World did. Which hasn't to be a bad thing. New World was a fucked up mess after all, and we don't want to experience that again, do we.
I disagree with this part.
Younger people aren't really interested in MMORPG's in general. They would rather a shorter gaming experience which is why games like Fortnite are so popular.
Rather, in order to succeed as an MMORPG in today's market, you need to appeal to the 40+ (35+ really) market. However, in doing this, you need to understand that people in this age bracket with the disposable income to subscribe to an MMORPG generally all work 40-50 hous a week, as well as having actual commitments many nights each week. In order to be a successful MMORPG today, the game needs to take this in to account by not penalizing players that cant dedicate 20+ hours a week, and that is what Ashes doesn't do.