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Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest news on Alpha Two.
Check out general Announcements here to see the latest news on Ashes of Creation & Intrepid Studios.
To get the quickest updates regarding Alpha Two, connect your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Vaporware ala Chronicles of Elyria?
TreVerity
Member
Does anyone think this is going to see the light of day? Great concept and this was very interesting 2-3 years ago.
1
Comments
Yes.
Keep in mind that any product in development always has the risk of not releasing. In 2002, there was plenty of speculation on WoW being vapor.
I’ve been following this project for close to five years, there’s been steady progress over that time, with some recent surges. So, signs are pointing positive.
There’s no risk is joining the forums, hanging out, and joining the conversation. I imagine given enough time you’ll be able to answer your own question.
Welcome to the fray. 😉
No it's definitely vaporware. If we had some monthly updates perhaps, where they showcase the progress, or even if they at some point had a playable alpha we could have tried, I would start believing this game would ever come out. But alas, we have had nothing like that, so this is definitely vaporware.
Edit: Ok that came off a little more snarky than intended
lol. That said, someone who hasn't checked in in 2-3 years might not be aware of all of these things, so, to be clear: Nerror's point is that we have had all of these things. MMO development often takes 6-8 years, and we have no particularly strong signs that Ashes will be vaporware.
The only people who refer to games as "vaporware" are usually people who know too well the state of Ashes and stalk the MMORPG subreddit waiting to drop the proverbial turd on it.
So I can understand the response when you come onto the forums and word a post exactly like this.
The only reason we get skeptical is because of the vocal response of the MMO community, which is a shame!
COE also never showed actual in game video or had an alpha while AOC has done both.
The jury is still out on how good the finished product will be but we'll 100% get a game. I personally have confidence in the team to produce a quality game based on what we've seen so far. It's more of a question of when then if for me.
The only real question I have about how good the launched product will be is does intrepid have the budget left if it takes 5+ more years. Being a mostly privately funded project with 100+ people on their payroll has got to be expensive. Hopefully for the sake of Steven and his partners wallet more people start buying alpha/beta packs once alpha 2 launches.
Offering Vapoware really only makes sense when you Incoming During your development is bigger than the costs you have.
Like CoE for example, he barely had any production costs which were covered by the funding and he was able to pocket the rest.
When you have 100 - 200 employees, which costs you many Million $ p.a. It would be stupid to have it be vapoware lol.
Where is your proof there is 100-200 employees working on that game? Or are you not talking about CoE?
talking about Ashes
It is known that the boss on CoE pocketed all the funds.
Ya i don't understand how any can make a comparison you don't have that many people working as well as producing content every month (with plenty of it we don't see as well). Had arguments with my guild last year, though its just people being overly skeptical but i suppose its fair.
Decent. Did you see the Mage Showcase stream?
There were some sweet cows.
No, I have not taken the time. I thought this game was coming out way prior to the current time table, and I honestly wonder how relevant it will even be 3-5 years from now. I wish I had not heard of this game back in 2017-18.Like if I just heard about it this year, I might have more hope. But ,they had a playable demo of the pvp back in 2018 and it felt like things were not far from being done, then poof, nothing else for 5 years. I feel like this will not make it. So I come back every so often, hoping to be wrong... I don't have a lot of faith any more in the genre. Too many stories like this one where they hype you up with their vision, sell you the early access package, and then deliver subpar games, if they deliver at all. A year ago I started feeling this way about AOC due to the lack of progress to a beta. At this point I just have it in my favorites to check for an update. Starting to feel like Pantheon is going the same way. Look what happened with Crowfall and Camelot Unchained. Everquest 3 sold me on a 200.00 package and then caved on it, but let me keep the Trailblazer flag to run around eq2 waiving to remind me of their pickpocketing skills.
Yeah, I understand what you're saying.
From the perspective of those who were 'invested' enough to actually give them money already, things are still fine. "Relevance at release" might be a bit harder to believe in for some, but I don't think most people that would answer you think 'the game won't release' or anything like that.
And since the Creative Director keeps saying 'don't give us money unless you really believe', I'll suggest the same to you.
From what they've been saying, if it does come out, it will probably be 'big' (at least in the sense that you will definitely hear about it) so I suggest maybe 'catch up on the very latest stuff and see if the gameplay looks good for you'. If not, come back in another year or so in case it changed.
You can check out those VODs here: https://www.youtube.com/@AshesofCreation
I went ahead and watched the video showcasing the mage. The combat looks pretty great! See you in about a year!
My assessment of why CoE imploded was that Caspian had absolutely no skills as a producer. I worked briefly in the game industry doing UI programming and got to see how important producers are for successful software development, they keep a project on track, find and correct where there is slippage and prevent feature creep from the designers from endangering the project.
Caspian on the other hand would constantly gut and major underlying engine code effectively resetting his team to square one. At the same time in had no ability to set or communicate timelines internally or externally and would reportedly just pass on the expected completion dates that his developers would give to the public with no padding and then announce delays on the promised delivery date despite having known for weeks that it was going to be missed. You can imagine how terrible it must have been to work for such a person. Caspian was a creative guy with some very nice ideas but ultimately sabotaged himself by refusing to hire a proper producer to discipline his own excesses. Basically, Caspian was to CoE as Elon Musk is to Twitter.
I'm not familiar with AoC upper management but they clearly did not fall into as similar hole.
Oh, sorry was not aware of that history, was just going off the present pattern which looked productive, how long ago did the professional producer come in?
As someone who wasted some money on Camelot Unchained and wasn't surprised or disappointed, I think this mindset is incredibly immature. They make it fairly clear to you in every presentation that the project may basically end up taking a decade, and yet here you are expecting to be surprised by a launch around the corner every time you happen to think about the game again.
Just how many times can you hear "It's done when it's done" without realising that you have to find something else to spend your energy on if the development itself isn't fulfilling for you to watch?
As far as "relevancy" at launch is concerned, if the game is good enough, it will change the landscape of what's relevant. And if it's not good enough to impress people 5 years from now, it wouldn't be that big of a benefit to you as a consumer if you got to play that game today anyway.
The playerbase who's only in it for flashy animations at the height of technological advancements is it's own worst enemy. They will never be served a community-building, engaging MMO, because the scale of good MMO development will always cause the genre to lag behind by a fair bit.
To the OP and others trying to compare this to COE, it is weaksauce at best. Jeremy Walsh never put out anything but words to support the money he took from his community. At the end he gave them store bought assets with some sort of on the rails demo that game development intern could put out in a week to try and put off the eventual lawsuit, he then went to work on Kingdoms of Elyria, a game none of his backers asked for or was needed in Unity, to give him something to show a judge that he was still working on a game, and thus could not be charged with fraud. If you want a chronicle of this (pun intended) I suggest looking at the various videos Kira has put out covering it over the years.
Ashes has produced iteration after iteration. I have tested in every iteration that Ashes has put out externally. I have a couple hundred hours in an actual game. While it won't be the final "release" version of that game, it is disingenuous at best to try and compare the two.
Aoc has shown us every stage of development its really the last hope for mmorpg for a lot of us. Even if there was another game to compete they would be starting from now. And indie games won't meet the players standards or have the development team for it. But I know you guys are dying for a game but be glad development team is going for quality over quantity. They could have choose a quick 5 year turn over and had less then 40% of all promises like black desert or half of the games released. FF14 is still going strong but the game was garbage when it released and the storyline being jrpg style is torture so lots of people pay to skip it. So it really isn't a contender for fun replayability compared to what Aoc is offering. Just some things to consider. Also if you don't want to purchase anything you don't have to here. I have and I don't regret it but I see a valuable investment for mmo future.
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