With the increased visibility from the kickstarter comes some more lucid views.
Ashes of Creation : nouvelle arnaque via Kickstarter ? | Geekzone.fr
(in french. Quick summary follows)
- First, for a funded game before kickstarter, the team is light. Pantheon-sized. Yea, they promise to go from 12 to 24 this fall! That's why they need your kickstarter, guys!
- The people have worked in the industry, but when you're told that they have FORTY years of experience combined, you know they got little experience. The Lead Game Designer was working as... International Customer Relation Liaison at SOE. The technical director was designing... payment solutions.
- Steven Sharif is an experienced Multi-Level Marketing guy, that's how he made his money. Wondered why there was MLM in the game? That's why.
- The demo videos are considered relatively easy to make with the power of Unreal 4. Wondered why the presentation of the node system working was all done using sprites on a background drawn map? They didn't had time to fake that amount of system stuff.
- Speaking of video: the first twitch stream:
No UI (save for a static HP/MANA bar that never moved)? No interaction, no combat? "Thanks for testing" for a 8mn walk around with the devs talking about how awesome all of it was and lots of things happened (but not here, unfortunately, the node next door)...
- And of course, the forum. Looks like the cheapest software they could find.
Summary: Caveat emptor.