The Last Hope for MMO RPGs

The Last Hope for MMO RPGs being a fan of MMO RPGs over the past decade has been quite a long road of disappointment we&#39;ve had Kickstarter scams we&#39;ve watched as monetization has single-handedly ruined otherwise promising games and we&#39;ve had multiple exciting projects be cancelled which by the way they&#39;re redoing the MMO project for what of the ranks Amazon is remain in a state of Perpetual development with no hope of ever releasing well unfortunately the latest disappointment comes in the form of an MMO that many were hoping would reinvigorate the genre Riot MMO a game that everyone was excited for based purely on Riot games track record have never Rel this is the same with every MMO it is the MMO hype Paradox the less people know about a game the more they&#39;re excited the more people know about a game the less they&#39;re excited releasing an unsuccessful product has basically gone back to the drawing board we never had any concrete info about what this MMO was actually looking like or saw any footage yet alongside ashes of creation this was one of the most hyped upcoming MMOs thankfully though ashes of creation is still progressing quite nicely and we&#39;ve seen some huge improvements to the combat showcased over the past few development live it&#39;s definitely gotten a lot better as usual in this video I&#39;ll break down the past four months worth of updates to keep the casuals up to date with Ash&#39;s progress who don&#39;t have time to tune into the 2 to three hour live streams every month in case you miss Miss ashes have cre I think also like the problem right now is that a lot of MMOs try to create an experience that people had 20 years ago and you can&#39;t do that and I don&#39;t think that anybody has figured out what the formula for creating the MMO that in 20 years from now people will try to recreate that experience that&#39;s the problem is people keep looking to the past to decide where to go in the future Alpha playable in Q3 of this year so might only be one more of these update videos from me until we have some actual gameplay to experience see happens but for a special MMO you&#39;re going to want a special PC a PC capable of handling ashes of Creations epic large scale battles particle effects everywhere tons of players on screen and the latest Unreal Engine 5 graphics whilst running at a smooth frame rate this is why I&#39;ve ordered a new gaming PC from today&#39;s sponsor star Forge systems do I really want I&#39;m going to be honest I legit did not even know who sponsored him that&#39;s crazy cuz I was thinking like and and like leading up to this I was like is this going to be awkward if it&#39;s like another sponsor no actually did to be in a situation where I&#39;m dueling another player to impress some hot e girl on Discord only to die because of bad frame rate [ __ ] no and with my brand new Voyager to Elite I&#39;ll never have to blame my failures on frame rate again I have to if I die 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gaming without compromising performance there it is wow what a great ad so true completely agree absolutely covered the August September October and November updates which showcased progress to the Village nodes the event system the Caravan system and Artisan skills starting out with December&#39;s live stream which takes place in a winter themed riverlands the focus here was the updated Ranger combat which has come a long way as you can see we&#39;ve got two full hot bars of abilities which shows that class design is well on its way to being ready for Alpha 2 to keep this as concise as possible I&#39;ll start by showing each ability along with its tool tip so you can just see what it does rather than rambling first up we have snipe a solid opener AB I feel like this does look very good like I I think this definitely passes the check the problem is like in order for another game to be like as big as wow was back in the day it it effectively has to be better than that because I don&#39;t think people respected like you think about going back and playing classic wow right now think about how well class wow plays and then think about what that was like in 2004 it was just so far above anything else on the market that it wasn&#39;t even it wasn&#39;t even close like it was like it wasn&#39;t even like one step above everything else it was like five steps above everything else like every other game was just garbage compared to that Lally couldn&#39;t play other games after playing well yeah Guild Wars was close no it wasn&#39;t Guild Wars was terrible Guild Wars was aw awful there not even remotely close you couldn&#39;t even jump in Guild Wars next the weapon basic attacks Barr yeah this does look good we&#39;re at a gaming Plateau yeah until somebody figures out better way ranged executability that has cool down reduction applied to it if the target is marked Mark of the bear Mark of the Raven yeah and as I&#39;ve said I do still think classic wow is probably the best MMO the Tiger in my opinion next we&#39;re given an overview of the hunt abilities which are basically of self Buffs starting with hunt of the bear hunt of the Raven and Hunt of the tiger yeah you have like different buff like ability optional charge capability for a more highly focused shot yeah that&#39;s what they did with evok strike not only does this provide AOE crowd control and damage but the ility and animation on this one is amazing additionally it can also be used to Traverse gaps and verticality easily my favorite ranged ability showcased so far next thund like I really like being able to do stuff like that because like for example in Elden ring you can do that with the millenia weapon art too and so uh yeah having anything like that is is great for a game shots would you develop an MMO would I ever develop an MMO um lightning reload which is a self buff that allows you to use select abilities with no cool down I don&#39;t know what the next game is supposed to be I don&#39;t know what it is yet I think there&#39;s a few games that have come out that I think capture like one dimension of it but I&#39;m not sure that I know what it is yet yeah I&#39;m not sure like a video got recently do you said you had to be an idiot to make an MMO I think the problem right now with MMOs is that it&#39;s actually a problem with the way that things are programmed and it&#39;s a problem with the way that Computing is right now because it seems like with things like Quantum Computing for the best of my understanding which is limited of course we will not have to worry about a lot of the technological limitations that we have right now in maybe 15 or 20 years probably even sooner than that so the big problem that MMOs have is monetization that&#39;s probably their biggest issue and a lot of the other issues happen as a result of that issue like things feeling not rewarding is an issue of monetization things taking too long like lost AR is a result of monetization so often times monetization may not be like the direct cause but it&#39;s the secondary cause of like something that is the direct cost so you&#39;re not getting a Quantum PC at home yes but the quality will improve over time that&#39;s what I&#39;m saying right the quality will improve look at unreal five unreal 5 I think is the best proof of that happening so I think the issue right now is that it is too expensive to create an MMO at the scale and scope that people wanted in and the cost of making an MMO is so high that it necessitates doing things that destroy the the game&#39;s Integrity I don&#39;t think that you will ever have a super successful MMO that is even half as popular as classic wow was like vanilla wow in like 2007 you will never have a game like that whenever the gamees pay to win or pay for convenience or anything it&#39;s it&#39;s just not going to happen bear trap CL compers aren&#39;t good at doing things I was just using as example right of the wild I&#39;m saying like technology is getting very very good at performance optimization like dlss unreal 5 Etc disengage undeniable that quality is improved and performance is massively better and finally you&#39;ve got the imbued ammo abilities which come in three types weighted Barbed and concussive three different self Buffs that imuse your next 10 shots with the various effects displayed on screen yeah this looks good overall the reaction to the updated Ranger combat was received very positively by the ashes Community for me personally I was especially a fan of the fluidity of the two Mobility abilities air strike and disengage as well as the B I&#39;m I&#39;m a firm believer that if a game doesn&#39;t have like super buttery smooth combat like fortnite for example fortnite&#39;s gameplay is [ __ ] amazing OverWatch 2&#39;s OverWatch gamepl used to be [ __ ] amazing like it&#39;s so fluid it&#39;s so responsive and it&#39;s so good you have to have that and if a game doesn&#39;t have that it will never be a big game attacks much quicker than I expected I also like that the mark abilities are off the gcd and I think the visual effects so far pretty good for this stage of development aside from the combat we also got a look at the range of skill tree and weapon skill tree which further augments how your abilities work I won&#39;t go into details on this as it&#39;ll likely change with balancing this should give you a decent idea of how you can change your abilities to was also really smooth it was beyond smooth after the ability overview the live stream concluded the ranger in action as well as the usual art showcase which I&#39;ll flash on screen now this looks amazing how far are we from launch uh realistically the game will probably go into an open Beta at the end of the year and then it will probably come out in 2027 I assume if I had to guess and that was pretty much it for the December 2023 update overall a great update to probably the end of 2027 2024 started off with an absolute development live stream that showcased ashes of Creations Caravan PVP system starting out Steven has his raid group make their way to a Viewpoint where they this was really cool and this goes back to what I was saying that like MMOs should look at um like isekai animes like solo leveling Sword Art Online Overlord Etc and then figure out what is it and like what are the plot devices in those stories and how can we make them real because those are some of the most popular animes people [ __ ] love them shanga Frontier yeah there&#39;s another one how can you make that experience happen in real life or not real life but like in real life in a real game wait ready to Ambush a passing Caravan protected by another raid group The approach then battle ensues oh my god oh it&#39;s it&#39;s Bloodshed yeah the problem is that see here&#39;s still the problem is that this combat isn&#39;t good it&#39;s better but it&#39;s not good classic wow is still way better than this and that came out in 2004 that&#39;s just the way it is and again I don&#39;t think people respect how far and above classic wow was over everything it was not even funny it It&#39;s like um like classic wow was like whenever Apple introduced like the iPod or the iPhone it was so far above every single thing in the market that it took everybody else multiple years to catch up and even then they didn&#39;t really catch up all the way they just completely blew up everybody else out do you think tab targeting is the future I think a soft lock Target is the future but aimed attacks should be uh available once the players are slain The Raid then turn the focus toward damaging the Caravan like lock on and destroyed catches fire and the crates of loot carried by the Caravan are then scattered around the area a victory icon then pops up on the UI and instructs the raid to pillage their loot at this point you&#39;re able to see that the type of contents in the crates is displayed with an icon on top of the crate some crates contain Commodities some contain materials Steven approaches a green marked crate presses e and is able to open the crate to loot stolen Commodities these are basically certificates that can be sold to Black Market vendors for gold the second type of lootable crate is material in this instance rubies due to the sheer amount of loot though this is too much for the raid to carry additionally if you manually loot the crates you get much less money for turning them in compared to if you deliver them via your own Caravan so Steven opens his inventory clicks on the Caravan item and this begins a countdown for a caravan to be summoned the length of time you need to wait for this summoning depends on the distance between you and the node your Caravan is stored at next the group need to wait around the summoning this by the way was probably my favorite update recently because these social systems are what will keep the game alive or kill but this is what will keep people continuously playing the game and logging on on a regular basis like an Overlord there&#39;s a dungeon building and not only that it&#39;s different species and alignments which help enhance RP yeah I guess it&#39;s because whenever something&#39;s so good and its category comes out every product after that tries to be a better imitation of it exactly yeah and like wow did a lot of things like at the time that MMOs did not do and it was considered bad for MMOs to do like wow was actually looked down on at the time as being like a baby MMO and defend it from attackers eventually the Caravan arrives we Mount up approach the cargo and there&#39;s a button appear on the Caravan hot bar called collect cargo yeah upon clicking this an AOE Circle appears and you&#39;re able to instantly loot the cargo within the radius of the circle into your Caravan The Raid then set off having successfully stolen the cargo from the other raid group into their own Caravan and eventually reach a body of water this was real were able to see how a ground Caravan is able to convert to a raft after going through a few minutes of building during this process you&#39;re able to see the details of how the Caravan is slowly Tak I think this by the way this by is probably the coolest thing uh like with with everything like this is really really awesome I also think that there needs to be more large bodies of water like these are this is too narrow of a channel built into a raft to Traverse the water obviously it&#39;s very vulnerable from St grou repels the attacking the Caravan the Caravan successfully converts into a ra see it slide down the ramp and splash as it&#39;s deployed into the water really nice attention to detail The Raid group swim over to the raft jump on and we see this really cool scene of the boys out on the water freely moving around the raft wind in the sails waves generated from the movement of the boat it all looked super cool whilst on the water it&#39;s explained that the game will have a current system with the water similar to arage where your speed will increase if you sail with the current and slow down whilst against is like that if you do nothing the current will slowly move you along on its own current strength will be different depending on the river and the location after a bit of sailing around the raid run into an ambush whilst at Sea yeah I I think that this is like this is about 20° off of incredible this experience still feels too gy to me what is in my opinion one of the best experiences like an out at Sea experience it&#39;s [ __ ] valheim valheim is lit holy [ __ ] I don&#39;t know exactly how you can get to that with this but like for example you should have other players able to like increase the speed of the boat by rowing the boat or something like that but turn around to safety disembark the raft and convert it back to a land Caravan in doing so the entire conversion process is repeated but in Reverse with the raft this time being deconstructed and needing to once again be defended with the land Caravan rebuilt I think another thing is that I don&#39;t like the concept that if you get knocked off the raft you can just swim to shore I think that that kind of removes the it removes the severity of it it removes the tension like I don&#39;t like how people are following the raft around on the the shore and then just running back and forth to the raft like I just it feels like a game it doesn&#39;t feel like it&#39;s an experience like here&#39;s another vibe in Rust taking off with the massive [ __ ] helicopter with everything in it everybody is done looting and making it back to your base it is all about the experience and the vibe it is a game though but it should try its best not to be group make their way to the node where they&#39;re attacked one final time they successfully defend the Caravan then arrive at the node where the goods are able to be unpacked what I&#39;m saying is that the immersion in the game should take you away from the obvious fact that you&#39;re playing a game whenever you&#39;re playing a great game I think that the game itself is kind of put to the side and you can have a Transcendent experience that is fully immersive and I think that the more elements and more things in a game that function in the same way that real life does or at least create real life emotions every single thing like that like the feeling of tension in a game you feel tension it&#39;s not like there&#39;s video game tension tension is an emotional feeling so if a game makes you feel tension the game is real does that does that make sense it&#39;s sounds weird but I I I think it does to do this talk to a caravan Master click Caravan storage where all of your goods will be displayed then you&#39;re able to right click on the goods and unpack them into the node cargo storage which will take a certain period of time during which the materials being unpacked will be temporarily locked next we head over to the Commodities vendor and sell those crates directly to the NPC and finally we head over to a shady back alley room where we&#39;re able to sell the stolen Commodities that were manually looted to a black market vendor the black market is however only available should a node choose to unlock it via the node Marketplace skill tree progression path very brief art update to end the January live stream and overall it was an update that was received pretty well although there was a lot of concerns from the community regarding there seemingly not being a whole lot of risk to attacking Caravans on the side of the attackers which sparked quite a bit of debate point we don&#39;t have time get into this in this video but overall another great showcase where I was particularly impressed with the attention to detail to the animation the Caravan to a raft February&#39;s development live stream wasn&#39;t interesting also like this is another thing is that I think players should be able to accelerate the crafting of the boat and they should do that through different mini games that the boat construction building or construction area uh pre-creases like for example a thing to like you know disassemble the uh the wagon and then carry the wood over to an area where the boat is being assembled and it will create multiple mini games and it will progress on its own naturally but you can do it faster if you&#39;re helping them like obviously like pow world right or like um I I think that&#39;s probably the first example I would think of one is it was focused around commission and gave us a good idea it it&#39;s it&#39;s not about it being men Max it&#39;s about it being real and authentic because that&#39;s the way it would work in real life and every single thing that you can do that&#39;s the same as in real life adds to that immersion day-to-day solo gamepl would look like in ashes of creation starting out Steven&#39;s piloting Mage and heads over to the node commission board at first glance this reminded me a lot of new world&#39;s Town board missions except with the addition of varying rarity levels for Missions and that&#39;s pretty much what they are so solo content that funnels players into other content and contribute to the progress of story arcs taking you to areas where events are triggered and also pick up side quests along the way we take two commissions with objectives relatively close to each other and along the way are beckoned over by a minur which after some dialogue offers us a side quest to talk to his brother find the brother who then gives us another side quest to kill other minur and after killing a few an event is spawned where the Minotaur leader is summoned that looks really nice but by the way a lot of games are afraid of this type of visual I&#39;m going to be honest guys back in the day this [ __ ] was [ __ ] awesome so like there were these fog maps that would happen in pubg and you wouldn&#39;t be able to see anybody else around you it was actually like really [ __ ] scary because you didn&#39;t know like that&#39;s the way the normal game is right and then you had rain Maps too right this is in the military base and like look at that like you&#39;re just looking out into the distance you can&#39;t really see or tell what the [ __ ] is going on at all I think a lot of developers are afraid of low visibility uh areas I don&#39;t think that they should be but I think that they should be careful with how they design them like a good example of low visibility being good is something like Dragon&#39;s Dogma 2 it&#39;s something like valheim at night I it&#39;s like the pubg fog map I really like that uh like Blight Town in Dark Souls 1 it doesn&#39;t necessarily have to be like impossible to see but it has to be like uh to a degree oppressive and I think that fog maps in pubg are probably the best example of that being like really cool to play I really really enjoyed doing these a lot like I had some of the best times ever like with me McConnell train Zack esand like playing these maps and like even the rain map too uh was amazing which also results in a change of the weather to a storm the storm features weather hazards in the form of lightning bolts which damage mobs and as we find out later can basically One-Shot you something I found a bit off during this game play was how the rain changes Direction based on your movement of the camera that&#39;s this the same new world is the same thing it&#39;s because the rain doesn&#39;t actually exist uh it&#39;s like a uh camera texture effect this didn&#39;t look good time they can fix that the next 20 minutes is basically just doing in the form of commissions side quests and events personally I found this live stream quite hard to watch as Steven&#39;s piloting of the Mage didn&#39;t make the class look very appealing to play after completing some step sucks yeah it&#39; be my better but stepen sucks so yeah objectives and arriving at a Viewpoint the gameplay section of this live stream ends with the node leveling up and the beginning of a new story arc which brings with it changes to the area yeah like the idea of the giant like ancient tree burning is really cool but this animation doesn&#39;t look good like it just doesn&#39;t look good um like I&#39;m trying to think of like what what is a really really cool massive large scale event like that that&#39;s good I don&#39;t I&#39;m I&#39;m trying to think of like something that works that way but the UR tree yeah yeah but like that&#39;s also Skybox right again most time it&#39;s it&#39;s pretty SC yeah Elder ring bur three I think that might be the best one that tree and power world I don&#39;t know as usual a quick look at the art update Dragon God and Demon Souls almost and that was pretty much it for February&#39;s development live stream overall I thought this one was kind of mid I thought the environmental hazards on display were cool but seeing that Mage gameplay with the clicking and backpedaling was really hard to watch the community reception to this one was quite positive though with many comments saying things like it&#39;s starting to look like a somewhat finished game yeah q1 2024 ended with an Banger of a development live stream this time showing off the updated combat to the fighter class similar to what we did with the ranger I&#39;ll just show off each individual ability with the tool tip info on screen to keep things concise starting out we&#39;re actually seeing the male orc race in game for the first time we get a quick look at the skill tree explanation of the momentum system which is essentially rage if you&#39;re familiar with the Warrior from World of Warcraft with some abilities generating momentum and others spending it starting off with the first ability Blitz which is basically your standard Warrior charge ability except this one seems extremely strong in that you can jump and also like there&#39;s a very big component to this let me go back that&#39;s a power stance that&#39;s [ __ ] cool and I think that like for example in armored Core 6 and in Elden ring there are a lot of things that you can do in that game that look really [ __ ] cool like let&#39;s take out the idea of like oh how much damage it does or anything like that does this look [ __ ] badass yes it does strong in that you can jump and charge vertically to get on top of high ground next brutal cleave which is an ability and momentum shares a cool down with overpower is basically the single Target counterpart to cleave the pile driver MIM which is probably my favorite Warrior ability which can be augmented via the skill tree to either be a frontal cone or range Shockwave attack battlecry like basically you want to have a lot of like uh you know almost anime motions but not have them like anime if that makes sense cataclysm another Super impct doesn&#39;t need to be anime for something to feel like anime like Elder ring one reminds me of blood Seekers Al from Dota 2 crippling blow basically hamstring from Wow mhm lethal blow your executability something interesting with this however is that you can spec it so that 50% of your Overkill damage is returned to you as health and Mana blood fusion and off gcd leech buff lunging assault leap strike basically heroic leap on steroids this can also be used to daverse verticality and gaps next we&#39;ve got three different forms weird stances form yeah I think that Warriors should have Mana but that shouldn&#39;t be the resource they use like for any physical attack they shouldn&#39;t use Mana but there should be like a void strike or some other type of ability so like this is the fantasy that I go after whenever I think about that I go after the fantasy of goblin Slayer being able to use the Scrolls in combat as magic spells even though he&#39;s a warrior I think that&#39;s super [ __ ] cool so I think that Mana plays a plays a role but should only play like a very small utility role that&#39;s not integral to combat ferocity form of Solarity and form of fluidity next we&#39;ve got exert which basically combines the effects of each of your forms into a big spender where for 5 seconds or so you&#39;ll be unstoppable this also acts as a cc break up next we got to look at the weapon skill tree and great sword basic attack Combos and it&#39;s worth remembering that each class in ashes will be able to use any weapon you could play as a great sword wielding Mage for example it basically just changes your weapon basic attack and each weapon has its own skill tree with the ability showcase out of the way a group was formed and they demonstrated how the warrior looks in group play during this section I noticed that you seem to loot mobs individually in ashes which looks a bit clunky personally I think it would be much better if they just added the AOE loot option along with auto loot exactly how it works in World of Warcraft if it&#39;s well we don&#39;t have autoloot I mean like uh lazy Pon is a BDO player uh I I know he used to be at least and um I think that looting should feel cool but it&#39;s also like it it&#39;s very hard for looting to avoid being annoying like I never get manual loot yeah like I I kind of like the idea of having to man ually loot things but like with an AOE loot but at the same time maybe Auto loot would be better I I I like if I had to decide like I had to say like which side of the fence I&#39;d say you should have to manually loot because that&#39;s what makes sense and having pets loot things for you is kind of cheesy in my opinion I think it&#39;s like cheesy like non-gameplay gameplay so yeah I&#39;m not sure it&#39;s not broken don&#39;t fix it I don&#39;t want to press more buttons during this section we also got to look at because some destructible environment like have you ever thought that maybe the actual problem is the fact that you have to loot too many mobs and looting isn&#39;t the problem it&#39;s the frequency of looting that&#39;s the issue because I think looting like for example in Dark Souls whenever you kill a mob and it drops something you know especially if it&#39;s like a black knight it&#39;s like oh [ __ ] right like is is this the item and so looting I think is good but the reason why is because you&#39;re not killing black Black Knights all the time Monster Hunter looting yeah exactly so I I I think it&#39;s just it should be designed in a better way and eventually complete some objectives and that was pretty section of this live stream overall I really like the direction they&#39;re going with the fighter class and it&#39;s looking like a strong Contender for my main at release the only real critique I have is that some of the abilities look like they&#39;re skipping so perhaps some improvements to the animations but other than that the combat showcased here actually looked really good here&#39;s the usual art update I want to go back and look at that one again really good here&#39;s the usual art update that looks really nice that is amazing how do you feel about things like new world chests Jesus I don&#39;t know cuz I I like chest runs in New World a lot and at the end of the live Studios is currently going through a bit of a hiring process so if you&#39;re someone that works in the gaming industry then check out their website for open positions so you can help bring about this MMO&#39;s release before the end of the decade to summarize my thoughts on all of these updates it&#39;s a night and day difference with how ashes is looking now compared to Alpha 1 the game is starting to look very playable now and I&#39;m even starting to think combat is looking decent the combat has improved a lot I think that one thing that if anybody is kept up with ashes of creation even if you are a a non-believer I think it&#39;s fair to say that the game has improved a lot from where it started more polish this could have the potential to be one of the best hybrid combat systems in things I don&#39;t like that could be improved the Looting looks clunky animations need to be smoother and the lighting as a whole could be improved as in some places it makes the visuals look kind of rough for example the scene at the end of the commission&#39;s live stream from the Viewpoint well that&#39;s just again like that goes back to what I was saying about how like Elden ring like if you go back if you go down and you look at where are we at we&#39;re at 1840 um if you look at the visual Fidelity of it&#39;s really good here&#39;s the usual art update the visual Fidelity of this is higher than things in Elden ring like in terms of the level of detail and the amount of pixels that are in this I&#39;m like 99% sure this is better than Elven ring but it doesn&#39;t matter because it&#39;s it&#39;s not about the pixel count it&#39;s not about anything else about the lighting and it&#39;s about the design and the style yeah it&#39;s the art style and the lighting yeah like Elden ring like imagine if this had the lighting of Elden ring it would look [ __ ] amazing of the commission&#39;s live stream from the Viewpoint I can&#39;t believe it&#39;s been almost 3 years since I last played ashes of Creation in alpha 1 7 years since I first covered this project ashes of creation is truly my last hope for the MMO genre I suppose Pack&#39;s day looks decent but everything else looks either mid or is guaranteed to be paay to win due to Korean developers I&#39;ll be honest I don&#39;t know like I I mean Ash if ashes of creation can&#39;t do it I don&#39;t think any other game can do it but I&#39;m not confident for any MMO in the entire uh Marketplace to be able to do anything more than uh uh than be I don&#39;t think any single MMO will even be 10% as relevant or culturally impactful is classic wow like vanilla World of Warcraft was not even 10% I don&#39;t think osrs is even remotely close like for everybody who says these other games wrath and TBC I don&#39;t think that you guys respect how big wow used to be I talked about this a couple of days ago World of Warcraft used to be bigger than fortnite in Minecraft go on to Google Trends look up these different games compare them to fortnite and Minecraft now they&#39;re nothing they&#39;re just they&#39;re nothing they used to be yeah it it I don&#39;t think people respect how big wow used to be it it was a completely different level let&#39;s just hope nothing unexpected happens that would cause this game to not make it to completion but that&#39;s it for this video as always let me know your thoughts on the development progress of Ashes of Creation in the comments below Steven does often read comments on videos like this so he&#39;ll likely see your feedback help us out with a like for the algorithm Gods if you enjoy these update vids and click the link in the description below to get yourself a star Forge PC because you&#39;ll probably need one to run this game with maxed out Graphics so social media on screen thanks for watching and I&#39;ll see you in the next one that was a great video B like I&#39;m going to be honest like I think that MMOs right now we are in a transitionary period of technology and a transitionary period of like the way that people can play games and because that because we&#39;re in that period I think that nobody knows what to do going forward there&#39;s nothing nothing revolutionary yeah exactly weren&#39;t we always um in a way yeah but I think that now it&#39;s especially true I think there&#39;s like there&#39;s got to be some extra level of like complexity or Nuance to MMOs in order to make them like Transcendent again yeah this doesn&#39;t seem revolutionary yeah exactly whereas like wow was revolutionary Minecraft was revolutionary uh like a Grand Theft Auto was revolutionary like even to a lesser extent uh Halo was revolutionary I would say um th those are some of the big ones right Skyrim maybe oh Super Mario uh Super Mario Brothers 3 in my opinion I think was revolutionary and maybe even Super Mario Brothers 3 wasn&#39;t it was just like it was like Elden ring where it wasn&#39;t like nothing about this was revolutionary it was just so [ __ ] good like I I think that also people say balder&#39;s gate I think balers Gate 3 might be looked at that way Mario 64 that&#39;s a really great example Mario 64 was revolutionary Absolutely I&#39;ll WK you guys the video make sure to give it a like I uh I&#39;m I&#39;m really glad to see more people talking about this but I think that every MMO like I just don&#39;t think it&#39;s possible right now like that&#39;s the that&#39;s like kind of the result and like the that that&#39;s that&#39;s the way I feel about it right now is it&#39;s just like the game it&#39;s not quite there yet you want something that is wow uh what yes I want something that has the same level of like relevance and significance as uh like vanilla wow and I think that right now none of the games really can do that and I don&#39;t think that even ashes of creation will do it I don&#39;t know what what will with wild it&#39;s become biggest do you Ash creation can be bigger than that what&#39;s missing I don&#39;t know nobody does that&#39;s the thing nobody does but I&#39;m uh I&#39;m still very excited of for ashes of creation you know I definitely am I don&#39;t want you guys to think that I&#39;m not

The Last Hope for MMO RPGs being a fan of MMO RPGs over the past decade has been quite a long road of disappointment we&amp;#39;ve had Kickstarter scams we&amp;#39;ve watched as monetization has single-handedly ruined otherwise promising games and we&amp;#39;ve had multiple exciting projects be cancelled which by the way they&amp;#39;re redoing the MMO project for what of the ranks Amazon is remain in a state of Perpetual development with no hope of ever releasing well unfortunately the latest disappointment comes in the form of an MMO that many were hoping would reinvigorate the genre Riot MMO a game that everyone was excited for based purely on Riot games track record have never Rel this is the same with every MMO it is the MMO hype Paradox the less people know about a game the more they&amp;#39;re excited the more people know about a game the less they&amp;#39;re excited releasing an unsuccessful product has basically gone back to the drawing board we never had any concrete info about what this MMO was actually looking like or saw any footage yet alongside ashes of creation this was one of the most hyped upcoming MMOs thankfully though ashes of creation is still progressing quite nicely and we&amp;#39;ve seen some huge improvements to the combat showcased over the past few development live it&amp;#39;s definitely gotten a lot better as usual in this video I&amp;#39;ll break down the past four months worth of updates to keep the casuals up to date with Ash&amp;#39;s progress who don&amp;#39;t have time to tune into the 2 to three hour live streams every month in case you miss Miss ashes have cre I think also like the problem right now is that a lot of MMOs try to create an experience that people had 20 years ago and you can&amp;#39;t do that and I don&amp;#39;t think that anybody has figured out what the formula for creating the MMO that in 20 years from now people will try to recreate that experience that&amp;#39;s the problem is people keep looking to the past to decide where to go in the future Alpha playable in Q3 of this year so might only be one more of these update videos from me until we have some actual gameplay to experience see happens but for a special MMO you&amp;#39;re going to want a special PC a PC capable of handling ashes of Creations epic large scale battles particle effects everywhere tons of players on screen and the latest Unreal Engine 5 graphics whilst running at a smooth frame rate this is why I&amp;#39;ve ordered a new gaming PC from today&amp;#39;s sponsor star Forge systems do I really want I&amp;#39;m going to be honest I legit did not even know who sponsored him that&amp;#39;s crazy cuz I was thinking like and and like leading up to this I was like is this going to be awkward if it&amp;#39;s like another sponsor no actually did to be in a situation where I&amp;#39;m dueling another player to impress some hot e girl on Discord only to die because of bad frame rate [ __ ] no and with my brand new Voyager to Elite I&amp;#39;ll never have to blame my failures on frame rate again I have to if I die it&amp;#39;s 100% only because I was lagging he got AAR have PCS available for multiple different levels all handb built by professional nerds in Austin Texas at entry level you&amp;#39;ve got the Horizon series which are perfect for the everyday gamer next up you&amp;#39;ve got the Navigator PCS for the more serious Gamers packed with nextg components and ready to withstand the abuse of your multi-day Cheeto fueled gaming binges and finally for the people like me who make gaming their entire identity you&amp;#39;ve got the Voyager PCS which are so powerful you&amp;#39;re basically future proof for many years to come ter perfect for enthusiasts and content creators additionally if you&amp;#39;re not looking to upgrade your entire PC yet star Forge also offer custom cases and plate lights so you can add a bit more personality to an otherwise Bland looking rig click the link in the description below to check out star forge&amp;#39;s epic lineup of gaming PCs now and be ready to experience the next generation of gaming without compromising performance there it is wow what a great ad so true completely agree absolutely covered the August September October and November updates which showcased progress to the Village nodes the event system the Caravan system and Artisan skills starting out with December&amp;#39;s live stream which takes place in a winter themed riverlands the focus here was the updated Ranger combat which has come a long way as you can see we&amp;#39;ve got two full hot bars of abilities which shows that class design is well on its way to being ready for Alpha 2 to keep this as concise as possible I&amp;#39;ll start by showing each ability along with its tool tip so you can just see what it does rather than rambling first up we have snipe a solid opener AB I feel like this does look very good like I I think this definitely passes the check the problem is like in order for another game to be like as big as wow was back in the day it it effectively has to be better than that because I don&amp;#39;t think people respected like you think about going back and playing classic wow right now think about how well class wow plays and then think about what that was like in 2004 it was just so far above anything else on the market that it wasn&amp;#39;t even it wasn&amp;#39;t even close like it was like it wasn&amp;#39;t even like one step above everything else it was like five steps above everything else like every other game was just garbage compared to that Lally couldn&amp;#39;t play other games after playing well yeah Guild Wars was close no it wasn&amp;#39;t Guild Wars was terrible Guild Wars was aw awful there not even remotely close you couldn&amp;#39;t even jump in Guild Wars next the weapon basic attacks Barr yeah this does look good we&amp;#39;re at a gaming Plateau yeah until somebody figures out better way ranged executability that has cool down reduction applied to it if the target is marked Mark of the bear Mark of the Raven yeah and as I&amp;#39;ve said I do still think classic wow is probably the best MMO the Tiger in my opinion next we&amp;#39;re given an overview of the hunt abilities which are basically of self Buffs starting with hunt of the bear hunt of the Raven and Hunt of the tiger yeah you have like different buff like ability optional charge capability for a more highly focused shot yeah that&amp;#39;s what they did with evok strike not only does this provide AOE crowd control and damage but the ility and animation on this one is amazing additionally it can also be used to Traverse gaps and verticality easily my favorite ranged ability showcased so far next thund like I really like being able to do stuff like that because like for example in Elden ring you can do that with the millenia weapon art too and so uh yeah having anything like that is is great for a game shots would you develop an MMO would I ever develop an MMO um lightning reload which is a self buff that allows you to use select abilities with no cool down I don&amp;#39;t know what the next game is supposed to be I don&amp;#39;t know what it is yet I think there&amp;#39;s a few games that have come out that I think capture like one dimension of it but I&amp;#39;m not sure that I know what it is yet yeah I&amp;#39;m not sure like a video got recently do you said you had to be an idiot to make an MMO I think the problem right now with MMOs is that it&amp;#39;s actually a problem with the way that things are programmed and it&amp;#39;s a problem with the way that Computing is right now because it seems like with things like Quantum Computing for the best of my understanding which is limited of course we will not have to worry about a lot of the technological limitations that we have right now in maybe 15 or 20 years probably even sooner than that so the big problem that MMOs have is monetization that&amp;#39;s probably their biggest issue and a lot of the other issues happen as a result of that issue like things feeling not rewarding is an issue of monetization things taking too long like lost AR is a result of monetization so often times monetization may not be like the direct cause but it&amp;#39;s the secondary cause of like something that is the direct cost so you&amp;#39;re not getting a Quantum PC at home yes but the quality will improve over time that&amp;#39;s what I&amp;#39;m saying right the quality will improve look at unreal five unreal 5 I think is the best proof of that happening so I think the issue right now is that it is too expensive to create an MMO at the scale and scope that people wanted in and the cost of making an MMO is so high that it necessitates doing things that destroy the the game&amp;#39;s Integrity I don&amp;#39;t think that you will ever have a super successful MMO that is even half as popular as classic wow was like vanilla wow in like 2007 you will never have a game like that whenever the gamees pay to win or pay for convenience or anything it&amp;#39;s it&amp;#39;s just not going to happen bear trap CL compers aren&amp;#39;t good at doing things I was just using as example right of the wild I&amp;#39;m saying like technology is getting very very good at performance optimization like dlss unreal 5 Etc disengage undeniable that quality is improved and performance is massively better and finally you&amp;#39;ve got the imbued ammo abilities which come in three types weighted Barbed and concussive three different self Buffs that imuse your next 10 shots with the various effects displayed on screen yeah this looks good overall the reaction to the updated Ranger combat was received very positively by the ashes Community for me personally I was especially a fan of the fluidity of the two Mobility abilities air strike and disengage as well as the B I&amp;#39;m I&amp;#39;m a firm believer that if a game doesn&amp;#39;t have like super buttery smooth combat like fortnite for example fortnite&amp;#39;s gameplay is [ __ ] amazing OverWatch 2&amp;#39;s OverWatch gamepl used to be [ __ ] amazing like it&amp;#39;s so fluid it&amp;#39;s so responsive and it&amp;#39;s so good you have to have that and if a game doesn&amp;#39;t have that it will never be a big game attacks much quicker than I expected I also like that the mark abilities are off the gcd and I think the visual effects so far pretty good for this stage of development aside from the combat we also got a look at the range of skill tree and weapon skill tree which further augments how your abilities work I won&amp;#39;t go into details on this as it&amp;#39;ll likely change with balancing this should give you a decent idea of how you can change your abilities to was also really smooth it was beyond smooth after the ability overview the live stream concluded the ranger in action as well as the usual art showcase which I&amp;#39;ll flash on screen now this looks amazing how far are we from launch uh realistically the game will probably go into an open Beta at the end of the year and then it will probably come out in 2027 I assume if I had to guess and that was pretty much it for the December 2023 update overall a great update to probably the end of 2027 2024 started off with an absolute development live stream that showcased ashes of Creations Caravan PVP system starting out Steven has his raid group make their way to a Viewpoint where they this was really cool and this goes back to what I was saying that like MMOs should look at um like isekai animes like solo leveling Sword Art Online Overlord Etc and then figure out what is it and like what are the plot devices in those stories and how can we make them real because those are some of the most popular animes people [ __ ] love them shanga Frontier yeah there&amp;#39;s another one how can you make that experience happen in real life or not real life but like in real life in a real game wait ready to Ambush a passing Caravan protected by another raid group The approach then battle ensues oh my god oh it&amp;#39;s it&amp;#39;s Bloodshed yeah the problem is that see here&amp;#39;s still the problem is that this combat isn&amp;#39;t good it&amp;#39;s better but it&amp;#39;s not good classic wow is still way better than this and that came out in 2004 that&amp;#39;s just the way it is and again I don&amp;#39;t think people respect how far and above classic wow was over everything it was not even funny it It&amp;#39;s like um like classic wow was like whenever Apple introduced like the iPod or the iPhone it was so far above every single thing in the market that it took everybody else multiple years to catch up and even then they didn&amp;#39;t really catch up all the way they just completely blew up everybody else out do you think tab targeting is the future I think a soft lock Target is the future but aimed attacks should be uh available once the players are slain The Raid then turn the focus toward damaging the Caravan like lock on and destroyed catches fire and the crates of loot carried by the Caravan are then scattered around the area a victory icon then pops up on the UI and instructs the raid to pillage their loot at this point you&amp;#39;re able to see that the type of contents in the crates is displayed with an icon on top of the crate some crates contain Commodities some contain materials Steven approaches a green marked crate presses e and is able to open the crate to loot stolen Commodities these are basically certificates that can be sold to Black Market vendors for gold the second type of lootable crate is material in this instance rubies due to the sheer amount of loot though this is too much for the raid to carry additionally if you manually loot the crates you get much less money for turning them in compared to if you deliver them via your own Caravan so Steven opens his inventory clicks on the Caravan item and this begins a countdown for a caravan to be summoned the length of time you need to wait for this summoning depends on the distance between you and the node your Caravan is stored at next the group need to wait around the summoning this by the way was probably my favorite update recently because these social systems are what will keep the game alive or kill but this is what will keep people continuously playing the game and logging on on a regular basis like an Overlord there&amp;#39;s a dungeon building and not only that it&amp;#39;s different species and alignments which help enhance RP yeah I guess it&amp;#39;s because whenever something&amp;#39;s so good and its category comes out every product after that tries to be a better imitation of it exactly yeah and like wow did a lot of things like at the time that MMOs did not do and it was considered bad for MMOs to do like wow was actually looked down on at the time as being like a baby MMO and defend it from attackers eventually the Caravan arrives we Mount up approach the cargo and there&amp;#39;s a button appear on the Caravan hot bar called collect cargo yeah upon clicking this an AOE Circle appears and you&amp;#39;re able to instantly loot the cargo within the radius of the circle into your Caravan The Raid then set off having successfully stolen the cargo from the other raid group into their own Caravan and eventually reach a body of water this was real were able to see how a ground Caravan is able to convert to a raft after going through a few minutes of building during this process you&amp;#39;re able to see the details of how the Caravan is slowly Tak I think this by the way this by is probably the coolest thing uh like with with everything like this is really really awesome I also think that there needs to be more large bodies of water like these are this is too narrow of a channel built into a raft to Traverse the water obviously it&amp;#39;s very vulnerable from St grou repels the attacking the Caravan the Caravan successfully converts into a ra see it slide down the ramp and splash as it&amp;#39;s deployed into the water really nice attention to detail The Raid group swim over to the raft jump on and we see this really cool scene of the boys out on the water freely moving around the raft wind in the sails waves generated from the movement of the boat it all looked super cool whilst on the water it&amp;#39;s explained that the game will have a current system with the water similar to arage where your speed will increase if you sail with the current and slow down whilst against is like that if you do nothing the current will slowly move you along on its own current strength will be different depending on the river and the location after a bit of sailing around the raid run into an ambush whilst at Sea yeah I I think that this is like this is about 20° off of incredible this experience still feels too gy to me what is in my opinion one of the best experiences like an out at Sea experience it&amp;#39;s [ __ ] valheim valheim is lit holy [ __ ] I don&amp;#39;t know exactly how you can get to that with this but like for example you should have other players able to like increase the speed of the boat by rowing the boat or something like that but turn around to safety disembark the raft and convert it back to a land Caravan in doing so the entire conversion process is repeated but in Reverse with the raft this time being deconstructed and needing to once again be defended with the land Caravan rebuilt I think another thing is that I don&amp;#39;t like the concept that if you get knocked off the raft you can just swim to shore I think that that kind of removes the it removes the severity of it it removes the tension like I don&amp;#39;t like how people are following the raft around on the the shore and then just running back and forth to the raft like I just it feels like a game it doesn&amp;#39;t feel like it&amp;#39;s an experience like here&amp;#39;s another vibe in Rust taking off with the massive [ __ ] helicopter with everything in it everybody is done looting and making it back to your base it is all about the experience and the vibe it is a game though but it should try its best not to be group make their way to the node where they&amp;#39;re attacked one final time they successfully defend the Caravan then arrive at the node where the goods are able to be unpacked what I&amp;#39;m saying is that the immersion in the game should take you away from the obvious fact that you&amp;#39;re playing a game whenever you&amp;#39;re playing a great game I think that the game itself is kind of put to the side and you can have a Transcendent experience that is fully immersive and I think that the more elements and more things in a game that function in the same way that real life does or at least create real life emotions every single thing like that like the feeling of tension in a game you feel tension it&amp;#39;s not like there&amp;#39;s video game tension tension is an emotional feeling so if a game makes you feel tension the game is real does that does that make sense it&amp;#39;s sounds weird but I I I think it does to do this talk to a caravan Master click Caravan storage where all of your goods will be displayed then you&amp;#39;re able to right click on the goods and unpack them into the node cargo storage which will take a certain period of time during which the materials being unpacked will be temporarily locked next we head over to the Commodities vendor and sell those crates directly to the NPC and finally we head over to a shady back alley room where we&amp;#39;re able to sell the stolen Commodities that were manually looted to a black market vendor the black market is however only available should a node choose to unlock it via the node Marketplace skill tree progression path very brief art update to end the January live stream and overall it was an update that was received pretty well although there was a lot of concerns from the community regarding there seemingly not being a whole lot of risk to attacking Caravans on the side of the attackers which sparked quite a bit of debate point we don&amp;#39;t have time get into this in this video but overall another great showcase where I was particularly impressed with the attention to detail to the animation the Caravan to a raft February&amp;#39;s development live stream wasn&amp;#39;t interesting also like this is another thing is that I think players should be able to accelerate the crafting of the boat and they should do that through different mini games that the boat construction building or construction area uh pre-creases like for example a thing to like you know disassemble the uh the wagon and then carry the wood over to an area where the boat is being assembled and it will create multiple mini games and it will progress on its own naturally but you can do it faster if you&amp;#39;re helping them like obviously like pow world right or like um I I think that&amp;#39;s probably the first example I would think of one is it was focused around commission and gave us a good idea it it&amp;#39;s it&amp;#39;s not about it being men Max it&amp;#39;s about it being real and authentic because that&amp;#39;s the way it would work in real life and every single thing that you can do that&amp;#39;s the same as in real life adds to that immersion day-to-day solo gamepl would look like in ashes of creation starting out Steven&amp;#39;s piloting Mage and heads over to the node commission board at first glance this reminded me a lot of new world&amp;#39;s Town board missions except with the addition of varying rarity levels for Missions and that&amp;#39;s pretty much what they are so solo content that funnels players into other content and contribute to the progress of story arcs taking you to areas where events are triggered and also pick up side quests along the way we take two commissions with objectives relatively close to each other and along the way are beckoned over by a minur which after some dialogue offers us a side quest to talk to his brother find the brother who then gives us another side quest to kill other minur and after killing a few an event is spawned where the Minotaur leader is summoned that looks really nice but by the way a lot of games are afraid of this type of visual I&amp;#39;m going to be honest guys back in the day this [ __ ] was [ __ ] awesome so like there were these fog maps that would happen in pubg and you wouldn&amp;#39;t be able to see anybody else around you it was actually like really [ __ ] scary because you didn&amp;#39;t know like that&amp;#39;s the way the normal game is right and then you had rain Maps too right this is in the military base and like look at that like you&amp;#39;re just looking out into the distance you can&amp;#39;t really see or tell what the [ __ ] is going on at all I think a lot of developers are afraid of low visibility uh areas I don&amp;#39;t think that they should be but I think that they should be careful with how they design them like a good example of low visibility being good is something like Dragon&amp;#39;s Dogma 2 it&amp;#39;s something like valheim at night I it&amp;#39;s like the pubg fog map I really like that uh like Blight Town in Dark Souls 1 it doesn&amp;#39;t necessarily have to be like impossible to see but it has to be like uh to a degree oppressive and I think that fog maps in pubg are probably the best example of that being like really cool to play I really really enjoyed doing these a lot like I had some of the best times ever like with me McConnell train Zack esand like playing these maps and like even the rain map too uh was amazing which also results in a change of the weather to a storm the storm features weather hazards in the form of lightning bolts which damage mobs and as we find out later can basically One-Shot you something I found a bit off during this game play was how the rain changes Direction based on your movement of the camera that&amp;#39;s this the same new world is the same thing it&amp;#39;s because the rain doesn&amp;#39;t actually exist uh it&amp;#39;s like a uh camera texture effect this didn&amp;#39;t look good time they can fix that the next 20 minutes is basically just doing in the form of commissions side quests and events personally I found this live stream quite hard to watch as Steven&amp;#39;s piloting of the Mage didn&amp;#39;t make the class look very appealing to play after completing some step sucks yeah it&amp;#39; be my better but stepen sucks so yeah objectives and arriving at a Viewpoint the gameplay section of this live stream ends with the node leveling up and the beginning of a new story arc which brings with it changes to the area yeah like the idea of the giant like ancient tree burning is really cool but this animation doesn&amp;#39;t look good like it just doesn&amp;#39;t look good um like I&amp;#39;m trying to think of like what what is a really really cool massive large scale event like that that&amp;#39;s good I don&amp;#39;t I&amp;#39;m I&amp;#39;m trying to think of like something that works that way but the UR tree yeah yeah but like that&amp;#39;s also Skybox right again most time it&amp;#39;s it&amp;#39;s pretty SC yeah Elder ring bur three I think that might be the best one that tree and power world I don&amp;#39;t know as usual a quick look at the art update Dragon God and Demon Souls almost and that was pretty much it for February&amp;#39;s development live stream overall I thought this one was kind of mid I thought the environmental hazards on display were cool but seeing that Mage gameplay with the clicking and backpedaling was really hard to watch the community reception to this one was quite positive though with many comments saying things like it&amp;#39;s starting to look like a somewhat finished game yeah q1 2024 ended with an Banger of a development live stream this time showing off the updated combat to the fighter class similar to what we did with the ranger I&amp;#39;ll just show off each individual ability with the tool tip info on screen to keep things concise starting out we&amp;#39;re actually seeing the male orc race in game for the first time we get a quick look at the skill tree explanation of the momentum system which is essentially rage if you&amp;#39;re familiar with the Warrior from World of Warcraft with some abilities generating momentum and others spending it starting off with the first ability Blitz which is basically your standard Warrior charge ability except this one seems extremely strong in that you can jump and also like there&amp;#39;s a very big component to this let me go back that&amp;#39;s a power stance that&amp;#39;s [ __ ] cool and I think that like for example in armored Core 6 and in Elden ring there are a lot of things that you can do in that game that look really [ __ ] cool like let&amp;#39;s take out the idea of like oh how much damage it does or anything like that does this look [ __ ] badass yes it does strong in that you can jump and charge vertically to get on top of high ground next brutal cleave which is an ability and momentum shares a cool down with overpower is basically the single Target counterpart to cleave the pile driver MIM which is probably my favorite Warrior ability which can be augmented via the skill tree to either be a frontal cone or range Shockwave attack battlecry like basically you want to have a lot of like uh you know almost anime motions but not have them like anime if that makes sense cataclysm another Super impct doesn&amp;#39;t need to be anime for something to feel like anime like Elder ring one reminds me of blood Seekers Al from Dota 2 crippling blow basically hamstring from Wow mhm lethal blow your executability something interesting with this however is that you can spec it so that 50% of your Overkill damage is returned to you as health and Mana blood fusion and off gcd leech buff lunging assault leap strike basically heroic leap on steroids this can also be used to daverse verticality and gaps next we&amp;#39;ve got three different forms weird stances form yeah I think that Warriors should have Mana but that shouldn&amp;#39;t be the resource they use like for any physical attack they shouldn&amp;#39;t use Mana but there should be like a void strike or some other type of ability so like this is the fantasy that I go after whenever I think about that I go after the fantasy of goblin Slayer being able to use the Scrolls in combat as magic spells even though he&amp;#39;s a warrior I think that&amp;#39;s super [ __ ] cool so I think that Mana plays a plays a role but should only play like a very small utility role that&amp;#39;s not integral to combat ferocity form of Solarity and form of fluidity next we&amp;#39;ve got exert which basically combines the effects of each of your forms into a big spender where for 5 seconds or so you&amp;#39;ll be unstoppable this also acts as a cc break up next we got to look at the weapon skill tree and great sword basic attack Combos and it&amp;#39;s worth remembering that each class in ashes will be able to use any weapon you could play as a great sword wielding Mage for example it basically just changes your weapon basic attack and each weapon has its own skill tree with the ability showcase out of the way a group was formed and they demonstrated how the warrior looks in group play during this section I noticed that you seem to loot mobs individually in ashes which looks a bit clunky personally I think it would be much better if they just added the AOE loot option along with auto loot exactly how it works in World of Warcraft if it&amp;#39;s well we don&amp;#39;t have autoloot I mean like uh lazy Pon is a BDO player uh I I know he used to be at least and um I think that looting should feel cool but it&amp;#39;s also like it it&amp;#39;s very hard for looting to avoid being annoying like I never get manual loot yeah like I I kind of like the idea of having to man ually loot things but like with an AOE loot but at the same time maybe Auto loot would be better I I I like if I had to decide like I had to say like which side of the fence I&amp;#39;d say you should have to manually loot because that&amp;#39;s what makes sense and having pets loot things for you is kind of cheesy in my opinion I think it&amp;#39;s like cheesy like non-gameplay gameplay so yeah I&amp;#39;m not sure it&amp;#39;s not broken don&amp;#39;t fix it I don&amp;#39;t want to press more buttons during this section we also got to look at because some destructible environment like have you ever thought that maybe the actual problem is the fact that you have to loot too many mobs and looting isn&amp;#39;t the problem it&amp;#39;s the frequency of looting that&amp;#39;s the issue because I think looting like for example in Dark Souls whenever you kill a mob and it drops something you know especially if it&amp;#39;s like a black knight it&amp;#39;s like oh [ __ ] right like is is this the item and so looting I think is good but the reason why is because you&amp;#39;re not killing black Black Knights all the time Monster Hunter looting yeah exactly so I I I think it&amp;#39;s just it should be designed in a better way and eventually complete some objectives and that was pretty section of this live stream overall I really like the direction they&amp;#39;re going with the fighter class and it&amp;#39;s looking like a strong Contender for my main at release the only real critique I have is that some of the abilities look like they&amp;#39;re skipping so perhaps some improvements to the animations but other than that the combat showcased here actually looked really good here&amp;#39;s the usual art update I want to go back and look at that one again really good here&amp;#39;s the usual art update that looks really nice that is amazing how do you feel about things like new world chests Jesus I don&amp;#39;t know cuz I I like chest runs in New World a lot and at the end of the live Studios is currently going through a bit of a hiring process so if you&amp;#39;re someone that works in the gaming industry then check out their website for open positions so you can help bring about this MMO&amp;#39;s release before the end of the decade to summarize my thoughts on all of these updates it&amp;#39;s a night and day difference with how ashes is looking now compared to Alpha 1 the game is starting to look very playable now and I&amp;#39;m even starting to think combat is looking decent the combat has improved a lot I think that one thing that if anybody is kept up with ashes of creation even if you are a a non-believer I think it&amp;#39;s fair to say that the game has improved a lot from where it started more polish this could have the potential to be one of the best hybrid combat systems in things I don&amp;#39;t like that could be improved the Looting looks clunky animations need to be smoother and the lighting as a whole could be improved as in some places it makes the visuals look kind of rough for example the scene at the end of the commission&amp;#39;s live stream from the Viewpoint well that&amp;#39;s just again like that goes back to what I was saying about how like Elden ring like if you go back if you go down and you look at where are we at we&amp;#39;re at 1840 um if you look at the visual Fidelity of it&amp;#39;s really good here&amp;#39;s the usual art update the visual Fidelity of this is higher than things in Elden ring like in terms of the level of detail and the amount of pixels that are in this I&amp;#39;m like 99% sure this is better than Elven ring but it doesn&amp;#39;t matter because it&amp;#39;s it&amp;#39;s not about the pixel count it&amp;#39;s not about anything else about the lighting and it&amp;#39;s about the design and the style yeah it&amp;#39;s the art style and the lighting yeah like Elden ring like imagine if this had the lighting of Elden ring it would look [ __ ] amazing of the commission&amp;#39;s live stream from the Viewpoint I can&amp;#39;t believe it&amp;#39;s been almost 3 years since I last played ashes of Creation in alpha 1 7 years since I first covered this project ashes of creation is truly my last hope for the MMO genre I suppose Pack&amp;#39;s day looks decent but everything else looks either mid or is guaranteed to be paay to win due to Korean developers I&amp;#39;ll be honest I don&amp;#39;t know like I I mean Ash if ashes of creation can&amp;#39;t do it I don&amp;#39;t think any other game can do it but I&amp;#39;m not confident for any MMO in the entire uh Marketplace to be able to do anything more than uh uh than be I don&amp;#39;t think any single MMO will even be 10% as relevant or culturally impactful is classic wow like vanilla World of Warcraft was not even 10% I don&amp;#39;t think osrs is even remotely close like for everybody who says these other games wrath and TBC I don&amp;#39;t think that you guys respect how big wow used to be I talked about this a couple of days ago World of Warcraft used to be bigger than fortnite in Minecraft go on to Google Trends look up these different games compare them to fortnite and Minecraft now they&amp;#39;re nothing they&amp;#39;re just they&amp;#39;re nothing they used to be yeah it it I don&amp;#39;t think people respect how big wow used to be it it was a completely different level let&amp;#39;s just hope nothing unexpected happens that would cause this game to not make it to completion but that&amp;#39;s it for this video as always let me know your thoughts on the development progress of Ashes of Creation in the comments below Steven does often read comments on videos like this so he&amp;#39;ll likely see your feedback help us out with a like for the algorithm Gods if you enjoy these update vids and click the link in the description below to get yourself a star Forge PC because you&amp;#39;ll probably need one to run this game with maxed out Graphics so social media on screen thanks for watching and I&amp;#39;ll see you in the next one that was a great video B like I&amp;#39;m going to be honest like I think that MMOs right now we are in a transitionary period of technology and a transitionary period of like the way that people can play games and because that because we&amp;#39;re in that period I think that nobody knows what to do going forward there&amp;#39;s nothing nothing revolutionary yeah exactly weren&amp;#39;t we always um in a way yeah but I think that now it&amp;#39;s especially true I think there&amp;#39;s like there&amp;#39;s got to be some extra level of like complexity or Nuance to MMOs in order to make them like Transcendent again yeah this doesn&amp;#39;t seem revolutionary yeah exactly whereas like wow was revolutionary Minecraft was revolutionary uh like a Grand Theft Auto was revolutionary like even to a lesser extent uh Halo was revolutionary I would say um th those are some of the big ones right Skyrim maybe oh Super Mario uh Super Mario Brothers 3 in my opinion I think was revolutionary and maybe even Super Mario Brothers 3 wasn&amp;#39;t it was just like it was like Elden ring where it wasn&amp;#39;t like nothing about this was revolutionary it was just so [ __ ] good like I I think that also people say balder&amp;#39;s gate I think balers Gate 3 might be looked at that way Mario 64 that&amp;#39;s a really great example Mario 64 was revolutionary Absolutely I&amp;#39;ll WK you guys the video make sure to give it a like I uh I&amp;#39;m I&amp;#39;m really glad to see more people talking about this but I think that every MMO like I just don&amp;#39;t think it&amp;#39;s possible right now like that&amp;#39;s the that&amp;#39;s like kind of the result and like the that that&amp;#39;s that&amp;#39;s the way I feel about it right now is it&amp;#39;s just like the game it&amp;#39;s not quite there yet you want something that is wow uh what yes I want something that has the same level of like relevance and significance as uh like vanilla wow and I think that right now none of the games really can do that and I don&amp;#39;t think that even ashes of creation will do it I don&amp;#39;t know what what will with wild it&amp;#39;s become biggest do you Ash creation can be bigger than that what&amp;#39;s missing I don&amp;#39;t know nobody does that&amp;#39;s the thing nobody does but I&amp;#39;m uh I&amp;#39;m still very excited of for ashes of creation you know I definitely am I don&amp;#39;t want you guys to think that I&amp;#39;m not

Transcript for:The Last Hope for MMO RPGs

Transcript for:
The Last Hope for MMO RPGs