Increasing concerns about community suggested scope creep

The only thing I'm concerned in relation to this is the overblown expectations of people, which will be inevitably crushed on release and people will call the game shit/scam/failure/doa/etc.

I'd prefer if Intrepid put way harder limits on what they wanna do, but most of the time I go from thinking "do THEY even know those limits?" to "they've promised open development + listening to the audience, so they can't just tell people to fuck themselves and their suggestions".

At the core, if Ashes is not ambitious enough, then the things that make it appealing won't stand much chance in the upcoming storm of MMOs.

Definitely a precarious position to be in, given the delays, and the fact that the appeal of Nodes themselves is dependent on so many other things, for many people.

Hopefully (for the sake of Ashes) AA2 will also be delayed or less ambitious.

It's literally called Intrepid Studios. It isn't 'let's be reasonable all the time' studios. Intrepid capture the hearts and imaginations of players before even having a product because of their ambition and vision. Intrepid is full of dreamers wanting to deliver a high quality experience and they similarly have attracted other dreamers wanting to give their love, support, and feedback. Let IS handle their schedule and resources. That is their job. It's our job to help them dream and feel inspired. Give and take.

I'd be far more concerned if I didn't believe Intrepid was listening to this type of feedback and weighing it appropriately. A bit of what you've mentioned could be a stretch, but a lot of it is just 'the basics' or things that don't take that much time. If you don't trust Intrepid to manage their own scope, Ashes is already a lost cause. Intrepid needs people who are willing to say things like this in order to inform their direction , and understand which of various styles of gameplay their community is interested in. They will face a lot of choices along the path to a fully-featured MMO, both in what is worth spending time on (or not), and what direction to take innumerable different designs. Trying to suppress that discourse can only harm Intrepid and guide them toward a shallow game that is largely disconnected from the interests of its community. If all you want is a WOW clone, I'm sure there will be enough of those to play in 2025, much less 2030.

You're obviously not the only one who has learned from the tale of Star Citizen on the internet, lol.

I'm sure you're used to being called the smartest most thoughtful person around by your personal guild or whatever, but outside of your own bubble that kind of perspective is so many steps behind the real world...

Just as a reminder, Intrepid constantly has to consider things like how their Alphas match up to new game releases, payroll, flow of money in general, the ever shrinking niche they can carve out for themselves due to new MMOs coming out and so many other things. There is literally no one who is in a better position to viscerally feel the risk of additional delays than Intrepid themselves, on a daily basis. It's kind of insulting to assume they don't share these worries already.