Development News

Good news today! Lately the community has been worrying that we may not be able to chose ourselves what region we want to play on. (as some from Europe might not want to play on EU servers..) Thankfully, today's update from Steven, on the official Discord, puts that to rest. There will be no region or IP blocking. He also confirmed that Intrepid will handle the game client packaging, so my.com won't be doing that either.

Yesterday he also dropped a small update, reassuring fans that the game will stay subscription based, with no box cost, and a cosmetic-only marketplace, the same as in NA.

Today the announcement was made that My.com would take over publishing duties for Ashes of Creation for Europe and Russia via my.com and mail.ru respectively. The duties will include billing, server infrastructure, community and customer service. Originally Intrepid Studios had made public that they themselves were planning to publish Ashes Of Creation in Europe.

The announcement was met with an uproar from the Ashes community. Many European players are already familiar with My.com from recent MMOs like Revelation Online, Warface, Skyforge and many more. From accounts of community members on this site and reports online, the publisher My.com does not have a quality track record. From leaks of customer credit information, to poor customer support and unfinished localization's of launched games.

Steven Sharif founder of Intrepid Studios was quick to defend his decision on discord and other sites. Here is a quote from Steven on the official Ashes Discord.

"I...

Special Announcements:

• Intrepid Studios is coming to Europe at Gamescom in Germany (21st August 2018).
• Name Reservation will be available sometime during Alpha 1 Phase 2 (Hopefully).

Alpha 1 Testing Phase Breakdown:
The Ashes of Creation Alpha 1 is set to begin during the third week of September and will go on for almost 7 months. The Alpha 1 test will focus on three major tests:

1. Open world Battlegrounds
2. Castles and Sieges
3. City 'Horde' Mode

Open world Battlegrounds:
Offering variable combat modes with testing upto a 100 players. They'd like to provide consistent Battleground testing where players will be able to complete a match and instantly queue up for another to ensure heavy testing of the feature. Focused on Matchmaking.

Castles and Sieges:
The objective is to test stability with upto 200 players to ensure they have the right values and spawn timers for various mechanics.

City 'Horde' Mode:...

Finally we got the newsletter from Intrepid, which provided us with some great information. The biggest news is that Alpha 1 phase 1 is confirmed starting week 3 of September! Phase 2 is planned for early Q2 2019.

As announced previously, Alpha 1 sales in the store is closing soon. They have currently over 8500 participants so far, of the cap of 10 000 participants. The last day for Alpha One pre-order packs ends on August 15th, which is also the day the pre-order cosmetics updates on all the packs. So if you want to upgrade your pack to get Alpha 1 access, this is the time.

Phase 1 of Alpha 1, coming in the 3rd week of September, will be focusing on action combat and PvP related mechanics in the game. Testing action, siege systems, adaptive AI in the horde mode and more.
Confirmed so far:

• Open World battlegrounds
• Castle Sieges (Guild vs Guild)
• City Defense "Horde Mode".

More info to be announced at their PAX Panel next month.

Phase 2 of Alpha 1, coming in early Q2 2019, will be the hybrid combat testing...

Intrepid Studios was back with another livestream yesterday, giving us some new info on what they are working on, answering questions from the community, talking about Stevens birthday, baconfirmedTM (patent pending) and more. Also, what's a livestream from Intrepid without some mic static and video/audio problems? Feels like home <3 So let's dive into the details of the stream!



New combat system in the works - will be featured during their next stream

Steven and Jeffrey opened up talking about the team being "knee-deep" in design and implementations of the combat systems, in preparations for Alpha 1. They are trying to make it feel good, be reactive, and making it seem like a an extension of you. Takes a lot of work obviously, but making good progress. Steven did then announce that during their next livestream, we will get live footage! As right now, it is extremely early, and not ready for public viewing just yet, which is fine.

Steven Sharif said:

You will see footage next...

Click to expand...

Today Intrepid Studios released a press release, where they now claim to be "one of the largest MMOs in production. Quite a feat! There has been lots of new hires lately (and more to come), some of which are previous Daybreak developers. The list includes senior programmers, engineers, artists and more. Steven Sharif noted that “It’s pretty exciting to watch your dreams become a reality, and at the end of the day, creating an MMORPG that players can be proud of." It is definitely a quality sign to see the team growing larger as we approach Alpha 1.

• Michael Roca – Senior Gameplay Programmer (Formerly of Disney, Daybreak, SOE, and EA)
• Grat Crabtree – Senior Software Engineer (Formerly of Daybreak and SOE)
• Devin Lafontaine – Senior Artist (Formerly Daybreak, SOE, Sigil Games)
• Tad Ehrlich – Senior Artist (Formerly, Daybreak, SOE, Midway Games)
• Garrett Fern – Senior Game Designer (Formerly Daybreak and SOE)
• Zin Chiang – Senior Producer (Formerly Travian Games and Publishing)
• Midori Bond – Executive Assistant (Formerly Senior GM and Customer Service at SOE)...

The Intrepid team is working hard to bring us Alpha 1 later this year, which will focus on some large PvP elements such as castle sieges. So to our big surprise, Steven just finished a playtest in Alpha 0 during the first part of the stream (so the playtest was why the stream was delayed 1 hour). While Steven was busy having fun with the play-testers, Bacon, Jeffrey and Peter guided us through the traditional questions and answers section.
What I personally found to be the most interesting questions and answers, I have marked in purple and moved up. You can read these further down on the page.

But first, the highlight of the stream:
Guild castle siege sneak-peak with Steven!


Right into the action!

We got the see one of the castles in the Alpha 0 build. Steven did, repeatedly, emphasize that this is very, very, very early build. From animations, effects, skills, UI, everything. First passes, for testing only. While Steven is whacking opponents in the castle, he says how important it is for an MMO to...

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 networking, bringing vast improvements compared to the state of the game 1 year ago. The game looks fluid, even with 40 people being in one place at the same time.

You might of recently heard about or seen article's posted in gaming new's sites about Intrepid Studio's buying Daybreak Games. This is what we have been told in response by Steven at Intrepid as well as Daybreak Games.


From Steven on the official Ashes of creation discord earlier today.

From Daybreak Game's on their forum's earlier today. Orignal Post

If you would like to take a look at the article's in question here are the main two new's sites that this has come from.
www.mmorpg.com - Article
Massively OP podcast

So what are your guys thought's on the acquisition? will it happen or is it just rumor's ?

So that concludes this years PAX East. It has been a great event, Intrepid studios really outdid themselves this year. Really focusing on the community, answering questions on stream and being out there for hours. We got a fun play-through session with the developers and Alpha 1 release confirmed for Q4 this year. To recap the event, check out the articles previously posted and the streams:

Day 1
Highlight of the day was the play-through session where Steven and his crew ran through the PAX demo.

You can check the recap and video here:
Stream recap

Streams from that day

Day 2
Highlight of the day was the PAX panel. It was very interesting hearing the developers talk about their...