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Embers Adrift Might Not Be The MMO For Me, And That's Okay | MMORPG.com
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Embers Adrift Might Not Be The MMO For Me, And That's Okay | MMORPG.com
Bradford has been playing Embers Adrift since its alpha backer launch last week, and has come away with one very clear opinion: it's just not for him.
Comments
Definitely a niche game and am glad I found it. I will be playing for a while. Oh yeah and no GOLDSELLER SPAN
Does the torch stay lit while it's on the ground? If so then "Awesome!!!!"
I did purchase and was only able to explore for a few minutes. Hoping to get more involved in the next few days.
I'm perfectly fine with no map but there does need to be a compass.
Perfect dark, especially if they are able to make it more like Dragon's Dogma, is very welcome.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
mmorpg junkie since 1999
The quests are done like older rpgs on console and mmorpgs where you need to talk to npcs to find out lore and ask questions and see if they have a quest. The quests have nice stories and rewards so far.
The combat is abit slow but it picks up as you get higher level and more skills. I liked having to carefully choose your fights as you can quickly get outnumbered, pull aggro from something nearby, or have your target call for help.
After exploring a zone you kinda get a sense where everything is. Even if you don't use the big planet in the sky aka Blupiter for a compass it becomes easy to figure out where you are and where you need to go.
The night can be abit dark but there is a option in settings if you turn it all the way down its a little brighter at night. There are also ground torches you can place near where you are fighting and they slowly burn down.
I am really enjoying it so far. I thought I would not after watching videos and streams, but after actually playing for a few days it is enjoyable.
This is a game for people who love Everquest, but disliked faster travel, a map, a mini map, a compass and magic....and range specializations. It is the most narrow demographic of mmorpg gamer I've ever seen and it will ensure this game stays under 1k players. This ignores the performance issues, the look and feel of the game, ect, which are all alpha-state in quality.
This game is for people who want to slowly fight mobs as the means of progress, be it alone or in a group. Death comes with a heavy penalty, you drop your inventory but not equipped gear, and with no means to navigate a dungeon, well, lets hope you have it fully memorized.
Also, with the low fantasy, you have 3 melee roles to choose from. Melee DPS, melee healing, Melee tanking. Youll have very few skills and they will all be basic and close range.
It seems that the game fired its lead and visonary last year and basically have raced to launch, in whatever state the game is at, and well, its very unfinished, and boring...its boring for everquest players who love insanely slow TTK farming.
Basically it seems investors got antsy and they launched unfinished and in an unacceptable performance state. 30 levels of stand and farm mobs content, 6 dungeons, 3 melee roles, thats it enjoy, oh and it looks like a PS2 game and preforms like new world on max settings.
You have to really REALLY want to like this game, and even then, its likely the community will drive you out, as its clearly the best game ever made and if you are not loving it to death....you need to go back to wow kiddo, which is the attitude in game. Like everyone is so far above the average peon gamer that needs a silly compass or rewards for grinding.
The issue this game is going to have, is that it appeals to like a couple EQ guilds and hardly anyone else, and this is the honeymoon period, eventually people will bore of the paper thin depth of classes, gear, and combat. This game has so very little going for it, ill be surprised if it lasts past the first month. Just be warned, if you are a huge everquest fan and love this type of game, you will struggle to find value in this game, everyone else, dont even bother touching this.
I agree with some of your points Cybersig but not all. The game does need some work still. They will be optimizing, fixes, and adding more classes and roles later. It is not alpha state quality.
The battles are made to be slower and more engaging similar to D&D and some oldschool mmorpgs. You can be a crafter. You can be a trader. You can be a gatherer. Your opinion on it being boring is just your opinion. Its more about the journey and friends you make along the way, not just the endgame grind.
The community is the best I have seen in a very long time. While there may be a few with a bad attitude that is normal. It is not just for people that liked EQ. It is for anyone who enjoys D&D, older rpgs on console, older mmorpgs, roleplayers, and gamers that want a game and community more like it used to be.
Lastly do not always listen to others opinions or reviews of something but judge for yourself.
A little thing that I have felt is that there is a need of a compass in the game.
Blupiter is always north
Proud MMORPG.com member since March 2004! Make PvE GREAT Again!
If I was back on BDO someone by now would have said "We don't ask questions on 'server name' " in general chat and got players who agreed. Of course, we spoke out against that, but modern MMO communities can be awful.
That is a problem though, because the low levels are extremely and painfully slow. Tough sell for new players. And by the time they get to their teens other players have moved on. In a game that all but requires group play those playing right now are likely going to be the last players to pick up the game in anything that resembles a population. And I believe it should still be possible to make old school combat satisfying. Nothing satisfying about this combat.
Agreed. It has old school elements but I did not find the world interesting at all like I would EQ. Literally nothing made me want to explore.
How is lack of skills old school? Lack of skills abilities is a new school thing not old school. In UO you could have as many skills as you could keybind or put on your screen.
How is trashy skills/abilities old school? UO, DAOC, WoW, EQ all have cool abilities. In Daoc you could chain your abilities with conditional follow-ups. Spells were useful and rewarding. Just because this game is on slow motion means its old school?
How is lack of movement or lack of location old school? UO was on a coordinate system. You could teleport to anywhere in the world with a rune stone. You could also gate people with portals to your location anytime you wanted too, an entire city of people if you wanted.
No magic is old school?
Darkness where you cant see is old school?
All these completely subpar mechanics this game has implemented are being painted on to old school games. Embers is not an old school game. Its a completely undeveloped game pretending to be old school.
The devs of this game didn't even play old school games. Maybe the original owner did, but when he left, he took all that experience with him.
EQ did not have all kinds of cool skills right out the gate. Some classes were better than others with the skills but not all kinds of cool.
EQ had no maps till the modders made them and there was no modding back at eq release, We did have /loc in eq tho and most folks just ran to a wall and followed that left/right.
EQ was dark as hell unless you had nightvision which a few classes had. you ran around with a torch or a wisp I think it was. There were classes with spells to give you nightvision also.
The game definitely needs work. When they say oldschool they are thinking things like tab targetting/sitting to get resources back. Needing a group to do a dungeon crawl. Slow levelling.
Everyone will have their opinions about the game and thats fine. The Devs made the game they wanted to make which is low fantasy. They did not make the game for the masses and I dont think they care what the masses think.
Having to get the beettle eye to cast my spells. Having the ability to forage or hide. Then there was the shadowknight I tried to make and finding myself in some well and drowning trying to find my guild underneath Qeynos. I lost that corpse and never found it again. You know interesting and frightening things that happened because the game gave me a letter from my guildmaster summoning me to find her. That was within the first 30 minutes of the game.
Training sense heading that actually worked. Using the racial skills you have. Each race having unique body forms and sizes and very distinct features with lore and history. Being hated and killed on sight because of the god you worshipped or the race you were. This made every NPC a potential death wish. Wandering in a part of town where some crazy NPC would kill you or becoming kill on sight for having killed some stupid fish in a pond at a temple.
There was politics and corrupt and good guards and all sort of nuances in the game that revealed itself as you played. Towns that were a maze to navigate like Kelethin up on a tree or Neriak which was deep underground.
There were fantastic spells that turned you into a brazier or other inanimate object. That you can as a bard use instruments that was so amazing. Please don't try to downplay the variety of skills , abilities and spells Everquest had. Does this game have even a third of what Everquest had at launch?
I will concede on the EQ reference, as it is the only game I listed I didn't actually play. I was basically going with people I know that played EQ and that people say WoW is an EQ clone. How can WoW be an EQ clone, and yet Embers = EQ? WTF WoW is nothing like Embers, not sure how that makes sense, but whatever I never played EQ so I cannot comment on that.
With that said, fine then say this is a subpar EQ clone. But old school? no, there is nothing old-school about trash. EQ wasn't the first MMO, nor was it the only MMO from 1997 to 2005 which is considered old school.
The only real similarity to old school this game has to me, is a really old looking user interface and chat system. So when people are asking for old school, they are not talking about wanting to bring back old interfaces and chat systems.
Never said eq was the first mmo it was the first 3D mmo to have success. Meridian 59 being the very first 3d mmo.
Comparisons are always gonna be a thing. looking at the team size and budget. Release EQ is a fair comparison. I will say EQ had more content at release than embers adrift does. Comparing it to WoW with that Blizzard budget is extremely unfair.
I will also this about WoW. It did nothing for the genre. All they did was package the best of other MMO's and tweek somethings.
What WoW did do and IMO was the one of the reason for the massive success was make a game that could be played on any computer back in the day. They also had huge IP in warcraft played by alot of folks.
The other mmo's back then just were not playable by most folks because of their computers/internet hardware requirements.