Ashes Of Creation’s Steve Sharif Talks About Alpha 2, Content Unlocks, And Development

Intrepid Studios’ creative director Steven Sharif sits down to answer a few burning questions about Ashes of Creation in the studio’s latest developer livestream. In the live community Q&A session, Sharif reveals more information about the team’s plans for the next alpha test and the introduction of new content.

According to Sharif, Alpha 2 will run until the open world MMORPG’s launch (presumably open beta), which is expected to go down at some point this year. We’d like to point out that the game’s release date has been pushed back so many times that we’re now taking all promised release dates with a grain of salt.

New zones will apparently be added throughout the alpha test and new content will be introduced in phases over several testing periods. These may include the addition of secondary archetypes along with primary archetypes. Sharif says that the biggest obstacle that’s preventing them from kicking off Alpha 2 is the amount of time and work needed to make various gameplay systems playable and ready for testing given their size and complexity, although he assures the community that development is flowing as smoothly as they could have hoped. The Underrealm, however, a parallel zone running beneath the overland game world, seems to be lagging behind in development.

The creative director also dives into the dynamic nature of content unlocks, saying that each server will advance and will have new POI and node content unlocked depending on what happens around them, ensuring that no two servers will be the same. Dynamic events will also frequently appear to engage player groups in the open world but will ideally take place outside of player-owned settlements and constructs.

There’s a lot to glean from the community Q&A for those patiently waiting on the game’s next round of testing. If you have an hour and a half to spare, you can check out the full dev stream right down below.