Alpha-1 castle sieges

Trebuchets in the Alpha-1 preview castle siege attackers headquarter camp.^[2]

Alpha-1 preview castle siege gameplay.^[3]

Alpha-1 castle sieges were based on Ashes of Creation Apocalypse castle sieges.^[4]^[5]

Players will be able to join guilds. These guilds can register for the siege events.^[2]
Castle siege events will be 100v100 battles that occur daily and will last for three hours.^[2]
Attackers will start on the opposite end of the map (from the defenders).^[2]
Attackers will be able to use trebuchets to drive to and assault the castle.^[2]
- Trebuchets have a single primary fire that does a small amount of damage to players and heavy damage to buildings.^[2]
- Trebuchets will be fully physical when they are being driven.^[2]
When the attackers have breached the castle they will be able to channel a cast on the relic in the throne room to try to capture the castle from the defenders.^[2]
The victors of castle sieges will receive benefits, such as cloaks, flying mounts for guild leaders and potentially also for guild officers.^[2]
Alpha-1 castle sieges are in a separate zone that is accessible via a NPC teleporter.^[6]^[7]^[8]
Currently the siege zone is actually in the open world, but separated by mountains and off in the sea a bit. There is actually no instancing in A1, although the siege zone will only be accessible in A1 through a registration NPC teleporter.^[6] – Steven Sharif
- This zone includes the following raid bosses.^[4]
- These bosses will also appear in the open-world (outside the siege zone) with slightly different mechanics.^[7]
The opposing team is notified when these raid bosses are being attacked.^[4]
Teams who get the last hit on these bosses will receive buffs that will help them in the siege battle.^[4]

Last year, I spoke of attempting to incorporate sieges into the Alpha One experience. This has obviously been a goal of mine because it provides considerable data and a consistent event within the world that players can participate in to help stress test the deployment. Well, I am happy to say that it is appearing more and more likely by the day! Initial implementation of the Apocalypse siege code has been migrated into the Alpha One client, and we should begin internal testing next month. I will caveat this expectation with the fact that we are cutting it a bit close from an internal QA standpoint, but I have some confidence that the system will be online and capable of inclusion for the Alpha One test in the month of June. The siege component will obviously not be representative of what the siege system will be at launch, or even in Alpha Two.^[5] – Steven Sharif

Destructible structures (such as walls and gates) are present in Alpha-1 castle sieges.^[9]
- The ability to repair structures (and siege weapons) is a long term design goal that will not be present during Alpha-1.^[9]

Siege weapons

Trebuchet siege weapon in Alpha-1 castle sieges preview.^[10]

It wouldn’t be a castle siege without siege weapons. These are massive machines of war that enable attackers to bring down the walls, and defenders to keep their keep safe. Crafters can bring their own powerful schematics to the battlefield, or you can order baseline siege weapons from your friendly neighborhood siege master NPC. The Castle’s defenders will be able to deploy their own defensive weapons and turrets based on how well they maintained and defended their own Nodes. The sky will be illuminated with fire and fury.^[11]

Ballista siege weapon in Alpha-1 castle sieges preview.^[12]

Siege weapons and siege vehicles are able to be utilized during sieges.^[13]

Siege equipment is able to be crafted or purchased from NPCs. Crafting will require materials, recipes and craftsmanship.^[14]^[15]

Part of this endeavor of sieging a player-held location (or non-player-held location) is time to prepare; and that includes gathering and crafting these mega weapons or collecting the resources: Whether it be gold or specific quest items to purchase from NPCs.^[15] – Steven Sharif

There will be ways to repair destructible structures (such as walls and gates) and also repair (or re-craft) siege weapons that were damaged during sieges.^[16]
- This is a long term design goal that will not be present during Alpha-1.^[16]

Anything that you want to bring into existence in the world is going to be built by players: Whether that is Ships, Siege engines, Weapons, Armor, etc.^[17] – Jeffrey Bard

Server prime-time

Objective-based PvP events such as node sieges, castle sieges, guild wars, and node wars will occur within a prime-time window somewhere between 3PM and 9PM server realm time. This is subject to testing.^[18]^[19]^[20]

Guild wars and node wars can be declared at any time, but the objectives will only spawn during the prime-time window.^[21]^[22]

The key about the server prime time is that events cater to prime time. So, these inflection points where our expectation from a gameplay design is to allow or afford players an opportunity to participate in highly impactful events within the game: Those get delegated to prime time.^[21] – Steven Sharif

Alpha-1 combat revamp

Alpha-1 split-body melee weapon combat sneak peek.^[23]

I can move while swinging on this guy. I can back up then continue to attack him. Just have complete control over my character while attacking.^[23] – Steven Sharif

A revamped combat system will be rolled out during and post Alpha-1 testing based on player feedback.^[24]^[25]^[26]^[27]

I just want to give kudos to the combat team, because in my opinion having played this and watched this and seen the community's response to it, they've done a great job in moving away from what was our direction prior to Alpha-1 to now having developed for Alpha-2 a significantly revamped combat experience; and I think it feels good and it plays well and it's fun.^[24] – Steven Sharif

The goal is to give more agency to the player and achieve a more fluid flow of combat with greater mobility when using abilities.^[28]^[29]
The current hybrid tab and action combat system will remain after the revamp.^[28]
This revamp will not represent the final form of combat, but will set the general direction that combat will be taking.^[30]
The revamp will be iterative and will be rolled out to testers in different phases.^[29]
The developers will be testing whether or not to use global cooldowns GCDs on different types of abilities during Alpha-2.^[31]
- As of July 2023 global cooldowns are not currently in the game.^[32]
- Instant cast abilities are referred to as off-global-cooldown or OGCD abilities.^[32]

The revamped combat system will feature split-body animations, where the character's upper body can be locked by weapon attack animations while the lower body is free to continue moving.^[23]^[33]^[34]

You'll be able to move forward while swinging your weapon; and this will allow you complete control over your weapon attacks for melee.^[23] – Steven Sharif

Alpha-1 combat was focused on core functionality rather than combat balance.^[34] Alpha-2 combat will include archetypes, significant ability support, augments, split-body combat, weapon attacks, and many additional items, among other things.^[35]

Changes that allow templated abilities to apply to 3D positions in the air or water will be prototyped and may be included in Alpha-2.^[36]

Alpha-1 PvE content

PvE content in Alpha-1:

There are over 200 quests in Alpha-1.^[7]
- Questing will be placeholder until Alpha-2.^[37]^[38]
Approximately 10 percent of the artisan system will be online in Alpha-1.^[39]^[40]
There are approximately 49 unique gear sets obtainable in Alpha-1.^[7]
- These are unique sets with different stats, but some may be similar in appearance.^[7]
There is no instancing in Alpha-1.^[6]
Approximately 6 or 7 dungeons with one almost raid-level difficulty.^[41]
Two world bosses requiring party-sized groups.^[41]
One true 40 person raid boss.^[41]
Alpha-1 castle sieges occur in a zone that is accessible via a NPC teleporter.^[6]^[7]^[8]^[5]
- This zone includes three Elder dragon raid bosses.^[7]^[4]
- These bosses will also appear in the open world outside the siege zone with slightly different mechanics.^[7]

There's over 200 quests in the game right now. There's a bunch of dungeons. We've retooled all of the boss fights. Those dragons that you see in the siege are also in the world- part of the open-world too. There will be a slightly different- there are some extra mechanics in the siege versions versus the ones that are in the world, but there's plenty of cool things to get on both of them, so make sure you check them out and hunt them down.^[7] – Jeffrey Bard

Alpha-1 playtest schedule

Hail and well met glorious Ashes of Creation testers. My name is Sean Farrens. I am the manager of quality assurance on Ashes of Creation and on behalf of the Ashes QA team I would like to extend a deep and heartfelt thank you to everyone who participated in testing Ashes of Creation during the weekend of May 14 through May 16th for our Alpha 1 build. In spite of instability and uncertainty you have all proven to be invaluable in regards to your feedback and bug reports; and for that I cannot express my gratitude enough. As many of you know, developing an MMORPG is an epic endeavor that is filled with trials and tribulations that no other game will ever encounter; and your illustrated dedication has proven to our team that we are on a high road to the best MMORPG gaming experience to date. During this most recent testing period we received over 2,600 bug reports, which have been an absolute boon to our testing process. We review each report individually and I continue to be impressed with how detailed and helpful each of these reports has been. Like seriously you guys give repro steps and everything. Super duper handy. I greatly look forward to your feedback in the future and hope you enjoy our content so far, so thank you so much everybody.^[42] – Sean Farrens

While we will have specific spot tests for certain systems as we develop them post the Alpha one month, it should be expected and understood that after this Alpha one month there will be probably a significant amount of downtime where there won't be spot testing as we break apart a lot of systems, take what we learned from alpha one month and implement and iterate upon those learnings. So there's gonna be several months probably worth of significant downtime where there will not be access to spot testing, where we are going to go in and really rejigger a lot of systems^[43] – Steven Sharif

Phase	Release	Estimated/Actual date
Alpha-1	Alpha-1 early preview livestream.^[44]	March 27, 2020.^[45]
	Alpha-1 limited QA testing (NDA).^[46]^[47]	May 28, 2020.^[48]^[49]
	Alpha-1 preview pre-test 1 (NDA).^[37]	Dec 18 - Dec 21 2020.^[37]
	Alpha-1 preview pre-test 2 (NDA).^[37]	Feb 19 - Feb 22 2021.^[50]^[51]
	Alpha-1 preview intermittent spot testing (NDA).^[52]^[53]	Mar 19 - Jul 9 2021.^[52]^[53]
	Alpha-1 preview weekend (no NDA).^[52]	July 9 - July 11 2021.^[54]^[55]^[52]
	Alpha-1 (no NDA).^[52]	July 14 - August 15 2021.^[56]^[57]

Alpha-1 testing goals

Server deployment and performance testing

Stress-test our server realm deployments and player concurrency numbers with high volumes of player activity and interactions.^[52]
Stand up multiple world server deployments across different geographical regions.^[52]
Soak test server grid health over a continuous period of production use.^[52]
Evaluate current networking architecture, and identify non-performant code and areas for additional optimizations or refactoring.^[52]
Test our build strategy and hot-fix deployment procedures, account services, web-based systems, launcher and patcher stability, and cloud-based infrastructure.^[52]

System functionalities and behavior testing (in their core state)

Node features (In their core state).^[52]
Experience collection – The ability for nodes to collect and store accrued experience from players in their Zone of influence and for this data to persist in a global hierarchy of the node matrix.^[52]
Propagation – The ability for nodes to advance in stages, reflecting the appropriate advancements in the following: culture, layout, quest hooks, spawners, crafting and processing stations, NPCs, service buildings, merchant tables, prop placement, housing, citizenship, government systems (election, appointment, terms, admin interface) and taxes, |points of interest propagation and advancement, public projects, and parenting/vassal hierarchy.^[52]

Player character systems (in their core state)

Experience collection and persistence, experience debt, death effects, corruption and flagging, inventory systems, character paper doll and equipable items, property ownership and player storage, stats and waterfall derivatives, combat and ability systems, tab and action states, race and class selection and their customization, movement and character states, looting and party management systems.^[52]

Ancillary systems (in their core state)

Caravans, drop, spawn, and reward table adaptations, player trading, mount and vehicle systems, raid and party functionality, guild progression and persistence, guild hierarchy, chat systems, customized AI behavior trees, boss functionality, harvesting prerequisites and procedural resource spawners, recipes and craft station systems, interactable containers and objects, global event manager, siege and battleground systems, open world traversal and dungeon design, quest and narrative dialogue setup.^[52]

The above is not a comprehensive list of everything being tested in Alpha One, but it hits the primary points. There are many other data metrics being collected for our approach to the content production pipelines, system definitions, and refactoring as well. Not to mention a plethora of technical art implications and optimizations, but you get the gist. This is a very fundamental test that will impact the direction of development post-Alpha One, so you can understand the importance of testing and its need for player participation, attention, and feedback.^[52] – Steven Sharif

Alpha-1 testing zone (Alpha island)

Map of Alpha-1 testing zone.^[58]^[59] Image credit: Axiom: Angelcry

The Alpha One map including nodes, dungeons, quest givers, POI, teleporters, and camps will be explorable! Note that this is only a small portion of the world of Verra.^[60]

Alpha-1 testing tropical zone featuring a war beast and a tribe of pigmy goblins.^[61]

This is a rather large tropical area; and what we use some of the creatures for is establishing character for different parts of this tropical place. So that even though it's the same biome, it feels different when you are going from place to place based on what's there and how those things are interacting with the environment.^[62] – Jeffrey Bard

Alpha-1 testing took place in a zone to the north west of the world map.^[63] This zone has many islands and a mainland area.^[64]

The Alpha-1 starting area is set in the ruins of an Pyrian divine gateway.^[65]
There are 12 different (sub)zones in the Alpha-1 testing location.^[62]
The Alpha-1 map was approximately 70 km² of playable area.^[66]
- This was previously estimated to be approximately 100 km² in size.^[62]^[64] This was about 17% of the total world size.^[67]
- Previous estimates range between 20-25% of the map.^[62]^[68]^[69]
- Traversing the width of the zone (10 km) on a mount would take about 30 minutes.^[70]
Alpha island (also called Alpha-0 island) was the first open-world testing zone for Alpha-1 participants.^[71]
There are approximately 4 biomes in Alpha-1: Flood plains, Desert (Desert), Snowy mountains, Forest.^[72]^[73]
- A tropics biome was added for the December 2020 Alpha-1 preview tests.^[63]^[61]^[62]
Temporary teleportation points will be present in early tests until ships are introduced later in the alpha testing.^[74]

Alpha-1 availability

Pre-order pack upgrades are possible for current pack holders for the difference in price.^[75]^[76]^[77] Upgrades to Kickstarter and Summer crowdfunding packs are also available in the store for the difference in package price.^[78]