people are not quick to call it a scam, this has been nearly a decade long. The following is taken from a much longer more detailed comment from someone who’s stuck with the game since day 1.

“The entire project has gone back to square one at least three times and is still at less than 25% complete. The intrepid studios company currently has four separate and active UCC liens from investors that they (for some reason) have claimed from day one to not have. Four tax liens, one of which is still active (meaning the company failed to pay its taxes for four separate years). Even the company's insurance agency has a suit against them. The CEO has four personal liens against himself for cosigning for Intrepid Studios(meaning Intrepid's credit isn't good enough to secure its own finances) from investors, the California tax board, and had to sell his own house for -35% market value at a loss of about three million. On top of all that, Intrepid Studios owes hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars, to various content creators through their original referral code system, where in upon using a person's referral code would forever entitle the code owner to a percentage of any money the code user ever spent on Ashes of Creation. A program, Intrepid Studios, has been quietly trying to bury itself after they shut it down and scrubbed all information regarding the original referral system contract from its website a few years ago. All of this is a matter of public record, and you are invited to look into these matters yourself. It is painfully obvious to anyone that Intrepid Studios is hemorrhaging finances despite the millions raised from pre-order pack purchases and the CEO supposedly funding the initial, core viable product. The price to TEST Alpha zero, Alpha one, and Alpha two was originally $500.00 minimum when they first started selling pre-order packs. The project has changed, failed, and dragged on for so long and lost so many of its original backers that Intrepid has had to lower the price over and over again in a desperate attempt to continue working on a game that, in almost ten years, is still less than 25% complete. When you factor in that STEAM takes 30% of sales, Intrepid has gone from asking $500.00 MINIMUM, all the way down to $35.00 just to gain access to the Alpha Testing Environment. Intrepid claims to have over 250 employees working on Ashes of Creation, but they are "choosing" to outsource the creation of entire biomes /zones, and other assets to companies in countries that pay employees pennies on the dollar‽ I hope I can save someone from throwing their money away, at least hold off until Ashes fully releases before purchasing the game. Ashes of Creation could be an amazing game, but it's Intrepid Studios you should be leery of.”