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Ashes of Creation announced their plans for Alpha 2 recently and it was met with some controversy over just how they plan to monetize the next big testing phase for the Indie MMO. Since then, they have subsequently changed tune, listened to feedback, and made some fairly big adjustments to their testing phase keys.
0:00 Ashes of Creation Drama
1:06 Ashes of Creation Alpha 2 Dates
3:48 What to Expect in Alpha 2 Content and wipes
6:26 Ashes Alpha 2 pricing drama and change
Sources:
https://ashesmoments.substack.com/p/alpha-2-phase-1-on-october-25th-tiered
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Release_schedule
https://ashesofcreation.com/news/2024-08-18-alpha-two-roadmap-and-ama
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Put me off bye bye
at least star citizen alpha you get the game at launch..
I don't understand the uproar really… people were playing $250 for access up until this point, people are angry about a $100 package for the persistent Alpha? Gamers are ridiculous. The only difference is lack of all those goofy cosmetics, which don't mean anything in the end anyway. 🙄 I'm on a fixed income but… I may try to see if I can swing the $100 pack. It'll be a gamble as I'm not sure they will allow their anti-cheat to work with Linux. Ah well…
👍✌
The cope is off the charts
A 3 month subscription towards the game on release feels like it would have been the appropriate return on “investment”. After all, it’s supposed to be a two-way street here. Yes, the player gets early access BUT ALSO they’re testing the game for you. As it stands, it feels like a predatory scheme towards those who are already on board. “You’ve already spent 10 years and ‘X’ amount of money. What’s another $110 on top of it?” It makes me wary of future monetization. If the developers are trying to take advantage of the community before launch, what will happen after launch? I’d think the devs would be “showering” prospective players with generosity: early access, skins, special privileges, etc. This definitely makes me more cautious moving forward with AoC.
Game will more than likely not release at this point until 10 to 12 years after the kickstarter. It’s an alpha test. I’m not sure why anyone would be upset just wait it’s a long ways out still unfortunately.
Yes, the update helped. I was surprised when they said there was no beta access. Alpha testers should be paid testers.
Its so gonna turn into pay2win
It was relieving that the keys we purchase from wednesday will include everything from alpha 2 to month 1 of release, but you have to look at the fact this project has no publishers and server time for the alpha when hosting 100k+ players is EXPENSIVE like $780,000+ a year (around 65c per concurrent player per month just for the server time) so for just alpha (18 months) thats 1.17million+ and thats just for Alpha 2 – just think how much longer until release say 4 years and it will be persistant 24/7 from May 1 till release – so it will end up costing about $50 of your $120 in server costs alone.. I wasnt happy with paying $120 for alpha 2 access only, but now im quite content paying $70 to the development of the game, knowing i can test and play the game through apha 2 (with some restrictions early on) and beta 1 & 2 and first month of release with no additonal costs until 2029, Think of alpha access to many games on kickstarter is about $45-55 at the moment (example Outbound – non MMO means no persistant server costs) so even if you wait till May 1 for alpha 3 at $100 it will still cost you about $45 in server costs and then you are only paying $50 to the devs for the game access so all for a 90M$ mmo with no publisher completely backed by players and privately funded. I think $100 (or $120 for earlier access is not much).. just my opinion
is it me or did they originally say there would be no in-game stores whatsoever
Wtf is this timeline. Give me a break. This gam enot being full release is pathetic. Steven sleeping on his pile of cash can kiss my backside.
Good to see they added more value. Clearer communication would probably have avoided this PR mountain-out-of-a-molehill storm. Ah well. Still, as long as there's no pay-to-win/convenience/headstart on live, who cares? Wait until the game is out, see if it's good. If yes, great, free box cost, just monthly sub and have fun. If not, then you havent wasted a dime. Let people with money to throw to the wind pay to test if they want, doesn't change anything for players that wait for live. Simple enough.
Braver Of World Tier here, I don’t have to worry about the subscription since mine is lifetime, but I’m hoping this game isn’t going to be dead on arrival
moving along… at the speed of evolution.
NGL, I get the impression that this game is either never coming out, or it's going to be meh.
Man, this game is such a hard pass for me. It's pretty, but it does not look very engaging to me.
I'm still trying to understand. I saw the clip of Asmongold losing his mind and going on a rant over this
AoC passed from an interesting game that could be to just another pyramid scam lol.
Now tell me this isn't a cash grab game FAILED
Pay to be a tester!
Still too high of a cost for a game that literally doesn't exist. Everyone just trying to get their money before Gta 6 comes out.
Spend YOUR money on what YOU think is worth it. There, I solved it.
i couldn't care less about paying for alpha testing
LOL Alpha still in 2026! Seriously, $120 to test a game that has been in development since 2017. I really believe this game has now become worse than Pantheon and that is totally sad to say. If you want testers, open the game to everyone now. You'll get hundreds of thousands of bug reports and feedback which is better than a small kiss ass crowd who paid for the game thinking no matter what they create will be perfect.
It's alpha, ALWAYS a buggy mess. That's the freekin point. If you pay for an alpha, either you understand you are throwing money at a game, or you are an idiot. Personally, I will spend $12 when the game launches.
hell i paid 375 lol but got a lot of stuff in it so im not crying yet……🤣🤣🤣🤣
TotalBiscuit would have a word or two to say about paying money to a company to alpha test their game
I see this as them juicing whales that procrastinate on buying a pack.
Ponzi Scheme. Scam Game.
They can sweeten it up any way they want, they're still charging over 100$ to spot test an alpha. Incredibly brazen, and what's even more incredible is how many people are defending them for it. Years ago I feel like the entirety of the 'gamer' community (or at least the vast majority) wouldn't have stood for something like this. We're all getting so acclimated to everything being monetized and it's a sad, depressing state of affairs.
That said, people need to chill on the FOMO, and I had to check myself as well. I want to play this game so damn bad, but the reality is that we're looking at at LEAST another two years of testing. I was 30 when Ashes went into development, and I'll be 40 by the time it releases. This better be the best MMO ever made, and it's not even close, or a lot of people are going to be incredibly disappointed.
This seems like a pretty classic case of "let's release something completely absurd. If we get away with it, we can laugh our way to the bank. If we don't, we can pretend we listen to our community and go towards what the actual model was going to be. It will still be ridiculous, but they'll think we're the good guys and that their feedback matters".
The negative PR that's generated by major content creators from the initial awful decision then turns to positive PR which has reached 100x the audience thanks to the coverage. Meanwhile, you're still paying them to test their game.
Players went from paid testers to testers who pay.
If we have a beta acces and some time on the start its good enoughf for me.I will buy the key
I don't understand why they don't just do a sub fee for the testing instead of a box price.
lets hope this isnt gonna be another star citizen, lol. game is awesome from the videos, but thats it. an unfinished game.
Remember when game devs would give out keys to gamers to help test their games during Alphas? Now we pay the devs to play am Alpha? Wtf happened? The Early Acxess games seem to be a cover for Alpha testing to justify charging people for incomplete games! The industry is a joke now.
– animation, still bad.
– movement, still clunky
these 2 aspect is still the same for years
– price, gonna be pricey for crowdfunded indie MMO
my conclusion:
for years their animation is still bad and clunky even if they are quite better now, but still bad. for the price, if the price for the base game and the subs more expensive than FFXIV or WoW, this game wont be that successful. for now its overhyped and this hype is quite dangerous for AoC since they need to be successful on their launch or else the game will be dead in months
It makes me think they need a new PR person. The live announcement was rather chaotic and should have been handled differently. With the clarifications now it looks better and i will most likely be participating, but it depends on one thing – how stable it will be in phase 1.
They added 15$ of cash shop + 1 month free
stop crying noone is twisting your arms to buy the new alpha keys. if you do you get access to the beta aswell . you do not have to buy it but if doing so youre helping the game progress faster.. and why should you get game access at launch you didnt buy the first alpha keys that cost a lot more. so many people complain saying thats was it for me bye bye and still they will be there at game launch…
$250…for alpha test ur crazy unless u personally know them these days. Thats my opinion.
Who ever buys into this crap needs help.
I would never pay 100+ dollars for testing a game, before in time ppl got paid for testing now it costs hundreds of dollars. They are greedy
I smell Camelot Unchained.
Dude for real what game is this that never launch? They announced it back in 2016 8 damn years ago, this is a big hoax we had this before many times.
I have no confidence in AoC anymore.
Severally put of AoC now!
Steven now appears to me as a charismatic manipulator. The update to the pricing for Alpha testing is an insult imho. It appears that it shows they are “testing” what they can get away with, instead of wanting people to help them make a final product. It’s also been said by Steven that the game has already got all of its funding so the completely egregious pricing is a joke imho. Diablo 4 got dragged over the coals for its game price and content, and that was a complete game (sort of). I don’t see how we should tolerate this from AoC. It stinks of bait and switch to me. Now we are getting closer to people seeing the game and investing in it, it’s becoming clearer that the actual business model is, pretend to be a game “for the people, by the people” to get coverage in news feeds etc, then switch to egregious measures upon release. $120 to work for them and get in game….. Steven seems to have shown his colours now and I won’t be looked down upon like that.! 😡
Absolutely gutted doesn’t come close to how I feel about this! 😢 if a AAA company did this?………….
How to make money in the gaming industry years ago = make good game.
How to make money in the gaming industry today = promise a good game, make the money before the game is made, game dies due to egregious monetisation.