The verbal Ashes of Creation NDA has been lifted and it doesn't look pretty.

Prescience · May 2021

It would seem that despite 5+ years of development time the game still has a long way to go.

It's even worse than I had anticipated. The Unreal 4 Engine is causing hindrances in large groups of people just as we anticipated.

ThelastTzar

·18h

It's probably worth mentioning this since it seemed like mass pvp dropping fps was brought up a few times. Steven mentioned that they have not yet implemented the client side scaling for rendering, which is what they plan on using to stop the fps from dropping in moments like this, so I would expect it to get a lot better once that is worked on.

Quoting a redditor that sums things up:

level 1

ThrottlePeen

·11h

What I've gathered from some of the reviews circling around, is that, as everyone expected, the game is FAR from ready, we're talking at least 2 years, probably 3 years, before it should be released.

No wonder the no-NDA alpha got pushed (and will probably get pushed again). If someone like Timthetatman who is obsessed with AoC, or Asmongold, streamed Ashes in its current state, it would be kind of a laughing stock. You can keep explaining to people that it's an early alpha and work in progress, but the average gamer will just see the gameplay and dismiss the game if it looks janky at that point.

Regardless of what I think of Steven and the AoC team and their absolutely greedy monetization... AoC is in a weird spot because 2020-2022 would be the best time for them to release, given how hungry MMO players are for something new. But as it stands, New World will benefit from MMO fans being desperate to try something new, and by the time Ashes is ready to release, we'll most likely see a teaser/trailer/cinematic from the new Riot MMO, which will without a doubt create ridiculous hype for the game that will easily overshadow Ashes.

Another redditor stated the game is not ready to be viewed by the public - suggesting Steven delay the Alpha even further, for fear of disaster:

This game is not ready to be viewed by the public.

Ashes of Creation MMO

I know this post will upset a lot of people but this game is just not ready to be streamed / viewed to probably millions of people..

After playing the alpha 1 test the game is still at the base.. Lot of systems not working, bugs, rubberbanding, quest bug, ui bug and the combat need a lot of work too.

Trust me this game as a lot of potential but if u will let someone like asmongold streaming this alpha to like 80k viewers its going to be a disaster..

Please Steven think about its not about transparency,its about saving the game and reality is that this game is years and years away from release.

If u have to delay to 2022 and get an actually solid build do it cause if u let people play this next month it's going to be bad I'm just being honest with y'all