Trials of Ascension

Computer Crash

This morning I really don’t have the time to devote to a proper post as I got upstairs, ate my oatmeal, drank my coffee and then noticed one of my computers was stuck in a booting up loop.  As a result I spent most of my normal blogging time trying to resurrect it.  It appears to be gone now, and I will have to figure out what happened over the weekend.  But in the meantime as I play a somber rendition of taps for it… I need to get a post together today. 

Trials of Ascension

 

File this in the “Yet Another MMO Kickstarter” category.  Trials of Ascension came across my RSS feed this morning so I felt like I needed to check it out.  Their claim is that they plan to build a “truly innovative MMORPG” and some of the things they mention wanting would definitely be different.  The tech demo they posted looks pretty spartan, but then again so did the Pathfinder tech demo. Hopefully given resources they will clean that up a bit.  In it’s current state it reminds me quite a bit of the old Atari published MMO Horizons.  Some of the features they mention wanting are…

  • Perma Death – 100 deaths and the character stays dead
  • Random Everything – no static spawns or dungeons
  • Hardcore Gameplay – video talks about wanting to challenge the players a lot
  • No Fast Travel – feels it shrinks the world too much
  • No Global Chat – whisper and shout only work within a radius
  • No Names – can’t see character or npc names
  • Magic Difficult – magic is hard to acquire but extremely powerful
  • GM Team – live GM events and interaction
  • Cooperative Crafting – players have to work together to craft items
  • No Minimap – world map but no way to tell exactly where you are
  • No Con System – no way to determine the level range of a player or mob

Not For Me, But Maybe You

So what they propose is a drastically different game than what is available currently.  I am posting this on my blog because I figure there are several of my readers who would be excited to play something like this.  The problem is… I am not.  I read the list of features they want to implement, and I remember the fervor that was whipped up before Vanguard released about it being a return to hardcore gameplay.  The problem is… players will say they want this sort of a game but they never seem to show up with their pocket books when one is released.

Maybe Kickstarter is a viable vehicle for this sort of niche vision, and potentially it can get built and find a quiet following to keep the lights on.  Mostly I am just shining a light on this existing to let folks who might want to support it know about it.  Personally nothing they are describing sounds like “fun” to me.  I like my modern conveniences and I tend to rebel against the games that don’t have them.  However that is not to say that there are not players out there who have been craving this more hardcore and primitive gaming experience.  In that case support the hell out of this game and hope it makes it through to fruition.

2 thoughts on “Trials of Ascension”

  1. Certainly looks like something I’d play, but I never spend money on games for myself anymore. If it gets finished and goes F2P I’ll definitely check it out. 🙂

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