Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
My A0 experience
Hello everyone!
Not so many hours ago, Steven went onto the discord and informed us A0 testers that we are now allowed to share our A0 experience with the rest of you guys. I am still unable to provide audio or video recording as that is still under NDA.
However, I would like to tell you guys about my testing experience and what to take away from A0.
My journey started off with me being unable to get into the game, due to bugs with the client and the game itself. As many others, I would get stuck at the infamous Windmill Boss and I actually only got into the game once for the entire period of testing. I was able to provide bugs and feedback by sharing my experiences with the client, but there was this one time where I actually got into the game
And my, was it beautiful. The graphics in A0 really were something different from A1. You could sense the MMO aspect behind the world and feel it's scale when walking around, especially when you were close to the mountains. Your journey would start off at an Empyrian portal, which was very grand in scale and was sorrounded by large statues and ruins with a roman-esque feel to them.
Getting into questing itself was tricky due to some bugs that prevented the quest tracker from being able to pick up when a mob was killed, so after reporting the bug, I mostly went exploring. There were some NPC's stuck in the ground, which was pretty hilarious to look at.
When you left the starting area, your gear already looked pretty cool, even though it was very simplistic. You were able to swap weapons and use class abilities. I played a cleric and the amount of healing my character did, at the time seemed very ridiculous. Leaving the portal area, you were met with a vast forest and various paths leading in different directions. I took the one less traveled. Basically I didn't really follow the trail. I went down to the river and was left amazed by the water texture which looked pretty freaking cool.
Crossing the river I was met with catlike creatures that seemed a bit too overtuned for solocontent, not that I mind the challenge. A few moments after crossing the river, the server crashed and my short adventure had come to an end.
TL:DR of my experience with ashes
- Beautiful graphicwise
- Very standard MMO
- Laggy (Probably due to me being EU)
- Unstable server/connection wise
- Buggy
All things which I expected going into the test, but it was a fun and refreshing experience nonetheless, having never tested a game before.
Please let me know if any of you had any exciting adventures in A0 yourselves, and do not hesitate to ask questions. The game is very much still in alpha, and I may not be able to answer a lot of your questions, due to it being so very basic (in a good way), but I will try my best.
Not so many hours ago, Steven went onto the discord and informed us A0 testers that we are now allowed to share our A0 experience with the rest of you guys. I am still unable to provide audio or video recording as that is still under NDA.
However, I would like to tell you guys about my testing experience and what to take away from A0.
My journey started off with me being unable to get into the game, due to bugs with the client and the game itself. As many others, I would get stuck at the infamous Windmill Boss and I actually only got into the game once for the entire period of testing. I was able to provide bugs and feedback by sharing my experiences with the client, but there was this one time where I actually got into the game
And my, was it beautiful. The graphics in A0 really were something different from A1. You could sense the MMO aspect behind the world and feel it's scale when walking around, especially when you were close to the mountains. Your journey would start off at an Empyrian portal, which was very grand in scale and was sorrounded by large statues and ruins with a roman-esque feel to them.
Getting into questing itself was tricky due to some bugs that prevented the quest tracker from being able to pick up when a mob was killed, so after reporting the bug, I mostly went exploring. There were some NPC's stuck in the ground, which was pretty hilarious to look at.
When you left the starting area, your gear already looked pretty cool, even though it was very simplistic. You were able to swap weapons and use class abilities. I played a cleric and the amount of healing my character did, at the time seemed very ridiculous. Leaving the portal area, you were met with a vast forest and various paths leading in different directions. I took the one less traveled. Basically I didn't really follow the trail. I went down to the river and was left amazed by the water texture which looked pretty freaking cool.
Crossing the river I was met with catlike creatures that seemed a bit too overtuned for solocontent, not that I mind the challenge. A few moments after crossing the river, the server crashed and my short adventure had come to an end.
TL:DR of my experience with ashes
- Beautiful graphicwise
- Very standard MMO
- Laggy (Probably due to me being EU)
- Unstable server/connection wise
- Buggy
All things which I expected going into the test, but it was a fun and refreshing experience nonetheless, having never tested a game before.
Please let me know if any of you had any exciting adventures in A0 yourselves, and do not hesitate to ask questions. The game is very much still in alpha, and I may not be able to answer a lot of your questions, due to it being so very basic (in a good way), but I will try my best.
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Comments
Also, despite rumors that a the final game was shaped a ton during A0 or we were testing "all the time" we tested when Steven and company needed us and we were doing a lot of necessary foundation work that they needed bodies for.
A common misconception about A0 was that we got to experience the mmo Ashes as it will be intended later on altho in a smaller enviorement and "light form" (not all skills, not all everything but in general all systems are in place)
Stresstesting was probably one of my favorites in one of the tests when the floodgates where opened up approaching the end of a testing period it ended in a rubberbanding so amazing that everything stopped for a solid 20seconds and shot forward in time all at once before breaking down. Was a hillarious flash I haven't experienced before.
And that is all fine because the focus was not to test out gameplay systems(you know what I mean), but ensure that everything works to a level of satisfaction.
Ignoring the barebone state of it, I really liked the introductionary take on arriving in the new world. Everything had a purpose, a first camp that fights off creatures to protect the portal.
Quests that built on that notion, secure the area, find medical herbs we aquired knowledge off, patrol off to the side to make sure it is still safe in the parts already secured beforehand.
I also liked quests popping up when moving somewhere that went in tune with your overall purpose. Fighting off rabbits and cheetas along the road.
I liked the overall feel of what it is going for but that's really it since there really wasn't anything more to see from a gameplay standpoint.
When I got in, there were no instructions on what keys did what and no way to find a keymapping window. Movement was kind of clunky. Some quest mobs were unkillable. Quests would pop up that there were not mobs for it. (looked a long time for those and never found any even following directions)
Did a lot of exploring, but I really couldn't find a way to chat. One event I did I kind of followed along with 2 other players and we went exploring and did some jumping puzzles. Great fun. Another time another player and I helped each other kill bandits without being able to talk to each other.
You would think we had lots of time to play but in reality there were assigned time slots that may have lasted only a few hours, and very few of those. Anyone who thought we got to play as much as we wanted is very wrong. In sum total I probably got to play a total of 20 hours at the most for the whole of Alpha 0.