Summary of the Trove AMA with Avarem

First of all, for those who aren’t interested in Trove: Please excuse the “imbalance” here in this blog recently. But I’m sure that every gamer understands the excitement when a new game launches. Expect this to change in favour of Guild Wars 2 again, once the expansion launches (whenever that might be… *cough*). :)

Two days ago, Avarem posted an AMA on the official forums and it was met with a lot of enthusiasm. Reading through the countless posts he made can also be quite a lot of work, so I thought I should pick out some personal highlights to ramble about them here.

What is pretty clear from the way he responded to people asking about queues etc., is that Trion did not expect so many new players. I get that queues happen every time an online game launches. I remember ArcheAge (yes, also published by Trion) having queues with a few hours of waiting time when it launched. Trove, at least, had queues of under one hour. They kept writing that they added more servers and did optimizations and that we should see the queues disappear or get shorter but for me, queues were at a consistent 30 to 50 minutes. Apparently, demand grew as fast as the (server) supply did. Looking at Steam, where the game got released as well, revealed that they were in Steam’s “top 10 games played” (no. 5 right now). I seriously believe them when they say they did not expect to have such a popular game! It seems that they took highest priority (as they should) which means that content updates are not the highest priority right now. I assume once the launch dust has settled, we will get lots of new goodies. Some of which Avarem talked or hinted about already in this AMA. But enough about queues. They are annoying to deal with and they are no more fun to write about either and it’s much more fun to look at what’s coming to Trove next.

Even before launch, the playerbase had asked for a better trading system. Currently, you need to be online at the same time and stand at the same trading post to initiate a trade. This can be a bit difficult to achieve especially when you want to trade with somebody from another time zone. But even back then, Trion already said that they will give us some easier method to trade and that it will come post-launch. This “trading system” is coming. No details yet, other than that it will be “more automated“.

In the beginning, Trion said that Trove will not get PvP. And I get it: They keep adding new classes and I would imagine it to be very difficult to balance them properly. So, “serious PvP” is out of the question (my personal opinion here!). But they have since changed their mind when it comes to “no PvP at all!” and they are working on some fun “Trovey” PvP. The important part for those who cannot stand PvP: It will not be mandatory – and probably not too serious. They are already working on the next new class, but it has no biome yet. It will have a new weapon type. At some point in the future, they will look at all classes again to see if they need some improvements (and maybe we will see some balancing for PvP, but who knows…)

When it comes to “more stuff to do”, something called The Shadow Tower will come to Trove next. Unfortunately, it seems to come before the underground update which has already been postponed before. Poor thing… other content keeps pushing in front. ;) Anyway, they will show or talk about The Shadow Tower more in their livestreams (on Twitch, usually on Fridays). Speaking of their livestreams: Inventory space will get an expansion, apparently, and this is another thing that they will talk about in their next livestream.

The Neon City biome is currently not part of the challenges, but it will be added in the future. Some lore may also be added to Trove at some point. At the moment, there is hardly any backstory to the game. They had some in the tutorial, but I’m not sure if they took it out again.

Clubs may see some love. I left out some ideas Avarem mentioned or ideas from players that he liked, as it sounded more like an “if we can somehow make it work” and less of a “this will come”. Avarem himself, at least, doesn’t give many details or specific ideas other than this: “Future of clubs: more building, more connection to the game, more progression.“

For those on Macs, there’s good news for you: They are working on a Mac client! For those in Oceania, hoping to reduce latency, there aren’t such good news: They don’t have a data center in Oceania, so there are currently no plans to add servers located over there.

There is no policy about multiboxing yet, but we will hear from Trion about that soon, apparently.

One last thing: Since Avarem replied to somebody who has issues logging in, I thought it’s worth mentioning it here as well. If you have problems, send an email to support@trovegame.com – this is where you will get help! They also look at what bugs people are reporting, so they can work on fixing them. Considering how many new players have joined Trove recently, I would assume you need some patience until you get a reply, but yeah, there you go. :)