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Ashes of Creation Creative Director's Letter Looks Forward to 2021 | MMORPG.com
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Ashes of Creation Creative Director's Letter Looks Forward to 2021 | MMORPG.com
In the latest letter from Ashes of Creation Creative Director Steven Sharif, he takes a a look back at 2020 and the progress the game has made, with a steely eye towards the progress the team intends to make in 2021.
Comments
2018 no release
2019 no release
2020 corona delay no release
2021 corona delay no release
2021 game is still in alpha no release
2022? Beta?
2023? Release after 5 years of delay?
I mean if they are late, apologize, offer something in return but nothing. At this time it is always easy to say "delay because of corona".
And what is that about "isnt terrible"? If you buy something you can expect some delay, but we are now over two years behind and who knows when we gonna see full release of game and i mean full promised features. At this time we would all play aoc and have atleast 8 dlcs but nothing.
And do we really need more jpg costumes and upcoming keys with jpg costumes?
Even i have stupi* key i will never forget old times where companys would just give free keys for alpha and beta instead bundle it with jpg and png bs to make bigger profit.
6 months behind? In name only (and even in it's stripped down form Alpha 1 is more than 6 months behind)... so lets be honest here. He has promised a LOT of things for AoC and for Apocalypse that he never delivered on. Has he delivered a single thing since #2 on the list? I don't follow Apocalypse but I do not believe ANY of the other items were delivered. (and was Apocalypse ever actually able to support 100 person matches?)
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
Oh I've never been one to think "We aren't as bad as THEY are" is a valid excuse. I think the most dangerous part of Stephen's PR is that he so easily convinces people that the past didn't happen. Just look at it in this thread... people think he is only 6 months behind but it's because he has changed his definition of what Alpha means (plus Alpha 1 isn't until April which makes it a full year late and thats just from the 2018 timeline and not from the original pitch). If you go back to the original timeline, he was supposed to be having these weekend Alphas starting in Dec 2017, so they are actually 3 years behind that, and the game was supposed to already be released 2 years ago.
I'm confident that we will get SOMETHING delivered from these guys, but whether it really is what was first pitched remains to be seen. If its what he first pitched, then it will be worth the wait. If it's not close to that... then it will just be a waste of time.
We shall see... some day.
Lets not forget how @jahlon used this slide in his video to mock other studios for being behind development:
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
Want to talk about poor project management on top of the original lie? Let me know when they reach the 8 year mark
/end broken record
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
We have a lot of work ahead of us. In 2020, we will be inviting you into the Alpha One test phase where you will get to experience the systems and mechanics of the MMORPG we have all been waiting for. We are excited for all of the data this will provide us with and cannot wait to make the iterations necessary to create the MMORPG of our dreams. The Alpha One experience will not be under NDA, so our glorious community will be able to watch along as our Alpha One testers take their first steps into Verra.
NOPE- Alpha 1 test phase is now scheduled for April 2021
Additionally, 2020 will see the public testing of our Castle Siege mode in Apocalypse, where players will be able to experience our objective-based warfare, siege weapons, and destruction systems that will be employed in the MMORPG.
NOPE- Not only did they not deliver the Castle Siege mode, but they shut down the whole Apocalypse game in March
https://forums.mmorpg.com/discussion/487638/apoc-early-access-comes-to-a-close-mar-10th-and-no-one-cares#latest
As we continue development, we will be working to always improve our communication with our amazing community. In 2020, you can look forward to new blogs on classes, node types, freehold buildings and equipment. As well as, more in-depth videos that showcase a whole host of systems our Alpha One players will be experiencing in their testing.
Dunno- Maybe partial? But these are the sales/PR things, not the tangible game deliverables that were listed for 2020.
--------
So my suggestion, as always, is to focus on if these companies do what they say they will do. It's quite easy to just put out a list of great things they will do in the future, but a lot harder to actually deliver those.
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
I would really like to see this as article "Ashes of Creation - Never delivered"
Instead we see articles like directors letter, hiring and videos where we can see first animations for skills, mounts and design.
And dont worry about jahlon, we used to see him do things like this in aau, now aoc and soon fractured. Streamer who is remembered for making streams about failed games, praising them and never said truth about real condition in game.
Alpha 1 (really Alpha 1 Phase 2) early backer testing weekends started December 18th, 2020.
Source: https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Release_schedule#/media/File:alpha_one_test_schedule_asset.jpg
Castle Siege mode started testing on December 19th, 2019 and it had overwhelmingly positive community feedback. As for the shut down of the Apocalypse testing servers, the greater gaming community held a gun to Intrepids head to shut the tests down because a rumor went out of control that the MMO game was abandoned for Apocalypse. Turns out that rumor was wrong.
Intrepid has proven time and time again, they adjust their timeline reactively to feedback. Gaming community hated the combat? Gaming community thought UE4 couldn't have more then 20 people on the screen? We got Apoc. Gaming community thought apoc was replacing the MMO? Gaming community witch hunted the devs until they gave them their MMO? Apoc testing timelines were shelved, Intrepid gave us MMO tests first.
Apoc hit 200+ player matches and that delay you are pointing out in this thread was spent fixing a network desync error Apocalypse flagged. When they came back, they came back to the community with a 5,000 simulated client battle from the data we gave them from testing APOC on and off for 2018/2019. You guys can hate delays and apocalypse, but without both, the game would have cap'd out at around 200 player fights.
Source:
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Ashes_of_Creation_Apocalypse_castle_sieges
Source: https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Performance
As I've shown above with actual sources, they did fulfill tangible game deliverables to their community. If you're going to publicly throw shade at a companies rep at least do some research lol. Otherwise, you risk looking pretty dumb and needlessly toxic to the people who are following this more closely.
overwhelmingly positive community feedback
From who? There are alot of us who are dissapointed. From where you get that is was overwhelmingly positive feedback?
Also for alpha, yes it is in 2020 not 2021. Full 4 days of alpha holy cow! After that we get full 3 days in februry and 7 days in march and finnaly 1 month starting 6 of april.
Apocalypse was huge failure. They didnt announce it is testing of any kind, then they offered ember which is aoc ingame currency to attract players.
And sniperman dont even start with cyberpunk. We saw years and years of some mmorpg developement just to be trashed at release.
This people who defend interpid are same people who defended aa then bdo first 2 months and aau. Wont even talk about star citizen.
From the people who actually were still playing it as it got fixed in mid 2019. There wasn't a verbal NDA so if you go back into the community forums, reddits, discord around that time, they were full of those testers singing the castle siege praise, saying "THIS is what's going to make APOC huge!" and stuff like that before Steve decided to shelf castle siege release until the Apoc misinfo stigma died down and could be proven wrong definitively.
You can complain, but short weekend alpha's are pretty normal. They haven't even got into their content push yet in the development cycle so I don't think these tests need to be left on 24/7 for months on end, draining cash out of the studio.
Apocalypse was a huge marketing failure. But the actual game itself, especially towards the end when they really had it polished, was praised pretty universally by people who weren't just being salty about the MMO. Even shroud, and other big streamers for that genre said it was really solid after playing it nonstop, and said it could hold its own weight in the genre if people would just chill out.
It also was a huge testing success, which at the end of the day was its original purpose.
They announced Apocalypse as Alpha 1 Phase 1; A Battleground/PvP test for the MMO. That caused some confusion when they first launched in 2018, as it was not the MMO game world people saw in the Alpha 0 tests, but a single battleground PvP map. People were screetching about "where are my nodes?!" and that's what led to the rebrand of Apocalypse as a standalone title. It was to get people to realize this was a small slice of the MMO assets repurposed to test very specific systems.
Source:
Fast replay:
Anyway for announcement i missed it.
For streamers they dont care or they really care. For people who are getting free things is amazing. New upcoming hyped mmorpg = more viewers = more money.
Aoc reddit, discord and forum is one huge circus. Just check % of upvoted fan videos, and they make every video for every single word interpid says.
Difference between streamers and official content creators (yes, game have over a year official content creators ?) is if game fails at release there is huge chance they are going to say fck this game but official content creators will always defend it because they are very small streamers and only way to make money and build channel is to stick with game and viewers they got from that game.
I would really like to see gaming portal sending questions to interpid, why game is so delayed, are we gonna get full promised features at release and not wait several months after for them to add it so people can forget another promise which is quartely content updates, why game progress is so slow, how much money they raised from shop, why they are not doing anything about spam videos on reddit which are badly downvoted, why they use these spammer youtubers to promote game, is it really neccesary, what is difference between star citizen and aoc comparing their ever changing roadmaps which includes release dates etc
Ask these questions and if they answer, it is going to be amazing to read them.
Real questions not bs ones like on their stream where they filter sensitive questions.
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
You got a source on that information buddy? Every official source states it's the Alpha 1 build. The marketing word "preview" and "pre-test" is not because of limited functionality, but because it's quick weekend tests focused on stabilizing servers and QA bug testing for the upcoming public Alpha that'll likely be a marketing push.
This is comical.
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
What's comical is watching someone try and debate sources with literally no counter proof. Although maybe comical is not the best word to use, there is a real danger to people doing this constantly to this game as we saw in the past with all of these crazy misinformation conspiracies that have plagued development. I'd say it's pretty messed up more so then anything else to stir up hatred towards developers baselessly.
You had the pitchfork ready over castle sieges, and a lack of an Alpha 1 in 2020. You were given timeline sources that proved the pitchfork wasn't really necessary, but now you're going to try and debate reality over a word. Pretty cringey my dude.
I have set in stone things/ideas/designs i need to see so a game either has me on board right away or likely never.
How many studios COULD make the mmorpg i want to play,maybe 5 or 6 ,that doesn't give me a lot of hope especially when 3 of them already have mmorpg's.
Square Enix used to be the best option but they have gone full AWOL,turn into Blizzard 2.0 and Blizzard is never on board with my idea of game design.Rockstar is more worried about GTA and cash shops and Epic games is more worried about FN and it's cash shop.
I cannot believe any serious gamer THINKS an indie studio or kickstarter studio can deliver a really good mmorpg.I actually gave up hope 4 to 5 years ago,turned to survival games and just looked elsewhere to find something different/unique.
Bottom line,i hope MR Sharif gets the game he truly wants and earns a living from it,maybe one day it will turn out to be good enough.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Not gonna bother.
I checked and LITERALLY every single post you have on here (covering YEARS) is related to AoC.
I have enough of that from Babs.
You have fun.
The rest of us aren't going to play your word-games, but you can go back and tell Stephen how great you did.
I will leave you with this:
We’ll be doing continual testing of our game until launch, alpha and beta are included in this plan. Alpha 1 will be our very first “closed” test, followed by Alpha 2, Beta 1 and Beta 2. They will take place in that order, but exact dates of each test aren’t available at this time. Alpha 2 will remain active in a persistent state till launch, then will become our Public Test Server. (If you have a key from our weekly drawings, those keys give access to our weekend NDA Alpha starting in Q4 2017
ESITIMATED DELIVERY DATE:
DEC 2018
Have fun
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
Source:
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Milestones
The "weekend NDA Alpha" test referenced on that kickstarter page was originally a "friends and family" showing that was expanded into "weekend NDA tests", and then finally given to the greater community as "Alpha 0", which happened on December 15th, 2017. As shown in that block of text that you linked, that pre-alpha test was only accessible to people who won alpha 0 keys in community events and drawings.
Source:
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Alpha-0
Source: https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/36198/so-about-friends-and-family
The December 2018 estimated delivery date was for Alpha 1 as was stated in multiple interviews by the developers during the kickstarter event.
Source: Kickstarter interview Q&A's around 2017
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Category:Livestreams
They were on track to give us basically a slightly more developed Alpha 0 on that date but decided to listen to community feedback over combat and server network concerns. So that December 2018 slot was given to Alpha 1 phase 1 with the launch of Apocalypse on December 18, 2018.
Source: https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Ashes_of_Creation_Apocalypse_battle_royale#Ashes_of_Creation_Apocalypse_release_schedule
The announcement of that launch also included the announcement of Alpha 1 Phase 2, which was originally scheduled for after horde mode. Alpha 1 phase 2 is the MMO alpha experience we got now, that was delayed due to the network issues Phase 1 found.
Source:
Essentially, they've been in Alpha 1 since December 2018, as phase 1 was them tackling all the ugly background gunk needed to be done to get us to phase 2. The rebranding back to simply Alpha 1, instead of launching it as Alpha 1 phase 2 is because literally 0 people listened to them when they kept trying to say Apocalypse was phase 1 of alpha 1.
As I said before, almost all of their adjustments or "word smithing" as you put it was in direct response to community feedback, and their pledge to be flexible with their agile development method. They stated they were doing open development so they could at every milestone, stop, listen to us, and fix things while they still could be fixed. They've upheld their community promise and you're acting like that's a bad thing.
That is simply not possible, they can say whatever they want but when you write on kickstarter estimated, yes estimated maybe some delays but estimated release date December 2018 that means estimated full release of game is december 2018! You cant simply take that date and say it is for alpha you or them because then it is false advertising.
I need to mention that every pack have same estimated delivery date even Explorer pack which costs 25$ and you dont get any alpha/beta but you get 1 month of game time which means 1 month of full game time and some bs ingame and guess what? Estimated delivery date Dec 2018.
Also, on most of pledges you can see pet, costume, ingame character title, appearance bundle, various skins, mounts, guild name reservation etc, so even what you say is true which is not, did we get all these things? As i said it is easy to take that date you or them and say it is for alpha.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1791529601/ashes-of-creation-new-mmorpg-by-intrepid-studios/description
Another thing from kickstarter website:
When is alpha and beta?
Kickstarter Alphas is currently scheduled to launch in 2018, with Betas following after that. Note, this schedule is subject to change based on development milestones.
Last updated: Tue, May 2 2017 12:07 AM CEST
Alpha0 is what they call Pre Alpha (word game) and it started Dec 15 2017.
Real Alpha started or how they call it Alpha1 May 28 2020 and it was limited. After that was again Alpha1 for several days Dec18-21 2020 (just to say Alpha started 2020?)
They are clearly in huge delay and they are starting acting like robert by selling items in shop where you cant even see how item is going to look ingame and making streams and videos about things which even they admit it is in early stage of development.
Sources:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1791529601/ashes-of-creation-new-mmorpg-by-intrepid-studios/description
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Release_schedule
Edit: To say more about confused and every changing dates which you cant talk about it because you will proclaim yourself as "hater", which would really be like "guy who paid game and ask why they dont deliver in time", lets see some posts: So what do you think? Will this game launch this year? ~post old 1+ year While a lot of us wish to see Ashes of Creation Launch this year many prefer that it be delayed for quality assurance, the Devs have stated that this ETA may be delayed if they aren't confident they can deliver the quality they desire. If push comes to shove they will announce a delay and we should brace ourselves for that possibility. Personally im okay with a delayed launch! ~post old 1+ year, "While a lot of us wish to see Ashes of Creation Launch this year" "many prefer that it be delayed for quality assurance" no s* "Personally im okay with a delayed launch!" me too, pay me and i will say whatever you want ~reddit moderator Which all that makes me think it's gonna be closer to Jan 1 2021 than it will be Jan 1 2020. ~post old 1+ year Every year same questions and we get same answers.
I mean fair enough, delays don't bother me since I have a big steam backlog to get through, but I get other people are more bothered by stuff like that. Sorry if it came across like handwaving, I just have a pet peeve about wrong info getting tossed around and parroted.
Steve giving an expectation that the game could be given to us in 4 years with all the features he promised in my opinion is really the issue here for unmet expectations. I didn't find out about the game until much later, which is why I likely don't have the same burn out towards Intrepid. 4 years of development time for a modern MMO Alpha is pretty acceptable from my broad sort of backseat view of things, but I can see how an early backer might be more pissed off about it.
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
Backing a crowdfunded video games and game development in general involves risks and unpredictability.
Intentions and goals are just that. Not promises set in stone. Anything dev's say or decide is based on the information they have at the time and a lot of best guessing.
As things change along the way so will development decisions and timelines.
As a backer if you already trusted a company enough to give them your money in advance the least you can do is trust their judgement in doing the best for the games development even if that goes against your expectations.
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018