As you all know full release will be coming out soon, as weird as it feels to say that of course. The main goal I have with this thread is to detail the changes that happened to the community of this period as it’s been dry, but interesting for the AO ecosystem. Any changes or beliefs or theories you have or heck, even stories are welcome. It’s most likely only a few weeks until full release drops and the state of AO has been changed a lot. With the lack of content pvpers became probably the most consistent AO players mainly just due to them grinding renown and money ruining the markets.
i got a story theory i wanna dump so here
we enter skyhall, look around ask for information run around ask for information run around ask for information repeat Skip skip we end up killing a noble of skyhall who happens to be an aesir member
but we fuck up and accidentally let innocent people get caught in the battle and die (yknow that one statue in the emotes video with the statue)
after this our character realizes the weight of our actions and finally start feeling guilt over the fact that we caused this to happen through that self righteous fallacious justice
idk bout chapter 9 tho but i remember seeing that one theory about us being hunted by a thorne empire bounty hunter because of our crimes
it’s going to be so funny reading back these messages once FR drops, because most predictions will probably be completely wrong.
but I think that the player count will reach pretty high numbers for the first few days as usual, and then drop back down to maybe 3k people after a week or so, since not a lot of grindable content has been added (ig mostly talents and some new bosses)
I think that pvp might have an even higher bar of entry due to those fusion jewel thingys that were mentioned in the patch notes and of course blood diseases and gels since those open up a bunch of strong synergies.
or maybe most of the new things are actually kinda bad like the last few rare spells and techniques we’ve gotten and not much has changed. who knows
I do hope that the fleet system isn’t too difficult to get into, since it seems very useful for mid to early lategame. but if it’s something you can only really start once you’ve figured out everything else (your build, your armour/weapons, etc) it doesn’t really seem worth it.
feels like thats a bit low, i think 5k at lowest after a week cause keep in mind ao still manages to have 1k players despite not being update for more than a year
I think that refers to The Incident
I get the feeling that getting into it will be precisely the difficult part of it. Grinding out the ships you want, the deckhands to command (IIRC?) some ships, and getting the galleons to upkeep them early-on is going to be a decent barrier to entry. Once you’re decently down the research path and you’re making more profit than you’re spending to upkeep, that’s when it’ll finally be useful.
Though I have forgotten a lot about it, I might be wrong.
Anyways, onto my actual theories. The game will see a pretty big player count spike, as well as some youtubers (maybe even decently big ones) coming around to cover AO, which will only further grow it. Returning players who didn’t stick around during the Great Drought will find the economy much harder to work with (especially for buying the new stuff) and may not stick around long, despite the sheer amount of content added (mostly due to either disagreements with changes or only being there for the story).
A bit out there, but there will be a decent amount of discourse over the Juraserva bosses and how their spawning mechanics cause problems for actually completing the talent line (IIRC they’re based off random chance and there’s always a possibility someone beats the boss first, which might just send it back on cooldown) and how a handful of players can partially restrict a server’s access to them. The same will go for Spirit Weapon access, however these will become items of greater value than the Colossal Greatsword or Amelia’s Cloak (as they’re vital to all spirit builds).
After a month or so, the player count will die down to 2-3k, with people still hunting Far Reaches enemies, new titles, The Omen, and more. I also expect a not-miniscule amount of players to get walled at a story boss, maybe even with max level, which causes them to quit out of difficulty (and said boss to get nerfed).
iirc laelus the thief is a set encounter, so spirit builds would have access to at least 2 spirit weapons without having to hunt down the wandering bosses, and with the rite scrolls from bookcases they’d have a pretty decent amount of variety, so I don’t think it’s too big of an issue
I can’t believe Vetex added fucking aids to arcane odyssey
The problem with the fleet system to me is that it seems incredibly expensive. I haven’t watched the video about it for a while but the one thing I know is that managing a multi-sea fleet with dozens of ships is going to be costly although it does remind me of when Queen Elizabeth 1 hired privateers to make money for England, random history there.
Can’t wait for the community to moan about all of this and I get some youtubers bring unwanted attention but I’m going to admit it, as shameful as I feel I actually got into world of magic because of flamingo back in like 2020.
Yhere’s a friend of mine who’s coming back when full release drops and this is exactly what I’m afraid of and I stated before. Without anything to work with for a year players don’t really have anything to do other than grind for galleons in all honesty and the marketplace is now just a big monopoly from clans.
grimm i want you to know i am blaming you for my academic failures today and that there WILL be consquences.
skittle you’re built like a rubik’s cube
domer