Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two Phase III testing has begun! During this phase, our realms will be open every day, and we'll only have downtime for updates and maintenance. We'll keep everyone up-to-date about downtimes in Discord.
If you have Alpha Two, you can download the game launcher here, and we encourage you to join us on our Official Discord Server for the most up to date testing news.
Alpha Two Phase III testing has begun! During this phase, our realms will be open every day, and we'll only have downtime for updates and maintenance. We'll keep everyone up-to-date about downtimes in Discord.
If you have Alpha Two, you can download the game launcher here, and we encourage you to join us on our Official Discord Server for the most up to date testing news.
Comments
I do find it interesting to see people realize for themselves what I first talked about several years ago.
The design of this game is objectively wrong. I can't think of a more direct way of stating the issues this game has than that.
I mean, creating a game for what you know to be a very niche audience, and then having servers with 10k concurrent players needed to make them feel not empty? These two things shouldn't exist in the same game, and this fact should be obvious to literally everyone when it is stated bluntly like this.
A large world and very limited fast travel? Same deal, shouldn't exist together. Even if there are valid reasons for each of these things existing, when it became apparant to Steven that the design of the game made it so that these two things had to co-exist, he should have gone back to the drawing board.
Sure, there are other issues with the game as it is today, but they can technically be fixed. Issues with aspects of the core design that are in direct opposition with each other though, they cant be fixed.
But at this point I'm just sitting in the boiling water and waiting for the inevitable end. Ribbit
Quote from Steven
“Even if you only have a short time to play, we want that time to feel meaningful. Whether you’re gathering, doing a quick dungeon, or helping your node progress, your contribution matters.” – Steven Sharif
“We know a lot of our players won’t have endless hours to play every day. I want to hear from you — what systems or features would help make Ashes feel rewarding for casual players too? Your feedback is really important as we shape this.” – Steven Sharif
Steven Sharif Interview – Golden Feather Tavern Podcast (Sept 12, 2025)
https://www.youtube.com/live/cAABK4_janM?si=xtx_YiTl1X6JmLey
Even the wiki talks about having paths of leveling that would be easier for casuals. This has been said since the start.
There are no "quick" open world dungeons. There are no "quick" PvP dungeons.
When time-limited people talk about logging on to do a quick dungoen, they are specifically talking about doing an instanced dungeon.