Alpha 1 and Why It Should Be Purchasable Again

Yea yea, I know this topic can arouse strong opinions on both sides of the argument and I understand each point of view. That being said, I'm bored. Very...bored. There is nothing out right now that is interesting, an MMO that makes me want to log in and play. I'm fine with no lifetime subscription or other "early bird" deals coming back out but at least let those of us who are willing to pay for A1 come in. Honestly, I just want to have a goal, to give feedback and to make a better game so that I hopefully never encounter a gaming drought like this again. I would be fine with either a straight up pack upgrade for just Alpha One or a marketplace that is endorsed (and preferably run by) Intrepid where those who put $$ in early but are no longer interested or need the money can sell their access if it's a concern around server stability/population. Covid created a lot of money woes and I refuse to use 3rd party services. It won't happen, but like I said I'm bored and have time to rant on here.

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Warth

tl/dr

he is bored

FuryBladeborne

Steven has said that he will reopen A1 packs if the servers are stable with the current A1 player base and they need to test with more people. Basically, once its good for testing it will reopen.

George_Black

I see no reason why they shouldn't reopen A1 sales if more testers are needed.
I have a few friends that got very interested in AoC, would love for them to join me. Gatekeeping is petty.
But if they dont want too, tough luck, wait for A2.
Just remember that testing isnt playing. If you pledge 500 you do so in order to help.

Vhaeyne

Yeah!!! and I want a pony!!!

Wandering Mist

Ok, so a few things to note here.

1. The reason why Alpha 1 sales were stopped wasn't because of some kind of exclusivity deal, but simply because they had enough people to test Alpha 1 with. This early in development, the server infrastructure can only manage so many people while remaining stable, and they reached the limit they were comfortable with, so they stopped selling Alpha 1.
2. With this in mind, if they discover they can handle more people and want more testers, they might open up Alpha 1 sales again, but this is very much an "IF" here.
3. Alpha 1 isn't really a game per se, and likely won't scratch the itch you are looking for. Early Alpha testing (for any game) involves a ton of sitting around waiting for servers to be fixed, remaking characters over and over because something broke, getting stuck in terrain unable to get out, etc. Also at this point the majority of the systems aren't implemented. Alpha 2 will give you a much better "gaming" experience as the servers will (hopefully) be more stable, and more systems will be implemented into the game.
4. If Intrepid allowed players to sell Alpha 1 packs it would go against one of their core principles (no pay2win) and even if it was only allowed in a specific place, it would be impossible to moderate. Definitely not a good idea in my opinion.
5. You can still contribute feedback about what you see and read without playing the game for yourself. Once the NDA is lifted the floodgates will open and there will be a ton of streams and youtube videos and other content about the game which you can review and give your feedback on, so be patient a little longer.

One final note, mmorpg development is a marathon, not a sprint. It takes a long long time to make a game of this scope to a decent standard. Intrepid are well aware that there are thousands of players who are anxiously waiting for Ashes, which is why they are determined to do this right. We need to all be patient and let the devs do their jobs. Spread the word, be excited, but wait for the right time as well.

Atama

George Black wrote: »

I see no reason why they shouldn't reopen A1 sales if more testers are needed.

They aren’t, so /thread.

Talents

If you're bored then there are way better options to spend $500 on to alleviate your boredom than A1. A1 really isn't meant to be played for fun.

daveywavey

Big Lols!

"Why Alpha 1 should be purchasable again":
"Because I missed it, and I'm bored"

Good one

Nagash

As long as Kickstarter exclusives are kept exclusive then I have no problem

Jahlon

So reopening Alpha 1 is a can of worms for Intrepid.

Sure, their original development timeline let them to believe they would be publishing before 2020, so closing off Alpha 1 sales in August/September 2018 made perfect sense.

Fast forward 2.25 years and we are only now just entering Alpha, so we clearly have some time to go before launch.

The community has tripled in size since the decision to close off Alpha 1 sales and as such there is a pile of money to be made from opening up Alpha sales....
....but money should not be a primary concern on a project where the core viable product is already fully funded.

There are people who made a purchase of a pre-order pack they didn't really want the cosmetics from, because there was some verbiage used the last pack sold with A1 access in it, was going to be the last opportunity for buying alpha 1. That is a segment of the population we are basically going to say what to? Tough luck? You bought a pack you didn't really want because it was the last chance for Alpha?

Before the white-knight brigade jumps on this, make sure you do your research and look at both the stream verbiage and the newsletter verbiage and how they are radically different.

The argument can be made that more testers is a good thing....
...but do you need more testers before you've done any major testing?

The best and cleanest roadmap for opening Alpha 1 sales again would look something like this:

1: Continue on with A1 sales being closed
2: Get through the Feb test and the March test with the current tester pool
3: Get the data from the those tests and verify server stability
4: Determine if you need more testers to get the data you need for server stability and infrastructure
5: Determine if you can even accommodate more testers with the server capability you have
6: Then make a decision about reopening Alpha 1 sales in April.

Nerdalert

Good points and I think the roadmap above makes a lot of sense. I was half kidding about a good reason to open up A1 sales would be my own personal boredom but it got the conversation going so that's a win. The point I was trying to make is that there are plenty of us who didn't know about the game in 2018, see tons of potential in it and would pay for the privilege to test early. The MMO genre hasn't been all that great for a good amount of time.

I have never heard of a for profit company complaining about too much money. If the servers can handle it and they need the data I'm ready to upgrade. If not, I will just stick with A2. I am not advocating for any of the other Kickstarter benefits to come back.

Is the jump in the number of A1 testers to A2 testers a big one? A2 could be a bit of a mess if participation in A1 is lower than expected. I have no idea on how the first test went and how many 2018 and Kickstarter folks joined in.

**and by "bit of a mess" I do not mean normal expected Alpha testing issues because this is a "real" Alpha test. I'm talking about Lazypeon coming out with that video, hype increasing by 30 fold and A2 sales going through the roof type of mess.

StevenSharif

I will give some further insight here.

One of the main reasons for evaluating the pretests prior to opening up A1 sales again was to see the stability of the multi server selection code, and how our individual server deployments held up. That, along with our world concurrency and individual server performances did indeed hold up to our expectation, and gives me the first green light for consideration of opening future sales. You can expect more info on this during January 👍

sarkado

I'm not against additional people getting into ALPHA 1, but the argument of I want to help provide feedback is kind of mute to me at the current stage of testing. The majority of "Bugs / Issues" new players getting into the the alpha will most likely have already been addressed or noted for patching at a later point.

As Steven addressed above at this point in the testing they are more focused on the stability of the server and how it can stand up to people blowing it up with skills, spamming etc.

Nerdalert

Well...You are one person I can't argue with. Thanks to you and the whole team for making this game possible. Cheers!

George_Black

Atama wrote: »

George Black wrote: »

I see no reason why they shouldn't reopen A1 sales if more testers are needed.

They aren’t, so /thread.

AntVictus

George Black wrote: »

Atama wrote: »

George Black wrote: »

I see no reason why they shouldn't reopen A1 sales if more testers are needed.

They aren’t, so /thread.

God I hope not. We don't need that can of worms.

BlightEmpire

I can sympathize with both sides. But as someone who has only recently discovered ashes of creation i regret not being able to buy into the alpha and learn about the game from the get go. I have bought into multiple game alpha's in the past found a few bugs but ultimately id be lying if i said it wasnt mostly cause im dieing to play it and the alpha helps me learn the basics for launch day.

In summary Yea i wanna get into the alpha but not sure if we all should.... the conundrums of life...

Vhaeyne

Things sound really positive right now for A1 sales then. Which is exciting. I gladly pay for the pain of alpha1 to be able to watch the game mature into a fine MMO.

akabear

Cumulatively, Alpha 1 is about a month and a half of total game time, with a few days already expended.
It is quite a premium privilege to play and good luck to those that invested.

Although Alpha 2 is targeted to be persistent, it does not appear to have a date at the moment, so there might be a bit of a wait.

If you have not already got A1 access, then I would shoot for Alpha 2 if you felt it was a must to be involved.

In my case, I recall watching the pre-release clips from ESO before it went live and there is one thing that always stuck from what one of the playtesters remarked. They stated that after playing the game in alpha / beta for so long during testing that they felt burned out and that they had had enough by the time ESO was actually going to release. They said they would probably only play a little once live. It was sad to hear at the time.

I hope what ever players do get to test does not result in the same and that there is still a considerable amount to discover that does not get pre-played.

akabear

Just looked up the cost uplift to do so and the amount was worth it to me! Not such an increase if already a kickstarter backer. Now looking forward to Alpha 2.

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