Preview sessions for new MMORPGs are often fairly predictable. Advances in graphics and artificial intelligence may have been made since the last time you attended one, but you can be almost certain someone's going to beat a big monster senseless in a dungeon. And so, in fact, it went when creative director Steven Sharif and lead designer Jeffrey Bard showed me a hideous chap with face tendrils called the "spider demon" in their upcoming sandboxy MMO Ashes of Creation. Using a mage-like character, Sharif zapped and fried the creature a few times to show off the combat, which he describes as feeling similar to that of Guild Wars 2. Good stuff.
But wait! A twist! Bard showed me that I could become the spider demon myself if I so wished, or at least if I'd bought one of the "monster tokens" they plan on selling through Ashes of Creation's eventual cash shop. Nor would this be some mere cosmetic outfit for a few laughs in the local square, as you might get with a lootable toy in World of Warcraft. Within minutes, Bard was in the spider demon's form tearing through a medieval-styled village and clawing away at its buildings--buildings players would use. And thus those same players have a vested interest in stopping Bard-as-Spider-Demon, but naturally on the sparse preview build there was no one around to thwart him save Sharif, who ended up getting killed by Bard by accident. It's essentially players as world bosses, and it's one of the most interesting ideas I've seen out of the MMORPG genre since EverQuest Next effectively became EverQuest Never, even if the idea has its roots in other multiplayer games like Evolve.
The spider demon is but one of the most dramatic manifestations of the consequences arising from Ashes' "node" system, which is the killer feature that distinguishes Ashes from its many genre cousins. Think of nodes this way: rather than presenting players with lands where all the setpieces have already been put in place the moment you enter the game as in Final Fantasy XIV, Ashes of Creation fills its new servers with open wilderness peppered with invisible nodes. Nodes soon start to grow (or "level") into villages, cities, and more based on player activities and the majority racial makeup--elves, dwarves, and the like--of the participating players. Eventually, players can seize and remove surrounding nodes once their own node gets large. And in the process of this ongoing growth, sometimes players will disturb things that were better left undisturbed. Things like the spider demon.
"It's kind of like civilization is encroaching on this environment," Sharif told me, adding that the nature of nodes ensures that each server will have a substantially different experience from another. "Monsters will come and destroy buildings and advancements that have been made in the open world."
It won't always be a spider-demon, Sharif said. There are three tiers, with the spider-demon being a member of the mid-sized, dungeon-boss caliber "elite" category. Sometimes the disturbed beings could take the form of packs of dire wolves, hordes of zombies roused from their graveyard, or even, rarely, an epic-tier dragon flying out of a volcano once a node reaches its maximum level. In any case, the disturbed monsters have to tackle a series of destructive objectives, which can either be handled by the the AI or, more interestingly, by a player. The player in turn would attempt to complete all those actions much as in a multi-objective quest, hopefully before other players brought him or her down.
"The AI normally has to kill a certain amount of people, and then it can eventually delevel a node by killing enough NPCs," Bard said. "If the player takes over and finishes that script successfully, then they're going to get rewards mostly based around the context of the event, so they'll get clothing customizations, appearance items, or mounts."
Sharif adds that each time you participate in a "ride," as he refers to the monster takeovers, the more skills you'll unlock that make it more fun.
The system sounds good. It sounds a little too good, in fact. I asked Sharif if there's any way to limit the spawns or the tokens so you don't have an unmanageable horde of spider demons tearing through the world.
"Each token has a marker that determines when it was first released, purchased, or whatever the deal may be, and that enters the player into a queue that gives priority to the earliest marker," Sharif said. "If that player's offline, then it will go to the next player in the queue. And there's only going to be a select few of these being sold at any given time."
Sharif also said the token system doesn't clash with one of Ashes' core philosophies of not saddling this subscription-based MMORPG with a "pay-to-win" cash shop.
"We want to make sure that the benefits granted for participating in monster tokens are twofold," he said. "One, it's a fun way for a player to get out of their normal mode and act on behalf of the environment to oppose the players. Additionally, the benefits from participating in this ride are going to be primarily cosmetic and enhancing your performance within the ride itself. You won't get any advantage over other players by participating in the event."
It's still a little early to guess how well all this will work out in practice. Ashes of Creation's Kickstarter campaign isn't even over yet (although, impressively, it's already amassed more than $2 million with 11 days still to go) and the alpha won't even appear until later this year. The game itself won't drop until next year, and that's being optimistic.
But the spider-demon was but one of the many fascinating things I saw during my hour with Sharif and Bard, with the others being the insane level of detail in the world or the daunting size of a "metropolis" tier node. Ashes of Creation is making MMORPGs seem exciting again, and from what I saw, the team's already far enough along that the project won't end up in ashes itself.
Leif Johnson is a contributing editor to IGN who plays RPGs from a remote Texas ranch and who has wondered for years if he's more like a mage or a ranger. You can tell him how silly this line of thinking is on Twitter at @leifjohnson.
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