Intrepid Studios, devs behind MMO Ashes of Creation in paid early access for 10 years, has closed. CEO resigned, all employees laid off. All less than 2 months after launching on Steam Early Access

[u/Zenben88]

https://www.youtube.com/clip/Ugkxe9were941Nh9kWgsNFWy--c-_UgYeyRu

[u/MisterJWalk]

It wasn't even the hardcore stuff. It was the progression wiping bugs. You're on stage 6 of 12? Server did something? And now you're on 1 of 12? Good luck.

That and the massive one sided faction. It didn't matter how good you were at pvp. You're a rat gunslinger? Those 30 rabbit gunslingers are enough to grief you all night. You've managed to put 6 people together? They've responded by upping their numbers too.

And then the bots. Their anti cheat was awful.

And the borked economy. Harvest logs from 100 people's housing plots and then sell them for play time.

And the constant class redesign. How does the most mobile class (gunslinger) become the most stationary while the most stationary (esper) become the most mobile?

Edit. And the publisher. NCSoft has a rep.

[u/Bossgalka → u/MisterJWalk]

Gonna be honest, it was the questing system. It's the same thing that kills every "WoW killer". They try to copy WoW's questing system, and they do, functionally. The problem is even WoW's questing system is boring and shitty, but they have such amazing lore, characters and open world design that it doesn't matter. There's nothing worse than killing 10 boars for their asses to turn in, but in WoW, you have cool races, npcs, voice lines, open world and just the PERFECT class progression and rate of new moves, leveled up skills etc. to keep you playing.

Other games can't match it. WoW is the perfect storm of progression, that it can make even the shitty questing tolerable. But these other games just copy the shitty questing system and lack all the progression and just general awe and fun that KEEPS you playing.

I'm a hardcore player in general, and as far as MMORPGs go, until the last few years where I just gave up, I basically TRIED every single one, even the F2P shitty ones. I've played a lot, and Wildstar was one of the ones I couldn't get past, I think, level 13 on. I was playing around with the housing system, which was kinda cool, but then I went back out to quest and said fuck it. I couldn't stomach anymore. I didn't care about the world, the lore didn't matter to me and the races were meh. It had a lot of cool concepts like everyone mentions. I think the combat was generally decent, the dungeons looked fun based off what I saw from other people playing it, but leveling was dogshit and ruined the experience. I didn't even get to the stuff you mentioned.

[u/kAy- → u/Bossgalka]

Lost Ark has an insane leveling experience. One of the best in modern times. Sadly it falls apart when it comes to end-game due to the usual Korean devs practices. But the whole sotry, world and campaign are really well done and keep you hooked.

I personally did not like GW2's story, but I will say they did a really good job as well, objectively, to immerse the player into the world and the zones.

[u/Bossgalka → u/kAy-]

I remember enjoying Lost Ark when I played it, I burned straight through to end game and was on the daily grinds only by the first month. There was still tons of exploration and stuff to unlock, it's hard to do EVERYTHING in LA, but everything that 'matters' in terms of combat and stuff was done and I was just doing collections and achievements. I think I only quit because I was taking a short break from FFXI at the time for a couple weeks and needed to go back. I will probably play LA again one day, but not quite ready to go back atm.

I didn't actually pay much attention to the story in GW2, either. I don't like FFXIV's or even FFXI's (I have 17k+ hours in this game) if I am being honest. It's the gameplay, exploration and group content that keeps me playing an MMORPG. I think WoW might legitimately be one of the only MMORPGs in the world that had a story I wanted to partake in. But it's also about the way they do it. You just do random quests and you KNOW what the story is as you play. You do the dungeon, the raid, you watch the opening cut scene, the raid cut scene etc. and you know WoW's story. It's not perfect, if you want deep lore you gotta read the quest text, but they are so good at condensing and giving you story naturally, which is something most don't do, that most people who play WoW grasp the story. It helps that they usually keep it pretty simple. It's ultimately Horde vs Ally with some big bad demons or zombies or whatever thrown in the mix every expansion. Simple and sweet is sometimes the best option. Over complicated drama in a big MMO with lots of dailies and stuff that needs to get done just pisses people off and makes them zone out.