First off I want to give a warm welcome to Intrepid Studios new Community Marketing Lead Margaret Krohn! Margaret introduced herself on Reddit sharing her plans for Ashes of Creation community presences moving forward. She was also opened to address some of the communities questions to get a better understanding of some of her goals for the community. Bellow is Margaret Krohn full introduction. (original post)
Hello, Glorious Ashes of Creation community!
Thank you all for the warm welcome, and all the great questions! I know there were some questions I was unable to answer, but I was able to get together with Steven to provide you with those answers, so let’s get right to that, as I know that’s what you all really want to see! 😉
Q: Will there be a payment plan for Kickstarter package upgrades?
- A: We are not considering a payment plan structure to purchase upgrades at this time. These purchases can be currently made via our payment options on our website.
Q: Will we get name reservations?
- A: The Name reservations feature will become available as we approach a permanent server convention. This will probably happen around Alpha 2, and will be accessible through the website on your account page.
Q: How can we get name reservations?
- A: You can gain access to the name reservation option via the Voyager Plus Package in our current preorder shop. This reservation was also available to our discontinued Intrepid Pack, Certain Kickstarter Packages, and the Summer Packages.
Q: Will we be able to change our usernames and passwords?
- A: Username changes will not be available other than special requests to our CS team, but we will allow you to change your display names.
Password change options are already available if you’ve already migrated to our current website from our legacy version. If you log into the new website, then you have already been migrated. Do note that the password recovery feature is still being worked on if you’ve forgotten your password. We will have an update for you once this feature is complete.
Q: When will the forums be up?
- A: Currently we are working on a single sign-on solution into the forums and a new website. We do not have a final date for when this will be available, but we are hoping for within the next couple of weeks. This is a high priority for us and we apologize for this inconvenience.
Q: What is going on with the website?
- A: We are still working on a host of current issues regarding the website. We’ve made considerable efforts, but we hope to have them all resolved by the end of the month.
Q: When will we get to have more information on content – Nodes 3, final class names, artisan classes, etc?
- A: Our team is working on putting together a Content Roadmap that will provide you all with these types of information in the forms of many mediums – articles, videos, and livestreams. As we get closer to Alpha 1, you’ll be seeing a lot more of this type of content becoming available.
Q: Can we please get Q&A questions in advance during live streams?
- A: We still value the live interactions and questions during our live streams, so we will continue to take them, but there will be some filtering that goes into them. We’re also going to talk to our Content Creators and Phoenix Initiative backers in order to allow them to submit some questions in advance.
Q: CS tickets feel like they are being answered too slowly. Are you working to resolve this? Also, are account tickets currently on halt?
- A: Account Tickets are not on halt. We have added additional personnel to our ticket process. Our current average response time is 72 hours, but we hope to get this down, and we appreciate your patience in the meantime.
Q: As a Content Creator, I would like to see some changes made to the program, and I would love to have more information to help cover the game. Is there a plan to address these concerns?
- A: Yes! After we finalize our Content Roadmap, we will be distributing information in advance to our Content Creators to better empower you to create your content. We also plan to have some meetings in the upcoming month in order to address other concerns.
Q: Are the marketplace issues resolved?
- A: We’ve identified some additional issues, and we are hoping to wrap those up this week. We also are addressing the concerns with the pricing of some items.
Q: Will we get more vlogs?
- A: YES! 🙂
Q: There are a lot of concerns about deadlines and expectations not being met when it comes to times that are continually pushed back. Will this be resolved?
- A: We are in active development, and understanding that for the betterment of our game, we may sometimes have to delay previously provided times and dates in order to make sure that you, as the player, have the best experience. That being said, we strive to meet our windows of time that we provide and will be transparent if these times change.
Q: When will the login errors be resolved?
- A: Some people are still going to experience some login errors until we are capable of providing the username and password recovery options from the legacy platform.
Q: Have the 500 series errors been resolved?
- A: These errors were a result of issues on our backend architecture from our website. Most of these have been resolved but will require some re-architecture that we are currently in the process of doing.
Q: Have the new registration issues been fixed?
- A: Most of these issues have been solved and new registrations are currently functioning.
Q: With the interdependence of Lore and world-building, how far along is the team as it relates to quests and subsequent choices the players make?
- A: With regards to our unique questing system, it currently exists to provide players with a dynamic experience based on the overarching lore of the world, and the independent player and community. Base functionality was demonstrated over a year ago. Obviously, these will continually be progressed and developed and demonstrated in our upcoming Alphas and Betas.
Q: Will we get patch notes?
- A: Yes, we will be including patch notes.
Q: Will there be a way to completely remove the BR from Apoc and just have the Castle Siege and Horde Mode?
- A: Yes, do not select the mode and it will be excluded from your matchmaking process.
Q: I don’t like the combat animations in their current state. Are there still changes being made to them?
- A: Obviously, we are in development, so the animations are not in a final state. I do want to note that the MMORPG will have different animations in comparison to APOC – since Apoc is 100% action combat and the MMORPG will include our hybrid combat.
Q: If the majority of people would prefer playing APOC with class kits, would it be possible for them to be added to the game?
- A: The BR will not have class kits. Horde and Siege mode do have Class Kits.
Q: Regarding the aspects of raiding, can we assume we will get some more information before Alpha 1 like size and so on?
- A: We’ve released information on raiding in the past, but we can plan to write up a more comprehensive article that can help answer this information.
Q: Will I have the option of revealing armor and ALSO bad ass real looking armor, or are we gonna be forced to pick one or the other?
- A: There’s going to be a variety of gear that you’ll be able to gear your character from on a visual spectrum, but we will not utilize overly sexual armour as we are going for a more realistic armour visual.
Q: How will you roll out new weapon types? When will we see daggers in action? Will we be able to get behind the enemy and stab them from their backs etc?
- A: With updates will come new skills, weapons, etc. We do have combat mechanics that do incorporate directional combat that players will be able to see in the future.
Q: How will backer fulfillment work?
- A: Everyone should have their backer items in their account history. If you have not, please contact our customer service. The rewards specifically – We plan to have the majority of those in Alphas and Betas.
Q: What kind of camera distance is Intrepid using for fights? (WoW vs FF14)
- A: Closer to FF14. We want people to have a wide range of view, especially since our battles will be very large. We want people to be able to visually access their surroundings.
Q: What is the current status on getting OCE servers, US east is very laggy for us OCE players and US west server were down, which were a bit better. Not much has been heard recently.
- A: During our testing phases, we won’t have OCE servers, until we hit BETA for the MMO, and live launch for APOC.
*Phew* We made it through them all! I wanted to say a big thank you to Steven for taking forty minutes of his time to help go through these questions with me, and to all of you for chatting with me and asking a bunch of great questions. I hope this helped resolve your questions, and as we move forward, we’ll be releasing more content – articles, Q&As, videos, and livestreams, so stay tuned!
Cheers,
/Margaret
