So the verbal NDA was lifted for the Alpha preview tests so here goes my limited experience so far:
This is not a game yet. The combat is awful, floaty and controls are clunky. There are 3 classes with almost non-existent progression and a boring skill bar. Normally I wouldn't care about that last point but it's very, very far off the goal of having 8 archetypes and 64 class combinations. The world is huge but totally lifeless, feels like procedurally generated with random mob spawns in totally random places. Every now and then there is a POI and those look super cool (underground caverns and the like), but mostly running around the world just feels lacking a lot. All the systems that they talk about are in but very barebones. So instead of focusing on one system after another you have like 10% of everything, which just feels like there isn't even a core gameplay loop. They show off raid bosses in their streams, when the truth is that they shouldn't even think about raids until they have the core gameplay more fleshed out.
They stress it's a technical alpha and we shouldn't judge the content, but at this pace we won't be able to judge any content until 2024. It's the Star Citizen of fantasy MMOs.
But then let's judge the technical points: Controls are clunky as mentioned and that immediately makes the game feel "off". Also the servers can't handle any amount of players, I have yet to experience a test that didn't start with severe server issues, often being delayed because of it, and frequent restarts to fix severe lag and rubber-banding whenever there are too many players in an area (like the starter zone). We were told to spread out across the world to avoid lag... There were around 1k-2k players in the test probably and those were spread out across 9 (!) servers already because a single server can't handle that number despite the huge map (even though the release map will be muuuuuch bigger).
This may be the best game ever on paper and I'd love to play what they are advertising, they got some super strong hype going and in part this may be because those content creators hyping the game on Youtube get paid for it (through referrals).
But in reality they are very far from delivering anything. Alpha 1 is still being delayed again and again (this was just "preview alpha"). Also the cult of personality around Steven is super weird and I'm getting some serious "one-man show" or "micro-management" vibes from him. Every announcement is "his decision", never the team. That's just dangerous.
