Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Why Phase 2 Has Me Worried About the Future
Zhav
Member, Alpha Two
I’ve been a l supporter of Ashes of Creation since the project was first announced, but I have to admit that phase 2 has left me feeling pretty pessimistic about the game’s direction, particularly when it comes to the leveling experience.
Let’s be real: leveling is going to be a massive part of Ashes of Creation—for most players, it’ll take up the majority of their playtime. Yet, after all this time, it feels like almost no meaningful improvements have been made in this area. The leveling grind is still frustrating, and here’s why:
1. Leveling Takes Too Long to Get Fun
The pace of leveling feels off, especially in the early game. Right now, it takes far too long to unlock even your basic kit, which means combat isn’t enjoyable until much later. Grinding out levels for hours just to unlock core abilities isn’t engaging—it’s exhausting. A long leveling curve is fine for mid-to-late game progression, but players need to feel rewarded early on to stay invested.
2. Mob Grinding Dominates
Despite Intrepid’s claims that grinding mobs isn’t supposed to be the main method of leveling, it still is. Quests remain largely inefficient, offering minimal XP compared to simply grinding mobs. To make matters worse, the increase in player numbers during phase 2 has made the problem even more noticeable. Mob spawn rates haven’t scaled, so there’s constant competition for limited spawns, creating frustration instead of fun.
3. Solo Play Feels Punishing
Most classes still struggle to solo effectively. This wouldn’t be as much of an issue if there were better questing options or other incentives, but right now, solo players are left grinding the same mobs endlessly with tons of downtime making it inefficient and feel rewarding.
4. Misplaced Priorities
Instead of addressing core gameplay mechanics like leveling and combat pacing, Alpha 2 has introduced features like freeholds. While freeholds might be great in the future, they currently serve no real purpose in the Alpha. Meanwhile, the leveling experience—the thing players will spend 90% of their time doing—feels neglected. If the core experience isn’t solid, no amount of side features will save the game.
I understand this is an alpha, and there’s still time for changes, but it’s disheartening to see these long-standing issues persist while other, less critical systems get the spotlight. Leveling is the backbone of any MMORPG. If it doesn’t feel good, players won’t stick around for the rest of the experience.
I really hope Intrepid shifts their focus to refining the core gameplay loop—balancing the leveling curve, improving quest rewards, and ensuring that combat is fun from the start. Otherwise, I fear Ashes of Creation might fail to deliver on its incredible potential.
What are your thoughts? Have you had a different experience with phase 2?
Let’s be real: leveling is going to be a massive part of Ashes of Creation—for most players, it’ll take up the majority of their playtime. Yet, after all this time, it feels like almost no meaningful improvements have been made in this area. The leveling grind is still frustrating, and here’s why:
1. Leveling Takes Too Long to Get Fun
The pace of leveling feels off, especially in the early game. Right now, it takes far too long to unlock even your basic kit, which means combat isn’t enjoyable until much later. Grinding out levels for hours just to unlock core abilities isn’t engaging—it’s exhausting. A long leveling curve is fine for mid-to-late game progression, but players need to feel rewarded early on to stay invested.
2. Mob Grinding Dominates
Despite Intrepid’s claims that grinding mobs isn’t supposed to be the main method of leveling, it still is. Quests remain largely inefficient, offering minimal XP compared to simply grinding mobs. To make matters worse, the increase in player numbers during phase 2 has made the problem even more noticeable. Mob spawn rates haven’t scaled, so there’s constant competition for limited spawns, creating frustration instead of fun.
3. Solo Play Feels Punishing
Most classes still struggle to solo effectively. This wouldn’t be as much of an issue if there were better questing options or other incentives, but right now, solo players are left grinding the same mobs endlessly with tons of downtime making it inefficient and feel rewarding.
4. Misplaced Priorities
Instead of addressing core gameplay mechanics like leveling and combat pacing, Alpha 2 has introduced features like freeholds. While freeholds might be great in the future, they currently serve no real purpose in the Alpha. Meanwhile, the leveling experience—the thing players will spend 90% of their time doing—feels neglected. If the core experience isn’t solid, no amount of side features will save the game.
I understand this is an alpha, and there’s still time for changes, but it’s disheartening to see these long-standing issues persist while other, less critical systems get the spotlight. Leveling is the backbone of any MMORPG. If it doesn’t feel good, players won’t stick around for the rest of the experience.
I really hope Intrepid shifts their focus to refining the core gameplay loop—balancing the leveling curve, improving quest rewards, and ensuring that combat is fun from the start. Otherwise, I fear Ashes of Creation might fail to deliver on its incredible potential.
What are your thoughts? Have you had a different experience with phase 2?
2
Comments
About leveling speed, I generally liike it to take very long so I have to disagree there. Again, it's not fun right now for those who don't like grinding so that probably makes it feel worse for you.
They didn't do anything with related to archetypes this phase. I get that the rogue was pushed back, but the classes need a lot of polish. We were promised class rebalances a month ago that never appeared.
A few weeks after Phase 1 start - the bard got a huge revamp with many more passive points. They are already the most well developed class that is already spread thin and they got a lot more love. The other archetypes need that same overhaul badly.
And yet nothing.
All of the new stuff this phase has to do with super lategame. Tier 4 node vassaling, freeholds, new l25 dungeon. That's all well and good - but it doesn't change the early experience where we are repeating the exact same grind with no new archetype features for us to learn.
We're still missing showcase features that we were lead to believe were in the game (rather than isolated vertical slices) I very much expected the artisan skill trees to be live for phase 2. We're still missing the promised character creator (that we were told we'd get before the start of Alpha 2).
Phase 1 exceeded my expectations with how well it worked. I knew that Phase 2 was going to 'set the pace' for what Intreped was really working on 'behind the scenes where we can't see' and what we've got shows us they have nothing 'held back' - it's a long and bumpy road ahead for this game.
EDIT: I actually do agree with the OP on one point - mob griding dominates. Quests are skippable except only 2 that have a specific reward. The one that gives you your tools and your horse and the one that gives you 3 uncommon armor pieces.
Quests need to give more rewards than just glint and xp. They need to give meaningful upgrades to your gear. Even uncommon rings or a cloak would be a reason to do quests.
Many of the quests are still broken from phase 1 - looks like whatever feedback we gave on that regard hasn't been looked at yet.
There’s a difference between slow and tedious. There’s a reason games don’t have you sit at the same grind spot for hours on end anymore.
Both points have already led to me not wanting to play any more.
I know it's an alpha, but I think the progress from phase 1 is minimal.
The quest system is still almost non-existent or not well implemented.
I'm also more of a solo player and don't feel like looking for a group for every activity.
Mob grinding is for me the most boring thing there is to do in a game.
And why are the two new races so ugly? Who implements something like this and says it looks good????
I was also hoping that they were already much further ahead in development and that Phase 2 would be a surprise.
But at this rate, I don't see a release before 2030...
Monsters can be stolen from you, removing you of all loot and EXP from the monsters you spent time and effort attacking first.
Almost every single location for Level 10 farming was taken by massive zerg guilds, leaving next to 0 place for anyone else to farm.
The current world feels barron of life, where is the monster density to allow you to farm/kill monsters in the open? I went over mountain and hill and only saw 5 scattered goblins ravens and wolves spread out over them.
I strongly believe that Shared EXP must be a thing. As for loot, then maybe make that contestable but the EXP no. EXP must always be given else the game will just feel like a total slog to level in.
And this is feedback on the alpha 2?
The leveling experience should be prioritized over other systems in my opinion, hence the post.
This is a toxic community. PVP focused games system that leads to gate keeping. Where only X will get to certain systems because of multiple reasons.
I was hesitant to support the game. I took the plunge for Alpha 2. My fears feel that this is gonna take the same mistakes that New World made in different and new insane ways.
Grouping, as I will say is where the majority of the fun is. The issue you have with things, is at this time regardless of their "vision" of leveling. Grinding mobs is the only way. The reason for this, is because the quests they have require "most" of them, require killing certain mobs...well people are grinding the shit out of em so you won't be able to do the quests to even test it. So it forces you to end up in the endless meta of trying to find a grinding group that isn't already maxed.
Crafting...I was excited about this, only to find that Zinc/Copper are more rare than higher level shit...how does this make any sense? It doesn't. I know its alpha 2...but if you look at the road map....you can't test shit if you can't level crafting to really get testing done in it.
This game initially was supposed to be a PvX style game, more along the lines of a Gw2/BDO/EVE online where nodes and stuff inspire world pvp.
Refocusing my take.
1. Early game combat:
Currently is god awfully unbalanced and hit or miss. If your tank, good luck. Your going to be miserable. If your not in a group, of ranged...its goin to be tough sledding if your solo cause your new to the game. Period. Balance is not needed. You cannot have a multiple class(archetype) game and have everything perfectly balanced. That is unrealistic, and will only cause problems if that is their goal. Each archetype(class) should have their niche, and should be focused around that. Tanks should be able to mitigate well, their dmg is low, its a give n take, and the problem is, its skewed still against them. It takes too long early for some classes to start feeling well at all.
2. Nodes for mining/gathering are shit.
Take a page out of others. Lower the respawn or change the nodes up...cause currently only the sweats are going to do anything...or the big streamer guilds....again gatekeeping create and festers toxic community.
3. Incentivize Partying better:
4. Remember: This is Alpha 2. The focus clearly was to stress test the servers and system to the max. Take the lessons and actually do something. Don't pull a New World and ignore the community. The vision can still be done while removing some of the issues that everyone is stating.
I want AoC to succeed. I love MMORPGs, and definitely would love a fantasy inspired PVX style. WoW is great but lets be honest. IS a PVE centric MMO.
I don't think anything I have said is non-constructive.
Basically nothing changed for this phase other than the wipe.
Plus very little mining resources - discussed many times even with streamer videos and nothing done. Saying everything is fine with resources is like the current Administration saying the economy is fine; believe what we tell you not what you're experiencing.
Some things have moved backwards in Phase 2 - most of which the community has already warned about.