It's funny how people are patient with games they are really looking forward to but every other game not released in two years is "vaporware" or a scam.
Anyway, great looking game, very much looking forward to playing it.
Then there are those who excuse or ignore the facts of the situation and build strawmen instead
Who even cares anymore. This game is so far away from being finished that it probably won't matter by the time it comes out, especially if they're beat to market, god forbid they're releasing around the time of Riot's MMO (if it ever even releases as well).
The realists....
Bottom line is...
Promises were made which many people believed and bought into based on them.
It isn't so much they couldn't keep their initial promise dates, few games ever do.
What absolutely sucks is they won't or can't provide a new target date to backers after so many years in development.
Could be a year...3 years, 5 years or maybe never....
Some of us might not live long enough to see it's release, dead pools are a real thing at our age.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Promises were made which many people believed and bought into based on them.
It isn't so much they couldn't keep their initial promise dates, few games ever do.
What absolutely sucks is they won't or can't provide a new target date to backers after so many years in development.
Could be a year...3 years, 5 years or maybe never....
Some of us might not live long enough to see it's release, dead pools are a real thing at our age.
It shows he actually learned from his mistakes. He should have never given any dates to begin with. Only these AAA companies could give a date 3 years prior to release and then launch the game unfinished because they had to rush.
You can clearly see the progress of the games development. That is all that matters.
Not quite that bad. At least some people have actually logged in and moved their characters around. And Stephen is not now showing voxel graphic mud concepts.
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 like the ambition, but PvP where your town can be wiped out.... I'm not sure how well that is going to fly. Look at the headaches in New World - it is hard to imagine this being a wild success.
I like the ambition, but PvP where your town can be wiped out.... I'm not sure how well that is going to fly. Look at the headaches in New World - it is hard to imagine this being a wild success.
Love the concept though.
Personally I like the concept. Just as I liked Darkfall. But when people lose their stuff in games it creates a lot of heartache and exodus.
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
So many P2W games, mobile crap that should be picked on. 100% cosmetic shop, no convenience items. Just pure 100% B2P with sub. 100% PC UE5 game with no mobile crap. They have built a solid studio that keeps hiring well respected developers. We see evidence of a real game. Are we MMOs fans here or not lol
I like the ambition, but PvP where your town can be wiped out.... I'm not sure how well that is going to fly. Look at the headaches in New World - it is hard to imagine this being a wild success.
Love the concept though.
Personally I like the concept. Just as I liked Darkfall. But when people lose their stuff in games it creates a lot of heartache and exodus.
There are so many inherent advantages to being a PK that really need to be addressed. For some reason, developers are loathe to really tackle the issue in a meaningful way.
For a game absolutely based on PvE activities I cannot help but wonder how it will go when nobody is doing them.
I like the ambition, but PvP where your town can be wiped out.... I'm not sure how well that is going to fly. Look at the headaches in New World - it is hard to imagine this being a wild success.
Love the concept though.
Personally I like the concept. Just as I liked Darkfall. But when people lose their stuff in games it creates a lot of heartache and exodus.
Ark immediately came to mind. It is very popular but most everyone I know who plays has a love/hate relationship with public pvp servers for this very reason. The only people who really like this kind of thing long term are those who are entrenched above a certain level in the pyramid or chain, so that they never really truly lose anything and all those below them grind like hell to keep it all going.
I like the ambition, but PvP where your town can be wiped out.... I'm not sure how well that is going to fly. Look at the headaches in New World - it is hard to imagine this being a wild success.
Love the concept though.
Personally I like the concept. Just as I liked Darkfall. But when people lose their stuff in games it creates a lot of heartache and exodus.
Ark immediately came to mind. It is very popular but most everyone I know who plays has a love/hate relationship with public pvp servers for this very reason. The only people who really like this kind of thing long term are those who are entrenched above a certain level in the pyramid or chain, so that they never really truly lose anything and all those below them grind like hell to keep it all going.
In Darkfall my guild took and held a city for the first 4 months. We had 50+ online every night. Then we lost that city and dropped to 10 or so logging in.
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 like the ambition, but PvP where your town can be wiped out.... I'm not sure how well that is going to fly. Look at the headaches in New World - it is hard to imagine this being a wild success.
Love the concept though.
Personally I like the concept. Just as I liked Darkfall. But when people lose their stuff in games it creates a lot of heartache and exodus.
Ark immediately came to mind. It is very popular but most everyone I know who plays has a love/hate relationship with public pvp servers for this very reason. The only people who really like this kind of thing long term are those who are entrenched above a certain level in the pyramid or chain, so that they never really truly lose anything and all those below them grind like hell to keep it all going.
In Darkfall my guild took and held a city for the first 4 months. We had 50+ online every night. Then we lost that city and dropped to 10 or so logging in.
I think many people forget that this "game's" design philosophy was heavily inspired by Archeage (since Steven was admittedly a whale in that game for a while), so I'm not surprised if some elements of the old style of that game seep in (if it ever makes it release).
I like the ambition, but PvP where your town can be wiped out.... I'm not sure how well that is going to fly. Look at the headaches in New World - it is hard to imagine this being a wild success.
Love the concept though.
Personally I like the concept. Just as I liked Darkfall. But when people lose their stuff in games it creates a lot of heartache and exodus.
Ark immediately came to mind. It is very popular but most everyone I know who plays has a love/hate relationship with public pvp servers for this very reason. The only people who really like this kind of thing long term are those who are entrenched above a certain level in the pyramid or chain, so that they never really truly lose anything and all those below them grind like hell to keep it all going.
In Darkfall my guild took and held a city for the first 4 months. We had 50+ online every night. Then we lost that city and dropped to 10 or so logging in.
I think many people forget that this "game's" design philosophy was heavily inspired by Archeage (since Steven was admittedly a whale in that game for a while), so I'm not surprised if some elements of the old style of that game seep in (if it ever makes it release).
Archeage and Linage had a baby, you would have Ashes.
Promises were made which many people believed and bought into based on them.
It isn't so much they couldn't keep their initial promise dates, few games ever do.
What absolutely sucks is they won't or can't provide a new target date to backers after so many years in development.
Could be a year...3 years, 5 years or maybe never....
Some of us might not live long enough to see it's release, dead pools are a real thing at our age.
It shows he actually learned from his mistakes. He should have never given any dates to begin with. Only these AAA companies could give a date 3 years prior to release and then launch the game unfinished because they had to rush.
You can clearly see the progress of the games development. That is all that matters.
You clearly can tell the supporters of Ashes haven't learned their lesson.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
I like the ambition, but PvP where your town can be wiped out.... I'm not sure how well that is going to fly. Look at the headaches in New World - it is hard to imagine this being a wild success.
Love the concept though.
Personally I like the concept. Just as I liked Darkfall. But when people lose their stuff in games it creates a lot of heartache and exodus.
Ark immediately came to mind. It is very popular but most everyone I know who plays has a love/hate relationship with public pvp servers for this very reason. The only people who really like this kind of thing long term are those who are entrenched above a certain level in the pyramid or chain, so that they never really truly lose anything and all those below them grind like hell to keep it all going.
In Darkfall my guild took and held a city for the first 4 months. We had 50+ online every night. Then we lost that city and dropped to 10 or so logging in.
I think many people forget that this "game's" design philosophy was heavily inspired by Archeage (since Steven was admittedly a whale in that game for a while), so I'm not surprised if some elements of the old style of that game seep in (if it ever makes it release).
Well I think that Stephen hypes various parts depending on the audience.
Me personally... I like the idea of having something at stake that you can lose. But I suspect that many people will freak out when they actually lose a Freehold.
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 like the ambition, but PvP where your town can be wiped out.... I'm not sure how well that is going to fly. Look at the headaches in New World - it is hard to imagine this being a wild success.
Love the concept though.
Personally I like the concept. Just as I liked Darkfall. But when people lose their stuff in games it creates a lot of heartache and exodus.
Ark immediately came to mind. It is very popular but most everyone I know who plays has a love/hate relationship with public pvp servers for this very reason. The only people who really like this kind of thing long term are those who are entrenched above a certain level in the pyramid or chain, so that they never really truly lose anything and all those below them grind like hell to keep it all going.
In Darkfall my guild took and held a city for the first 4 months. We had 50+ online every night. Then we lost that city and dropped to 10 or so logging in.
I think many people forget that this "game's" design philosophy was heavily inspired by Archeage (since Steven was admittedly a whale in that game for a while), so I'm not surprised if some elements of the old style of that game seep in (if it ever makes it release).
Well I think that Stephen hypes various parts depending on the audience.
Me personally... I like the idea of having something at stake that you can lose. But I suspect that many people will freak out when they actually lose a Freehold.
Personally, I feel like if they were serious about releasing a mmorpg like this, they would start small and then feature stuff like this in updates/expansions. Albion online is a perfect example since its still pretty popular even though it has full loot pvp on many of their maps. To kind of off-set it though, they make crafting critical to that game so in a way, there's kind of 'lanes' for people even if they aren't really into pvp. I'd argue that a key to their success is of course them altering their business model, but also starting small and just expanding over time with other features. It just feels like Ashes is trying to design then ENTIRE mmorpg before it releases, which is honestly stupid.
I like the ambition, but PvP where your town can be wiped out.... I'm not sure how well that is going to fly. Look at the headaches in New World - it is hard to imagine this being a wild success.
Love the concept though.
Personally I like the concept. Just as I liked Darkfall. But when people lose their stuff in games it creates a lot of heartache and exodus.
You dont really lose all that much if a town you are a citizen of is destroyed or if you are killed. You lose gatherables you had stored in your house or in your inventory when you die. You will have to become a citizen of another node and get a new home and it will have all the same stuff your old home did. That is it.
You clearly can tell the supporters of Ashes haven't learned their lesson.
Yet.
I am perfectly willing to forgive a mistake or two and Steven has admitted to the initial release date being a mistake. Almost every MMO takes this long to make an MMO they generally just don't announce it so early.
I consider myself cautiously optimistic. There is no doubt they are working on it with the progress we have seen.
Ayoh lose things when you die not going to play then.
For me it would depend on what you can lose and can you substitute for loses. In AC you could get gems which were the first two or three things looted so your stuff was safe. You could bank gems, but you could not die multiple times without exhausting them, so death was still an issue.
Someone remind me, how many games you know that has been in development ( for many years ) 5-6 years by indie companies and they are at least 3 years away from release and which turned out to be good games..?
I can actually think of some indie games that took nearly a decade to create and actually released and turned out good,
However none of them were MMOs and the reason they took so long was that they were made by one guy in his spare time.
My big concern for AoC is that they keep adding mechanics,
I wonder if they even have a minimal viable product yet or if they just keep adding stuff on top without finishing the core mechanics and trying to develop all of them concurrently.
Shadowbane was a game where you could pour tons of resources into a town only to have it wiped from the map.
I just don't see this doing well.
For me, a red flag is any game that tries to sell the concept of a peaceful crafter being protected by his clan. I get the impression (perhaps wrong here) that some developers think PvP types enjoy protecting a gatherer while he looks for flax in the hills of wherever.
What they soon learn is it is more fun to gather flax by going and killing the other team's hunter/gatherers. With no protections, both teams gatherers disappear.
Shadowbane was a game where you could pour tons of resources into a town only to have it wiped from the map.
I just don't see this doing well.
For me, a red flag is any game that tries to sell the concept of a peaceful crafter being protected by his clan. I get the impression (perhaps wrong here) that some developers think PvP types enjoy protecting a gatherer while he looks for flax in the hills of wherever.
What they soon learn is it is more fun to gather flax by going and killing the other team's hunter/gatherers. With no protections, both teams gatherers disappear.
This is an MMO where your Guild will compete heavily for resources. Its built into the PvP of this game. Right down to the transportation of good and crafting supplies. You will see guilds in this game protecting their gathers and crafters. The economy and PvP is also tied together. You want to defend your node, you will need money to upgrade it. Having PvPers go into other nodes and disrupt gathering and crafting, its a good long term tactic to take down a node.
Shadowbane was a game where you could pour tons of resources into a town only to have it wiped from the map.
I just don't see this doing well.
For me, a red flag is any game that tries to sell the concept of a peaceful crafter being protected by his clan. I get the impression (perhaps wrong here) that some developers think PvP types enjoy protecting a gatherer while he looks for flax in the hills of wherever.
What they soon learn is it is more fun to gather flax by going and killing the other team's hunter/gatherers. With no protections, both teams gatherers disappear.
This is an MMO where your Guild will compete heavily for resources. Its built into the PvP of this game. Right down to the transportation of good and crafting supplies. You will see guilds in this game protecting their gathers and crafters. The economy and PvP is also tied together. You want to defend your node, you will need money to upgrade it. Having PvPers go into other nodes and disrupt gathering and crafting, its a good long term tactic to take down a node.
Uneducated Fly-By-Night Opinion: Game doesn't stand a chance.
I wish developers would think about what people actually enjoy doing with their time. For me, conquering PKS is a matter of thinking about what those people love to do, and that is PvP. So if I were a game designer, I'd think about throwing as much PvP at those guys as possible.
What they don't enjoy doing is sitting around protecting a crafter/gatherer. Even if they do, it is easy to circumvent. Just have a neutral or spy keep an eye on the gatherers and find those not protected. PvP players will eventually fall into a non-written agreement to leave each other alone while destroying other clan's gatherers.
Or worse yet, roll a character in "powerful clan A" and let their guards protect me while I collect resources, only to back door them to my real clan. lulz...this system is so easy to abuse.
Now you say, "But the strongest PvP players will be from the best supplied cities" which for me translates into "Hey, do the boring work of protecting crafters that you hate so you can have decent gear".
The question will then become, for every PvP player: "Why not just go play a game where I can do what I want to do?"
We've many thousands of games - has anyone (serious question) seen one yet that has pulled off the whole "protect the weak and needy crafters and the caravan going to town from bandits" nonsense? That is such a pipe dream loaded with bullshit.
Shadowbane was a game where you could pour tons of resources into a town only to have it wiped from the map.
I just don't see this doing well.
For me, a red flag is any game that tries to sell the concept of a peaceful crafter being protected by his clan. I get the impression (perhaps wrong here) that some developers think PvP types enjoy protecting a gatherer while he looks for flax in the hills of wherever.
What they soon learn is it is more fun to gather flax by going and killing the other team's hunter/gatherers. With no protections, both teams gatherers disappear.
This is an MMO where your Guild will compete heavily for resources. Its built into the PvP of this game. Right down to the transportation of good and crafting supplies. You will see guilds in this game protecting their gathers and crafters. The economy and PvP is also tied together. You want to defend your node, you will need money to upgrade it. Having PvPers go into other nodes and disrupt gathering and crafting, its a good long term tactic to take down a node.
Uneducated Fly-By-Night Opinion: Game doesn't stand a chance.
I wish developers would think about what people actually enjoy doing with their time. For me, conquering PKS is a matter of thinking about what those people love to do, and that is PvP. So if I were a game designer, I'd think about throwing as much PvP at those guys as possible.
What they don't enjoy doing is sitting around protecting a crafter/gatherer. Even if they do, it is easy to circumvent. Just have a neutral or spy keep an eye on the gatherers and find those not protected. PvP players will eventually fall into a non-written agreement to leave each other alone while destroying other clan's gatherers.
Or worse yet, roll a character in "powerful clan A" and let their guards protect me while I collect resources, only to back door them to my real clan. lulz...this system is so easy to abuse.
Now you say, "But the strongest PvP players will be from the best supplied cities" which for me translates into "Hey, do the boring work of protecting crafters that you hate so you can have decent gear".
The question will then become, for every PvP player: "Why not just go play a game where I can do what I want to do?"
We've many thousands of games - has anyone (serious question) seen one yet that has pulled off the whole "protect the weak and needy crafters and the caravan going to town from bandits" nonsense? That is such a pipe dream loaded with bullshit.
Ok, you do get this is a full PvX game. This is not a PvP game where killing people have no meaning. Its not a PvE game that is about PvE encounters. This is a PvX game that has designed every aspect of the game into why people do PvP and PvE. This is a dear for people who want a game, that everything is tied together. Every system ties to the PvX experience. This has not happened in a very long time. If you dont like PvX games and what that means. I would 100% stop following this game. As you will not change a thing. The core of this game is very focused.
Phase 1: Naive gathers, white knights, and gankers enter the game. Wow, this game is fun and everything looks cool for about 2 months.
Phase 2: White knights realize protecting gatherers is boring as hell, expensive, and then convert to gankers.
Phase 3: With no protection, crafters leave the game.
Phase 4: With the gatherers gone, small and medium sized guilds begin to suffer. They're unable to compete with gear/town upgrades and they're driven out of the game by the elite guilds (read: exploiters who've tons of duplicated assets).
Phase 5: With a dwindling population, elite clans realize they've shit the bed again and move onto the next game.
Comments
There is always an optimist in every group
Then there are those who excuse or ignore the facts of the situation and build strawmen instead
The realists....
Bottom line is...
Promises were made which many people believed and bought into based on them.
It isn't so much they couldn't keep their initial promise dates, few games ever do.
What absolutely sucks is they won't or can't provide a new target date to backers after so many years in development.
Could be a year...3 years, 5 years or maybe never....
Some of us might not live long enough to see it's release, dead pools are a real thing at our age.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
It shows he actually learned from his mistakes. He should have never given any dates to begin with. Only these AAA companies could give a date 3 years prior to release and then launch the game unfinished because they had to rush.
You can clearly see the progress of the games development. That is all that matters.
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
------------
2024: 47 years on the Net.
Love the concept though.
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
For a game absolutely based on PvE activities I cannot help but wonder how it will go when nobody is doing them.
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 think many people forget that this "game's" design philosophy was heavily inspired by Archeage (since Steven was admittedly a whale in that game for a while), so I'm not surprised if some elements of the old style of that game seep in (if it ever makes it release).
Yet.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Me personally... I like the idea of having something at stake that you can lose. But I suspect that many people will freak out when they actually lose a Freehold.
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
Personally, I feel like if they were serious about releasing a mmorpg like this, they would start small and then feature stuff like this in updates/expansions. Albion online is a perfect example since its still pretty popular even though it has full loot pvp on many of their maps. To kind of off-set it though, they make crafting critical to that game so in a way, there's kind of 'lanes' for people even if they aren't really into pvp. I'd argue that a key to their success is of course them altering their business model, but also starting small and just expanding over time with other features. It just feels like Ashes is trying to design then ENTIRE mmorpg before it releases, which is honestly stupid.
I am perfectly willing to forgive a mistake or two and Steven has admitted to the initial release date being a mistake. Almost every MMO takes this long to make an MMO they generally just don't announce it so early.
I consider myself cautiously optimistic. There is no doubt they are working on it with the progress we have seen.
However none of them were MMOs and the reason they took so long was that they were made by one guy in his spare time.
My big concern for AoC is that they keep adding mechanics,
I wonder if they even have a minimal viable product yet or if they just keep adding stuff on top without finishing the core mechanics and trying to develop all of them concurrently.
I just don't see this doing well.
For me, a red flag is any game that tries to sell the concept of a peaceful crafter being protected by his clan. I get the impression (perhaps wrong here) that some developers think PvP types enjoy protecting a gatherer while he looks for flax in the hills of wherever.
What they soon learn is it is more fun to gather flax by going and killing the other team's hunter/gatherers. With no protections, both teams gatherers disappear.
I wish developers would think about what people actually enjoy doing with their time. For me, conquering PKS is a matter of thinking about what those people love to do, and that is PvP. So if I were a game designer, I'd think about throwing as much PvP at those guys as possible.
What they don't enjoy doing is sitting around protecting a crafter/gatherer. Even if they do, it is easy to circumvent. Just have a neutral or spy keep an eye on the gatherers and find those not protected. PvP players will eventually fall into a non-written agreement to leave each other alone while destroying other clan's gatherers.
Or worse yet, roll a character in "powerful clan A" and let their guards protect me while I collect resources, only to back door them to my real clan. lulz...this system is so easy to abuse.
Now you say, "But the strongest PvP players will be from the best supplied cities" which for me translates into "Hey, do the boring work of protecting crafters that you hate so you can have decent gear".
The question will then become, for every PvP player: "Why not just go play a game where I can do what I want to do?"
We've many thousands of games - has anyone (serious question) seen one yet that has pulled off the whole "protect the weak and needy crafters and the caravan going to town from bandits" nonsense? That is such a pipe dream loaded with bullshit.
Phase 1: Naive gathers, white knights, and gankers enter the game. Wow, this game is fun and everything looks cool for about 2 months.
Phase 2: White knights realize protecting gatherers is boring as hell, expensive, and then convert to gankers.
Phase 3: With no protection, crafters leave the game.
Phase 4: With the gatherers gone, small and medium sized guilds begin to suffer. They're unable to compete with gear/town upgrades and they're driven out of the game by the elite guilds (read: exploiters who've tons of duplicated assets).
Phase 5: With a dwindling population, elite clans realize they've shit the bed again and move onto the next game.