Shelve your snark, Hi-Rez detractors: It looks as if Tribes: Ascend isn’t dead after all.
Following rumors last week that suggested the studio might be turning its attention back to the long-neglected 2012 entry to the Tribes franchise, CEO Erez Goren tweeted the confirmation, noting that the good fortunes of MOBA SMITE and the upcoming Paladins have made the reinvestment possible:
With the success of Smite and Paladins, we have more resources than ever in the Studio. We can now afford to go back and improve older game.
— HiRezErez (@BlueOrc) August 28, 2015
Tribes will be getting a new map and some other small changes as well as continuing support. PTS in about two weeks if all goes well.
— HiRezErez (@BlueOrc) August 28, 2015
Hi-Rez President Stewart Chisam seemed salty about the spoiler but confirmed and added context to the announcement on Reddit.
We have a very small but passionate team working on some changes to Tribes that we hope the community will respond to positively. This team is led by HirezSean, who was highly involved at all levels on the initial Ascend project, and one of the lifelong Tribes fans that initially lobbied for us to acquire the Tribes franchise in 2010.
Our plan is to release a very early version of some of our changes to a public test server as soon as we can (hopefully within a couple weeks). We expect this version to be very raw from many perspectives, especially from a balance angle — but we know the Tribes community is passionate and will help us test out the changes and provide the feedback we need to get the changes into a shippable state.
Chisam calls it a “passion project,” noting that he doesn’t expect it to make money but that at the very least he wants to “leave the game in a better state than it is now” for the die-hard fans within and without the studio.
Obviously, we can’t promise how long we will maintain the game — and given our history, I want to be very careful about oversetting expectations. If people don’t like and respond to the changes as we make them, obviously, we will have to stop maintaining the game at some point. But I am hopeful we can get the game to a better spot that our hardcore Tribes community will really love and appreciate for a long time.
