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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.
Why do these two gameplay videos look so different?
Artharion
Member, Alpha Two
4 months ago, they showed the Node Wars video, and visually, it looks spectacular to me. The color palette is well contrasted with the world, there’s no excessive fog, and the character animations with the staff, bow, etc. look really good—at least for me:
https://youtu.be/DJZVi3F513s?si=qCZDms4gKnTR54kC
However, when I watch the video from yesterday, even though it’s clear it’s the same game, I see the color palette is very different, there’s a lot of fog, and even the character animations look worse:
https://youtu.be/lB5euffRa-g?si=cD2EzTiCp_bGcsBM
What could be the reason for such a difference in only 4 months, and why has this direction been taken? Could it be that the Node Wars video is from some dev-build that we won't actually see on October 25 during the first stage of Alpha 2?
https://youtu.be/DJZVi3F513s?si=qCZDms4gKnTR54kCHowever, when I watch the video from yesterday, even though it’s clear it’s the same game, I see the color palette is very different, there’s a lot of fog, and even the character animations look worse:
https://youtu.be/lB5euffRa-g?si=cD2EzTiCp_bGcsBMWhat could be the reason for such a difference in only 4 months, and why has this direction been taken? Could it be that the Node Wars video is from some dev-build that we won't actually see on October 25 during the first stage of Alpha 2?
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Because it is for testing certain systems not about you getting to play through content.
because that's not how making a game works.
you develop systems that help you make the game/content. you don't build the content right away. you basically make a game-making factory particular to the game you are making and you don't need to add lots of content to test it, and don't even need several biomes. after the factory is completed, then you build stuff with it.
making the first biome will take long because you aren't just building a biome. you are building a biome factory and a biome. after that, the next biome will take significantly less time.
edit: same thing for quests, skills, characters, etc
There is no reason to have quests in a build for a live stream if they don't intend to show those quests.
everything I said went right over your head =_=
during these however many years, they were building a factory that builds biomes and content, they weren't building the biomes and content.
People outside of Software Development rarely understand that what actually takes massive amounts of time isn't the stuff you see - its the stuff you don't see.
I don't work in gamedev, but I can tell you in buisness applications what you see is 5% (maybe up to 15% in a simple app which AoC doesn't fall under) of the work.
And yes we also have a ton of tools and Libraries making our lives easier.
Which by the way is also why we rarely show our customers WIP unless we need feedback to continue working.
Now we haven't actually seen anything since Alpha One several years ago outside of very selected snippets.
I personally think that there are 2 systems that are VERY hard to build:
- Nodes actually changing in appearance and function whilst the server is running
- Transitions between servers
Do I believe that the game will be finished in 2 years? (Or at least feature-complete)
Not really.
But I do think that they are on a good way and that they will speed up regarding the visible stuff (Biomes, Races, etc.) soon.
And yes, they need to get bigger for that - which they are constantly saying.
If you want to see what it looks like when a company starts with stuff like Biomes, take a look at Star Citizen.
Gigantic universe with essentially nothing in it...
I personally would rather have a smaller world but actual content in it.
And I fully plan on recording everything to compare content and world over time (maybe even with content other people on other servers made to see the actual difference).
I think they have different builds with different content and effects. Could also still be tinkering with lighting and visual effects. I expect Alpha 2 to be pretty toned down, although they did mention current efforts are on polish for Alpha 2 Phase 1.
This has to be nothing more than a Troll nobody is this oblivious! I think they are going to hide a lot of content you will never see before launch and if 10k people is good for testing than 100k phenomenal! I would do more math but your lack of comprehension is astounding so It would just be wasted mate!!
80% of the game can be tested in a 3rd of a biome because it is the actual mechanics of the game i.e. crafting, gathering, processing, freeholds, weapons, equipment, player classes, npc interaction, nodes, random events that need testing! Content is last on the list.
I agree!
i thought the same up until the last livestream, the reason being is yes this game is in development that is understood by everyone, but the fact of the matter is over the last three years the livestreams have been going backwards, the game looked Spectacular up until about 6 months ago when we saw the real in game footage of the game that looks absolutely NOTHING like the footage that was shown in the showcases beforehand.
furthermore the footage just keeps getting worse and worse up until the past two showcases witch to me seems like intrepid know the NDA is about to be lifted and they can't keep pretending anymore so they are showing it for what it is, also adding a huge layer of dense smog and over the top particle effects to try to hide the fact that what we have been shown and advertised to buy into, is not the game that we are going to get. so i would HIGHLY doubt they are hiding the weathering showcase build in another build
on that note, i don't think the game looks per say bad, i think that the team are improving bit by bit, but i do think that the game has no soul and the art style is extremley bland and just UE 5 assets resized and placed over and over, comparing the A2 world to the world we saw in A1 the graphics are a little better but the soul of the world is all but gone, and yes i think it is warrented to have concerns with the rate of progress, yes its an alpha, no its not an alpha 1 anymore, we are now launching A2 we should be seeing the start of some systems that are here to stay with some polish
also ... back to the main topic, this point has been raised time and time again and the forum posts usually go the other way, the OP asked why the game looks so much worse than it did 6 months ago, color pallet is terrible, graphics are blury, and visuals went from astonishing to pretty average for a mmo in 2025, let alone when it launches in 2035, so back to the question at hand, what's the reason?, the OP didn't even post the best examples, go back and watch these showcases vs the showcase we just had
Not hiding it in other builds.
That is literally how game development is done. Different developers have their own build (or builds) that they work with to add their own features. This way, if someone accidently does something game breaking (which happens often), it is only their build that is affected, not everyone's build.
There will be a master/stable build that is where complete features are added, and live streams are most likely done on a master build that is two or three versions old.
It isn't copium to have a general understanding of how game development works.
It makes me wonder why most MMOs we’ve seen until now have been so underwhelming. Probably because they were rushed, like New World, and released without enough thought or creativity behind them. I’d rather the developers take their time to create something worthwhile than push out a low-effort cash grab just for monetization.
Also, I don’t agree with the take that the world feels soulless—it looks pretty amazing to me. You have to remember that this is an open-world MMO with PvX elements, not a traditional RPG like World of Warcraft where you're spoon-fed a story. In a sandbox, everyone’s actions matter, and that’s the beauty of it. The freedom to do what you want in a world like this is exactly how MMOs in 2025 should be.
And I hate the Lineage 2 comparisons—people really need to stop. I love PvP and PvX, and it’s one of my favorite things to do in an MMO, but Ashes isn’t going to be a carbon copy of Lineage 2 or ArcheAge. Sure, it might take some inspiration from other games, but stop comparing it. How can MMOs innovate and move forward if all you want is to play some outdated game?
Personally, I’m most excited about how the combat will be balanced, the different classes, and how the world will feel when everything is finished. I’m confident they’ll figure out the networking issues with some testing and tweaking. So yeah, I’m hyped—stop being such a doomer!
New World, where you can see several parallels (city ownership, quest townboards, crafting stations bound to towns/levels, action combat with dodge, weapon freedom and skills, lots of gathering and crafting as main content part, …) is still a solid MMO, but had two main issues: No endgame beside „looting chests in elite areas“ and bugs with huge impact (server rollbacks included), the small bugs are irrelevant, every game has them. Those two aspects killed the game at that time, and there was no full recovery since then.
Talking about themeparks and sandboxes: Ashes is a sandpark, developers for themselves take this wording. So, the full sandbox is a dream, as the full themepark is. And thats the good thing in Ashes: It tries to address both, which is good. Humans need guideance and guidelines, so players want that as well. Some freedom is fine, full freedom is an illusion (and chaos and anarchy, which nobody wants).
On topic:
As for the Saturdays stream: It was ok, but not overwhelming. 10min jumping puzzles, well, whatever.
To get a hub like Lionhold is much appreciated, I personally hope to find those time efficient hubs later on in the game in cities/towns/nodes. No need for a walking simulator. Graphics and animations still need lots of improvement, but thats an Alpha, so we will see. Compared to already released games or upcoming games a lot of work is needed to match same quality and level, especially in term of movement animations. Graphics, effects and so on are not a big concern, they will manage it, it already looks quite nice.
Got several New World vipes last Saturday (deja vu was heavy during the time the town board quests were shown), but beside the two mentioned main issues I‘ve mentioned NW was really fun to play, level, fight, gather and craft. I only stopped because of boring elite chest runs, like 90% of all other players at this time.
The game has crashed multiple times, and people keep complaining about lag, so the networking side doesn’t look promising either. If anything, Throne and Liberty feels soulless. The combat—both PvE and PvP—is clunky as hell and feels bad most of the time.
If you're looking for a Lineage 2 clone, sure, go play Throne and Liberty, but I guarantee you’ll get bored—it brings nothing new to the table.
Omg, definitely not. I've only passed very very few MMOs since ~year 2000. That's one of them.
And all of what you said is fine. Except you complained about the lack of content in biomes, about biomes themselves not being "finished", and other bs that has nothing to do with actual systems.
I disagree that Alpha 2 will run for 6+ years, obviously.
Regarding the visuals, I feel like they can also be subjective.
Myself, I haven't really noticed a large drop in quality. Actually, every new stream we get, I feel like the game looks more like an actual game.
This is obviously going to be worked on, the lighting, effects, animations.
I did say animations looked bad, but I'm aware they're going to improve. I know they said countless times that visuals will improve, as well as visual fxs' for classes.
It's fine to provide feedback, and say x looks not great, or y needs improving. And that's what the original post was kind of all about. But then the replies were completely different, choosing to complain about it, saying random stuff about the development, etc.
All of which are not systems, but content that's added on top. The base is the systems, not classes, races, augments, or biomes.
The goal for the project management behind the processes is to time things, so as much as possible may get worked on simultaneously.
The goal of the streams is to collect user opinions, not to assuage user concerns.
In the long run, the goal is also to generate hype and willingness to pay for the product. But that doesn't mean you're owed proof right now. You'll get proof when there's something for you to buy. Alpha isn't something for you to buy; it's you contributing to the development process.
It's a lot of effort to summarise the state of progression of all the elements of the game.
They'd have to go into a ton of detail about unfinished assets and systems in order to give you a full picture of how close to being playable each biome, dungeon, quest line, and encounter type is. Giving you that information isn't their goal in the first place, and it certainly isn't worth dozens of work hours and project leader coordination to give you a verified summarised presentation of all the progress and all the shortcomings.
More importantly, even if they did go through that effort, 3 months later you'd be here complaining about anything presented in those summaries that didn't pan out as planned. Giving you more details will only make the problem worse.
Because this entire thread is evidence that you're not cut out to handle uncertainty. And uncertainty is the expected default condition for a project of this scale.
The last thread on this subject is 1-2 weeks old, by the way.
Here's my highly thorough and unambiguous comment from that thread, explaining why you shouldn't expect to be kept in the loop about how far each aspect of the game design has advanced, or where the roadblocks are in the development:
And by extension why you shouldn't view a lack of information on these subjects as an indication that they're not progressing at a sufficient pace:
Can I guarantee that that sort of realistic/pessimistic messaging wouldn't hurt his brand? No.
Is the way they're communicating now anywhere close to misleading or deceptive? Hell no.
In fact I think their communication is pretty responsible, and in my perception, the parts that are slightly too optimistic have more to do with Steven not distinguishing cleanly between "schedule" and "tasks steps", which isn't really that big of a deal.
Essentially, when he's announcing the next step, he's not saying: "This will be done in 1.5 months", he's saying: "This step is expected to be delivered after the step planned for 0.5 months and the step planned in 1 month, therefore 1.5 months - without going into the probability of each of those delivering." Because it ultimately really doesn't matter, as long as he has good reason to believe the game will be published one day.
No, it's much simpler than that. The majority of what you're noticing is simply the difference between the scenes. Direction of the sun, time of day, flora, building architecture, the scene as a whole being more impressive when 50 fighters are ready to follow their commander's lead.
Everything they did in that stream was set up to look great zoomed in. The October stream represented PvE questing. It's inherently less glorious than a large-scale PvP battle, so it'll look less glorious, because there's less happening that you could look at.
Click on the parts of the current stream where Steven is looking and running away from the sun, and you'll notice the graphics will look much better than the average scene in the dungeon or looking into the sun. (Though some of the lens flare scenes are pretty gorgeous, as well.)
Another thing to mention is that Steven really likes what most players call fog. He likes atmospheric dust in the rugged landscape, and glaring sunshine casting rays while the player is looking towards mountain tops.
Some things I'd remind you to consider about this:
1) You're seeing more of it than you will during a regular play session, because Steven actively looks towards the light source.
2) The locations that looked too grey/foggy to you will look different during different seasons and different times of day with the sun in different positions.
3) Different locations also render differently on YouTube and Twitch because their compression is really bad at handling noise, and scenes with less contrast (lower lighting, more fog, more objects with small details that render as a blend of colours from a distance) have a lot of noise. So some of the fogginess might look substantially worse in some of the streams than others - let alone the game.
4) Fog and dust effects can be turned off, if you don't like them. Sure, ideally you want them to be good enough to keep them on, but just keep the option in mind when you blow these detailed issues up into problems.
5) It's work in progress, and many people commented on it after the dragon boss fight dev-update, so it's likely there will be several overhauls before release.
you're comparing apples to oranges here.
Lmaoooo. This is my thread 2.0