Thoughts on why a long Alpha 2 is necessary and alpha burnout isn't an issue

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And yet their stream vods barely break 90k on YT and on twitch they only get a few thousands viewers. Even Asmon's reactions get ~300k views, which is in line with views on his other vids so it's mostly the same people watching Ashes news instead of new ones.

And I'm sure that the "6mil" number you imply is also pretty much same people, just distributed across different channels.

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And they have already bought in. 100k in fact. And even more people will buy in when alpha2 releases. But they won't really care what form alpha2 comes in. But the hardcore audience might care. Because Steven has been yelling about "true alpha this true alpha that", but if they release an alpha2 that feels like an almost finished game - that's literally the same marketing trick as all the other companies do. So Intrepid would be no better than any other corpo trash or EA scam.

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I addressed this in the first part of this comment.

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Addressed in the second part of this comment.

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NW lost its playerbase because it was a shit game. They showed off a shitty BETA (not alpha) and then released the same shitty game. If Ashes does the same - they'll suffer the same fate. But we're not talking about the release or the beta. We're talking about alpha2 and Intrepid has been saying over and over again that they're doing a "true development alpha" where the game is unfinished and there's bugs and crashes and all that good testing stuff.

If they release a polished product as alpha2 - that would mean they've been lying this whole time and have turned to the same shitty marketing that pretty much every other current company exploits. And imo they're already on that path.

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Which is kinda my point (if I understood you correctly). Intrepid is trying to go for a real open development by showing true alpha stages of the game. And the absolute majority of common mmo players wouldn't care about that shit, because it's not the game. But if Intrepid then tries to make a game out of alpha2 - they'll attract those common players (even if it's just views on Asmon's stream/reactions) and those players will get disappointed because alpha2 will still look like shit, because it's not a fully finished game and won't have all the things Intrepid promised.

Intrepid should release alpha2 sooner, it should look and play like a damn alpha and it should go for long enough for any casual viewer to forget about the game. And then when we're nearing the release and Intrepid have polished the game into a gem - all those casuals would still just come back to the game because that's literally what they always do, as was shown by NW's release.

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Anyone who follows a non-existent game closely enough to give feedback on its development is a hardcore player. If they play alpha stages that are locked behind a ton of money - they're even more hardcore.