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.
Comments
The time is getting close.
We have a wonderful alpha pie in the oven and we don't wanna pull it out too early, or too late!
Love the gif (and that show!) haha
The challenging aspect of following a project in open development is exactly this! It's difficult when you can see and smell the *insert delicious dessert here* in the oven, but it still isn't ready to take out.
Our monthly development update livestreams aim to do exactly that - update the community on current developments! These should give some insight into the status of the project's development
We're just as excited to play Ashes of Creation with the Ashes of Creation community! We can't wait to play it with everyone as soon as we're able to!
Just a simple list of what needs to be completed in no particular order. But then us as a player base could tell how close we truly are. So if the list has 10 items and we have seen 4 completed it puts it in better perspective for us.
they probs gonna announce a2 in september ;3
Very possible with packs ending, i hope so!!
The only way Ashes succeeds is if it is a great gaming experience on release, if it is rushed and subsequently can't deliver then it's game over.
The latest content videos such as the Cleric gameplay look hugely promising so we can see things are coming on great. I am very happy waiting when we are kept updated, asked what we think and understand the vision.
Star wars, this is not.
LOL semantics at a @Noaani level. you are a very aggressive specimen. mostly passive, but very aggressive.
The problem isn't semantics at all, the problem is that some people here simply can't understand words.
Absolutely agree, no matter how much Steven and the team spam "This is a WIP"; 75% of people wont be able to comprehend that concept. So having an amazing launch of A2 will set the public expectation and as such it needs to be in a really good state for the overall health of the game.
See you next year
Actually, very little effort is going in to cosmetics (in comparison to the game as a whole).
We did indeed have a roadmap a few years ago, and then Intrepid hit an issue and got roasted by some in the community for not following their roadmap.
Between the three points from the above situation (roadmap existing, problem arising, community reaction) the existence of a roadmap is literally the only part of it that Intrepid can control.
So, their response to that - understandably - is to not put out another roadmap.
Selling cosmetic packs for a fortune without a single road map gives the impression of a studio in urgent need of money to finish its game.
But if the game is good, why not? And a large part of the MMO community spends its time spitting on the big studios (Blizzard etc.) for their business models, which aim to fleece the customer for mediocre content.
So in the end, financing production with cosmetic purchases to get a game that isn't P2W at the end of the day is defensible.
So you built a PC when you didn't have a time table?
I don't care if it takes five more years, people can say they will lose interest, but they will come back when the game nears A2, Beta, and release readiness.
A time table for Ashes with the sheer amount of code it has isn't realistic.
I also can't image a world in which Steven has his employees launch a live service alpha over the holidays.
I also don't know why they would suddenly change their mind on telling us dates after resisting for so long.
I would imagine the target is still q2 or q3 of 2024.
We knew that the release date was no longer before 2020 and we knew that we would not be given date until 100% sure they could meet the dates, but...
It still seemed as though Steven would be trying to release relatively soon rather than "when it's ready - even if it takes 6 or 7 more years."
I don't think many of us anticipated that there would be a 2 year gap between Alpha 1 and Alpha 2.
Even when Steven mentioned upgrading to UE5 at the beginning of 2022, he made it seem as though that would give the dev team the tools to work faster, thereby not causing much of a delay for Alpha 2.
I think by March 2023, we began to realize that Steven was likely going for a 8-10 year release schedule.
Most people seemed to still be hoping for Alpha 2 by Summer 2023.
the problem with this logic is that no games in the history of mmo's have said '' you need to buy cash shop items for the game to be completed'' so realistically they are no different than other companies using the cash shop to fund their project, this in its self is fine and i have no problem with it but i think if a company is funding a project through a cash shop they need to give the community a road map of where the funding is going, what mile stones are still to meet etc, you can pretty much guarantee without the cash shop, even if the game 'is' funded to completion, that you can add another 3-5 years development time
what core features? nothing core has been completed
whatever they deemed as core features. i think steven said in one q&a that the core features were ready, they just needed to add content and polish.
It's naive to think that the only reason the game has been delayed is because they're perfectionists and wanted to take their time. When in fact it's due to a lack of funds.
I never said or thought that. features take time do develop.
You think the game is already funded because Steven told it. But of course it's not true. But I understand that he prefers to lie about this, it's certainly the best communciation to have.
Or maybe it's kind of all funded today but certainly not when he told that the game is funded.
I wish life was as static as you believe it to be that 5 years seems so irrelevant.