The PvP sandbox of Ashes of Creation already has talked about making players fight for things like dungeon spots and caravans, but now it’s thinking bigger, as in node vs. node warfare, which is the focus of the latest Alpha Two gameplay preview.
The devs open up by explaining that war declarations between node mayors are going to cost some resources, starting first with a mayor putting forth a war preparations commission that asks players to gather materials. Once that’s completed, mayors can then declare war against a nearby node and kick things off.
There will be several different kinds of wars on offer at launch, such as disabling services, siphoning gold, or temporarily taking over mayorship of a node, but territory control is the war type available in Alpha Two. Once a territory war is declared, citizens of the competing nodes will fight for control of POIs that spawn in both areas of a node’s influence, earning victory points that ultimately determine which node wins the war and earns a big buff.
The rest of the preview showcases a full node war, talking about combat, making the game’s tech work at the scales wars require, and other node war mechanics.
The node war preview is the highlight of AOC’s May development stream, which confirms that Alpha Two’s third quarter launch window is still on track, talks about how it’s designing a more sandboxy “golden path” of character progression, and talks up Intrepid Studios’ latest hires, along with some player Q&A.
