At gamescom, we had the opportunity to talk with Steven Sharif and lead designer Jeffrey Bard from Intrepid Studios about their upcoming MMORPG Ashes of Creation.
In the first part of our interview, we discuss how the subscription MMORPG Ashes of Creation aims to avoid the mistakes of the canceled MMORPG Everquest Next. After all, Jeff Bard also worked as a game designer on Everquest Next.
The team wants to do better than Everquest Next
Everquest Next was overly ambitious: According to Jeff Bard, Daybreak Games wanted to achieve too much with Everquest Next, and ultimately it failed due to technology. They simply lacked the technology to implement the ambitious ideas.
Therefore, an extremely large amount of work was put into the development of this technology. This, in turn, led to delays and made the project increasingly expensive.
Ashes of Creation has a key advantage: Even with Ashes of Creation, the developers pursue complex ideas. However, they have approached this in a different way. Incrementally and with the understanding that they can actually implement them. Furthermore, Ashes of Creation has the advantage of being able to rely on an existing engine. The Unreal Engine 4 is used. With Everquest Next, everything had to be developed from scratch.
“Ashes of Creation will be one of the largest MMORPGs ever developed“, it is said. The developers were aware of this from the very beginning, which is why more than 100 people are currently working on it, and this number is expected to rise to 200 soon.
The ideas the team has are grounded in technologies that actually exist, allowing the features to be implemented. Thus, the development of Ashes of Creation, according to studio founder Steven Sharif and Jeffrey Bard, progresses differently than with Everquest Next.
An MMORPG for the community, developed with the players
Ashes of Creation is developed together with the community: The developers also explained in the conversation that they are developing Ashes of Creation not only for the players who will receive a vast world to explore, but that they want to create the MMORPG together with the community. The ideas and feedback from fans are important. They do not want to develop past the community like Bungie did with Destiny 2.
A classic MMO in modern attire: Ashes of Creation will build on a traditional MMORPG foundation known to genre fans. And on that, the developers will implement new systems based on innovative ideas. 10,000 players per server will encounter each other in a huge open game world. PvE, PvP, and crafting are important. Here, the new node system will be implemented, which makes the game something special.
You’ll learn more about the node system in another part of our conversation with the creators of Ashes of Creation.
