Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
will this game ever launch
Chicago
Member, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
we all respect the hard work the team is putting in and we understand that development can take time, however at some point we need to start asking the questions and stop using this as the narrative. Everybody here loves how ambitious the project is and stevens vision but i think its about time intrepid stop treating the people funding this project like we are naive children
there are a a hardcore group of intrepid fans that make any negative post on the forums almost obsolete because every time one is made they rush to intrepid's defense like intrepid is developing the cure for cancer.
its about time that intrepid start answering the real questions we have and stop beating around the bush, every single live stream at this point feels like we are watching a bunch of politicians, and every question chosen for the ama's are just the select few that can be answered without giving out any information.
we need to stop using '' what other company is this transparent '' as a defensive mechanism because that can only go so far when you realize that that this game has been funded through the community following the project, obviously we understand that steven has put in his personal funds but also steven will be the one that benefits once the game is complete, i think we are in the ball park of what 40+ million dollars funded by the community on pre order packs and keys, so obviously the company should be transparent that is expected at this point..
120$ for an alpha 2 key is ridiculous, AAA games are selling finished games for less than this, and as we all know steven's background in sales, stating '' don't buy this if you are looking for a finished game '' but then adding FOMO elements to packages, just contradict each other, furthurmore everyone that got FOMO'd into buying A2 for 250$ when packages were apparently ending and then bringing them back for half the price should be borderline illegal,
i have heared you are saying this is not a game and then saying that it is a game within the same sentence whilst delivering your '' dont buy this if you want to play a full game speech '' at this point we all know what you are doing, the packs are a cash grab and if you need cash be transparent about it.
it also needs to be said that intrepid are stating in the livestreams that they NEED testers yet putting it behind a paywall is just insane, atleast pay the people testing for you with in game time or embers or something
now for the real questions, i personally believe that the game is looking great, i love the visuals and i think that what we have seen has come a long way, but what we have seen is probably 1/10th of what is planned, and we are 8 years into development, we have continuously missed without fail every deadline intrepid has ever given us, the character creator was suppose the be released before A2 when A2 had a Q3 release date, and this is not a direct quote but something along the lines was said that it was basically finished, yet we have only ever seen the same two models over and over again, all models look basically the same on the live streams, the dwarf looks terrible, yet we have videos two years old of the character creator pretty much being fleshed out
its been stated A2 will last a year + from the real release of pretty much Q3 2025, so i would guess that with the way development goes over at intrepid we will have a 9 month delay from A2 to the betas and then they will drag out with missed timelines just like the previous A1/A2, we have waited 3 years for A2 since A1 and the one thing that was promised '' a persistent up time until launch '' has also been removed, you can spin it however you want but people bought in with expectations that A2 would be up 24/7 from release and that is the way that it was sold to us
we have still not seen
any secondaries
Naval content
nodes higher than level 3
16/18 biomes?
the rogue
the summoner
bounty hunting
duels
monster coins
the list goes on and on and would take me to long to type out, the content planned for A2 sounds good on paper, when you deep dive into every system announced realistically its very lackluster and will most likely have a content drought a week or two in.
after alpha 2 we are most likely going to be 11-12 years into development, thats 1/3rd or more of most of our lives, there are people that have purchased packs here expecting to play in 2020 like it was stated in the kickstarter that are no longer with us due to dying of old age before this game was released, this is not shade its just facts,
intrepid you can develop the most beautiful game in the world and show us tiny portions of this during the live stream but it all means nothing if the game never gets past development, as someone that did purcahse into the game and did so to support the company and vision '' i will add i don't regret this decision '' but i will be honest its time that we would like to see where all our money has gone, 40 million dollars plus in crowd funding its about time you are open with us and give us a real time line or road map, as the latest live stream was just a kick in the face to anyone that has really been following this project
im ready for all the hate this post will get and for the intrepid hardcore fans to come out of the woodwork to defend their Messiah, but you know what i don't care.
there are a a hardcore group of intrepid fans that make any negative post on the forums almost obsolete because every time one is made they rush to intrepid's defense like intrepid is developing the cure for cancer.
its about time that intrepid start answering the real questions we have and stop beating around the bush, every single live stream at this point feels like we are watching a bunch of politicians, and every question chosen for the ama's are just the select few that can be answered without giving out any information.
we need to stop using '' what other company is this transparent '' as a defensive mechanism because that can only go so far when you realize that that this game has been funded through the community following the project, obviously we understand that steven has put in his personal funds but also steven will be the one that benefits once the game is complete, i think we are in the ball park of what 40+ million dollars funded by the community on pre order packs and keys, so obviously the company should be transparent that is expected at this point..
120$ for an alpha 2 key is ridiculous, AAA games are selling finished games for less than this, and as we all know steven's background in sales, stating '' don't buy this if you are looking for a finished game '' but then adding FOMO elements to packages, just contradict each other, furthurmore everyone that got FOMO'd into buying A2 for 250$ when packages were apparently ending and then bringing them back for half the price should be borderline illegal,
i have heared you are saying this is not a game and then saying that it is a game within the same sentence whilst delivering your '' dont buy this if you want to play a full game speech '' at this point we all know what you are doing, the packs are a cash grab and if you need cash be transparent about it.
it also needs to be said that intrepid are stating in the livestreams that they NEED testers yet putting it behind a paywall is just insane, atleast pay the people testing for you with in game time or embers or something
now for the real questions, i personally believe that the game is looking great, i love the visuals and i think that what we have seen has come a long way, but what we have seen is probably 1/10th of what is planned, and we are 8 years into development, we have continuously missed without fail every deadline intrepid has ever given us, the character creator was suppose the be released before A2 when A2 had a Q3 release date, and this is not a direct quote but something along the lines was said that it was basically finished, yet we have only ever seen the same two models over and over again, all models look basically the same on the live streams, the dwarf looks terrible, yet we have videos two years old of the character creator pretty much being fleshed out
its been stated A2 will last a year + from the real release of pretty much Q3 2025, so i would guess that with the way development goes over at intrepid we will have a 9 month delay from A2 to the betas and then they will drag out with missed timelines just like the previous A1/A2, we have waited 3 years for A2 since A1 and the one thing that was promised '' a persistent up time until launch '' has also been removed, you can spin it however you want but people bought in with expectations that A2 would be up 24/7 from release and that is the way that it was sold to us
we have still not seen
any secondaries
Naval content
nodes higher than level 3
16/18 biomes?
the rogue
the summoner
bounty hunting
duels
monster coins
the list goes on and on and would take me to long to type out, the content planned for A2 sounds good on paper, when you deep dive into every system announced realistically its very lackluster and will most likely have a content drought a week or two in.
after alpha 2 we are most likely going to be 11-12 years into development, thats 1/3rd or more of most of our lives, there are people that have purchased packs here expecting to play in 2020 like it was stated in the kickstarter that are no longer with us due to dying of old age before this game was released, this is not shade its just facts,
intrepid you can develop the most beautiful game in the world and show us tiny portions of this during the live stream but it all means nothing if the game never gets past development, as someone that did purcahse into the game and did so to support the company and vision '' i will add i don't regret this decision '' but i will be honest its time that we would like to see where all our money has gone, 40 million dollars plus in crowd funding its about time you are open with us and give us a real time line or road map, as the latest live stream was just a kick in the face to anyone that has really been following this project
im ready for all the hate this post will get and for the intrepid hardcore fans to come out of the woodwork to defend their Messiah, but you know what i don't care.
6
Comments
I'll take the bait. The game is progressing nicely. No complaints about the timeline. You mention, and then agree with the ambition of the project, but then want it faster. You can't have both.
The monetization, is talked about in 9 other topics on the first page of this forum.
Time table wise, we will have to wait as they make something good. We can see the effort and progress, so it's not like they are sitting on their hands. What else do you want?
"Are we there yet?"
No, we are not there yet.
yes i would like it done faster, its crazy that this has become the narrative to make people look bad by wanting this, we are 40 million dollars plus in donations to this game so yes after 8 years i would like the game to be past A2 by now, when we are still 4-5 years + from a release from what i can see
On the other hand, if you want to convince me that a quality game can be produced and released more quickly, then why don't you go ahead and do that yourself and I will admit you are right.
i 100% agree with you, but lets not pretend 8 years ball park is quickly, i think everyone here agrees we don't want it rushed and to be bad on release but at this stage in development we should be further than we are
There were clearly challenges and meaningful changes that needed to happen.
There may be more. Intrepid is a small studio in a specific sense, even now. They're barely growing out of it.
You get updates every month, and you, yourself, have almost always been positive or mostly-positive toward the updates. Steven has never done this before, and that means he has to be given some leeway to make mistakes, change his mind on things, etc.
In the meantime, if you show your support for the ideas of Ashes, other games will come. They will be reminded of the old days when those ideas still had a foothold and they will start to put them back into their MMORPGs.
Just play those games until Ashes comes out.
I'm not trying to 'apologize' for things like the AMA Livestream, I didn't like it either, but what's the point of the negativity toward the game itself?
If you rag on Steven, he will probably face that, but 'it's time to see where our money has gone'... just assume that what you see is what they have managed so far, and if you're super disappointed by that, then... what?
"You're slow and you're making mistakes!" changes nothing.
However the one thing I can say is that each time they do a livestream and reveal the next step they have made the game looks better. This feels different from other projects and feels right. So ill support until it goes in a direction that i dont support. simple as that.
i agree he has never done this before, but you know what he has done? Sales, and many of them, and what he is doing with the A2 keys is straight cringe and steven should know better,
Well, I'm 'obligated' to say on behalf of one of my group members, that people really should have expected this.
It doesn't matter if Steven means no harm, it doesn't matter if he didn't originally intend to do this sort of thing. When people hit a wall with whatever level of ability they have, they often fall back on what they know.
"Steven is a salesman, so what we get is stuff sold to us, with no way to know what the real situation is."
Her advice to literally anyone paying attention to this project would be to believe in the team's desire to do most if not everything promised, but also believe that Steven will sell you ideas first and 'actual stuff' will come later.
Many of us are old enough to have been involved in jobs like this. Even if it is disappointing, it shouldn't be surprising. When this project launched it had a half dozen people and 'sold' it by building a very pretty technical slice of a game type that we don't actually see much sign of. This was always a man selling his dream. Dreams are supposed to be grand, they're supposed to be that thing people latch onto when they don't want to deal with the hardships of reality.
But when you try to turn the dream into reality, the hardships will come, and so will the 'anger' of everyone who is forced to remember that the hardships are real.
probably. likely, even.
will it launch within the timeframe they specify? extremely unlikely.
is the fomo and pricing ridiculous? yes.
i don't think the dev team is evil or anything, but i don't agree that they're transparent like their supporters try to say they are. i also am of the mind that the team underestimated the cost of creating a mmorpg and are trying to keep afloat without revealing the budgeting issues at hand........and well, just need to be honest about that.
it does take absurd millions (hard plural) to create a mmorpg sometimes (depending on scope). no shame in continuous crowdfunding while development is in progress. they, virtuously, seem to be unafraid to show rough iterative development (many devs will hide this by creating a polished and deceptive vertical slice that is infeasible for the final product to mimic....all to hook an audience) so on that front they are transparent.
i like many of the concepts behind ashes of creation. but yeah i don't think it's anywhere near "a couple more years" finished. like i stated in another thread, i predict 2028 at the earliest for a "true release" with 2029 looking more likely at minimum.
I really wouldn't want this to become another Camelot Unchained or Star Citizen.
And to the other point, A2 starts in a few weeks. The 24/7 is 6 months later but things are progressing. We all knew it could be delayed.
I can see people having a debate about price, and I can understand the annoyance a few more months wait. However, the magnitude of vitriol over any of this make no sence to me.
It's because from the perspective of many people, Intrepid (moreso Steven) lies by omission to his backers.
A lot.
So every time a new kick-up of this type happens, reinforcing that feeling, people get bitter, and when other people tell them to brush it off, moreso.
It's fine that you, and others, don't expect much, because you're perhaps just more skeptical people, but as a counterexample for what little it is worth...
I for one really really thought that Character Creator they showed us months ago was moreso 'this needs polishing and is overall working well already', and that is not true. Is it fair that I believed that? Doesn't matter. Am I actually mad about it? No, but only because I have come to expect that from Intrepid now. I have learned to expect it on everything.
For the uninitiated who normally experience development quite differently, this is, as Steven points out, very unique.
No one knows but I'm beginning to wonder how many times the "to be included in a future update" statement will be used to explain missing systems.
I am not kidding when i wrote in the last few Months - > that i am betting and are hella sure,
that some People who purchased Pre-Order Cosmetics around 2018 ... ... ... ... ... are now deceased ... ... ... ... in real Life.
Simply because We are all mortal -> and the fact that we age only forward and not backwards -> are able to get things like Cancer -> or are taken away from this beautiful Earth by things like a simple Traffic Accident and the likes,
is making me realise -> some of us who love this ambitious Project and Game that dear Intrepid made itself the Goal to deliver,
... ... ... ... ... some of us might not live to see it.
I think in the next +2 Years - and in the worst Case up to 2028 or 2030, Ashes of Creation will finally be finished and released.
Until then, we can support dear Intrepid with our Willpower as Testers - and of Course our Money.
✓ Occasional Roleplayer
✓ Guild is " Balderag's Garde " for now. (German)
I mean, how many staff does Intrepid have now? Staff aren't cheap
It's not worth looking in for at least another year, by then we should have an answer as to a launch window. You can buy into alpha two now. If your up for something like that, watch the Aug 16th AMA. You really need to be in the know.
I see what you are saying. It's a thousand needles instead of a punch in the head.
It's a fair perspective.
you are not wrong but then why are we paying to test the game? '' we need testers'' yet we have to pay to test the game and if we don't will the game take an additional 10 years? furthermore, l understand delays, but when we are hearing in live streams over the past few months that A2 is on schedule, lets call an apple an apple and admit that A2 has been delayed until may next year ( at the earliest ) so telling us everything is fine and then slapping an almost year at best delay on A2 just makes me wonder, also yes i understand staff are expensive but we have heard time and time again ( this project is funded to completion ), so why the high price tag, literally just makes A2 un obtainable for a huge majority of the player and fan base wich i think is just bad management.
A2 is not starting in october these are spot tests lets be real and stop lying to everyone that follows this game
You quote yourself on accident there.
No one is lying. It starts Oct 25th. It'll be live 3 days a week. As we progress, it'll shift to 7 days a week. That could take several months. It is disappointing to not be 7 days right away, but it's not the end of the world.
This is a transparent project in term of the game's progression in development, but they are clearly not transparent in term of monetization. I think they CLEARLY need more money (who doesn't??) to fund the game and didn't tell us that and it's a shame. Miscommunication everywhere from Intrepid just like content creators that can't share the right information. Deceptive.
But most of the time you'd be blissfully ignorant of almost the entire development time because they don't talk about it, so it only feels shorter because you only see the tail end of development. Here we're seeing how the sausage is made up close and personal, so yeah, it takes a bloody long time. Welcome to game development, it takes much long then anybody expects.
However there is another factor in play. There is a saying about creating things, you can have it done quickly, you can have it done cheaply, or you can have it done well. Pick one. Maybe you can have some of two, but you can never have all three.
Intrepid clearly want to make a product that has high quality, and frankly that is why most of us is here. To see something that hasn't been done before. Which means it'll either be expensive, or slow.
They have a decent amount of money, but they don't have a massive publisher or anything backing them, so they just can't afford throw bodies at this.
Meaning, there is no choice in the matter, it's just going to take time.
That being said, things are moving along at a decent clip. I would expect at their current level of progress, to be done in about 2-3 years. The hard work is done.
The weekly tests will be more effective for allowing intrepid to iterate on major network systems as is the focus of phase 1. It’s could be very likely that things will crash, lag, and be unstable. It may take sometime to investigate server and client logs submitted by players every test, develop solutions during the week, then submit them for another build to test the next weekend.
I strongly believe that once the network hurdles are mostly passed, their content delivery powered by tools they’ve added to and inherited from UE5 will start moving things along quicker. Even that being said I recognize the insane amount of content left, and I could see alpha 2 24/7 phase maybe going 2 years, not the estimated 1! It’s a massive project in development, at this point if you’re frustrated I would stop watching until official release news or beta!
to be fair i am fine with an 8-10 year development schedule, i know its on the long end but its more than fine, my issue is what seems to still be yet to developed after 8 years that concerns me, it doesn't even feel like we are half way
The majority of what complaining about being missing, is content. Of course you haven't seen it, you don't do that at this stage in development. That would be putting the cart before the horse.
Imagine if it was building a car, you wouldn't do the paint job before frame to put it on. If you do things out of order, all you end up with is supped up sport car with no engine to pull it.
At this point in development, it's about hammering down the features, and making sure everything works. Without the features, you don't have a game. Fortunately, most of the core features are built, and just need to be put through it's paces and refined. Which we will be doing during alpha 2.
Once that is done, content will come next, and you'll be shocked at how quickly. Because frankly, content is easy, features are hard.
If that much…
While most People's Willpower to create a good Game would have probably already run out, Chicago,
it appears as Sir Steven is just beginning to tap into his ... ...
It has risen - BEYOND the Limits of a normal Waiting Time - and into the Realm of COPIUM-Legends,
the Legend that shitty MMO Companies fear ... ... ... ... the Legend known, throughout the ENTIRE VideoGaming Universe - as the most powerful MMO Videogame ever exist ... ...
the tiny Phönix,
Ashes of Creation - has become - the legendary SUPER-Hype MMO !!! ~ "
✓ Occasional Roleplayer
✓ Guild is " Balderag's Garde " for now. (German)