Trials of Ascension, Shady Practices and the Big Crowdfunding Debate

[Fliptables]

Hey guis, you are just a bunch of meanies. You clearly can't see that these masterminds will revolutionise the whole franchise with this masterpiece, it's time to put the donations "RPG" back in our pockets "MMORPG"!

yer rpg...yer rpg...yer rpg

[Azrile]

Oh well, 2 weeks and no news =/
They still show up to talk with some members how the self policing system will work =_=;

this is what happened last time in 2006. they just disappeared. and then he came back a few months later with that 3 paragraph ´we need 7 figures´ post and disappeared again.

We should start a betting pool on what day his ´outta here´ post comes. I am going for June 23rd...

[lawow74]

Yep, only their OT forum is still seeing activity. Everything else is dead for a day or two at least. I find it funny how some of their most ardent supporters went completely and totally silent, like HappyWulf.

[Kyanion]

Yep, only their OT forum is still seeing activity. Everything else is dead for a day or two at least. I find it funny how some of their most ardent supporters went completely and totally silent, like HappyWulf.

Some of them needed the smug wiped off their faces. That is what you get when you support incompetent CEO/DEV types with no abilities to produce anything.

[dextersmith]

Did I miss something and they have a dev busy working already?

There hasn't been a statement of what they're going to do going forward yet, has there? Genuinely curious what they're going to do for the future.

Someone there would rather have bacon than toa lol. $50 buy to play + further donations for unfinished junk, after $67k was already given. Thought toa was f2p. That's a lot of pay for no play.

[Espe]

Yep, only their OT forum is still seeing activity. Everything else is dead for a day or two at least. I find it funny how some of their most ardent supporters went completely and totally silent, like HappyWulf.

Many of those were clearly alt accounts run by the developers themselves. They were transparently terrible at hiding theitr tracks, especially in the beginning.

Want to know something funny? When I'm logged in their forums it takes minutes to open a page IF it opens, most of the times the page just won't even load at all... yet if I logout I have no bloody issues o_o;

Would not surprise me if they were severely throttling the bandwidth for accounts that have called them out on their BS, look at everything else the developers have done to scam people.

[Kyanion]

Did I miss something and they have a dev busy working already?

There hasn't been a statement of what they're going to do going forward yet, has there? Genuinely curious what they're going to do for the future.

Nah they haven't said anything yet, some of us expect them to just vanish into the shadows for a while only to come back later with some new money making scheme.

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Those kool-aid drinking fans slay me. They don't live in reality they still think this game is magically going to happen with 3 CEOs that don't code and haven't bothered to do anything useful in 10+ years. Yeah a dev is totally going to come on board and work for nothing! Once you look past the 3 CEOs that can't do shit you realize there is not much even there to WORK with. They have some shitty fan-fiction, tons of ideas that won't work in a MMO setting and what else? Artwork? I mean look at how little ACTUAL lore there was. Plenty of talking about things that they wanted to happen but very very little things actually on paper for people to see...unless you like fan-fiction about dragons.

[Taojnhy]

Yeah, exactly.

But hey, it's ok. All they need to do is pick a developer that will work for free. Yup, totally feasible.

Step 1: Get three CEOs/Co-Founders/"Developers". While you're at it, go ahead and involve some other people who also aren't developers, but call them that anyways.

Step 2: Get people to buy into your vision of making a game, despite no one who is involved actually knowing how to make a game. Fundraise!

Step 3: Hire someone to start making your game but mismanage that relationship, leaving your game dead in the water. Try bluffing your way through another fundraising effort!

Step 4: ??? Something involving unicorns, I think? The power of wishful thinking? Something like that.

Step 5: Profit!

[Kyanion]

Hey based on people like Xanward who were involved in the "social media team" they think they are devs too. I guess all of them that were called devs had 0 ability to create anything so why not, everyone is a dev!

[dextersmith]

Those kool-aid drinking fans slay me. They don't live in reality they still think this game is magically going to happen with 3 CEOs that don't code and haven't bothered to do anything useful in 10+ years. Yeah a dev is totally going to come on board and work for nothing! Once you look past the 3 CEOs that can't do shit you realize there is not much even there to WORK with. They have some shitty fan-fiction, tons of ideas that won't work in a MMO setting and what else? Artwork? I mean look at how little ACTUAL lore there was. Plenty of talking about things that they wanted to happen but very very little things actually on paper for people to see...unless you like fan-fiction about dragons.

Why were there so many volunteers? I wouldn't knowing that guy got paid. Were their expertise and contributions absolutely worthless? So many people unpaid yet $37k is unaccounted for. Hmm.......

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Brax wanted to extend Teddy's contract, meaning there is more money. Are they pocketing it now? Pocketing money raised for production is a scam and illegal.

[Kyanion]

The money was to 'make a demo' and that is what they did. So yeah paying one person, paying a small amount for Unity, some server hosting stuff and 'art assets' prolly used up some of it. But I am sure there was plenty left assuming they actually raised 67k which I doubt. So yeah I'm sure plenty of money went 'missing' or they never had that much to begin with.

[dextersmith]

The money was to 'make a demo' and that is what they did. So yeah paying one person, paying a small amount for Unity, some server hosting stuff and 'art assets' prolly used up some of it. But I am sure there was plenty left assuming they actually raised 67k which I doubt. So yeah I'm sure plenty of money went 'missing' or they never had that much to begin with.

$40k was asked for demo, less was used for it. Dragons are still just concepts.

[Taojnhy]

Brax wanted to extend Teddy's contract, meaning there is more money. Are they pocketing it now? Pocketing money raised for production is a scam and illegal.

Well, bear in mind that ToA, one of their more shrewd moves in a sea of terrible ones, made sure to clearly state that all monies received were donations and made without any legal obligation to actually provide anything at all in return.

This was one of the earliest things we read on their store page that had us yelling "SCAM".

[Kyanion]

$40k was asked for demo, less was used for it. Dragons are still just concepts.

Oh I'm making fun of Brax who when defending this train-wreck stated: "Even though we aren't structured like your typical indie studio, we have delivered on what was donated for -- a technical demo that is playable and showed proof of concept -- something many other 'normal' indie studios fail at." Just gloss over the fact that they took 67k to make a demo which most indie companies do for nothing.

[Azrile]

They are planning on opening up demo island to the general public for $50, along with a cash-shop and donate button.

You heard it here first.

The thing that I wonder is do those fans really not pay attention to how bad these guys are at managing money and handling outsourcing. Let´s just recount... they bought a MMO kit for $70 that came with a working building system that they can show off, but which cannot get past 30 concurrent players. They bought Unity Pro for $1500, and needed none of the pro features.. and now Unity Pro is free anyway. They bought a house model, and spent 4 months trying to get it done correctly. They bought a ´naming system´ that doesn´t work, and will never work over a network. And finally, they hired Teddy, who seemed like an honest guy and did an honest days work, but in the end, leveraged his own position and extracted money from them because of their incompetence.

Everything they have spent money on has blown up in their faces. God only knows how much money they spent on PR.

I said in the beginning, you could give these clowns $3M and they would not be able to make a MMORPG. All you would have is a lot of very happy subcontractors and a big mess of a broken game.

[dextersmith]

They are planning on opening up demo island to the general public for $50, along with a cash-shop and donate button.

Who's left to play? Their staff is disgusted too.

[Kyanion]

Who's left to play? Their staff is disgusted too.

Who would pay 50 dollars for that terrible demo island? I can't wait to climb on walls with some spider thing? I mean watch out for that "pvp" combat of standing there and swinging at each other and watch most of your hits not land because the coding wasn't finished. You want to play log chopping simulator? They have that. Oh joy.

[lawow74]

Who's left to play? Their staff is disgusted too.

They're not doing it, it's just another Kool-Aid Koo-Koo trying to hype people with the idea of it. And everyone is lambasting him for it and the idea they just need to jumpstart the project with a new programmer who's working for future shares.

Meantime I really do wonder how much money they managed to hang onto from all this.

[dextersmith]

They're not doing it, it's just another Kool-Aid Koo-Koo trying to hype people with the idea of it. And everyone is lambasting him for it and the idea they just need to jumpstart the project with a new programmer who's working for future shares.

Meantime I really do wonder how much money they managed to hang onto from all this.

I know it's just an idea, it's worse than the store idea but not quite as bad as "let's make a wow killer without money or skills". Do fans actually think further donations will be used for toa rather than beer?

[lawow74]

I know it's just an idea, it's worse than the store idea but not quite as bad as "let's make a wow killer without money or skills". Do fans actually think further donations will be used for toa rather than beer?

If there's still anyone left who genuinely thinks the Three Stooges are going to do anything more with their 'game', who knows what kind of bullshit they'll swallow alongside it?