Ashes of Creation Has Been Announced Since 2016. A Timeline of What Intrepid Studios Has Said and When.

A public record of Intrepid Studios' development announcements, alpha milestones, and stated timelines — with Riot Games' unnamed MMO project set alongside for scale.

The event floor is the only place a population is ever visible all at once.

Photo: NiP Friberg - DreamHack Winter 2013 7-7 screenshot · Wikimedia Commons

The Announcement Years: 2016–2019

Intrepid Studios was incorporated in 2015 by Steven Sharif, a real-estate entrepreneur with no prior game-development credits. The studio went public with Ashes of Creation in late 2016, entering a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter that ran through June 2017. The campaign closed having raised approximately $3.27 million from just over 19,000 backers — a figure Intrepid published on its own platform at campaign close. A simultaneous direct-pledge portal on the studio's website pushed the total above $3.5 million by the end of that month.

The pitch was a subscription-based open-world MMORPG built around a "Node System," by which player activity would determine which settlements developed into cities, which questlines became available, and which resources appeared in the world. Intrepid called it a "reactive world" — a design ambition that placed the game in direct lineage with the social-world experiments of the 1990s and early 2000s. It entered development with Unreal Engine 4 and a promise of a commercial launch window that, at the time of the Kickstarter, the studio described as 2019.

That window did not hold. Through 2018, Intrepid staged a series of closed pre-alpha sessions — invite-only weekends that the studio documented with developer livestreams. In May 2018, a pre-alpha gameplay video circulated widely, showing large-scale siege combat and the Node System in a rudimentary form. The studio's communications during this period consistently used the framing "Alpha One" as the next public milestone, without a fixed date.

Later, Intrepid announced a shift from Unreal Engine 4 to Unreal Engine 5, a decision that the studio framed as a long-term quality investment. The move reset development timelines in ways the studio did not quantify publicly at the time.

Alpha One and the Rebuild: 2020–2022

Alpha One entered a first limited test phase in December 2020, with a wider "Alpha One Preview" opening to a larger group of backers in June and July 2021. The studio described this phase publicly as a stress test and systems check — notably, it did not represent the full Node System in a playable state. SteamDB ↗ does not carry Ashes of Creation in its concurrent-user tracking at this stage because the game has not launched on Steam; all player-count figures from these tests come from Intrepid's own announcements.

Intrepid live-streamed its testing sessions on Twitch and YouTube, with monthly developer updates — called "Development Updates" in studio communications — becoming a consistent public cadence through 2020 and 2021. These updates covered engine progress, art direction, system design, and server infrastructure. The studio continued to take direct pledges and sell cosmetic packs throughout this period, generating ongoing revenue against which no public figure has been filed. Intrepid is a private company and has not published audited financial statements.

In late 2021, Intrepid announced that the Unreal Engine 5 migration was substantive enough to require rebuilding significant portions of Alpha One content. Alpha Two — the next formal milestone — was positioned as the version that would demonstrate the Node System at scale. No date was given. Through 2022, monthly development updates continued, covering character creation systems, combat feel, and server-side architecture. In December 2022, the studio published a summary of the year's progress that confirmed Alpha Two remained in active development, with no timeline announced.

For comparison: Riot Games announced an in-development MMORPG set in the League of Legends universe — Runeterra — in December 2020, via a developer blog post on the studio's official site ↗. The project was led by Greg Street, who had joined Riot from Blizzard Entertainment. As of the time of that announcement, Riot described the game as in early development and offered no target date. Street departed Riot in late 2023, and the studio confirmed the project continued under new leadership. No alpha milestone has been publicly announced for the Riot MMO as of the record used here.

Alpha Two and the Current Record: 2023–2024

In 2023, Intrepid moved to a public monthly preview system for Alpha Two, opening test windows on a rotating basis to backers. The first Alpha Two test session was announced and delivered in November 2023 — seven years after the game's initial public announcement, and roughly four years after the original stated launch window of 2019. Intrepid described Alpha Two in its communications as an "ongoing alpha" rather than a discrete event: the studio committed to continuous testing windows through 2024, with updates to systems delivered between sessions.

The Node System appeared in Alpha Two in a testable form, though the studio's own updates acknowledged that several planned node stages and the full castle-siege economy were not yet present. Monthly development updates through 2024 documented combat system revisions, a reworked class system introducing multi-class "Augment" mechanics, and server-stability improvements. Each update was published on the Intrepid website with a date stamp, providing a navigable public record.

No commercial launch date has been announced as of the end of 2024. The studio has not used the phrase "release date" in any official communication on record. The subscription model — announced at Kickstarter in 2017 as the commercial structure — remains the stated intention. The cosmetic-store model used during alpha, selling appearance packs to backers, operates separately from that intended subscription. As of Alpha Two's running test windows, the game continues to accept new pledges at tiered price points.

Intrepid's headcount has not been published in any regulatory filing. The studio is headquartered in San Diego, California; Steven Sharif has remained its chief executive and most prominent public voice throughout the development period. No senior departure comparable in profile to Greg Street's exit from Riot's MMO project has been publicly announced at Intrepid, though the studio has never published an organisational chart or staff count.

The public record, taken on its own terms, shows a project that has maintained continuous community communication, delivered testable alpha builds on a documented schedule beginning in late 2020, and generated ongoing revenue through cosmetic sales across an eight-year development window — without announcing a commercial launch date or filing the financial disclosures that would allow independent assessment of its runway.