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Ashes of Creation, a currently in-development MMO, is a game that’s managed to attract drama. There have been plenty of complaints and negative criticisms levied at the upcoming game, some of which have been fair, and other complaints not having much ground beneath them. This particular YouTuber has decided to step away from the game and its development and posted a video about his overall grievances with the game as it stands.
However, this comes days after the Game Director, Steven Shariff, came under fire for a statement about people wanting to "play" the game’s Alpha Two build. The YouTuber leveled some claims about the game, leading to Shariff to respond in the YouTube comments section and pasting it on Reddit to respond to another person.
Ashes of Creation YouTuber Narc takes shots at development team and the Creative Director calmly responds
YouTuber Narc had quite a few complaints about Ashes of Creation, done from the perspective of a “regular guy.” He claimed to refuse interviews and insider information about the game so that he could continue to critique the game as a regular person and not as a content creator or some kind of insider.
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One of his major complaints was the removal and subsequent return of the $250 dollar Early Access packs. Only when they returned, they were cheaper. This appeared to take advantage of people's FOMO (Fear of missing out) so they'd buy the keys at a later date.
Another thing he highlighted was “dynamic gridding,” which can add or remove game servers within a realm to cover for fluctuations in player density. It’s certainly a fascinating idea, but Narc focused on how Ashes of Creation kept changing the goalposts on when/if this would be implemented.
However, creating a video game — especially an MMO — is a challenging affair. No matter how often someone says a feature is ready, anything can change mid-development or the team may decide to push dates around to make sure it’s truly ready.
According to the YouTuber, his problem isn’t with the state of the game, but Ashes of Creation’s “deceptive communication between Intrepid and testers.” Despite Steven Shariff stating that the Alpha isn’t really meant to be “played,” Narc accused the developers of making players grind for 50 hours just to test certain things.
Between this and things like the desert biome’s presentation, the YouTuber continued to lay criticism at the feet of Ashes of Creation, leading to a response from the Game Director himself.
The response to Narc from the Ashes of Creation game developer is lengthy, but you can find it in the Reddit post above. This was posted on the platform in response to a post that said Narc was a huge influence on them to try the game but claimed the YouTuber was being pushed out of the community by Steven himself.
Steven’s primary points were that the game is still very much under development, and stands behind the decisions made. He also claimed to not be against negative criticism, so long as it was respectful. He did hit back on one of Narc’s claims, about people being banned for “voicing concern”:
“Lastly, I am not blind to constructive criticisms. I want constructive criticisms... This is WHY I have chosen the open development path. You stated that people were banned from the reddit for “voicing concern”. That is completely false. I watched on your stream, as the 4 people who were banned for violating the subreddit’s conduct rules over the last 11 days, came back to you laughing about the bans, as some achievement in your chat and discord."
With his comments, Steven then related the streamer's critcism to creating a toxic environment:
"Creating an atmosphere of toxicity is not constructive criticism or feedback, and it is not the type of community we are trying to cultivate around Ashes. There is plenty of room for well thought out criticism and feedback, so long as it remains respectful to other community members and the team.”
No matter how you slice it, it sounds like Narc is done with Ashes of Creation for now, but perhaps he’ll return to the game at a later time, when it’s in a more finished state — that’s entirely up to him. Perhaps it's for the best, though. At least one Redditor has highlighted how toxic the content creator has become, swearing at his own chat and banning people that disagree with him.
Creating an MMO is an incredibly challenging ordeal, and testing phases are truly not for everyone. Ashes of Creation, like any other game, is not immune to criticism. However, there’s a difference between constructive criticism and flaming or bashing a game — that’s not how progress is made.
For now, we’ll just have to see how AoC continues its development, and if it keeps the promises made to the fans. There are many people excited about it, hoping it’s the next big genre-defining MMO, but only time will tell on that point.
