Combat

BCG welcomes us to a community podcast with Greypelt, Okies, Truth Eternal and of course Steven Sharif as special guest. This is a great podcast, and I strongly recommend watching it. A link to the full podcast is at the bottom of this article. My favorite questions that got answered today, are marked in purple.


BCG: Why do you prefer MMORPGs to other game genres?
Steven: MMOs is a unique genre, providing the same ability to connect with people all across the world. With my previous guild, which I started in 2002, we had thousands of members. It was such a unique ability to turn on vent/TS and chat together with people across the world and bonding with them. Just the experience to fight with them, engaging in server wars, grafting and gathering the best gear.. You know, it is such a unique experience and that's why it is so...

What a great livestream last night! The stream, which lasted for about 1 hour, featured Steven, Jeffrey and Bacon. We first got a brief introduction, where they talked about bacon stuff (of course!), their Kickstarter office bet (Tristan cheated!) and how their team has increased from 30 to 70 in the last year. Very impressive! They are currently working on housing and environments, and we have some images shared which you can check out bellow.


First PvE raid video and Alpha 1 build ahead of schedule

We got shared a video from a recent Alpha 0 test, where they focused on PvE raid mechanics. The current size for raids was confirmed to be 40 players, but being alpha this can obviously change later. Steven also mentioned that they are impressed by the Epic engine, and their progress for the...

Yesterday Dungeon Crawler Network shared their recent interview with Intrepid Creative Director Steven Sharif. If you haven't seen the "From The Ashes" podcasts by DCN, you should definitely check them out. In addition to Steven Sharif, we also have the podcast hosts Aggelos, Alpha Soul and Stormzlord. In this article you will find most questions and topics that they talked about, and if you want to check out the whole video there is a link at the bottom.


PAX and Alpha 0

Steven mentioned that they received a lot of feedback after PAX, and of course some of it related to the combat mechanics. Steven and his team believes in transparency during the development process and wants the community to be a part of the process. The game is still in a pre-alpha state, they really...

The first day of PAX East is over, and it is time to recap! For the first hours of the stream we got to see the PAX visitors playing the PAX demo. Some of you probably recognized parts from the dwarf dungeon, which we have been shown footage from on a previous live stream. As a great way to finish off Day 1, Steven and his colleagues decided to play through the demo with us!

We start off by seeing a level 3 node at the village level. The last time we saw this node, it was being attacked by a boss, which had come out from his mountain cave to attack the node. One of the many great things about Ashes of Creation is that the game world will react to the player actions, in this case the node upgrade triggered the boss to attack the node. The villagers then had to defeat the boss to keep the node safe.

Sidebar: Notice the hilarious bug when one of the party members tried to...

Another month, another official AoC livestream. Steven and the crew played for about 1 hour, answering a few questions along the way. They showed us a few different instances, with some boss fights, the underrealm, an elvish node, and topped it of with a quick PvP session! Spoiler: Steven did not win the PvP! I have taken several images during the stream, check them out below!


AoC loading screen.

Stream starts with the amazing looking Dünheim instance, an old dwarf city that got corrupted. The monsters there are pretty strong. The visuals are great, especially when you consider this game hasn't even reached the first official alpha state (alpha 1, estimated ~Q3 2018). We also get a look at the UI, character screen, loading screens etc. Of course things might change, but it is cool to see how it looks now. Steven got some basic gear on his character...

Yesterday IGN released a hands-on article featuring Ashes of Creation. Over the course of about 2 hours, creative director Steven Sharif and lead designer Jeffrey Bard, guided their reporter through the wonderful world of AoC. Now who wouldn't want that job!

They talked a bit about the nodes, that most cities have to be grown by the players, through harvesting, monster slaughter, and economic trading with caravans. Also pointed out was that the size of the Underrealm, the network of beautiful caverns we were shown in the last trailer, was about the size of the world in Skyrim. Even more shocking, when completed, this area will still only account for about 1/30th of the total game world size!

"We’re much farther along than many other Kickstarter-funded projects at this phase," he says.

He was also quick to point out that the early quests of the classic formula of "kill x10 boars"...

This is an important topic for any MMORPG player. How will parties be handled? Dungeons? Loot rules? This will of course be tweaked before the game is finished in development, but this is what Steven could share to us about the current status of the AoC group dynamics:

The full developer journal
Grouping in an MMO is as important as any other feature in the game. Yet, so often it seems like an afterthought – a checkbox to tick to say that players can play together. But what’s the point if there’s no content that begs for players to band up and journey forth? In Ashes of Creation, grouping is an essential part of the game. Solo play is encouraged and totally viable as well, but we believe that an MMORPG is at its best when it’s fostering communities to form. And that can’t happen if no one ever plays together. Today, we wanted to talk about the Group Dynamics of Ashes of...