Oh boy.
Trials of Ascension is back which means I don’t have to eat my hat. It’s a woven corgi hat, I bought it off of Etsy. A very nice item.
If you’re not aware of Trials of Ascension, the game itself has been a thing for longer than some of MMO Fallout’s readers have been alive. It emerged back in 2001 under Don Danielson who may go down as one of the most incompetent con artists in the gaming industry next to Sergey Titov. After several failed crowdfunding attempts, Trials of Ascension finally launched into Early Access in 2018 and nobody cared. 35 peak players on launch month and single digits after that, the game quickly died.
Well Trials of Ascension is officially under new ownership. The newly knighted Dragonfire Entertainment has taken the reigns with a three man crew hoping to reboot the property and somehow descale the game from years of bad PR.
The Trials of Ascension IP has been picked up by a completely new team. A programmer (me), a modeler/animator, and a web designer, and we are actively developing the original game as well as have a Kickstarter going till the end of March at the time of this post. I can’t speak for previous design teams, programmers or decisions that were made regarding marketing strategies and use of funds (ie/ past kickstarter campaigns). What I can say is that currently it is under a whole new development process with a new team and fresh ideas and the intent of providing clear and transparent communication and practices to all in the gaming community.
For Trials of Ascension: Exile players, you’re out of luck. The current iteration might get some bug fixes, but overall development on the game has ceased.
If you’re interested in an MMO where you can play as a dragon, I recommend at least following the game’s Twitter account or website. Given the history of the IP, I would recommend avoiding the $9 thousand dollar Kickstarter campaign currently running.
MMO Fallout 