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.
Alpha Two First Impressions /Review
Sporia
Member, Alpha Two
I've spent about 10 to 15 hours in the Ashes of Creation Alpha, and I have to say I'm largely disappointed so far. I understand it's a work in progress, and I understand that there are still many years until launch, but I'm going to go over why I'm disappointed.
Initially, I was worried about the combat, the servers, and things not working well. For the first two weeks, it was pretty rough due to DDoS attacks and other issues. However, by the end, the combat turned out to be fairly decent, and the servers held up really well this past weekend, which was a big plus. But the elephant in the room, I think, is the confusion around questing. Whether it's because the quest item icons are bugged, or because the questing format is just so unclear, it’s a major problem.
Questing Frustrations
The number one weakness right now for this game is the questing. It’s extremely confusing. From the moment you enter a village and accept a few quests, it’s not clear where to go or who to speak to. I think this has been a common complaint from the community. In my experience, the game has been an absolute chore to play. I've hated playing it because there’s no clear route for quests or direction. Everyone is just grouping up to kill mobs repeatedly, extremely boring . The commissions hardly give any XP, and there's no point in doing them since it takes ages to get the correct spawn—if it even happens, as some quests are bugged.
For example, I had a quest for two weeks that required killing undead just outside a village. These undead only spawn at night, but for three weeks, they haven’t appeared. This is the worst questing experience I’ve ever had in an MMO, and I’ve played a lot of them—New World, World of Warcraft, Final Fantasy XIV, you name it.
The Quest Log is a Mess
There’s no separation between main quests, side quests, or crafting/profession quests; everything is jumbled together. The quest log is tiny, even on a 32:9 Samsung G9 monitor. Even when I increase the quest log to its maximum size, it’s still too small. There shouldn’t be a cap on how much you can enlarge the quest box.
Confusion with Crafting Quests
I had a profession quest that asked me to mine "ZINC." I found some, but then the quest said I needed a Journeyman Mining Certificate. There’s no information in the game about where to obtain this certificate. I had to search on Discord to find the answer, which has been a recurring frustration throughout the Alpha. It’s tedious and makes me not want to invest more time.
Optimized Routes Need to Be Fun
Players will always find the most optimal route to level, and they will choose that route every time. It’s the developers' job to make those optimal routes engaging and enjoyable. Most players have a second screen with an interactive map to find materials for mining, herbalism, or even for quests, but this shouldn’t be necessary.
World Map Frustrations
The world map is another problem. It needs refinement. When you zoom into an area, it's hard to make sense of the route to your destination. I spent hours trying to get to a specific quest to kill some gryphons, but I had no idea how to get there. There were no clear directions on the map. I went around in circles trying to find an entrance. It turns out I needed to go near the goblin area, up some stairs to a skeleton area, then up another set of stairs, turn right, go up another set of stairs, across a huge bridge above the village, and then I finally reached the birds' area. The map gave no indication of this path, and it’s incredibly frustrating to waste so much time figuring it out.
Overall, the questing and navigation need serious improvements if Ashes of Creation is going to live up to expectations. Right now, it feels more like a chore than a game.
[Here’s an example of what I’m talking about: this is the route I took while trying to get to a quest area to kill some gryphons. As you can see, I started from the quest location and spent an hour trying to figure out how to get there. I had no idea, tried everything, and eventually thought, "Ah, it has to be that path back where I started at level 1." But when I got there, I hit another wall or dead end. This was an extremely frustrating questing experience.
In the end, the correct route to get to the quest was the blue route. It’s crazy to think that a player is supposed to magically know that’s the way to go. I found it randomly while in a group farming mobs in the area. If the intention was to have players discover the route "organically" or "randomly," then it’s simply bad design and not fun at all. The "green circled" areas on the map looked like paths that I assumed would provide an easy route, but they ended up being dead ends.
A Comparison with Other Games
These problems have already been solved in other games. Here’s a map from The Witcher 3. What do you see? White lines, slightly faded, show clear routes to every area. There are also areas in the game that don’t have visible paths, which are meant to be secrets you find in the world. There’s no stress or wasted time trying to figure out how to reach a destination. Even if you don’t want to provide a quest tracker, at the very least, the world map needs to display routes clearly. Honestly, I’ve stopped playing multiple times because I just wasn’t having any fun.
Graphics
The graphics were very underwhelming. I’ve watched 4K podcasts for years where the game looked good, but the first time I booted it up, it looked pretty bad. I had everything maxed out on Ultra at 5K resolution on a Samsung G9 with an RTX 4090, but the visuals were disappointing. I’m not sure if it's due to the fog, lighting, or mist, but it looked far worse than any 4K podcast I’ve seen on YouTube. It’s bizarre. Also, I noticed that the winter visuals look much worse than the spring visuals; I have no idea why, just pointing it out.
Performance Issues
Other things to mention: DLSS on Quality mode gives hardly any performance boost. Frame Generation currently isn’t working—it provides zero FPS increase when I usually get an average of a 30 FPS boost in other games. In general, FPS in villages drops below 50, and that’s with an RTX 4090 and an AMD 9050x overclocked to 4.5GHz on all cores, paired with 32GB of RAM. This is a high-end machine that runs Cyberpunk 2077 maxed out with path tracing at 5K resolution above 60 FPS.
Ultimately, my overall experience has been underwhelming purely because of the questing. Why would I spend an hour trying to figure out how to kill a bird or where to find a ZINC node to earn 1,000 or 2,000 XP, when I can just join a group of three players and kill mobs that give us 400 XP per kill? We can take down 2–3 mobs in under a minute, equaling the total XP from completing a quest.
The one thing in the game that I didn't expect to be a problem turned out to be the biggest issue for me. It reminds me of the New World launch. Players quickly got bored of "fetch" quests and walking back and forth, so content creators started releasing videos showing the "fastest XP route," which involved spamming commissions on the board. Overnight, everyone stopped questing. The developers responded by nerfing commissions, and that decision frustrated a lot of players.
In the end, I believe in Steven's vision. I backed the game and am rooting for the team’s success. That’s why I'm here, writing this review, pointing out what I think is holding the game back significantly.
Initially, I was worried about the combat, the servers, and things not working well. For the first two weeks, it was pretty rough due to DDoS attacks and other issues. However, by the end, the combat turned out to be fairly decent, and the servers held up really well this past weekend, which was a big plus. But the elephant in the room, I think, is the confusion around questing. Whether it's because the quest item icons are bugged, or because the questing format is just so unclear, it’s a major problem.
Questing Frustrations
The number one weakness right now for this game is the questing. It’s extremely confusing. From the moment you enter a village and accept a few quests, it’s not clear where to go or who to speak to. I think this has been a common complaint from the community. In my experience, the game has been an absolute chore to play. I've hated playing it because there’s no clear route for quests or direction. Everyone is just grouping up to kill mobs repeatedly, extremely boring . The commissions hardly give any XP, and there's no point in doing them since it takes ages to get the correct spawn—if it even happens, as some quests are bugged.
For example, I had a quest for two weeks that required killing undead just outside a village. These undead only spawn at night, but for three weeks, they haven’t appeared. This is the worst questing experience I’ve ever had in an MMO, and I’ve played a lot of them—New World, World of Warcraft, Final Fantasy XIV, you name it.
The Quest Log is a Mess
There’s no separation between main quests, side quests, or crafting/profession quests; everything is jumbled together. The quest log is tiny, even on a 32:9 Samsung G9 monitor. Even when I increase the quest log to its maximum size, it’s still too small. There shouldn’t be a cap on how much you can enlarge the quest box.
Confusion with Crafting Quests
I had a profession quest that asked me to mine "ZINC." I found some, but then the quest said I needed a Journeyman Mining Certificate. There’s no information in the game about where to obtain this certificate. I had to search on Discord to find the answer, which has been a recurring frustration throughout the Alpha. It’s tedious and makes me not want to invest more time.
Optimized Routes Need to Be Fun
Players will always find the most optimal route to level, and they will choose that route every time. It’s the developers' job to make those optimal routes engaging and enjoyable. Most players have a second screen with an interactive map to find materials for mining, herbalism, or even for quests, but this shouldn’t be necessary.
World Map Frustrations
The world map is another problem. It needs refinement. When you zoom into an area, it's hard to make sense of the route to your destination. I spent hours trying to get to a specific quest to kill some gryphons, but I had no idea how to get there. There were no clear directions on the map. I went around in circles trying to find an entrance. It turns out I needed to go near the goblin area, up some stairs to a skeleton area, then up another set of stairs, turn right, go up another set of stairs, across a huge bridge above the village, and then I finally reached the birds' area. The map gave no indication of this path, and it’s incredibly frustrating to waste so much time figuring it out.
Overall, the questing and navigation need serious improvements if Ashes of Creation is going to live up to expectations. Right now, it feels more like a chore than a game.
[Here’s an example of what I’m talking about: this is the route I took while trying to get to a quest area to kill some gryphons. As you can see, I started from the quest location and spent an hour trying to figure out how to get there. I had no idea, tried everything, and eventually thought, "Ah, it has to be that path back where I started at level 1." But when I got there, I hit another wall or dead end. This was an extremely frustrating questing experience.
In the end, the correct route to get to the quest was the blue route. It’s crazy to think that a player is supposed to magically know that’s the way to go. I found it randomly while in a group farming mobs in the area. If the intention was to have players discover the route "organically" or "randomly," then it’s simply bad design and not fun at all. The "green circled" areas on the map looked like paths that I assumed would provide an easy route, but they ended up being dead ends.
A Comparison with Other Games
These problems have already been solved in other games. Here’s a map from The Witcher 3. What do you see? White lines, slightly faded, show clear routes to every area. There are also areas in the game that don’t have visible paths, which are meant to be secrets you find in the world. There’s no stress or wasted time trying to figure out how to reach a destination. Even if you don’t want to provide a quest tracker, at the very least, the world map needs to display routes clearly. Honestly, I’ve stopped playing multiple times because I just wasn’t having any fun.
Graphics
The graphics were very underwhelming. I’ve watched 4K podcasts for years where the game looked good, but the first time I booted it up, it looked pretty bad. I had everything maxed out on Ultra at 5K resolution on a Samsung G9 with an RTX 4090, but the visuals were disappointing. I’m not sure if it's due to the fog, lighting, or mist, but it looked far worse than any 4K podcast I’ve seen on YouTube. It’s bizarre. Also, I noticed that the winter visuals look much worse than the spring visuals; I have no idea why, just pointing it out.
Performance Issues
Other things to mention: DLSS on Quality mode gives hardly any performance boost. Frame Generation currently isn’t working—it provides zero FPS increase when I usually get an average of a 30 FPS boost in other games. In general, FPS in villages drops below 50, and that’s with an RTX 4090 and an AMD 9050x overclocked to 4.5GHz on all cores, paired with 32GB of RAM. This is a high-end machine that runs Cyberpunk 2077 maxed out with path tracing at 5K resolution above 60 FPS.
Ultimately, my overall experience has been underwhelming purely because of the questing. Why would I spend an hour trying to figure out how to kill a bird or where to find a ZINC node to earn 1,000 or 2,000 XP, when I can just join a group of three players and kill mobs that give us 400 XP per kill? We can take down 2–3 mobs in under a minute, equaling the total XP from completing a quest.
The one thing in the game that I didn't expect to be a problem turned out to be the biggest issue for me. It reminds me of the New World launch. Players quickly got bored of "fetch" quests and walking back and forth, so content creators started releasing videos showing the "fastest XP route," which involved spamming commissions on the board. Overnight, everyone stopped questing. The developers responded by nerfing commissions, and that decision frustrated a lot of players.
In the end, I believe in Steven's vision. I backed the game and am rooting for the team’s success. That’s why I'm here, writing this review, pointing out what I think is holding the game back significantly.
3
Comments
As for the other stuff, I think it's pretty spot on. There' no incentive right now for players to be involved in the world. Players will naturally gravitate towards what is efficient/fun, and right now it says a lot about the system - because players gravitate towards mindless murdering of things for 200 hours. There's no skill, there's no cohesion, there's no direction. Just murder hobo the same little spot nonstop.
To compound that issue, is the extremely drastic difference levels make both for PvE and PvP resulting in some pretty broken balance. Unless Ashes of Creation is planning to go down the route of Black Desert Online "no level cap" nonsense, where it's just time-sink trumps all... they are going to destroy any sense of balance when they start incorporating world events like node wars, guild wars, etc. Because anyone who isn't the highest obtainable level will become less than cannon fodder. They will be basically reduced down to non-participants.
For all the cool systems they have in place, their combat scaling is atrocious at present time. This really only become such a large issue because of the proposed time investment. I think they said something like 500 hours to max level? My problem is that balance feels like it is based around time spent and not community driven factors such as skills/crafting. This essentially renders all these other neat systems like crafting as irrelevant. Who cares if you spend 100 hours crafting heroic gear? This guy spend 500 hours and is 3x your level with common gear.
If they want Ashes to be skill based game they need to make it a skill based game and not an arbitrary stat race based on facerolling mobs.
I really wish I could see party members on the map when pulled all the way out. I mean light that area up neon pink with flowers coming off of it. I hate having to play "Where is Waldo" when looking for my group. That seems like a pretty easy fix but for some reason, it has not been.