Tribes Ascend

Introduction

Tribes: Ascend is a free-to-play multiplayer-only first-person shooter part of the Tribes franchise. It is developed by Hi-Rez Studios and is currently available as a digital download for Microsoft Windows, though Hi-Rez Studios haven't ruled out the possibility of an Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 release in the future. Aspects from previous Tribes games such as jetpacks and skiing are featured in the game.The game was released on April 12, 2012.[1]

The game has no single player component, other than being able to try the various maps and weapons in a practise mode without being connected to a game.

All public and custom servers are local to Oceania. Rumoured to be located in Sydney. Private server functionality are expected shortly.

The game can be downloaded from https://account.hirezstudios.com/tribesascend/

General Gameplay

Tribes:Ascend (T:A) consists of multiple game modes, with the most popular being the capture-the-flag mode.

In addition to a jetpack, T:A exhibits a fast paced movement capability called 'skiing'. Skiing is considered essential to be mastered by every tribes player.

Reviews

89 metascore and a 9.0 user score at Metacritic

Gametrailers - http://www.gametrailers.com/video/review-tribes-ascend/729223

Introduction Videos

Trailers:

'Focus' - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-Q1M7XSulo
'Llama Island' - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjyUy5f3VIw

Skiing:

Flag Punting:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCBXzV8aKmw

Other Resources

The ocau Tag

Some members of the OCAU community have started to include 'ocau' (all lowercase, no quotes) in front of their name. (T:A does not currently have clan support, but its expected to come shortly). To add 'ocau' to your ingame name you need to change your name which costs ingame Gold.

If you want to wear the ocau tag, please consider the following;

Keep swearing to a minimum.
Be a good team player. If there are already 5 pathfinders, field a heavy or medium instead.
Don't swap teams or leave the server just because the team you find yourself on is losing.
Communicate with the rest of the team using the voice commands.
Don't use hacks of any kinds.

To see who are playing in OCAU, see this Google spreadsheet. Don't be afraid to add yourself and then say hi in this thread.

If you wish to access the OCAU Tribes Mumble server, see the Google spreadsheet above for details. Many thanks to laidlow for providing this service.

Other Australian Tribes Communities

http://bittah.com - Predominantly long time players from the Tribes 1 and 2 days. Have an irc channel and mumble voice server. Numerous clans are in the process of being formed at their forums.

[1] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tribes:_Ascend