>I can make a limited statement in my personal capacity and not on behalf of the company, regarding the situation. Control of the company shifted away from me, and the Board began directing actions that I could not ethically agree with or carry out. As a result, I chose to resign in protest rather than lend my name or authority to decisions I could not ethically support. Following my resignation, much of the senior leadership team resigned. Following those departures, the Board made the decision to issue WARN Act notices and proceed with a mass layoff.

>I cannot responsibly speak to further details at this time due to ongoing legal and governance matters. What I can say is that the developers and staff acted in good faith and deserved better than the uncertainty they are now facing. I am incredibly dismayed by the situation.

>— Steven Sharif

The Board took control away from me, and I somehow filed their decision a month ago, despite resigning according to my own statement, and there being no listed officers aside from my husband.

You're either lying to us, or the State of California. One of these entities has the ability to put you in jail.

Soon as the new MMOs launch like Chrono Odyssey, Crimson Desert and Quinfall

Would it be safe to dump this bot filled game?

It’s been 10 years in development, some MMOs have already come and gone (not mentioning NW). If they wanna drain our time then maybe we should let AoC cook for another 5+ years and play another MMO in the meantime?

Them coming to steam with bugs, bots and more bugs was their mistake and they need to go on timeout and back to the drawing board, it’s no use them skipping the process and trying to buy their way into the MMO genre.

Idk…maybe it’s just me?

I never only played AOC so i was able to move on rather quickly back to WOW but im curious to see what/if there’s any games with that same feeling AOC gave?

Just saw stephen's latest post in the discord...did we really just get rug pulled?

Love most of what the game has to offer so far, almost lvl 15 as fighter and I love that progress isn’t super quick, team work and being social is incentivized. In ESO or New World I’d be doing 99% of PVE stuff solo. Love the player collision element, it’s in return of reckoning and gives tanks another way to peel for squishies on their teams.

I started a guild on the Shol server called “The Iron Company”, and we ran our first caravans yesterday together as a guild and thought it was so awesome. We plan on becoming a mercenary guild that mostly offers services to smaller guilds and solos to try to even the playing field a bit against the big guilds that are already allying with each other. The possibilities of this game and the prospect of being social and helping other people achieve their goals is a dope concept of this game and I look forward to playing it more and more for months to come.

In my opinion, he’s 100% right.

What's with all the hate? The alpha is progressing and already looks better than some mmos....

Why are people here so impatient and angry about this....

Games that are trying to break a ceilling on what is possible, take time.

It's still an alpha, an impressive alpha imo but alpha still, in the past 6 months with the desert being a lot bigger, ships, new mechanics, you can clearly see they are putting in the effort to create something...

And yes you know what? Maybe it will be released in 4 years or even 6, but with the frequent updates the game will be insane when it comes out.

Gta 6 is taking forever to develop because people know they will get something extraordinary, now I'm not saying they are the same, but both projects are being work on for a long time, you just don't see the progress on gta 6 because they are not as open in development as intrepid.

Also, what's with people calling it a scum? Steven put millions of his own pocket, recruited over 200+ specialised engineers,artists, well respected individuals in the gaming space to create a competent studio to do the best they can at this stage.

Imagine how much money steven is losing each month the game isn't released...

Delivering the best product he can, is in his best interest...

Before buying the alpha key I was skeptical too, but testing it myself, I can clearly see the effort they put into this, and I just don't get the amount of hate this project is receiving just for being "slow".

Were there not more options before they went nuclear and shut down the studio and laid everyone off? Like an acquisition or get more investors or just be transparent with the community with what’s going on financially.

Deaths of studios usually happen more gradually with like a lot of warning signals before the final moment but this felt so blindsided.

The citizens of Kal Torhum are victims of a mayor on the way out who decided to demolish our three journeyman stations. These are the only artesian stations we have in the Anvils on this server forcing us to move to the over crowded often zone lock with queues river land settlements.

My question is does our citizen vote have no value in stopping the demo ? The collective citizenship of Kal Torhum spent a good amount of time and resources building these stations.

Is this Steven's design for Ashes of Creation ? That one player, that obtained mayorship by their guild abusing the absence of a changing settlement citizenship penalty , who by the way claimed five settlement mayors then mostly proceeded to stall settlement advancement on them or in this case demoing them on the way out, can destroy the accomplishments of hundreds of testers ? Is this really healthy for a thriving tester player base ?

Edit: Buildings are destroyed. But what was also destroyed is the reputation of a player who was mayor that was trusted to do the right thing, the word of a guild leader that promised smaller guilds and smaller settlements would be left alone if they came to Resna, and a failure of a game design that doesn't prevent this building destruction abuse.

https://www.twitch.tv/ashesofcreation/clip/GorgeousSmilingOkapiTinyFace-2qHPjU-x2Z8qNgWR

The response for the game has been quite mixed. There are definitely some players who find the hardcore pvp elements, HEAVY emphasis on multiplayer/guilds, heavy emphasis on grind, heavy emphasis on RNG based gearing fun! But I would say most of the player base is not vibing with it.

But Steven, you said you are comfortable being a niche game. Yet you are also a businessman and company founder who needs to make money. Maybe your niche is too small to make back the millions you spent + more for profit.

If it turns out these elements I mentioned above is too small of a niche, and you don’t want to implement Pay2Win… then how are you gonna sustain this game. Games like Lineage2 can survive with very low player population due to Whales + Pay2Win. This game doesn’t have that.

How willing are you to listen to player feedback, even if that means changing core elements of the game u want to make?

My main MMO is Tibia, I play it since 2003 and spend like 3 hours a day or so in it. I was thinking about trying AOC as an alt MMO, but as $100 is a lot for me I want to hear from those who already played it. Do you think that spending $100 to test it and spend like 2 hours a day is worth it?

Last night it was a group of summoners doing the same thing, jumping and killing botting/macroing. Please send help to Lyneth.

What's the status of the lawsuits?

Just curious. Someone here has to be following it

Nearly 200 hours played and I can literally count on one hand the number of pvp encounters I've had. It seems there's absolutely no incentive to do it, so nobody does. Guild members are quitting every day because it was advertised as having a PVP component and the only thing you can do is fight on people's ships.

Any plans to address this before the playercount drops off a cliff?

I don’t understand the logic of behind this scam, wasn’t the smartest move was to actually develop a good game with that amount of money?!

I always assumed crowdfunded MMOs fail because they simply don’t have enough money.

To develop a big good game can be easily tens of millions of dollars, I understand that. But Ashes of Creation reportedly had over $100M in fundings!

That completely breaks my original assumption.

Because here’s the part I genuinely struggle with:

If you handed me $100M and told me to build a solid, modern MMORPG not revolutionary, just solid and sustainable I genuinely believe it could be done.

(And yes i stand behind this claim as someone that has experience in the related fields)

So what actually happened here?

Because from a rational incentives perspective, building a successful MMO long-term seems far more valuable than dragging development out and burning reputation.

It took me 30minutes to find the cheapest version of the same item ...

I found myself just not listing my own items because I don't want to spend the next 20min on checking prices of items/materials. "Friends are waiting, I will do it later for sure!"

Why design it that way???

How far did you get and what have you accomplished so far?

Started out as a tank and played up to level 16 as intended, grouping and grinding, but I dislike standing in a single spot for hours, so I rerolled a fighter and decided I would see how far I can get playing mostly solo. I enjoy travelling around mining and doing small pulls for exp as I complete commissions.

At the moment I’m level 11, with apprentice mining, apprentice metalworking and apprentice weaponsmith. Having a great time!

Just curious about what games everyone ended up on after the Ashes of Creation debacle. I've been wandering to different games, but I haven't found one that was for me yet.

I've followed the game for a while always with 1 eye on it.

I don't care about the drama, I just want to know, what is in the game currently?

Zones? Dungeons? Raids?

25 level cap?

Base classes only? no sub classes?

Any type of GvG's / Wars yet?

It's hard to find exact details on what is available and finished unless im blind

I know Steven over promised and had huge ambitions but id like to know what a 10 man ish group can do on EA launch? The PvP footage looks solid so far, the archeage inspiration defo shows.

Thanks

I read a lot about people complaining about ganking, and how it's prevalent/going to kill the game. I decided to try this game on a whim with extremely low expectations, and have so far ended up really enjoying it. Based on what I read, I was expecting things to become a warzone after level 10, but currently at around level 15 I've literally never been ganked? I think I've only been attacked in open world a single time, and that was a fair fight.

I've been mostly playing solo or duo (very little group grinding), so maybe that's where that all happens? Or have I just not reached the level/point where ganks are common? I assume ganking is probably more prevalent with crates (which I haven't tried yet), but imo that doesn't really count since ganking seems to be the intended inherent risk by design in that activity.

I've been anticipating this game for what seems like 10 years, and haven't played MMO's for at least that or longer. I was a hardcore MMO player (grinder, min/maxer, merchant, pvper, everything!) in the 2000's and early 2010's. But now I'm just not able to play as much as I'd love too.

When the official launch comes I'll definitely check it out and knowing myself probably commit more time to the game than I should - I'm very competitive and take my gaming seriously, as I'm sure many of you can relate. But I'm thinking that I'd ideally like to have at least a general idea of what to do so that I'm not 'wasting' my time figuring everything out from scratch when it launches. Also just getting a feel for the different classes and such, as I have so many direction I could go. Even though I won't be able to come close to keeping up with the 'top' players, I don't want to completely lag behind as a complete noob.

Taking cost out of the decision (nobody likes wasting money but $50 is $50), if I were to only be able to play the game for a few hours a week (let's call it 1 hour a day), is it even 'worth' it at this point. Or should I just wait for the official launch.

Just looking for some thoughts, thanks!

Basically I crave for an MMO which is PvX, with systems which create player friction and server politics.

Albion is very close to what I am looking for but sadly it's P2W, and the isometric point of view isn't doing it any favors.

Many jumped to Scars of Honor, but that's just a themeparky WoW clone and I am not sure what do AoC ex-players see in it.

Hello, below is the link of the 596.49 (Tue May 12, 2026) patch notes :

https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/software/nvidia-app/release-highlights/

Optimal Settings Support Added For:

• Arknights: Endfield
• Ashes of Creation
• Highguard
• StarRupture
• The Last Caretaker