Path to Alpha Two Phase III

July 25, 2025

The Countdown Continues

As we draw closer to the start of Phase III, we want to take a moment to share some of the progress made during our Alpha Two journey, and what’s coming next.

Over the last few months, your participation and feedback have helped us dig deep into core systems and performance improvements. Thanks to your efforts, we’ve made meaningful strides in areas like:

Dynamic Gridding & Server Performance - Improved load balancing and real-time responsiveness across the realm.
Unreal Engine 5.6 Transition - Better lighting, stability, and overall polish.
Time-to-Kill Analysis (TTK) - Helping us fine-tune combat pacing and enemy health tuning.
Early Game Flow - Including how quickly players obtain mounts, tools, and find their first questing hubs.
Node Progression & Player Behavior - We’ve been tracking how players interact with the world, level up nodes, and engage in meaningful choices.
Guild Storage System Testing - Introducing and iterating on shared storage solutions for guilds, ensuring functionality, security, and ease of use for organized play.
And so much more!

But we’re not done yet.

To ensure Phase III hits the quality bar it deserves, we’ll be using the weeks ahead for continued iteration, polish, and testing. With that in mind, Alpha Two Phase III will now begin on August 26, 2025.

What We’re Focused On:

Anvils - Development in the Anvils zone arrived a little hotter than anticipated. As such, we’re taking some additional time refining the new starting area, focusing on interior spaces, content, visual landmarks, and environmental storytelling. While we are not aiming for content parity with the Riverlands starting zone, we do want to ensure a robust golden path that guides you through the starting villages, artisan POIs, pocket dungeons, and nodes progression.
Level 4 Nodes & Vassalship - We need some additional time to smooth out the level 4 layout, enhance environmental set dressing, and improve UI elements related to Vassalship. These systems represent a major step forward in shaping the world through player-agency and fostering healthy competition between nodes as they specialize and evolve.
First-Time User Experience (FTUE) - Streamlining and enriching the early game experience for newcomers in both The Anvils and the Riverlands requires iteration. We will be spending the coming weeks improving these paths with support from testers on the PTR.
Lighting, Maps, & Interiors - With the hot delivery of The Anvils, downstream teams like lighting, audio, and UI were impacted. This additional time will be used to enhance ambiance, improve interior maps, and refine navigation throughout key regions of The Anvils.
Economy & Stat Rebalance - Our economy refactor has touched every aspect of the game, and demanded significant time and effort from the team. Based on recent feedback and data, we’re continuing our rework of rewards, item values, scaling, and more. We will use this extra time on PTR to test and tune these systems to ensure a proper start to Phase III.
Dynamic Gridding, Server Worker, and Realm Improvements - We accomplished a huge feat this month with our glorious testers on PTR, having successfully split and removed server workers from the grid during runtime. Over the course of the next few weeks, we will continue backend optimization efforts to support larger, more stable play environments.

Ongoing Testing & Events

Until Phase III officially begins:

Alpha Two Realm Shol (v0.13) will come online Thursdays at 10AM Pacific Time (PT) and close Mondays at 6PM PT.
Public Test Realm (PTR) remains available 24/7, with downtime for updates.
Intrepid Events will continue on both Shol and PTR to keep things exciting and help us gather valuable data.

In Closing

As with any active development, delays happen… we will stay focused on our outstanding work outlined above and provide updates as we continue with our PTR testing. Your support, passion, and time mean everything to us. We’re building Ashes of Creation together, and it’s your feedback that shapes each step forward. Whether you’re reporting bugs, submitting feedback, or just showing up for a hide-and-seek event, you’re making a real difference. On behalf of the studio, Thank You! <3 - Steven Sharif

FAQ

Does this mean less time for me to play Ashes of Creation prior to August 26, 2025?
1. Not at all. The Alpha Two Shol realm will be accessible from Thursdays at 10 AM PT to Mondays at 6 PM PT, but if you want to try out the newest content, you’ll need to play on the PTR version of the client.
Will I have access to PTR?
1. All testers with Alpha Two access are granted access to the PTR environment. This started July 1, 2025.
If I purchase an Alpha Two Third Wave bundle, will I get immediate access to the PTR?
1. Yes, purchasing an Alpha Two Third Wave bundle will grant you access to the PTR as soon as you purchase it!
When will the Alpha Two Shol realm be available?
1. Alpha Two Shol realm will still be accessible on the following schedule: Thursday 10 AM PT to Monday 6 PM PT each week, leading up to August 26. However, there will be no new content or feature updates during this time.
Why are you pausing updates to the Alpha Two Shol realm?
1. We're locking content to stabilize the environment and ensure a clean, high-quality build for our next major update on August 26, 2025. This also gives us space to gather focused feedback and fix bugs in preparation for Alpha Two Phase III.
What’s the difference between the Alpha Two Shol Realm and PTR?
1. Alpha Two Shol Realm: Open to all Alpha Two testers without NDA. This is where content creators can stream and where public testing occurs.
2. PTR: A separate private test realm environment where early features and builds are pushed. PTR is under visual NDA and used to collect early feedback before features go to Alpha Two.
Will my progress on PTR carry over to Alpha Two?
1. No. PTR progression is temporary and will not carry over to the Alpha Two environment. It’s purely for testing purposes.
Will there be wipes to PTR?
1. Yes. As usual, PTR may be wiped as needed for clean testing, and wipes are more likely in this environment than on realms like Shol. There will also be lots of usage of experience and gear vendors to allow for quicker progression in order to aid in testing specific features.
What happens if something critical breaks on the Alpha Two Shol Realm?
1. If issues arise on the Alpha Two realm, we’ll patch and fix directly there. While feature updates are paused, we will still maintain stability and address critical bugs!
Will updates to Alpha Two resume after August 26?
1. Yes. Our intention is to resume pushing new updates to Alpha Two starting August 26, 2025, pending successful stabilization and feedback during this PTR window.
How do I update my game for PTR?
1. Updating the PTR uses the same launcher as Alpha Two. To update the launcher, select “Private Test Realm (NDA)” as the environment to download PTR updates. Please note that downloading both Alpha Two and PTR will take up additional space on your computer. For more detailed instructions, please refer to this article.
Can I stream or record on PTR?
1. No. PTR remains under visual NDA, which means streaming, screenshots, or sharing video content from PTR is not permitted. There is no verbal NDA, meaning you may talk about your experiences on PTR with others, but not share visual elements.
Why is the NDA still in place if we all have access to PTR?
1. The NDA helps us focus on collecting feedback, not content impressions based on unfinished features.
I’m a content creator. What can I do while Alpha Two isn’t being updated?
1. We understand this limits what you can share publicly. While new content will be under visual NDA, you’re still welcome to talk about your experiences with the new features on PTR, and create visual content on the Alpha Two Shol Realm. We appreciate your understanding while we focus our efforts on PTR to prepare for Phase III!
Why is this being done?
1. Stability is our top priority! We aim to deliver a smoother and more polished experience with our next major update, ensuring new content like Dynamic Gridding, the Anvils, level 4 nodes, and the economy changes are ready for robust testing. Also, centralizing all testing to PTR allows us to focus feedback, fix bugs efficiently, and avoid disrupting the live environment with work-in-progress features and systems.