Korn

Hi all,

following up on our recent dev talk about the upcoming Into the Fray expansion, we would like to provide you with more information about the so-called “Journey Back” Ability that will be added to mounts.

Design Goals & Constraints

The main reason why we are introducing this change is to combat zone camping. This is a strategy used by gank groups who camp at a static location near the portals in order to catch solo or small group players when they return from the Outlands to the Royal Continent.

Ganking is an integ... Read more

Recently, there have been quite a few threads about the non-consensual PvP balance in Albion Online. There are a lot of complaints that due to recent changes, it is too hard to catch and kill potential ganking victims.

First of all, note that our balance goal is to maximize the amount of PvP that happens in the game in a sustainable way.

Non-consensual PvP in full loot games is extremely hard to do properly. The underlying issue is that it needs to be set up in such a way that it works in the long term, for both parties involved, the gankers, and the potential victims. Without potential victims, there is no non-consensual PvP.

What's not immediately obvious is that maximizing PvP is not achieved by making the game more and more deadly.

The amount of non-consensual PvP depends on the number N of possible targets in the zone, the chance E that you can engage them in a fight, and the chance K that you can score a kill in a fight, w... Read more

Hi all,

we have been made aware of various fraud attempts in the crypto currency world related to Albion Online.

Somebody claims to be selling / listing Albion Online crypto currency and claims that you can you use in connection with the game.

Be advised that this is a scam.

Do not invest into this under any circumstances.

Also, note that similar scams are being run for other popular games. We strongly advise you that if you read about a game allegedly offering its own crypto currently to check directly with the developers of said game to see if this is true before taking any further action.

Hi all,

When it comes to large scale Outland gameplay, one of our core design goals is to encourage as much conflict as possible.

This is always a balancing act between making it easy to get to and find fights on the one hand, and making sure that a coalition of players does not become overly dominant on the other hand. Part of this is also to set up the game systems in such a way that conflict is always encouraged as much as possible, of course within the constraints that in an open world Sandbox MMORPG, players can freely choose on how to play and who to fight.

Over the past weeks, we have received a lot of feedback regarding the role of hideouts for power projection in the Outlands. Due to the flexible custom rights system, it’s currently possible for each hideout to in principle act as a respawn point for an entire coalition, no matter what their actual in-game alliance status is. In addition to that, freshly placed hideouts can fulfill that role ri... Read more

Hey there,

in the past weeks, there has been a lot of discussion about the smart cluster queue feature introduced with Queen.

With this post, we'd like to give an overview of the situation and share with you the steps that we consider taking.


What is the goal of the cluster queue?

There are hard tech limits to how many players can fight in a single zone. These tech limits are not subject to hardware, meaning that no matter how many servers we use, they can't be exceeded without causing massive issues. We have been able to extend this limit substantially since the game's release, but that won't change the fact that such a limit will always exist.

Now, prior to the cluster queue, it was possible to block off a zone by placing a large number of players there and reaching the zone player cap. This stopped other players from entering entirely.

The goal of the cluster queue is to prevent zone c... Read more

Hi all,

here is a short explanation of how the manual cluster queue priority system works.

1. The cluster queue in general works on an alliance level.

2. Based on the players from the alliance who are in the queue or already in the zone, the system calculates how many total player slots that alliance will get in the zone in the upcoming queue cycle. The calculation is based on the average IP value of the players in the queue or zone. This calculation is not affected by any manual queue priority settings.

3. Once the system has calculated how many total slots an alliance will have in the zone, it checks if the current number of alliance members in the zone is higher or lower than that. If it is higher, some members will be kicked form the zone. If lower, some members can enter the zone.

4. The system then determines players to be added to or removed from the zone based on the following:

Entering (if the... Read more