Ashes of Creation testers can finally talk about what they have experienced in the MMO's alpha, as Intrepid has lifted its verbal and written NDA heading into Alpha 2.
The news came via the Ashes of Creation Discord channel (via Reddit), with studio founder and creative director Steven Sharif lifting the NDA to let the opinion floodgates open.
"As most of you know, we have been testing the last few months with our Alpha One participants in anticipation of Alpha Two Phase One starting on October 25th," Sharif states on Discord. "During this time, we have been addressing stability and performance bugs within the game. And we have made meaningful progress and I am confident that we will leave phase one with a very solid testing environment. At this moment, I am hereby releasing the verbal and written [NDA] restrictions on our testers. They may discuss their experiences throughout this process. The visual [NDA] will remain in effect."
As a result, feedback has started to filter to eager readers on the official subreddit, as well as the Ashes of Creation forums. By and large, the feedback looks positive, with one user highlighting multiple aspects of gameplay in the Alpha One tests, including how certain classes feel, skills hunting, and more. Others thank the developers who seem to be in a constant state of bug fixing throughout the process to get things ready for Alpha Two testing later this week.
Not everything is positive, though, with some dismissing the current iteration of Ashes as a "mostly generic tab target MMO," while others have commented on its visual quality (though with the visual NDA still in effect, we'll just have to take this with a grain of salt), as well as combat that, as one Redditor put it, "kills my enjoyment" stopping them from playtesting any more, namely because it's a tab-targeting MMO versus a hybrid style, apparently.
It'll be interesting to see how things progress as more players share their thoughts ahead of this week's Alpha Two kick off. MMORPG reader (and Harbinger) Slapshot is already soliciting thoughts on our forums if you're a tester and want to provide some honest thoughts, in fact.
If you're eager for more Ashes of Creation, check out Nyce Gaming's great interview with Steven Sharif from a few days back, embedded below.
