Following Ashes of Creation's Pretest, Steven Sharif Talks Potentially Opening up Alpha 1 Sales Agai

System · December 2020

Following Ashes of Creation's Pretest, Steven Sharif Talks Potentially Opening up Alpha 1 Sales Again | MMORPG.com

Intrepid Studios ran a 4-day pretest last week for Ashes of Creation where thousands of players took part in testing the game in a limited capacity ahead of the Alpha 1 test that is planned for April. Creative Director Steven Sharif popped into the forums to talk about whether Alpha 1 access will be purchasable again, and why the Alpha Pretest was important in that decision.

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Slapshot1188 · December 2020

Of course he is... was there ever really a doubt?

Utinni · December 2020

Without a title I'd have assumed this was a video of ESO. Anyone remember what new/innovative thing this game was supposed to bring eventually?

ashiru_1978 · December 2020

Utinni said:

Without a title I'd have assumed this was a video of ESO. Anyone remember what new/innovative thing this game was supposed to bring eventually?

Ashes of Creation also looks like ESO to me - models of characters, monsters, flora, fauna look really uninspired and generic. The colors of everything look washed out and dull and lighting seems pretty bad. I know this is not the finalized appearance of the game, but I also can't help but think how similar to ESO it looks.

mandark91 · December 2020

Too many concepts, too little team, too much time spent with "promoting" something he claims he can fully fund till completion, too many missed deadlines... I mean c'mon.

He didn't even hide the fact that the people who are working there and draining company funds in salaries are his friends. Even himself has a salary...
If your intention is to fund this yourself, from your own money, and not from overpriced packages and fundraisers, would you give yourself a nice hefty salary on which you pay taxes, or the lowest possible salary?

How many more signs do people need before they call it a scam and move on. Just put the dx12 addon on gw2 (which is a game that began development 15 years ago) and you will have better graphics/effects than what they did for the past 5 years with this game (WITH an engine already built).

Xatsh · December 2020

The concepts are what make a mmo, problem in the genre is everything is a boring linear themepark. So the fact his game is aiming for a full mmo is the right concept. IN my opinion his sky high ambition... is sorta the minimum to make a good mmo. And it is a hit it or game fails kind of thing in my opinion. The game has to hit the target or it will die out as fast as other garbage that was released recently.

As for scam. He has a team of 80ish people currently and is hiring 30more in the new year to ramp up content creation for the world. So I do not see the he is hiring his "Friends". He had friends start the project with him, which makes sense. Better to start a business with friends then randoms.

The only stupid thing he did in my opinion was releasing Apocalypse. If you look at the progression of the game, look at other major AAA titles at early development. You will see the game is actually doing pretty well in comparison. Looks a hell of better then WoW and ffxiv did in pre-alpha stages at this point.

As for him getting a hefty salary? Where did you hear/get that information.

Blastoize · December 2020

No normal trading, example if you want to sell your items on another continent you cant go to beach, summon ship and just go, instead you need to reach city with port and then at that port you can summon ship and start sailing to other continent.

You would say that this is mmorpg where your stats depend on gear, but no, it depends only 60%.

Player driven economy, cant wait to see that in mmorpg game. Good luck to ppl who start playing 2+ months after release.

Flying mounts are only for chosen ones (10-15?)

Auction? Yeaa baby! You buy item and you dont get it! What to do? Simple! Go to town where item was listed and pick it up ?

Estimated delivery date was december 2018, so lets skip few days and say it is over 2 years late and game is still in alpha.

In kickstarter you would think these sales was only there to get mount and unique costume for char and mount but after kickstarter finished they were so fast to open website with shop. Again, cant wait to see bunch of lvl 1s running in kewl looking costume which probably wont be same as picture you saw when you bought it. There are already people complaining..

Refferal, oh boy, on first website you could see which items someone bought, how much money they spent and your cut but with new website these informations dissapeared. 2 years and nothing. Magic?

Toxic reddit community started by youtubers and streamers, no new updates but 10s of new videos and streams every day. Interpid is doing nothing they even have content creators before game was in alpha, i mean what else to say? At least they got free alpha key, building channels and making money based on apsolutely nothing.

Etc

Etc

Even if they make full game, it is going to be worse then archeage dailys, prepare to quit job and spend 16 hours a day in that game because map is big, you wont be in 0,0001% to have flying mount, and everything takes soo much time it is crazy.

Really dissapointed.

Wizardry · December 2020

PAY to test their product for them...lmao.So these aren't really game testing phases,they are marketing phases.

Nanfoodle · December 2020

For people backing the game, this is a good sign. This means they need a bigger pool of alpha testers then they currently have and they had a healthy amount of backers. Things are going well.

emperorhades1 · December 2020

Call it dead and move on

ElonMusk · December 2020

Ashes is right.

Scot · December 2020

Blastoize said:

No normal trading, example if you want to sell your items on another continent you cant go to beach, summon ship and just go, instead you need to reach city with port and then at that port you can summon ship and start sailing to other continent.

You would say that this is mmorpg where your stats depend on gear, but no, it depends only 60%.

Player driven economy, cant wait to see that in mmorpg game. Good luck to ppl who start playing 2+ months after release.

Flying mounts are only for chosen ones (10-15?)

Auction? Yeaa baby! You buy item and you dont get it! What to do? Simple! Go to town where item was listed and pick it up ?

Estimated delivery date was december 2018, so lets skip few days and say it is over 2 years late and game is still in alpha.

In kickstarter you would think these sales was only there to get mount and unique costume for char and mount but after kickstarter finished they were so fast to open website with shop. Again, cant wait to see bunch of lvl 1s running in kewl looking costume which probably wont be same as picture you saw when you bought it. There are already people complaining..

Refferal, oh boy, on first website you could see which items someone bought, how much money they spent and your cut but with new website these informations dissapeared. 2 years and nothing. Magic?

Toxic reddit community started by youtubers and streamers, no new updates but 10s of new videos and streams every day. Interpid is doing nothing they even have content creators before game was in alpha, i mean what else to say? At least they got free alpha key, building channels and making money based on apsolutely nothing.

Even if they make full game, it is going to be worse then archeage dailys, prepare to quit job and spend 16 hours a day in that game because map is big, you wont be in 0,0001% to have flying mount, and everything takes soo much time it is crazy.

Really dissapointed.

Welcome to the forums!

I wish all our new posters had something good to post about in their first post, but at least you are here.

immolatuz · December 2020

This game will be good, as its made by gamers. Sure it might look like ESO, but they taken the best part of all the games and put it into one, where they also listen to the comu.
Ya its been long under way but, hey, i rather have a working finished good game , then some rushed trash like we seen all the lastes games have been.

Kyleran · December 2020

immolatuz said:

This game will be good, as its made by gamers. Sure it might look like ESO, but they taken the best part of all the games and put it into one, where they also listen to the comu.
Ya its been long under way but, hey, i rather have a working finished good game , then some rushed trash like we seen all the lastes games have been.

Hrmm, the last company to try this approach was Blizzard, and while very successful wasn't a game I cared to play over the long term.

As for the whole rushed vs taking their time argument, SC and CU are already 7-8 years in development with no firm release date in sight, don't need another never-ending story to follow in the "hope" that even if released totally polished might still be a game I don't like.

Not getting any younger here, so I'm fine to be called an inpatient, petulant child, we're burning daylight folks.

IsilithTehroth · December 2020

Looks further along than I thought it would, but looks very generic which I hated about elder scrolls, along with almost everything else about that game...lol. Here is to hoping Profane can pull off their mmorpg.

Exclusive10 · December 2020

The butt hurt in this comment section is laughable! The game looks good to me and has a come a long way. I can't wait til Steven bursts your bubble of tears and smirks while he checks his bank account when the game launches

Kyleran · December 2020

Exclusive10 said:

The butt hurt in this comment section is laughable! The game looks good to me and has a come a long way. I can't wait til Steven bursts your bubble of tears and smirks while he checks his bank account when the game launches

Welcome to the forums, keep coming back.

You'll have plenty of years to wait for this one to deliver, heck could be at least until 2025.

Slapshot1188 · December 2020

Exclusive10 said:

The butt hurt in this comment section is laughable! The game looks good to me and has a come a long way. I can't wait til Steven bursts your bubble of tears and smirks while he checks his bank account when the game launches

Oh one thing I am QUITE sure of is that no matter how good or bad the game ends up... Stephen's bank account will be swollen.

Slapshot1188 · December 2020

CryptoAhash said:

Looks pretty awesome to me! Can not wait to play.
For the impatient here: Development of a game takes years, for an mmorpg it takes times 10.
They have a pretty small team working on this. But have to say they are doing a very good job!

To come back at Stephen's bank account, it has always been swollen.
He has funded lots of private money to build this game already.

Sure he has.

Linif · December 2020

ashiru_1978 said:

Utinni said:

Without a title I'd have assumed this was a video of ESO. Anyone remember what new/innovative thing this game was supposed to bring eventually?

Ashes of Creation also looks like ESO to me - models of characters, monsters, flora, fauna look really uninspired and generic. The colors of everything look washed out and dull and lighting seems pretty bad. I know this is not the finalized appearance of the game, but I also can't help but think how similar to ESO it looks.

If I've ever learned anything from years of judging games by their covers it's: I don't care what the game looks like, as long as it's fun.

I hope it's fun.

Linif · December 2020

Slapshot1188 said:

Exclusive10 said:

The butt hurt in this comment section is laughable! The game looks good to me and has a come a long way. I can't wait til Steven bursts your bubble of tears and smirks while he checks his bank account when the game launches

Oh one thing I am QUITE sure of is that no matter how good or bad the game ends up... Stephen's bank account will be swollen.

I've seen enough of your posts to know you don't cry fire until you see smoke, so I may have missed where the cynicism has come from. Why's this guy (Steven) earned your cynicism, or is it a general distaste for devs?

AshestoAshe5 · March 2021

The test wasn't really 4 days. You wouldn't know this though because the NDA is being used to hide such things while Intrepid continues to lie about the state of testing.

Slapshot1188 · March 2021

Linif said:

Slapshot1188 said:

Exclusive10 said:

The butt hurt in this comment section is laughable! The game looks good to me and has a come a long way. I can't wait til Steven bursts your bubble of tears and smirks while he checks his bank account when the game launches

Oh one thing I am QUITE sure of is that no matter how good or bad the game ends up... Stephen's bank account will be swollen.

I've seen enough of your posts to know you don't cry fire until you see smoke, so I may have missed where the cynicism has come from. Why's this guy (Steven) earned your cynicism, or is it a general distaste for devs?

I honestly do not know what is going on with the game. But the developer has done some IMHO shady things from the start.

1. He always (since announcement) word-weasels around how much he has committed and spent on the project. People cling to his $30M number but despite numerous attempts (including directly asking him on these forums) he has never, to the best of my knowledge, said that he is putting in $30M. Always vague wording.

2. Did the typical over-promise/under-deliver thing with unrealistic timelines.

3. Constant and unending sales.

4. Threw up the silly "Apocalypse" Battle Royale back in 2019 and I believe that is has now been shut for a year. They never (as far as I know) demonstrated much of teh stuff that was touted and hyped by people like jahlon such as Castle Siege Mode etc...

5. Background is in MLM

6. The biggest one for me by far is the real money referral system. This means that promise to pay "influencers" 15% of purchases in order to refer people to the game and make those purchases. This utterly and totally undermines the legitimacy of anything these people say. So I have no idea if what they is saying is reality or if it's driven by wanting to excite people and get them to use their referral code.

7. Fans say things that are diametrically opposite about the game. Right now it's a blank canvas that people use to project their dreams on. But the people on the left and right have their own dreams. I have even seen supporters claim that it's not a PvP game. Once the game gets out of the fantasy stage and enters the playable stage, reality is going to crush the dreams that conflict with each other. Will it be yours? Or the guy on the left? Or the gal on the right? Or all 3?

So I really do not know if these guys will deliver or not. I do know that given the above I will only believe what I see actually get delivered from these guys. I sure HOPE they deliver a fun game that we all can enjoy, but I think you'd have to be nuts to give this guy your money before the game is ready. If he can really self-fund the project then let him do so.

Scot · March 2021

AshestoAshe5 said:

The test wasn't really 4 days. You wouldn't know this though because the NDA is being used to hide such things while Intrepid continues to lie about the state of testing.

Welcome to the forums!

Howdy, Stranger!

Following Ashes of Creation's Pretest, Steven Sharif Talks Potentially Opening up Alpha 1 Sales Agai

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Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV

Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV

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Following Ashes of Creation's Pretest, Steven Sharif Talks Potentially Opening up Alpha 1 Sales Agai

Comments

Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV

Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV