We are excited to announce that all registered users for Ashes of Creation will be able to play Apocalypse on December 18th! You will receive instructions before the 18th on how to set-up your Apocalypse open beta account. As you are aware, we have been testing the Apocalypse arena heavily over the past couple months. The goal of this testing was to answer the feedback from our community about the development of our combat system.
From the very beginning, we have designed towards a hybrid combat system that provides players the choice between more action oriented combat or traditional tab targeting combat. This blend of combat required that we take a unique approach to testing. So as a result we introduced an unplanned testing phase we called Alpha 1 Phase 1, and it was solely built around testing the action side of our intended hybrid system.
As this testing period was introduced, we decided to package up the intended game modes of Battle Royale, Castle Sieges and Co-Op Horde and rename it Apocalypse. We also decided that we wanted to stress our server infrastructure with as many players as possible. So on December 18th we will grant this testing phase to everyone as a Free-To-Play experience.
We are also happy to announce, that you will be able to earn cosmetics within Apocalypse that will carry over with your account into Ashes of Creation the MMORPG! Apocalypse allows us to introduce players to the art and immersive nature of the world of Ashes early on. Giving us a persistent environment to deploy assets as they are created for the MMORPG. This also means, that those of you who own backer cosmetics from Kickstarter or the Pre-Order store, will be able to see some of these on your character in Apocalypse before the launch of Ashes.
Apocalypse will have Chapters with Adventure Paths that have 50 levels of progression available to players, and will update every 10-weeks. This will give players a free progression path filled with unique cosmetics that are earnable through the collection of experience from playing any of the 3 game modes Apocalypse will offer. There will be an optional Legendary Path that players can purchase. Both paths provide daily quests and weekly questsfor players to complete. These quests give lore that relates to the story of Verra during the Fall, thousands of years before the start of the MMORPG.
We have decided that all Alpha One backers will have lifetime access to the Legendary path. We will also be giving all Beta and Alpha Two backers access to the first Chapter’s Legendary path, with over 50 cosmetics available to earn!
The benefit of the Apocalypse testing period with the limited scope of these 3 game modes, is the ability to collect much needed data with regards to;
- Server Architecture
- Server Stability
- Server Deployment
- Large Scale Battle Optimization
- Action-Combat Designs
- Castle Siege Design
- AI and Boss Designs
- Character Asset Polish
- Environment Optimization
- Account Management Deployment
- Launcher/Patcher Deployment
While all of these features are further tested through our Alpha and Beta schedules, the ability to deploy Apocalypse with the Battle Royale, Castle Siege and Horde modes available provided great opportunity for refinement before the Alpha and Beta periods that does not impact our development schedule of the MMORPG.
Intrepid is very excited to be able to offer this experience to all the fans following our development. We hope that Apocalypse delivers many hours of fun for you to enjoy in the world of Verra. Everyone on the team is incrediblythankful for the dedication and commitment that our Glorious Community has shown Ashes and we cannot wait to see you in game!
