Ashes of Creation: MMORPG in which the world can change

A new MMORPG is in the works. Ashes of Creation is developed by an indie studio and wants to offer a sandbox world with a player driven economy, the option to build houses and whole cities and in which even merchants play a big part. PvP is important, too.
Players can create their own quests or participate in quests that are designed by the developers.

Interesting is that players can shape and change the world with their actions. Whole empires can fall or cities can be destroyed because of the choices the players make.

More can be found on the official website:

http://www.ashesofcreation.com/

 

Sounds good.
Things i couldn't find (but i am at work and have no time to go through everything):
- Indi Studio? Big project, small studio, doomed to fail?
- How is it financed? I see no KS or similar button

Maybe you know it from the top of your head @Lord_Darkmoon

 

They gotta dream big if they want any chance to raise the fund to develop the project and pay for salaries and operation costs.

The actual implementation will be a different story. Things could change as they actually spend time developing it.

I suspect it will end with something along the line with Shadowbane. After awhile, the game will be dominated by those who have more time to play. Those with less time may quit after feeling hopeless. The dev may try to mitigate that by offering town "protection" option, which may bring up P2W because they gotta eat too.

 

It is a very ambitious project so scepticism is understandable.
They finance it by themselves. Obviously they got as much money to cover the costs.

 

They pretend to at least.
There isn't much to see so far on this page.
All there is is making an account and refer the game.
I will keep an eye on it non the less.
But so far all projects of that scope I know failed to deliver.

 

Art style looks like a cross between WoW and LotRO done in water colors. Bleh! Doomed to fail. /runsaway

 

We'll see

 

Got more info on that :

http://www.ashesofcreation.com/ashes-of-creation/

"Ashes of Creation begins with us and ends with you, but there are many steps in between. We’ve incorporated some investors, but primarily my own funding has begun the process and we’re well on our way. The team is dedicated, experienced and enthusiastic about what we will be delivering to you, the player. We’re focused on giving you the version of the game we know you’ll love, and to do so we want to keep this as investor-lite as possible (publishing or otherwise). With this in mind, we plan on starting a Kickstarter in the near future. We believe the crowdfunding platform to be perfect for making a game for the player you actually want to attract. Perhaps most importantly, is that it allows you to be involved with our process. Through both financial and creative transparency you’ll be able to be have input with design through the developer’s forums, so you see what we’re working on and what’s on our mind."

 

I interpret the passage above as in they'll build a prototype (in R4 all we had was a sparsely populated Owl's head) to test the base mechanics then do a Kickstarter to fund the development of the real game.

 

The game is developed by people who did Everquest Next:

http://massivelyop.com/2016/12/07/e...-creations-lead-dev-ex-daybreak-jeffrey-bard/

 

Ah!
There we go. A KS. Well, we will see how it goes. Deffo going to keep an eye on it.
Thanks for finding this passage!

Which was, in my opinion, a rather medicore project.

 

Yes I agree but it also shows that they are professional devs with experience.

 

Indeed.

 

Well... They were going to deliver the game they think people will love it. Now that they plan on doing kickstarter and take direct input from the players. We all know how that goes.

There will be this one guy who complain there is not enough story line content with epic stories for solo people.

The PvP folks will complain the dev don't do enough for them. The folks who only do pvp on the forum, but not in-game will cry out anytime the dev team tries to boost pvp activities.

The power gamers will run out of things to do and start taking role of pseudo game designers. Those who don't spend enough time in-game and don't read the milestone/road map will assume the role of program managers and criticize the dev for not doing things their ways.

Eventually, they will make the game free to play and start running some form of microtransation to stay alive.

But it is always good to have more options on the market, so people can decide which one gives them the best gameplay experience otherwise.

 

In my experience they will just fail to deliver.
Like Eternal crusade e.g. that delivred not even 50% of the promised game without taking backers into account that try to force their vision of the game.
They just failed. Bit more than they could chew. End of story.

Let's be frank: SotA is actually the only KS MMO that at least resembles to what was announced (though we got enough people that will disagree with that).

Just look at the rest...i would say 90% of them have failed the same way eternal crusade has.
So chances are good that this will happen here too.

Or they might succed. I wouldn't mind it ^^

 

Yeah, I disagree
Judging from the story/quest/SP Content, SotA will probably not deliver 50 percent of what was promised. But we will see...

 

Former SOE Studio devs, and others. Many of the design ideas seem to be adopted from the now cancelled Everquest Next. Most notably that the game world 'AI' will adapt to player actions.

http://www.ashesofcreation.com/a-reactive-world-nodes/

They have some great ideas. sounds like they will be going to Kickstarter within a month or two.

 

Thanks for the update. Going to follow this closely. Though beeing a former SOE Dev hasn't any merit for me after they ruined SWG and failed to deliver on their promises with h1z1 hehe.
At the moment I am in love with CoE (don't get your hopes up folks, I am still in love with sota. You won't get rid of me that easy ).

 

There's no information about which platforms it'll run on, so I expect Windows only.

 

Most KS game projects look good on paper, videos and discussion panels. It's when the real code and prototype becomes available that the true scope of effort, manpower and cost becomes obvious. That's when the disparity between the promise & reality becomes apparent.