Embers Adrift

I think Embers checks the boxes for fans of MMOs circa 2000s. Environments are well done and the community is helpful, world chat is your friend.

Edited review after feedback received. This game is a grind fest. The community is small and some of the community keeps to themselves. The population of multiboxers is significant. Finding groups is difficult for the mentioned reasons and also the small population. It is a shame because the design of the game encourages grouping where the dungeons are great for groups. There are solo loops in the dungeons called 'ember veins'. You can solo all the way to level cap, but xp is faster in groups. I think that the game's population is shaped by the gameplay. One of the problems I think is that if the general population is 90/10 good to evil, the population here is a bit different, and I wouldn't be mentioning it if it was cheery. Evil triumphs over good sometimes and more often here. The boxers won't group with loners because they would rather not share rolls on loot. People are friends with each other depending on whether you have rolled against them on loot or not. There is so much to say about raiding design and how it won't scale to a larger population. Whether this is a cause of the limited population or not is hard to say. But there is 1 lockout for the entire server on about a weekly basis for the raid bosses. So even if a new group of 20 people wanted to play this game to end-game, they couldn't do any raiding unless they were wrapped into the group already raiding. Fortunately or not, the end-game raid has only been almost full rarely in the time I've been around, and not lately. Can you imagine the problems it would create if there were 35 raiders looking for 30 spots in raid? It would be a social nightmare. I think they should implement level matching grouping for dungeons. So if I am level 50 I could turn my level down to 35 and run the forgotten depths dungeon with other people. Or we could all turn our level down to 8 and run the lowest dungeon, and still be rewarded with reasonable XP. With a population as small as it is, it is really hard to find groups. It's just people switching around alts to play. It works if you have an alt every 10 levels, but I am gearing this review to a new player without alts. On the plus side, the abilities and gameplay style is what you would expect of a game of this type. I'm an old WoW hardcore raider who raided for a competitive spot and enjoy the mechanics. Of course it's a bit less polished or simpler than WoW, and there is a bit less variety. But the developers do still spend time on the game, and they even accept requests for improvements. For instance, they developed improved weapon switching. But there are some things like buff icons rearranging themselves so quickly it's impossible to read them in real-time. You need to make a clip and scrub through it to find the buff. The crafting system is quite complicated if you're into that. There are codes of conduct and you'll find people who don't uphold standards. Not everyone is friendly. People will lie to your face. People will judge you by your philosophical ponderings and not your actions. People will group based on whether you may need loot, would slow them down, if they have a normal group that you're not a part of. So I'd say I'm about 50/50 for recommendation of this game. I changed to recommended because selfishly I'd like more players. I had 2 helpfuls before that. If you're a good person, come play; if you're evil, don't. That's wishful thinking. The minority of the community sours it for me. You will need more than 2 hours to try it out, but $20 may be worth it. You may play for 6 months to a year with a subscription.

Screw it, I am not going to go on about whats good and bad, there is plenty of that already posted and I am sure they would do a better job of it than I. The only reason I tried it is cause I love the type of grafix this kind of game has. Nothing else about it makes me want to play.

I have been having a blast on this game, first day I found a guild that was very helpful and they have been helping me out with quests and running these massive dungeons!!! The community in this game is amazing and not toxic. Really can’t wait to see what else this game as to offer. For 20 bucks what do you have to loose if you enjoy playing tab target MMOs.

Yes, I purchased and refunded. I enjoyed my one hour run with this game. But, I am just concerned about how long the servers will be up. After playing Meridian 59, AC, AC2, DaoC, I've switched to just playing solo on MMORPGs. I refunded the game because I am afraid, with the low server pop count, the status of this game's existence might be in jeopardy. Again, this is just my opinion, please do not be swayed by this review. I do understand that devs have stated Embers Adrift was not meant to be a large MMORPG community platform, but more of a compact, low to medium size community. Over the two years, I've seen platforms like Aeternum, closing down, it has made me think twice about investing time. Please give this game a chance. It is a good MMORPG. I will wait for a sale and definitely grab this game and keep it. For $19.99, with no required sub, it's a good deal. Highly recommended.

I love games like these, but i cannot currently recommend the game in its current player state. It's mainly designed as a party based game is and very difficult to do any of the higher difficulty content due to the very low player population. As it stands right now, they have not put out any big content updates, just mostly patches, hotfixes, and a few miscellaneous features, but nothing major as of note. I do not see the game surviving much longer, but who knows, I hope i'm wrong. I Would love to see this game strive.

Not Recommended — 3000+ hours, multiple characters at max level I really wanted to love Ember's Adrift. I've leveled 5 characters to max level, so this isn't a first-impressions review — this is coming from someone who's genuinely invested time into the game. The core gameplay loop is solid, but the elephant in the room is how the devs approach development right now. It feels like they've burned out on their own game. Leaving detailed in-game feedback or bug reports seems to serve only to tank their morale, which makes it hard to help them improve things without feeling like you're kicking a dead horse. Content updates are slow — and when they do arrive, they're often not substantial additions. Weather effects, transmogs, cosmetic pets — none of it moves the needle on actual gameplay, progression, or endgame content. Meanwhile the stuff that would actually retain players (new zones, class balance, meaningful endgame systems) barely gets touched. I don't think this is a bad game. I think it's a game whose devs have lost the energy to keep pushing it forward, and it shows in both the pace and the substance of updates. Hard to recommend at this point unless that changes. Some positives - Groups can be fun, if you can find'm. - Combat feels intentional, not just hit the next button off cooldown. - End game raiding zone is fun. Last few bosses are downed via exploits though. Flipside - No instanced content, just a couple people can lockdown endgame 'raid' bosses. - Nothing to do at max level, current raiding scene is just awful. - Constant feedback loop from Devs/Owners when we beg for QoL changes (jobs/wives/lives) as if players don't. - Everything, and I mean everything is secret squirrel, all new content goes untested.