Actually it's 10$ more than Phase 2 access, so it's not a 120$ scam. I understand your concern, there will probably be huge queues. Then why don't you just buy the Phase 2 or Phase 3 keys ? They literally give you the option.
Still, if you pay $120 for 7 weekends of Alpha 1 Wave 1 and you literally cannot even play because the game is purposefully throttled, that is some messed up shit imo.
They include the other phases. If you want to save 10 bucks I suppose a person could get phase 2 access instead.
What pisses me off is that these new alpha keys don't include the betas, I think that's some shit. If they can support the new alpha players buying keys for the alpha, than they can support the beta right? Since they were planning on already letting their original A2 players play beta?
Make it make sense to me.
Oh wait, nvm I'll make it make sense. It's because they plan on releasing new keys when Beta 1 drops that were just like the A2 keys they quit selling that include the mandatory shit people don't want like embers and gametime and cosmetics.
Which is overpriced, just like these new A2 only keys are overpriced. Steven tried talking about the value proposition, yea 120 bucks just to get stuck in a que like you said, and have it only exclusively for A2, WITHOUT any embers or gametime or cosmetics lmfao?
This key shit has gone from completely reasonable in my eyes to likely predatory and the decision to quit selling A2 keys might have just been part of that. I now think that decision was made with these new A2 keys in mind and that it has nothing to do with "new network capabilities".
People sure love throwing the word “scam” around a lot.
It’s an Alpha. Not the Korean-to-western conversion alpha of an already developed game, but a real alpha. Not an alpha in name only. Not “early access”. An Alpha. Be thankful your character isn’t just a box, because they don’t need all of the details turned on during an alpha unless it’s to test the look and feel of PCs.
It’s a Test, not a game. You’re testing features and systems. If you want to play a game, then wait for release.
As for duration, Alpha 2 wave 3 could take anywhere from 3 to 5 years, in my opinion, based on the time between Alpha 1 to Alpha 2 launch. Plus I fully expect some things to slide from waves 1 or 2 into wave 3 (and iterations of such). $100 for that time is really nothing compared to a monthly subscription. They could have sold Alpha 2 as a monthly subscription and made a lot more money, and players expecting unreasonable things could be in and out at minimal cost to them.
They have been very explicit in stating “do not buy an Alpha key if you expect to play a game.” It’s an opportunity to perform work as a real tester and possibly contribute to some game decisions via voting.
So not a scam. People making such claims either aren’t listening, are trolling, or just attention seeking on their next thing to gripe about. Lot of people make a living or find entertainment from complaining.
I agree it’s a scam. Me paying a company for doing their work? Should it not be reverse?
Much love ❤️
Anytime you have people passionate about working on something IRL, there is always people around to exploit that passion. Hence game developers suffering from some of the most extreme and generally unfair work conditions of any US industry, it's because they'll do it when asked, there's people lining up to get a shot at their dream job so it's not like the employer has to care about absolutely obliterating their mental health(which is apparently a super common issue).
Can you blame the exploiters though, it's basically free money. Who do you know that would turn that down? MILK MILK MILK
If you watched todays stream on twitch you would learn that they plan on consistently increasing CCU the longer the tests go on and things are working out well.
I admit i didn't watch all of it. I watched a bit, but Reallife happened and so i was busy at the time.
They’ve told people for years not to buy the packs with expectations to play the game or anything.
And they repeat that Statement every time in every Livestream and Presentation. But they are literally like Reason itself trying to talk back against an unrelenting Stream and Flood of Thirst for a good Game.
How many of these People - ( looking at Narc for example ) - are SOOOOOOOOOOO. DESPERATELY. trying to struggle against "dying from thirst" as MMO Gamers,
that they would do literally "anything" to get a new taste of something else,
than these pathetic mishmash MMO's ??
Worry not, Friends. We will have professional Testers in droves. But some People will log in into Verra and be all like :
* dunks Head into water *
* crazy gulping sounds underwater *
And they won't care if they would almost suffocate. They searched desperate for an Escape from all these shitty MMO's. Enough that they embrace a TRUE Alpha and will (hopefully) endure countless Lags, Disconnects, Log-in Que's, Wipes and so on.
People can yapp whatever they like against this Statement of mine - > MMO Gamers were "NEVER" this hyped for any WoW-Expansion i can remember. Not even for Legion. And Legion was the LAST, true WoW Addon until now.
If you’re buying a pack you’re buying it with intentions of TESTING when the chance comes and that means dealing with all the cons of play tests. Especially in one of the most COMPLEX genres of the gaming industry.
If people are upset about anything then that’s because they made impulsive decisions.
I do it for testing - but i do it also to be able to do what i want to do.
" Look around " ... ... ... ... ... ... ... and "breathe" with my Mind and Soul the fresh Air - that i tasted the last time, when i entered the World of Skyrim after my Main Character and Ralof fled from Helgen and Alduin for our Lives.
I just want to ... ... ... ... ... ... see a Video Game World again, one last time which makes my Heart and Soul race in Excitement and Joy - before my Real Life Body gives out one day. And i am willing to work the hard Job of testing a true Alpha,
if it means i am able to help dear Intrepid and Everyone else that Ashes of Creation comes out even "ONE Minute", or even "ONE MILLISECOND" sooner. 🫡 . 🫡 . 🫡 . 🫡 . 🫡 . 🫡
✓ Occasional Roleplayer
✓ Kinda starting to look for a Guild right now. (German)
People sure love throwing the word “scam” around a lot.
I can solid promise Everyone here in the Forum that i am shitting you not when i say :
- If for every single Time - since January 2024 - i read the Word " SCAM " in Connection to this Game in Development,
- ONE DAY would be taken off from the waiting Time for Alpha Two, meaning it would come One Day sooner everytime someone wrote "SCAM",
then the whole Delay of Alpha Two into late October would be totally reversed and we would likely test the Alpha Two in probably around the next +10 Days or in the middle of September.
✓ Occasional Roleplayer
✓ Kinda starting to look for a Guild right now. (German)
Steven did pretty clearly say they'd spin up new servers if needed.
That said, I think there might be some calculus in this decision. Phase 1 only has limited content (Riverlands plus some Tropics/Desert). 3k players is 1/3 of the intended final concurrent population. The land area present at the start of A2 is not 1/3 of the total end land area. So the population is going to be too large for the starting area.
You might think that the obvious solution is to just add more servers, but if they do that then we end up with the reverse situation over time. As A2 progresses, more content will be added, but the server population is only expected to decrease, so we end up with less players than intended for the area. So long term it might be better to limit the number of servers in order to maintain the appropriate number of players for the area that will eventually be developed. Then again, people might just leave because they can't get in.
Not sure what the winning answer is here, but I'm sure IS put a lot of thought into it.
Yeah but honestly if they had 0 queue / high merge risk servers i would play on those. If they got to spin some more up and then merge players that opt in that would be easy enough.
If you payed for a test expecting to get a fully released game you’re just lame. We’re not here to convince you it’s suppose to be fun we’re trying to tell you it’s BEING TESTED NOT PLAYED. You’re clearly have zero experience in the mmorpg world if you’re crying like a child about wait times. Go PLAY new world, a game that’s actually released, instead of sitting here making a bunch of meaningless complaints about needing to wait. If wait times are upsetting you during the alpha stages then I HIGHLY recommend you leave this game and this genre behind and not touch it with a 10
Foot pole. This genre has and will always be known for having queues. Especially on something like first day releases and TESTS.
Actually it's 10$ more than Phase 2 access, so it's not a 120$ scam. I understand your concern, there will probably be huge queues. Then why don't you just buy the Phase 2 or Phase 3 keys ? They literally give you the option.
Still, if you pay $120 for 7 weekends of Alpha 1 Wave 1 and you literally cannot even play because the game is purposefully throttled, that is some messed up shit imo.
You're paying to TEST, I repeat, TEST the game. NOT play the game. I repeat, NOT play the game.
Being in a queue is also TESTING the game.
Lol if you pay to "test" the game and you are only stuck in queue that's still lame bro. You are not going to convince me that its fun.
The alpha legit only has 3 races, a fraction of the map and is missing classes if I remember correctly still. Alpha 2 won’t even have duels at the start. You’re not going to get to PLAY much. Your expectations just don’t match reality. If anyone is to blame it’s yourself and your own lack of drive to look into something before you drop money. You bought something because you put little to no effort to look into the product you were getting.
Actually it's 10$ more than Phase 2 access, so it's not a 120$ scam. I understand your concern, there will probably be huge queues. Then why don't you just buy the Phase 2 or Phase 3 keys ? They literally give you the option.
Still, if you pay $120 for 7 weekends of Alpha 1 Wave 1 and you literally cannot even play because the game is purposefully throttled, that is some messed up shit imo.
You're paying to TEST, I repeat, TEST the game. NOT play the game. I repeat, NOT play the game.
Being in a queue is also TESTING the game.
Lol if you pay to "test" the game and you are only stuck in queue that's still lame bro. You are not going to convince me that its fun.
If you bought the 100-120 dollar packs with the expectations to PLAY the game in a state of “early access” like your traditional AAA company then you didn’t watch the ama. If you bought the 250$ dollar pack with the expectation that it’s going to get you access to again, an early access game, then you didn’t watch a single stream over the years period.
You put your money before your brain as simple as that 🤷🏻♂️🤦🏻♂️💀
If you payed for a test expecting to get a fully released game you’re just lame. We’re not here to convince you it’s suppose to be fun we’re trying to tell you it’s BEING TESTED NOT PLAYED.
Nice straw man argument. I never said anything about playing a fully released game. I can see the blood vessels protruding from your thick forehead like an erect male reproductive organ. You need to calm down.
If you say so lol, you’ve made it pretty clear you’re based in a completely different reality then most. Almost every argument you’ve made you make it very clear you’re just here for alpha 2 to play a game.
Fair enough. We are funding this project. We didn't even get shares, at the very least we should be able to complain about things we don't like and praise things we do like.
I don't like waiting in queues, its possible that their current design could result in queues for many weekends.
It's also possible that they fire up enough realms to drastically reduce queues. I am complaining now so that the latter is more likely.
Having hardware/software issues that need to be fixed is one thing. But purposefully throttling the people who paid to test the alpha to waste hours of primetime on weekends waiting in queues is lame AF.
What percentage that paid for Alpha 1 actually participated in Alpha 1? Lot of keys were part of packs, and some folks are willing to throw money at a developer if there’s an expectation for a decent game to play down the road without planning on testing. Then there are folks who thought they were getting a full game and have already dropped.
So for the numbers for Alpha 2 we’d have to factor out those who have Alpha 2 keys but no intention to participate. And does Intrepid really know how many that will be, which may be why they are targeting 3K CCU at the start of Wave 1.
We also don’t know how many keys per wave they are planning to sell. They did state they had a number.
So perhaps they are being conservative by underestimating the actual numbers that will log on October 25th and have mitigation plans to make adjustments as necessary.
It’s also possible that wave 1, weekend 1 is more like a series of pulses if they run into issues that need to be updated via hot fix from the start.
So perhaps they are being conservative by underestimating the actual numbers that will log on October 25th and have mitigation plans to make adjustments as necessary.
It’s also possible that wave 1, weekend 1 is more like a series of pulses if they run into issues that need to be updated via hot fix from the start.
I get that. I just hope they aren't purposefully planning on queues for Alpha tests if the logic has anything to do with wipes and merger concerns. Save that concern for launch. Guaranteed the testers would rather be in the game and testing and getting wiped/merged than wasting dozens of hours of primetime weekend in queues.
So perhaps they are being conservative by underestimating the actual numbers that will log on October 25th and have mitigation plans to make adjustments as necessary.
It’s also possible that wave 1, weekend 1 is more like a series of pulses if they run into issues that need to be updated via hot fix from the start.
I get that. I just hope they aren't purposefully planning on queues for Alpha tests if the logic has anything to do with wipes and merger concerns. Save that concern for launch. Guaranteed the testers would rather be in the game and testing and getting wiped/merged than wasting dozens of hours of primetime weekend in queues.
Again if you watched the ama maybe you wouldn’t be here complaining for invalid reasons. They don’t want to do wipes or anything of the sort unless they absolutely need to.
Again If you would have ever played another mmorpg then you’d know queues are just a reality of the start of one. They’re always going to be present. Yes that’s despite the amount of innovations intrepid has pulled off. They’re talented they’re not actually wizards. If you’re going to complain the least you can do is complain in good faith and logic.
The alpha legit only has 3 races, a fraction of the map and is missing classes if I remember correctly still. Alpha 2 won’t even have duels at the start.
Phase 1 ... ... ...
And also - You might expect this to be Subject to change VERY soon in the Time-Span of the first Three to Six Weeks or so. Some things, sudden changes, new things to get patched in to test and so on,
were announced to might happen in the first handful of Weeks or above when Alpha Two has started.
And Please don't forget,
it IS what it is. A true Alpha. This is not an Early Access Version of the Game.
✓ Occasional Roleplayer
✓ Kinda starting to look for a Guild right now. (German)
The alpha legit only has 3 races, a fraction of the map and is missing classes if I remember correctly still. Alpha 2 won’t even have duels at the start.
Phase 1 ... ... ...
And also - You might expect this to be Subject to change VERY soon in the Time-Span of the first Three to Six Weeks or so. Some things, sudden changes, new things to get patched in to test and so on,
were announced to might happen in the first handful of Weeks or above when Alpha Two has started.
And Please don't forget,
it IS what it is. A true Alpha. This is not an Early Access Version of the Game.
Again if you watched the ama maybe you wouldn’t be here complaining for invalid reasons. They don’t want to do wipes or anything of the sort unless they absolutely need to.
Why? Who cares if they wipe or merge servers? I doubt the players do.
If they can log in during prime time the first few weekends and then on weekend 3 transfer their character to another server I doubt anyone cares. As opposed to spending like 10 hours in queue during primetime during those weekends or something dumb.
Intrepid seems to care about server mergers or wipes in alpha 2, but why?
No one is owed anything other than the opportunity to test if they have paid for access, and what they are owed at launch based on what they have purchased.
If you have paid for access to test, you have the ability to test. What if they need to test the queues? Then you will test the queues
No one is owed anything other than the opportunity to test if they have paid for access, and what they are owed at launch based on what they have purchased.
If you have paid for access to test, you have the ability to test. What if they need to test the queues? Then you will test the queues
"Testing" the queues and purposefully throttling realms based on arbitrary assumptions that players don't want wipes or realm mergers during Alpha 2 is not the same thing.
If they need to "test" some things.. Fine, no problem. Good for them.
But if its just because of realm death fears, I doubt the player base cares. Wipe and merge as much as you want to avoid queues during A2... Especially in the early phases where spikes are high anyways.
No one is owed anything other than the opportunity to test if they have paid for access, and what they are owed at launch based on what they have purchased.
If you have paid for access to test, you have the ability to test. What if they need to test the queues? Then you will test the queues
"Testing" the queues and purposefully throttling realms based on arbitrary assumptions that players don't want wipes or realm mergers during Alpha 2 is not the same thing.
If they need to "test" some things.. Fine, no problem. Good for them.
But if its just because of realm death fears, I doubt the player base cares. Wipe and merge as much as you want to avoid queues during A2... Especially in the early phases where spikes are high anyways.
Go watch a stream instead of putting all this effort crying for no reason. Literally everything you’ve cried about has been discussed in the streams. You’ve made it clear argument after argument you’ve done actually nothing in regards to actually keeping up to date with what their plans are. To be quite honest if the queue keeps people like that from joining I find it a success.
Go watch a stream instead of putting all this effort crying for no reason. Literally everything you’ve cried about has been discussed in the streams. You’ve made it clear argument after argument you’ve done actually nothing in regards to actually keeping up to date with what their plans are. To be quite honest if the queue keeps people like that from joining I find it a success.
Q:What is your plan and what systems are in place to avoid the first few months of server queues and congestion; and when players drop off, how do you plan on handling that when the time comes?
A:I think that obviously is a problem that every MMO launch suffers. That is the balance between your active users your expected peak concurrencies: where that fall-off begins and how you consolidate servers. You don't want to expand too much at the beginning to alleviate server queues and then end up with like 30% pop servers that you have to consolidate later. The same is going to be true for Alpha-2. So, we're going to be leveraging- obviously we know how many users we have available when it comes to Alpha-2 entrance and then as we allow additional people to purchase in with these new key sales that we'll be doing later, we're going to get an idea of what that is. Generally I would expect we're going to see 30 to 40% peak concurrencies when it comes to opening the servers, when it comes to prime-time, when it comes to events that happen. And, so when we talk about server queuing server congestion, we want to make sure that we have healthy Alpha-2 servers, so we're going to leverage server queuing as much as possible. That means that sometimes those server queues might get into the thousands during those peak times, during the servers spinning up, or during those prime times or events; and that's okay. It's not going to be the most fun for a lot of players to have to sit in a queue. Obviously, we've all done that before in MMOs that we played, but the alternative is that we have too many servers available, we don't have those queues during peak times; and then when it's not peak times those server populations dilapidate and that's not what we want to have obviously.[12] – Steven Sharif
Go watch a stream instead of putting all this effort crying for no reason. Literally everything you’ve cried about has been discussed in the streams. You’ve made it clear argument after argument you’ve done actually nothing in regards to actually keeping up to date with what their plans are. To be quite honest if the queue keeps people like that from joining I find it a success.
Q:What is your plan and what systems are in place to avoid the first few months of server queues and congestion; and when players drop off, how do you plan on handling that when the time comes?
A:I think that obviously is a problem that every MMO launch suffers. That is the balance between your active users your expected peak concurrencies: where that fall-off begins and how you consolidate servers. You don't want to expand too much at the beginning to alleviate server queues and then end up with like 30% pop servers that you have to consolidate later. The same is going to be true for Alpha-2. So, we're going to be leveraging- obviously we know how many users we have available when it comes to Alpha-2 entrance and then as we allow additional people to purchase in with these new key sales that we'll be doing later, we're going to get an idea of what that is. Generally I would expect we're going to see 30 to 40% peak concurrencies when it comes to opening the servers, when it comes to prime-time, when it comes to events that happen. And, so when we talk about server queuing server congestion, we want to make sure that we have healthy Alpha-2 servers, so we're going to leverage server queuing as much as possible. That means that sometimes those server queues might get into the thousands during those peak times, during the servers spinning up, or during those prime times or events; and that's okay. It's not going to be the most fun for a lot of players to have to sit in a queue. Obviously, we've all done that before in MMOs that we played, but the alternative is that we have too many servers available, we don't have those queues during peak times; and then when it's not peak times those server populations dilapidate and that's not what we want to have obviously.[12] – Steven Sharif
Read it and weep buddy. NEXT ARGUMENT PLEASE!
Lmao did you even read all of it or are you just proving once again you’re one of the only ones who’s found a way to be upset. You just reinforced my hopes that long queues dissuade people like you from playing the game instead of having testers test the game.
The clear difference being a tester is willing to test ALL the things that come with an mmorpg where as a gamer such as yourself only cares that you’re not playing a game. THEYRE TRYING TO TEST THE SYSTEM to make sure they WORK for the ACTUAL release. How tf are they getting anything beneficial for the actual launch if you’re launching the alpha differently then the base launch. You’re just entitled, lazy and a cry baby from what I’ve gathered. Considering you’ve gone from crying about queue times to crying about them testing a basic system to ANY other game.
Please explain the logic that justifies launching alpha different than what the actual launch will be. Solely because you feel entitled to queue free game time?
Ashes of creation in general simply doesn’t allow for server mergers to be viable. Every server is going to build differently based off of the individual actions taken place by that servers community. That all goes out the door when you give a cry baby like you what you want, and you need to start merging all those unique stories into one? All because you demand to have PLAY time without queues during an alpha test
Ashes of creation in general simply doesn’t allow for server mergers to be viable.
Based take.
You clearly haven’t seen much about what AoC is if that’s really what you think. I truly don’t understand how you can buy into supporting an MMORPG then cry about something like wait times solely because they don’t make an exception for you or the alpha??? Maybe do research so you can have knowledge of what they’re trying to achieve. Go watch any live stream so you have a better idea of what it is you’re trying to support.
They have already said that queues will be a thing for the actual game launch, but in this case we are paying some fair cash to "test" the game, and we may just be stuck in queues the whole time.
People should write their test plans in advance, with expected results and as soon as they are done should log out to let the next testers in.
Or maybe crashes will be frequent and they login and crash happens fast. Then they can be happy they found a bug.
The pain will be when they wipe before full release. All that money and freehold will be gone!
And Dygz will stop "testing".
That all goes out the door when you give a cry baby like you what you want, and you need to start merging all those unique stories into one? All because you demand to have PLAY time without queues during an alpha test
Unique stories? The point here is to TEST, not to make unique stories. What, do you think you are paying for a full game or something?
They have already said that queues will be a thing for the actual game launch, but in this case we are paying some fair cash to "test" the game, and we may just be stuck in queues the whole time.
People should write their test plans in advance, with expected results and as soon as they are done should log out to let the next testers in.
The pain will be when they wipe before full release. All that money and freehold will be gone!
And Dygz will stop "testing".
Well that's the point of this thread. There may be a large portion of the population that doesn't care if their characters get merged onto other servers if it means skipping queue times. And actually we may be pretty annoyed at arbitrarily waiting in queues and wasting prime time on weekends. So its just a pain point with no upside to us.
By the time populations stabilize it could be like January 2025 or something so really a bunch of mergers the first few months and phases ain't a biggie as opposed to massive amounts of people waiting in lines.
Can you imagine the sucker that spends $120 for 7 weeks of Alpha 1 Wave 1 and is stuck in a queue EVERY WEEKEND? LOL
Will streamers and youtubers pay?
Do we need them to advertise the game?
Well if they are investing $120 to make some content videos that make WAY more then it's just like buying a prop for some content or something. Cost of business.
I mean free advertising is good, but they pay to advertise you is even better. Shrug. Advertising worked for General Motors.
The pain will be when they wipe before full release. All that money and freehold will be gone!
And Dygz will stop "testing".
Well that's the point of this thread. There may be a large portion of the population that doesn't care if their characters get merged onto other servers if it means skipping queue times. And actually we may be pretty annoyed at arbitrarily waiting in queues and wasting prime time on weekends. So its just a pain point with no upside to us.
By the time populations stabilize it could be like January 2025 or something so really a bunch of mergers the first few months and phases ain't a biggie as opposed to massive amounts of people waiting in lines.
True, The way I see it is that the proper Alpha 2 starts with Wave 3.
And Wave 1 and 2 are a pre-access which we got without asking for it.
At least finally happens. I've seen threads predicting it's start in the far future... like 2026. One year earlier is good
Do they get any benefit having more servers and a very large population now?
I think many players are needed when bugs happens rarely.
When bugs are frequent enough, (if just a few players moving around like fremens on the sand cause crashes), there is no need for 20 servers.
The pain will be when they wipe before full release. All that money and freehold will be gone!
And Dygz will stop "testing".
Well that's the point of this thread. There may be a large portion of the population that doesn't care if their characters get merged onto other servers if it means skipping queue times. And actually we may be pretty annoyed at arbitrarily waiting in queues and wasting prime time on weekends. So its just a pain point with no upside to us.
By the time populations stabilize it could be like January 2025 or something so really a bunch of mergers the first few months and phases ain't a biggie as opposed to massive amounts of people waiting in lines.
True, The way I see it is that the proper Alpha 2 starts with Wave 3.
And Wave 1 and 2 are a pre-access which we got without asking for it.
At least finally happens. I've seen threads predicting it's start in the far future... like 2026. One year earlier is good
Do they get any benefit having more servers and a very large population now?
I think many players are needed when bugs happens rarely.
When bugs are frequent enough, (if just a few players moving around like fremens on the sand cause crashes), there is no need for 20 servers.
OK, sure... But as a company, shouldn't you want to give the best experience you can to your userbase? Is it really that much harder to give the community a smooth A2 rollout without queues?
As a player, what would you rather have Otr: tens of hours of Queues for weeks or some realm mergers?
That all goes out the door when you give a cry baby like you what you want, and you need to start merging all those unique stories into one? All because you demand to have PLAY time without queues during an alpha test
Unique stories? The point here is to TEST, not to make unique stories. What, do you think you are paying for a full game or something?
lulz ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Lmao??? it’s literally a vital organ for the game itself. How tf are they suppose to test that the worlds are developing correctly if they’re merging them for entitled people like you. Of course someone as entitled as yourself would say “oh well screw that system I paid you 120 dollars now let me pay”. Guess we need to say screw ashes of creation for this entitled princes to play without queues 🤷🏻♂️
Comments
They include the other phases. If you want to save 10 bucks I suppose a person could get phase 2 access instead.
What pisses me off is that these new alpha keys don't include the betas, I think that's some shit. If they can support the new alpha players buying keys for the alpha, than they can support the beta right? Since they were planning on already letting their original A2 players play beta?
Make it make sense to me.
Oh wait, nvm I'll make it make sense. It's because they plan on releasing new keys when Beta 1 drops that were just like the A2 keys they quit selling that include the mandatory shit people don't want like embers and gametime and cosmetics.
Which is overpriced, just like these new A2 only keys are overpriced. Steven tried talking about the value proposition, yea 120 bucks just to get stuck in a que like you said, and have it only exclusively for A2, WITHOUT any embers or gametime or cosmetics lmfao?
This key shit has gone from completely reasonable in my eyes to likely predatory and the decision to quit selling A2 keys might have just been part of that. I now think that decision was made with these new A2 keys in mind and that it has nothing to do with "new network capabilities".
I'm getting real bad vibes from all this
It’s an Alpha. Not the Korean-to-western conversion alpha of an already developed game, but a real alpha. Not an alpha in name only. Not “early access”. An Alpha. Be thankful your character isn’t just a box, because they don’t need all of the details turned on during an alpha unless it’s to test the look and feel of PCs.
It’s a Test, not a game. You’re testing features and systems. If you want to play a game, then wait for release.
As for duration, Alpha 2 wave 3 could take anywhere from 3 to 5 years, in my opinion, based on the time between Alpha 1 to Alpha 2 launch. Plus I fully expect some things to slide from waves 1 or 2 into wave 3 (and iterations of such). $100 for that time is really nothing compared to a monthly subscription. They could have sold Alpha 2 as a monthly subscription and made a lot more money, and players expecting unreasonable things could be in and out at minimal cost to them.
They have been very explicit in stating “do not buy an Alpha key if you expect to play a game.” It’s an opportunity to perform work as a real tester and possibly contribute to some game decisions via voting.
So not a scam. People making such claims either aren’t listening, are trolling, or just attention seeking on their next thing to gripe about. Lot of people make a living or find entertainment from complaining.
Much love ❤️
Anytime you have people passionate about working on something IRL, there is always people around to exploit that passion. Hence game developers suffering from some of the most extreme and generally unfair work conditions of any US industry, it's because they'll do it when asked, there's people lining up to get a shot at their dream job so it's not like the employer has to care about absolutely obliterating their mental health(which is apparently a super common issue).
Can you blame the exploiters though, it's basically free money. Who do you know that would turn that down? MILK MILK MILK
I admit i didn't watch all of it. I watched a bit, but Reallife happened and so i was busy at the time.
And they repeat that Statement every time in every Livestream and Presentation. But they are literally like Reason itself trying to talk back against an unrelenting Stream and Flood of Thirst for a good Game.
How many of these People - ( looking at Narc for example ) - are SOOOOOOOOOOO. DESPERATELY. trying to struggle against "dying from thirst" as MMO Gamers,
that they would do literally "anything" to get a new taste of something else,
than these pathetic mishmash MMO's ??
Worry not, Friends. We will have professional Testers in droves. But some People will log in into Verra and be all like :
* dunks Head into water *
* crazy gulping sounds underwater *
And they won't care if they would almost suffocate. They searched desperate for an Escape from all these shitty MMO's. Enough that they embrace a TRUE Alpha and will (hopefully) endure countless Lags, Disconnects, Log-in Que's, Wipes and so on.
People can yapp whatever they like against this Statement of mine - > MMO Gamers were "NEVER" this hyped for any WoW-Expansion i can remember. Not even for Legion. And Legion was the LAST, true WoW Addon until now.
I do it for testing - but i do it also to be able to do what i want to do.
" Look around " ... ... ... ... ... ... ... and "breathe" with my Mind and Soul the fresh Air - that i tasted the last time, when i entered the World of Skyrim after my Main Character and Ralof fled from Helgen and Alduin for our Lives.
I just want to ... ... ... ... ... ... see a Video Game World again, one last time which makes my Heart and Soul race in Excitement and Joy - before my Real Life Body gives out one day. And i am willing to work the hard Job of testing a true Alpha,
if it means i am able to help dear Intrepid and Everyone else that Ashes of Creation comes out even "ONE Minute", or even "ONE MILLISECOND" sooner. 🫡 . 🫡 . 🫡 . 🫡 . 🫡 . 🫡
✓ Occasional Roleplayer
✓ Kinda starting to look for a Guild right now. (German)
I can solid promise Everyone here in the Forum that i am shitting you not when i say :
- If for every single Time - since January 2024 - i read the Word " SCAM " in Connection to this Game in Development,
- ONE DAY would be taken off from the waiting Time for Alpha Two, meaning it would come One Day sooner everytime someone wrote "SCAM",
then the whole Delay of Alpha Two into late October would be totally reversed and we would likely test the Alpha Two in probably around the next +10 Days or in the middle of September.
✓ Occasional Roleplayer
✓ Kinda starting to look for a Guild right now. (German)
If you payed for a test expecting to get a fully released game you’re just lame. We’re not here to convince you it’s suppose to be fun we’re trying to tell you it’s BEING TESTED NOT PLAYED. You’re clearly have zero experience in the mmorpg world if you’re crying like a child about wait times. Go PLAY new world, a game that’s actually released, instead of sitting here making a bunch of meaningless complaints about needing to wait. If wait times are upsetting you during the alpha stages then I HIGHLY recommend you leave this game and this genre behind and not touch it with a 10
Foot pole. This genre has and will always be known for having queues. Especially on something like first day releases and TESTS.
The alpha legit only has 3 races, a fraction of the map and is missing classes if I remember correctly still. Alpha 2 won’t even have duels at the start. You’re not going to get to PLAY much. Your expectations just don’t match reality. If anyone is to blame it’s yourself and your own lack of drive to look into something before you drop money. You bought something because you put little to no effort to look into the product you were getting.
Did you even buy one of the packs???
If you bought the 100-120 dollar packs with the expectations to PLAY the game in a state of “early access” like your traditional AAA company then you didn’t watch the ama. If you bought the 250$ dollar pack with the expectation that it’s going to get you access to again, an early access game, then you didn’t watch a single stream over the years period.
You put your money before your brain as simple as that 🤷🏻♂️🤦🏻♂️💀
Fair enough. We are funding this project. We didn't even get shares, at the very least we should be able to complain about things we don't like and praise things we do like.
I don't like waiting in queues, its possible that their current design could result in queues for many weekends.
It's also possible that they fire up enough realms to drastically reduce queues. I am complaining now so that the latter is more likely.
Having hardware/software issues that need to be fixed is one thing. But purposefully throttling the people who paid to test the alpha to waste hours of primetime on weekends waiting in queues is lame AF.
So for the numbers for Alpha 2 we’d have to factor out those who have Alpha 2 keys but no intention to participate. And does Intrepid really know how many that will be, which may be why they are targeting 3K CCU at the start of Wave 1.
We also don’t know how many keys per wave they are planning to sell. They did state they had a number.
So perhaps they are being conservative by underestimating the actual numbers that will log on October 25th and have mitigation plans to make adjustments as necessary.
It’s also possible that wave 1, weekend 1 is more like a series of pulses if they run into issues that need to be updated via hot fix from the start.
I get that. I just hope they aren't purposefully planning on queues for Alpha tests if the logic has anything to do with wipes and merger concerns. Save that concern for launch. Guaranteed the testers would rather be in the game and testing and getting wiped/merged than wasting dozens of hours of primetime weekend in queues.
Again if you watched the ama maybe you wouldn’t be here complaining for invalid reasons. They don’t want to do wipes or anything of the sort unless they absolutely need to.
Again If you would have ever played another mmorpg then you’d know queues are just a reality of the start of one. They’re always going to be present. Yes that’s despite the amount of innovations intrepid has pulled off. They’re talented they’re not actually wizards. If you’re going to complain the least you can do is complain in good faith and logic.
Phase 1 ... ... ...
And also - You might expect this to be Subject to change VERY soon in the Time-Span of the first Three to Six Weeks or so. Some things, sudden changes, new things to get patched in to test and so on,
were announced to might happen in the first handful of Weeks or above when Alpha Two has started.
And Please don't forget,
it IS what it is. A true Alpha. This is not an Early Access Version of the Game.
✓ Occasional Roleplayer
✓ Kinda starting to look for a Guild right now. (German)
Why do you think I mentioned it? Lmao
Why? Who cares if they wipe or merge servers? I doubt the players do.
If they can log in during prime time the first few weekends and then on weekend 3 transfer their character to another server I doubt anyone cares. As opposed to spending like 10 hours in queue during primetime during those weekends or something dumb.
Intrepid seems to care about server mergers or wipes in alpha 2, but why?
If you have paid for access to test, you have the ability to test. What if they need to test the queues? Then you will test the queues
"Testing" the queues and purposefully throttling realms based on arbitrary assumptions that players don't want wipes or realm mergers during Alpha 2 is not the same thing.
If they need to "test" some things.. Fine, no problem. Good for them.
But if its just because of realm death fears, I doubt the player base cares. Wipe and merge as much as you want to avoid queues during A2... Especially in the early phases where spikes are high anyways.
Go watch a stream instead of putting all this effort crying for no reason. Literally everything you’ve cried about has been discussed in the streams. You’ve made it clear argument after argument you’ve done actually nothing in regards to actually keeping up to date with what their plans are. To be quite honest if the queue keeps people like that from joining I find it a success.
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Server_merges
Q: What is your plan and what systems are in place to avoid the first few months of server queues and congestion; and when players drop off, how do you plan on handling that when the time comes?
A: I think that obviously is a problem that every MMO launch suffers. That is the balance between your active users your expected peak concurrencies: where that fall-off begins and how you consolidate servers. You don't want to expand too much at the beginning to alleviate server queues and then end up with like 30% pop servers that you have to consolidate later. The same is going to be true for Alpha-2. So, we're going to be leveraging- obviously we know how many users we have available when it comes to Alpha-2 entrance and then as we allow additional people to purchase in with these new key sales that we'll be doing later, we're going to get an idea of what that is. Generally I would expect we're going to see 30 to 40% peak concurrencies when it comes to opening the servers, when it comes to prime-time, when it comes to events that happen. And, so when we talk about server queuing server congestion, we want to make sure that we have healthy Alpha-2 servers, so we're going to leverage server queuing as much as possible. That means that sometimes those server queues might get into the thousands during those peak times, during the servers spinning up, or during those prime times or events; and that's okay. It's not going to be the most fun for a lot of players to have to sit in a queue. Obviously, we've all done that before in MMOs that we played, but the alternative is that we have too many servers available, we don't have those queues during peak times; and then when it's not peak times those server populations dilapidate and that's not what we want to have obviously.[12] – Steven Sharif
Read it and weep buddy. NEXT ARGUMENT PLEASE!
🫡 . 🫡 . 🫡
✓ Occasional Roleplayer
✓ Kinda starting to look for a Guild right now. (German)
Lmao did you even read all of it or are you just proving once again you’re one of the only ones who’s found a way to be upset. You just reinforced my hopes that long queues dissuade people like you from playing the game instead of having testers test the game.
The clear difference being a tester is willing to test ALL the things that come with an mmorpg where as a gamer such as yourself only cares that you’re not playing a game. THEYRE TRYING TO TEST THE SYSTEM to make sure they WORK for the ACTUAL release. How tf are they getting anything beneficial for the actual launch if you’re launching the alpha differently then the base launch. You’re just entitled, lazy and a cry baby from what I’ve gathered. Considering you’ve gone from crying about queue times to crying about them testing a basic system to ANY other game.
Please explain the logic that justifies launching alpha different than what the actual launch will be. Solely because you feel entitled to queue free game time?
Ashes of creation in general simply doesn’t allow for server mergers to be viable. Every server is going to build differently based off of the individual actions taken place by that servers community. That all goes out the door when you give a cry baby like you what you want, and you need to start merging all those unique stories into one? All because you demand to have PLAY time without queues during an alpha test
Based take.
You clearly haven’t seen much about what AoC is if that’s really what you think. I truly don’t understand how you can buy into supporting an MMORPG then cry about something like wait times solely because they don’t make an exception for you or the alpha??? Maybe do research so you can have knowledge of what they’re trying to achieve. Go watch any live stream so you have a better idea of what it is you’re trying to support.
People should write their test plans in advance, with expected results and as soon as they are done should log out to let the next testers in.
Or maybe crashes will be frequent and they login and crash happens fast. Then they can be happy they found a bug.
The pain will be when they wipe before full release. All that money and freehold will be gone!
And Dygz will stop "testing".
Will streamers and youtubers pay?
Do we need them to advertise the game?
Unique stories? The point here is to TEST, not to make unique stories. What, do you think you are paying for a full game or something?
lulz ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I love your optimism! =D
More than expect technical issues...
Well that's the point of this thread. There may be a large portion of the population that doesn't care if their characters get merged onto other servers if it means skipping queue times. And actually we may be pretty annoyed at arbitrarily waiting in queues and wasting prime time on weekends. So its just a pain point with no upside to us.
By the time populations stabilize it could be like January 2025 or something so really a bunch of mergers the first few months and phases ain't a biggie as opposed to massive amounts of people waiting in lines.
Well if they are investing $120 to make some content videos that make WAY more then it's just like buying a prop for some content or something. Cost of business.
I mean free advertising is good, but they pay to advertise you is even better. Shrug. Advertising worked for General Motors.
True, The way I see it is that the proper Alpha 2 starts with Wave 3.
And Wave 1 and 2 are a pre-access which we got without asking for it.
At least finally happens. I've seen threads predicting it's start in the far future... like 2026. One year earlier is good
Do they get any benefit having more servers and a very large population now?
I think many players are needed when bugs happens rarely.
When bugs are frequent enough, (if just a few players moving around like fremens on the sand cause crashes), there is no need for 20 servers.
OK, sure... But as a company, shouldn't you want to give the best experience you can to your userbase? Is it really that much harder to give the community a smooth A2 rollout without queues?
As a player, what would you rather have Otr: tens of hours of Queues for weeks or some realm mergers?
Lmao??? it’s literally a vital organ for the game itself. How tf are they suppose to test that the worlds are developing correctly if they’re merging them for entitled people like you. Of course someone as entitled as yourself would say “oh well screw that system I paid you 120 dollars now let me pay”. Guess we need to say screw ashes of creation for this entitled princes to play without queues 🤷🏻♂️