Ashes of Creation - Alpha 2 "months away"

Ashes of Creation’s March Development Update was packed with an abundance of new information related to the highly anticipated upcoming MMORPG. While this article will not include every bit of information from the hour and a half long live stream, it will touch on all of the key moments and new information revealed during this Development Update.

If you'd like to watch the Development Update in full, you can do so here.

One of the first key pieces of information from Intrepid Studios comes in the form of an internal Studio Milestone update. In March, the studio completed what they refer to as Milestone 4, which was the transition from Unreal Engine 5 into Unreal Engine 5.1. This update highlights the Lumen and Nanite improvements of Unreal Engine 5.1, which improve foliage rendering performance, and allow more realistic lighting and shading within the game. While Ashes of Creation’s Alpha 2 has already been delayed due to the game’s transition from Unreal Engine 4 to Unreal Engine 5, fans of this upcoming MMO are concerned that the continuous updates to Unreal Engine 5 will put the game in a perpetual state of upgrading to the engine's latest release. Steven Sharif (the Founder & Creative Director of Intrepid Studios) claimed that the team will analyze the potential performance improvements of each Unreal Engine 5 iteration, in order to assess whether implementing the newest version of this engine will help or hinder the game’s development progress in the future.

A related question that came up during the intro was one that has been on every follower of Ashes of Creation’s development - when Alpha 2? Early in Ashes of Creation’s development (2017), Steven believed that the game would be ready before 2020. This “before 2020” quote would come back to haunt Steven and Intrepid Studios, as it was used as a way to dismiss the game’s legitimacy, and it would permanently hinder the game’s reputation to many of Ashes of Creations early Kickstarter backers. For this reason, Steven has refrained from giving absolute dates for milestones and content releases, and the studio now only gives estimated dates whenever they are 100% certain that they will be able to deliver. While Steven was unable to give a direct answer to this frequently asked question, he was able to confirm that the playtest is “months” away, rather than years away. Adding that there will be internal testing within the studio in late 2023 and early 2024, before the game is pushed into its Alpha 2 state. This seems to confirm that Alpha 2 should be available around Spring or Summer of 2024.

The main topics of March’s Development Update were the quest system, a first look at the game’s non-instanced dungeon, The Tower of Carphin, and a sprinkling of lore related to this area.

During the Tower of Carphin preview, the team spoke about the Story Arc System. Ashes of Creation’s Story Arc System will activate questlines in certain regions depending on a variety of different scenarios, such as the region’s node progression, which race controls the node, and what content players have already completed. Since there are no traditional quest hubs in Ashes of Creation, this Story Arc System acts as a way to unlock additional quest content once the server has reached a specific milestone. As a Story Arc becomes activated, the zone can change its environmental aesthetic, which types of mobs spawn within the zone, and new quests & objectives will become available.

When a Story Arc has been initiated, players will have a limited amount of time to complete all of the quests and objectives that become available. While many of these objectives will be discovered organically by players, not all of them are required to be completed to progress the Story Arc. For example, if you enjoy gathering and progressing professions more than you enjoy combat, you will be able to complete objectives related to gathering in order to progress an objective that someone else might be progressing through exploration, or killing x number of enemies within the area. With this flexible objective progression system, Ashes of Creation hopes to satisfy more than just the combat-oriented players. Speaking of gathering, it was also confirmed that each Story Arc will make extremely rare resources available exclusively for the duration of the Story Arc event. Similarly, Story Arc quests will only be available during the duration of the Story Arc event. But these Story Arcs will be repeated over time, so if you happen to miss a Story Arc the first time it comes around, you don’t have to worry, as they will become available again after a cooldown period.

Towards the end of the Livestream Update, Steven hinted at which topics the next couple of livestream might cover; claiming that we will be seeing the Mage gameplay next month (April) and the Cyclops world boss the month after (May).

Ashes of Creation’s next live stream will take place on Friday, April 7th at 11am PST, where the game’s founder, Steven Sharif, will respond to the community’s questions in a live Q&A. If you’d like to see this, or any of Ashes of Creation’s future Development Updates, you can find the game’s Twitch channel here.