When it comes to the most exciting MMORPGs of the coming years, Ashes of Creation must not be missed. Despite potentially revolutionary features, modern graphics, and regular updates from the developers, large parts of the community suspect it is just another scam that will never succeed.
What is the mood in the community? On the website mmorpg.org.pl, there was a poll over the past days regarding the assessment of the MMORPG Ashes of Creation.
- About 55 percent of participants voted that “Ashes of Creation is another scam that will never succeed.”
- Almost 31 percent stated that they were initially excited but lost interest or hope for a good game over the long development time.
- The remaining approximately 14 percent expressed their continued anticipation for the online role-playing game by Intrepid Studios.
With 1,334 participants, this is of course just a small sample. However, this overall picture fits with the frustration of parts of the community, which MeinMMO had already reported on in August, after the developers of Ashes of Creation presented the prices for access to the upcoming alpha test phase.
Here’s the most important information about Ashes of Creation in just 49 seconds:
The Curse of Ambitious MMORPGs
Why is faith in Ashes of Creation dwindling? This is due to a mix of various factors:
- Ashes of Creation was announced in 2016, with the release originally planned for 2019. Now it is 2024. The first phase of Alpha 2 is scheduled to start in October. Phase 3 is planned for May 2025 and is expected to last about a year. Whether there will be only a beta or a final launch in 2026 remains to be seen.
- Originally, Ashes of Creation was touted as a next-generation MMORPG. The switch to Unreal Engine 5 emphasized this claim. However, due to the long development time, players are concerned that the online RPG will not feel like a next-generation MMORPG at launch. A curse that the genre has struggled with for a long time.
- It is now clear that Ashes of Creation will have a strong focus on PvP, which many MMORPG fans dislike. Even PvP fans criticize how Ashes of Creation handles damage dealt to characters in PvP battles.
- The long development with such a large team is made possible by Intrepid through the players who invested a lot of money in crowdfunding campaigns and supporter packages – similar to Star Citizen. However, the way the new alpha packages were to be monetized faced a lot of criticism.
What distinguishes AoC from other MMORPGs that are rumored to be scams? In the past decade, there have been several online role-playing games whose development was supposed to be financed through crowdfunding and that have either not appeared or have only been released in a disastrous state – leading to repeated accusations of scams:
- Camelot Unchained from developer veteran Mark Jacobs has been in development since 2012, but made little progress for a long time. In between, the studio even worked on another game, which drove many supporters crazy. Now the MMORPG is supposed to be released at the end of 2025. No one really believes that.
- Initially a Kickstarter success, then development stopped, layoffs, and lawsuits. Chronicles of Elyria has had a turbulent decade. Especially since the head of the project, Jeromy Walsh, has never completely buried it and keeps asking for money to finalize CoE. However, he really has nothing to show for after all these years.
- At least, Shroud of the Avatar by Richard Garriott was released. The “finished” product and the delivered Kickstarter goodies, however, had little to do with what the legendary developer promised at the start of the crowdfunding campaign. Fans have invested about 15 million dollars in the project. In return, there was mainly frustration and disappointment.
Ashes of Creation will have a strong PvP focus – you can attack the caravans of other players or you have to defend yours from others:
Ashes of Creation differs from all these examples in several ways.
- The people at Intrepid have been releasing comprehensive developer updates in video form for a long time. These not only prove that Ashes of Creation is making clear progress in all areas, but what has been shown – especially regarding the graphics quality – makes one eager for more. Development videos from Camelot Unchained and others have usually been discouraging.
- In all the years that Ashes of Creation has been worked on, there have been no dark news about development problems, internal disputes, or necessary layoffs.
- On the contrary, Intrepid has been steadily hiring for many years. In addition to studio head and creative director Steven Sharif, there are also many other employees who have been there from the beginning, such as Margaret Krohn (Director of Communications).
Through the numerous gameplay presentations of recent years, we can now also get a pretty good impression of what Ashes of Creation will be like, and how, for example, the potentially genre-defining Node system or the server foundation will work. That is more than Camelot Unchained and others have accomplished so far.
Whether all of this ultimately not only sounds good and looks promising but also works in the MMORPG environment will hopefully be shown by Alpha 2 this year and next year. MeinMMO will hopefully be there and report whether the ambitious online RPG can tap into the hinted potential. Ashes of Creation features huge raids like back in World of Warcraft – even with dragons
