Yet again the end of this month is bringing another livestream from Ashes of Creation, and once again alpha two phase three of the game’s testing continues to be one of the key focal points, only this time it sounds like things are actually moving into a playable state by backers instead of just the devs in isolated slices that look great on video. Sort of.

The big ticket announcement is the opening of a PTR starting on Tuesday, July 1st, for players to first kick the tires of new content that creative director Steven Sharif says is more “bleeding edge.” Those who are alpha two backers will get invites into this PTR on the same day it opens, but content within is under a visual NDA and those who break it face permabans, but those who play by the rules can expect a “fun test schedule” that will include contests and rewards shared in calendar form during the broadcast.

Next up was a preview of some of the PTR testing content, such as the in-development region known as the Anvils, which will work as the starting zone for the upcoming new Dunir and Nikua races. This alpine area promises a lot of verticality, plenty of quests, and some cavern locations to explore, while the Dunir and Nikua are two branching forms of dwarven races – the former your typical mountainous sort and the latter a more tropical clan. There was also a look at the Py’Rai, a reclusive race of antlered nature elves.

The economy segment touched on things that are also coming to PTR soon, not the least of which being a rework of the MMORPG’s crafting loop that includes a smoothing of the craftable gear curve to make it run parallel to a character’s leveling, as well as updates to material spawning, and a new crates mechanic that will let players contribute materials to a node’s advancement. There was also a look at stat UI changes that give a clearer breakdown of what set bonuses or individual stats mean.

The final portion of the stream shared several overall updates, including…

• A new town tier for nodes that sits in-between village and metropolis advancement.
• A new rotation schedule that temporarily turns POIs into “lawless” PvPvE zones.
• Several toggleable PvP options like automatically attacking flagged or corrupted players, stopping AoEs from hurting non-combatants, and a required held key press in order for a PvP player to force non-combatants into a fight, while here Sharif points out that doing so will cause corruption for the aggressor and that going “red” will never be a viable play strategy.
• Finally, a number of guild system additions like a guild XP rebalance, more methods to gain guild XP like weekly activities, and guild storage that can be later upgraded and expanded in the future.