The Madoc Post

Ashes of Creation and the Cost of Belief

I remember when MMOs felt like places.

They were worlds with their own momentum, existing whether you showed up or not, continuing their rhythms regardless of your presence. They could ignore you completely if you failed to matter.

Star Wars Galaxies did that to me. It rewired my expectations in a way I never recovered from.

In Galaxies, you were a person trying to exist inside a machine that barely acknowledged you. Cities existed because players built them. Economies lived or died because people chose to participate or walk away. You could become known without ever touching combat. You could spend months becoming useful to other people instead of chasing loot. Your name mattered. Your reputation mattered. the game did not put you on tracks like a theme park.

I watched entertainers and doctors become social gravity wells, while crafters became celebrities. When Galaxies went dark in 2011, it wasn’t just a shutdown. It was a way gaming, and community in them dying quietly.

The years that followed brought MMOs chasing "The Dream". Theme parks. Convenience. Progress bars. Cash shops. Daily chores pretending to be adventure.

Every new project promised to bring the magic back. Every one of them said the same words. Player freedom. Meaningful choice. Living worlds. And every one of them eventually revealed the ugly truth.

So by the time Ashes of Creation entered the conversation, I was tired.

Burned out tired, beyond simple skepticism. The kind where you stop getting excited even when the trailers look good. The kind where you half listen to developer interviews because you already know how the story usually ends. Another studio. Another promise. Another postmortem waiting a few years down the road.

I remember the forums lighting up late one night. The Kickstarter link bouncing around. I was watching another MMO bleed players when I felt that familiar tug.

The one that whispers maybe this time is different. I hated that feeling. It had betrayed me before. Still, I clicked.

The Pitch That Reached Backward

The Ashes of Creation pitch grabbed me with language more than spectacle.

Nodes. Dynamic cities. Caravans with risk. Player driven politics. Scarcity. Consequence. Travel that mattered. Progression that emerged naturally instead treadmill quest chains. The phrase “player driven” kept coming up as a structural claim, something fundamental rather than flavor.

At first, it was overwhelming. Too many systems stacked together. Too much ambition for one project. But underneath it all was something I recognized. A design philosophy that felt older than the genre had allowed itself to be for a long time.

It sounded like someone remembered Galaxies. Or Ultima Online. Or the messy early years when designers trusted players to create stories instead of consume them. This was a silhouette cut from memory and held up as a promise. It felt like something out of the golden age.

I was skeptical. Nostalgia is a powerful drug, and MMO players are particularly vulnerable to it. Studios know this because every sandbox since Galaxies have promised the same things. Player housing. Crafting that mattered. Economies driven by scarcity. Most of them delivered checkboxes instead of worlds.

Then the Kickstarter passed three million dollars in 2017. That was the moment belief turned into momentum.

When Belief Becomes Identity

Three million dollars is commitment from the fans. People were backing a version of themselves that still believed MMOs could be more.

You could see it forming in the forums. Long heart felt posts. System debates. Guild plans. Arguments over mechanics that didn’t exist yet. Believers and skeptics both convinced of the truth.

I had sworn I was done after Galaxies. Sworn it again after every supposed sandbox that turned into another theme park with housing bolted on. But there I was, leaning forward anyway.

That’s how it starts.

Early Cracks and Old Ghosts

The first real tension came from money rather than gameplay.

A referral program appeared and immediately set off alarms. The reason had everything to do with memory. MMO players don’t forget monetization scars.

I remembered the Trading cards in Galaxies, and SOE monetizing a corpse instead of fixing what killed it. I remembered trusting explanations that sounded reasonable right up until they hollowed the game out.

Now once again, Cosmetics followed. Monthly rotations. Limited availability. “Support development,” they said. “FOMO manipulation,” critics said. Both interpretations came from the same place, distrust learned the hard way.

I kept watching and wafting for a response. Watching as players argue. while Wondering what was really being built, a world or the momentum around one.

I told myself it was too early to judge. Transparency counted for something. It always does, until it doesn’t.

So I stayed on the sidelines, watching development crawl forward the way I once watched Galaxies patch notes. Hoping each one would fix something instead of breaking it.

Living Inside the Wait

Years passed.

Alphas appeared. Then more alphas. Different phases. Different names. Roadmaps shifted. Timelines stretched. Explanations grew longer and more careful.

From a development perspective, it looked reasonable. From a player perspective, time thickened.

This is the part people underestimate. When a project takes long enough, players stop waiting for it and start living inside the idea of it. They imagine characters. Cities. Economies. Futures. They build identity around patience. Around belief. Around sticking it out when others leave.

Money stops feeling like a transaction, and more like exposure. a little Like standing closer to a fire that warms you just up till it burns you.

I recognized it because I had done it before. Stayed in Galaxies long after most players left. Convinced it would come back. Revisited a few time even, long after the guild was gone. Hope is a currency that It spends itself even when there’s nothing left to buy.

Monetization and the it's Weight

Monthly cosmetics stopped being products and became symbols of dedication.

To supporters, they were proof the studio was still breathing. To critics, proof the project depended on anticipation instead of delivery. The longer the game stayed almost ready, the louder both readings became.

That’s the danger zone. When development becomes a psychological economy preying on hopes and dreams as nostalgia circles the drain.

I had seen this economy before with countless games where players invest thousands of hours and dollars into dreams that would never shine again.

Apocalypse and the Pattern Repeating

Apocalypse was introduced as a testing environment. Combat. Networking. Scale. On paper, the logic tracked.

Emotion doesn’t care about whitepapers. Players backed a persistent world. Apocalypse felt like a trend shaped detour. A familiar one.

I had watched SOE do the same thing. Chasing WoW numbers. Chasing trends. Forgetting why people loved their game in the first place. We wanted our cities. Our economies. Our social fabric, what gave the game life just vanish.

Even after Apocalypse shut down, the bruise stayed. Trust doesn’t reset when features are retired. It just adds another scar.

Steam and Exposure

Steam Early Access changed everything.

The audience widened. Context disappeared. Goodwill evaporated. Performance problems surfaced publicly. Bots. Cheating. RMT. All the unglamorous infrastructure problems that every MMO faces, now visible at scale.

In late January 2026, a director’s letter went out. Performance issues acknowledged. Bots addressed. Cheating discussed. It sounded steady. Responsible.

Looking back, Though, it reads like the calm before collapse.

When It Fell Apart

It happened fast.

Reports surfaced as Leadership resignations dropped. Board conflicts. WARN Act notices. The founder reportedly stepping down in protest. Layoffs followed. Employees began posting publicly that they were seeking work because the studio was shutting down.

There was no graceful wind down. Just Sudden impact.

Then came the allegations that some employees were laid off without receiving final paychecks. I don’t know whether they’re true, but as allegations go, they wouldn’t surprise me.

I’d finally taken the plunge with it in Early Access on Steam when, shortly after, Ashes disappeared from Steam. Purchases disabled. Listing pulled. The details blurred together. The message did not.

Stability was gone.

Watching the Community Break

Steam reviews flipped hard negative as anger and grief swarmed around them. with Scam accusations leading the charge in the comments.

I didn’t lose much money. However, there was a mix of guilt and relief that I’d stayed cautious, as I recognized the hope burning in those threads. I had felt it before, and feared it again.

Scam or Collapse

Calling it a scam feels clean, offering closure while simplifying a complicated failure into a villain. It’s probably wrong.

A scam requires intent from the start. This looks to me like ambition colliding with reality. Vision exceeding structure, and failure under pressure.

Intent matters when accountability is discussed. The harm is still done when failure causes devastation, but it’s difficult to say it was always a scam.

What Was Actually Sold

What players bought was the idea of a place once lost to them. A place where people worked together building a world of adventure and community.

I know what this dream feels like, and I lost it when Galaxies shut down. When my city vanished, and community scattered.

As of early February 2026, Ashes of Creation appears suspended or collapsed. Whether it returns in another form or joins the long list of unfinished adventures remains unknown.

What Remains

I think back to the early MMO days often. To the worlds that didn’t care about retention curves or cosmetic shops. To the days when developers were rock stars, bringing fantastic worlds to life as experiences for players.

Too often today, it seems more like a cash grab, in more ways than one. Suits dressed up as developers feasting on the aspirations of fans.

Crowdfunding and early access have changed the model. The appearance of transparency. The hope of player involvement. All while shifting the risk onto consumers.

There was a time when a development cycle meant getting a product to market before a consumer was approached. Now, all it needs is a dream and a payment platform.

The ashes are real.

And MMO players will keep walking through them. Funding the next vision. Hoping again. Because we’re chasing more than just games. We’re chasing places to belong.

Sometimes I wonder if somewhere, in an abandoned server, if the bones of another world are still waiting.

And sometimes I wonder if we’ll ever learn to stop naming our fish before dinner.