Ashes of Creation - new open world MMORPG

[ryanmahaffe]

It's not a good argument, $15 is also a quarter of full-priced game or even several full games during sales. Most of it is also spent on redoing the same little content pool for the umpteenth time just to have a chance at doing something fun. Most single player or short session multiplayer games have much better rate of fun to time spent in game.

Well let's be real, no matter what, chances are an mmorpg will have WAAAAY more content than any single player game besides the massive hard hitting games like Witcher, BotW, GTA and so on. So I would think paying a quarter of a full price game for what will be way more content than one is fine.

of course, that is assuming the game is good.

[Rogalicus]

Well let's be real, no matter what, chances are an mmorpg will have WAAAAY more content than any single player game besides the massive hard hitting games like Witcher, BotW, GTA and so on. So I would think paying a quarter of a full price game for what will be way more content than one is fine.

of course, that is assuming the game is good.

Where do you see more content than single player game? Even WoW with all its money releases something like three raids, two zones and two dungeons for $360 (24 months x $15 per month) per expansion. Can you really tell with a straight face that it's more content than six full priced single player RPGs?

[ryanmahaffe]

Where do you see more content than single player game? Even WoW with all its money releases something like three raids, two zones and two dungeons for $360 (24 months x $15 per month) per expansion. Can you really tell with a straight face that it's more content than six full priced single player RPGs?

What?
Battle For Azeroth: 50 dollars and a sub fee so 75 bucks. THe content you get for that price is way more than most Call of Duty game, Battlefield game, 1st party Sony or Nintendo game, ect ect.
Don't know what is up with your reading comprehension but I didn't say anything about the entire expansion, BFA on launch has more things to do than the majority of AAA games out there. Like objectively.

A brand new mmorpg will have way more things to do than the majority of single player games, which justifies the price I think.

[Rogalicus]

What?
Battle For Azeroth: 50 dollars and a sub fee so 75 bucks. THe content you get for that price is way more than most Call of Duty game, Battlefield game, 1st party Sony or Nintendo game, ect ect.
Don't know what is up with your reading comprehension but I didn't say anything about the entire expansion, BFA on launch has more things to do than the majority of AAA games out there. Like objectively.

A brand new mmorpg will have way more things to do than the majority of single player games, which justifies the price I think.

We were discussing subscription model, not how much content is released with expansion. Also, if you cut out busywork quests and dailies about killing 10 X and looting 10 Y, BfA has about 20 hours worth of content, which is in line with linear AAA games.

[ryanmahaffe]

We were discussing subscription model, not how much content is released with expansion. Also, if you cut out busywork quests and dailies about killing 10 X and looting 10 Y, BfA has about 20 hours worth of content, which is in line with linear AAA games.

Yeah but Ashes doesn't have a base line price, so my original thought process was that the base game is pretty much 15 bucks which will offer way more content than the majority of AAA single player games.

[Rogalicus]

Yeah but Ashes doesn't have a base line price, so my original thought process was that the base game is pretty much 15 bucks which will offer way more content than the majority of AAA single player games.

Yeah, I agree that it's good that I can just check out the game for $15. Still not quite sure about continual sub.

[ryanmahaffe]

Yeah, I agree that it's good that I can just check out the game for $15. Still not quite sure about continual sub.

Hopefully the node system makes the game as evergreen in practice as it sounds on paper. That way the devs can deliver good content updates while the players still have content to do no matter what.

[Deleted]

Well let's be real, no matter what, chances are an mmorpg will have WAAAAY more content than any single player game besides the massive hard hitting games like Witcher, BotW, GTA and so on. So I would think paying a quarter of a full price game for what will be way more content than one is fine.

of course, that is assuming the game is good.

Repeating the same shit weekly is not more content. Otherwise you could just replay any singleplayer title hundred times and call it more content too.

[ryanmahaffe]

Repeating the same shit weekly is not more content. Otherwise you could just replay any singleplayer title hundred times and call it more content too.

The fundamental lack of understanding here is ridiculous.
Lets use an example that isn't a WoW expansion.

If you tried to say that Spiderman, TLOU, Mario Odyssey, CoD, BF, whatever had more content at baseline purchase than Guild Wars 2, Wildstar, Elder Scrolls Online, or many new mmorpgs, you would be objectively wrong. Quality is subjective, quantity is not, there is more unique content in the mmorpgs I mentioned than most single player games, Hell even WoW expansions have just as much STORY and WORLD content as most SP games and then you have layers and layers of other things like mounts, pets, dungeons, raids, warfronts that even if you only did once just adds up to more things to do.

Ashes of Creation for it's $15 entree fee will likely offer more than enough content for the asking price. Of course it's an mmorpg and what matters is if they can sustain it, but that isn't my point.

[sylenna]

it looks like most UE4 games and the character seems to be disconnected from the game world. not a great sense of motion. the WoW designers mostly got it right that models aren't skating along, i.e. one footstep from the model is one "real step" in the game world - most of the time. that doesn't seem to be the way here. honestly, it looks a bit like fictorum.

also, it looks very flashy and fast. MMOFPS isn't really my type and i don't want to aim when i perform in raids or groups. just too hectic.

[ryanmahaffe]

it looks like most UE4 games and the character seems to be disconnected from the game world. not a great sense of motion. the WoW designers mostly got it right that models aren't skating along, i.e. one footstep from the model is one "real step" in the game world - most of the time. that doesn't seem to be the way here. honestly, it looks a bit like fictorum.

also, it looks very flashy and fast. MMOFPS isn't really my type and i don't want to aim when i perform in raids or groups. just too hectic.

Well the important thing to remember when looking at animations and character movement as this is simply the first pass of action system in a pre alpha game. They still want to build a more tab target based system and find a happy middle ground, we will ahve to wait and see. I agree that as of now it feels a bit floaty, as for speed I think the camera angle doesn't help as it reminds me of Warframe, you can zoom out of course and the angle was more like that because PR people think it make sit look more "epic"

I'm not even sure if the human models present in the vid are placeholder or not. I would imagine they are.

Combat is so crucial so I am hoping they find a good balance of what people what, personally I don't want some spastic crap like BDO but I don't just want another WoW either.

[Deleted]

The fundamental lack of understanding here is ridiculous.
Lets use an example that isn't a WoW expansion.

If you tried to say that Spiderman, TLOU, Mario Odyssey, CoD, BF, whatever had more content at baseline purchase than Guild Wars 2, Wildstar, Elder Scrolls Online, or many new mmorpgs, you would be objectively wrong. Quality is subjective, quantity is not, there is more unique content in the mmorpgs I mentioned than most single player games, Hell even WoW expansions have just as much STORY and WORLD content as most SP games and then you have layers and layers of other things like mounts, pets, dungeons, raids, warfronts that even if you only did once just adds up to more things to do.

Ashes of Creation for it's $15 entree fee will likely offer more than enough content for the asking price. Of course it's an mmorpg and what matters is if they can sustain it, but that isn't my point.

Again: Repetition is not content. Doesn't matter if it's singleplayer (especially games like FF do this too) or mmo. Strechting playtime by repetition as for example making you wade through hordes of trash mobs between points or do other repetitive tasks to stretch playtime deserves no praise. It takes no effort and doesn't improve gameplay. Most mmo's just have more repetition than singleplayer because they want to hold players longer while singleplayer don't care about stretching playtime artificially. It makes no sense to see less filler in singleplayer titles as a defect.

[ryanmahaffe]

Again: Repetition is not content. Doesn't matter if it's singleplayer (especially games like FF do this too) or mmo. Strechting playtime by repetition as for example making you wade through hordes of trash mobs between points or do other repetitive tasks to stretch playtime deserves no praise. It takes no effort and doesn't improve gameplay. Most mmo's just have more repetition than singleplayer because they want to hold players longer while singleplayer don't care about stretching playtime artificially. It makes no sense to see less filler in singleplayer titles as a defect.

Again, I am not talking about repitition or repeat content. I mean a new mmorpg will have more unique content than the majority of major 60 dollar games that aren't mmorpgs.

- - - Updated - - -

My.com has released an long post on the Ashes of Creation Discord server addressing some of the major concerns people have with them as the EU publisher


Pay-to-Win
As previously communicated, we at My.com are, and remain, fully committed to supporting the creative vision that Steven and Intrepid Studios has for Ashes of Creation. Their vision appeals to the desires of western MMORPG fans, and we are fully committed to bringing this non-Pay-to-Win vision to the European players.

In the past, My.com has published and developed primarily titles that were, from the ground up, built around a Free-To-Play model. This is not the case with Ashes of Creation, which is fully tailored towards a subscription-based business model. We want to make sure the game reaches our players with a business model and monetisation options that matches the expectations of the fans and backers of Ashes of Creation.

We are fully supporting the Non-Pay-to-Win vision that Steven and Intrepid Studios have, and we will implement the same model for the My.com version as they implement for their version.

We believe that Ashes of Creation will be one of the largest MMOs ever to be globally published, and as a publisher, we are excited to help lead the charge , together with Steven and our friends at Intrepid Studios.



Customer Service
While My.com is always striving to provide the best possible Customer Service for any of our titles, we may not always be meeting the players’ expectations in this regard. The feedback about Customer Service is traditionally one of the toughest parts of publishing an online game, but this will not deter us from improving. We are continually working on getting better in this area, and we want you to keep on telling us about your expectations.

In order to provide the best possible Customer Service for Ashes of Creation specifically, My.com will be working closely with Intrepid Studios to establish global procedures and policies for our players in the European and CIS regions. We will also establish joint service level expectations that My.com will commit to fulfilling.

As a first step to underline our commitment, we will already begin providing a base level of Customer Service for the European and CIS region, starting on the first of September. This will give us some head start on making sure that everything is set up for the times when players in Europe will have actual issues with which they contact us. Should you want to get in contact already - we are looking forward to hearing how we are doing there and where specifically you would want us to improve.



Account Security
Intrepid and My.com will be working closely together on bringing the account protection services to an even higher level. As part of that collaboration, we at My.com are happy to announce, that we will be providing additional account security mechanisms, such as Two-Factor authentication, that will help to protect all our user’s accounts. This will allow us to further expand security and control over accounts and data for all users and we hope to share specifics on these plans in the near future.

With the most recent implementation of the GDPR changes for European users, we have already solidified the security of your account and personal information, and given all My.com users more direct control over their data. These recent upgrades together with the plans we are pursuing with Intrepid will ensure that our data security is now up to the highest standards of the industry.

In addition to this, we will also closely collaborate on providing the client-server technology that will support this account security. Intrepid Studios will remain in full charge of compiling and providing the Ashes of Creation client through the My.com / mail.ru infrastructure, so that the process is as concise and secure as possible.


Localisation
In contrast to the titles that My.com was able to publish in the past, we now find ourselves in the very positive situation of working with a game that is in active development, and which is being built by a team that has internalized the requirements for localisation and has considered this from the get-go.

Intrepid Studios is already providing us with the necessary localisation tools that will allow My.com to focus on the actual localisation rather than having to work around a missing infrastructure. This will ultimately allow us to provide a localisation quality that meets our own expectations as much as those of the Ashes of Creation community. Additionally, the benefits of cooperating so early with the developers as in this case, allows us to provide feedback on matters of translations before things are set, which will further benefit the quality of translation in the game.



Server Quality
In order to provide the server quality, uptime and general operations stability that we all expect from a game like Ashes of Creation, we will once again work closely with Intrepid Studios who, by building a solid and robust infrastructure and the necessary tools for managing them in the first place, will lay the foundation for what will be a high quality server environment for the European and CIS players.

In addition to the close consultation with Intrepid, our IT teams are already now beginning our technical planning. Working with our five, globally distributed data centers, we will be able to provide local servers that allow for the best possible connectivity, while working with cloud server providers such as Google and Amazon we are investigating possibilities for quick and efficient scaling of resources to quickly react to changes in demand of computing power.

Also here we will be able to benefit from working on the technical backbones early on in the development process, which allows us to make sure that the game and the infrastructure can work harmoniously instead of having to find ways to “work around” server structures that are developed for a more centralised market such as can be found in Asia. Intrepid supports the needs of a European infrastructure so that My.com can focus on providing the best possible service.

-Some dude from Mycom

In other news AoC will be giving some kind of development roadmap at pax, probably just more specific timeframes on alphas/betas

[ryanmahaffe]

I guess I am the resident Ashes guy here, worried it will make me look more hype than I am.
Anyway here are the major takeaways from the Pax panel, thanks to reddit for packaging it up nicely.

Official gameplay footage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59ih84Xh5E8

Full livestream of the PAX panel: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/304599522

News highlights from the panel:

-Alpha 1 is moving into a Stress Test phase this week. Access to the stress test will be given at random from the list of A1 backers.

-Official Alpha 1 is then scheduled to start mid to late September and will not be under NDA.

-First mode of Alpha 1 will focus on the largescale 100 player battlegrounds.

-In December we'll get the next mode - 100 v 100 Castle Sieges.

-The timeline can be seen here. https://media.discordapp.net/attachm...088&height=619

-Additionally, 4 months after Alpha 1 phase 1 has finished, Steven announced all registered accounts will be invited to stress test and play the Alpha 1 phase 1 build. This is to help them with balancing characters kits for launch and help them prepare the servers for expected load. Free access players will only be able to play this older build, while payed backers will go on to access the Alpha 1 phase 2 and the Alpha 2 build scheduled for Q3 of next year. Source (hopefully a higher resolution picture will be uploaded soon.)

-Alpha 1 Phase 2 will be when we see the full MMORPG build.

-Progression will be up to level 20.

-Nodes will be fully operational up to level 3.

-Player shops, government, and freehold placement will be included as well.

-Four out of nine races will be playable.

-All eight base class archetypes will be implemented.

-Character Creation Suite.

-25% of total game world.

-Alpha 2 scheduled for Q3 of 2019 will be when servers become persistent. The Alpha 2 servers will also be converted into the public testing servers on launch.

[Logwyn]

I'll believe "world structure is dynamic" and open world housing when I see it.

Every MMO that has tried dynamic world has reverted to static. I hope the world is huge or open world housing will end up with the game all being urban sprawls or not entire land for everyone.

[ryanmahaffe]

I'll believe "world structure is dynamic" and open world housing when I see it.

Every MMO that has tried dynamic world has reverted to static. I hope the world is huge or open world housing will end up with the game all being urban sprawls or not entire land for everyone.

THe game world is going to be 480 Square Kilometers of landmass, so not counting oceans. So very big.

The node system sounds very beneficial to the idea of a dynamic world and if it works would hopefully prevent the static feeling.

[ryanmahaffe]

They want a sub for this? It will be a HUGE challenge to find enough people to pay it, just like Wildstar. They'll have to compete with stuff like Fortnite and WoW, which is pretty much free if you play enough of it.

The gameplay looks meh too. I think even Neverwinter from 10 years ago had better action combat.

Curious if it will have proper raiding. These new MMOs are never able to provide a good raiding experience, if they even try it. They just rely on pvp and players themselves being content instead of creating big chunks of expensive content that take balancing, like raids, which is just lazy IMO.

At this point in time I just can't see another MMO being successful. It's too expensive to develop, requires too much consistent attention from the developer so the game is balanced and patched and new content created and there's always the possibility of just throwing 100 idiots on a map and letting them kill each other while you profit. Maybe when/if VR hits mainstream.

Happy that I lived to see and play WoW in its golden age. Was a unique experience. doubt any of these new games will ever come close to that.

Wildstar had more than enough people to play it, it failed because of broken and buggy systems on top of lack of casual content.

Neverwinter? I am assuming you mean the online mmorpg by Cryptic? If so that wasn't 10 years ago, it was 5, and the combat was alright, you have to remember that what you see is a very early version of what will be the final system, look at what was there a year ago and compare it to now, completely different and I think as far as progress on alpha goes the combat looks pretty damn good. Reminds me of ESO but with way better spell effects.

If by proper raiding do you mean instanced raiding? If so yes, the game will have OW dungeons and raids as well as Instanced dungeons and raids that like all the content are unlcoked through progression of a node. It is currently unknown how much instanced content will be in at launch. The players are the fuel that brings the content, everything you do will progress the node of a zone and the higher that node becomes from a camp to a town to a city to a metropolis will unlock new massive OW dungeons and raids, bring new dynamic events and open up the really challenging content, including instanced raids. At least that is my understanding of it.

Well I can see an mmorpg becoming successful, the last one to not die immediately was BDO in 2016. AoC now has well over 500k registered accounts, the project has only been in active development for a little over a year. So the progress and rate of growth is inane.

I played vanilla WoW when I was a yongin, like this Tall | | and yeah I really loved it at the time but honestly I think it was overrated, I am not hype for AoC because after Wildstar I am very wait and see, Wildstar was my favorite mmorpg but due to the mismanagement of the company and a release they weren't ready for it was doomed to fail. AoC is being made by a mmorpg fan first and a business man 2nd. When it comes to upcoming mmorpgs like Crowfall, CU or Pantheon, this is the only one I am keeping a close eye on because I love the energy of the extremely experienced dev team and the rapid progress makes me not lose interest.

[Vlaid]

I've not followed this game very closely but for anyone who has, answer me this:

How will they solve the issues of having a dynamic world, with player housing necessitating a MASSIVE landmass resulting in a ton of space that you will never see other people in?

Every game that has had some combination of those features has a major problem with empty space.

[ryanmahaffe]

I've not followed this game very closely but for anyone who has, answer me this:

How will they solve the issues of having a dynamic world, with player housing necessitating a MASSIVE landmass resulting in a ton of space that you will never see other people in?

Every game that has had some combination of those features has a major problem with empty space.

Well I am not entirely sure what you mean but let me try to explain as best as I can (though keep in mind I am not an expert)

In AOC there are three types of housing systems
-In-node housing, houses you can buy inside of a node
-Instanced Apartments in a node
-Freeholds, OW houses

There are certain areas of zones and whatnot designed for freeholds and in such a massive world (480 SQKM) there will only be a certain amount before space runs out (a lot mind you) but most of them will be out of the way so the actual zones will still be full of content and stuff to do.

Now I actually don't really like the freehold system, I wish they replaced it with just traditional instanced housing and let the world outside of nodes just be the content area.

[Logwyn]

THe game world is going to be 480 Square Kilometers of landmass, so not counting oceans. So very big.

The node system sounds very beneficial to the idea of a dynamic world and if it works would hopefully prevent the static feeling.

Don't get me wrong. I hope that they pull it off and it works. I was just commenting on past experiences. Also too much dynamic is as bad as just static too.

I mean if the players take a couple of weeks to build something then someone can come along and knock it down in 10 minutes that's not really good and fun.