Sounds like you should probably look into the whole "Exposition Phase" of the game.

Exposition is 3 month period where anyone who's backed $120+ can begin constructing settlements in the world.

But the world will be filled with 100,000 NPCs in their own homes and businesses anyway so it's not a big deal.

It's more for the Nobility and Aristocracy to get to grips with their lands and spend their IP.

The players in early access will be laying the foundations for the ones coming after them. To be honest, I think the players arriving later will be at an advantage - families will already be established, trade routes and towns will be up and running. Since every character is mortal, if you arrive later you'll be young and fit and raring to go while the ones who started early will already in middle age (or older) and starting to slow down and be more vulnerable.

I don't really think you have too much to worry about wrt early access giving anyone a huge advantage.

To answer your question, Early Access refers to both. Different phases of Alpha and Beta access is granted at different funding levels. I believe Alpha phase 1 is at the $350 pledge, Alpha 2 at $200, Beta 1 at $100, and Beta 2 at $60.

All of those will be wiped before the start of Exposition, which is a 3 month "intro" to the game world where people will be able to create the building blocks of a functional society. Exposition is part of the $120 and up pledges, but I believe that they have also said that Exposition access would be gradual, and that people who pledged less would also get the earlier access, it just might be 2 weeks instead of 3 months based on the pledge amount.

Remember though, the point of exposition is to give us a chance to build the cities and kingdoms that the story of the game will revolve around. It wouldn't make much sense for the game to release, make everyone feel like they are at an equal starting place, but then a gigantic castle pops up seemingly out of nowhere because that guy happened to be a pledged king and you aren't.

Exposition will be like that, and I imagine it's going to be rather messy at first, too. But by the time the three months are over you will be entering into a game that's cities have been developed and settled. Routines will be in place. It should feel like a living breathing world, not a bunch of people running around asking in OOC How they lay the foundation for buildings again, when they are supposed to hold one of the highest offices in the land, you know?

Alright, this cleared things up a bit. Now I can see what they meant with "premade towns at launch" aswell. Thanks for the answers everyone :)

I wouldn't be able to imagine a bunch of random people in the middle of nowhere trying to build a city together. You'll need the nobility to lay the foundation so it makes sense that this fase is for the nobility only.

Posted By Caspian at 0:01 AM - Tue Aug 02 2016

Early Access in the context of this latest update means early access to seeing the game. That is, people who are Alpha 1+ have an opportunity to see more of the game as it's being developed.

In general, the more Influence someone has, the more integral they are to the success of the game, and the more opportunity they'll have to provide feedback and get involved.

In the current scenario, we've got a video that was shot for the purpose of creating screenshots. The environment artist did it without having the latest binaries, so there's missing functionality, and there's missing animations - such as a Jump animation. But we didn't care as the video was just for taking screenshots. In any event, the video itself isn't suitable to be shared with the whole world.

People would naturally criticize and we'd see questions like "when are you guys adding jump?" So to avoid that, we opted not to share the video broadly. However, people who've earned 3,500+ Influence deserve to see the ugly, uncut, rough, barely playable versions of the game if they want to.

That's what we mean by Early Access in this case.

That's awesome, I can't wait to see that sort of stuff! :D

Yeah I Laughed when I saw the guy Jumping up the stairs... It really is a very early prototype video, I could see where some people would tear it apart and question everything. I however loved it, and wish that I could walk around that city to see what is there currently.

Ehh soon enough I guess.

Posted By Brynath at 4:25 PM - Mon Aug 01 2016

Yeah I Laughed when I saw the guy Jumping up the stairs... It really is a very early prototype video, I could see where some people would tear it apart and question everything. I however loved it, and wish that I could walk around that city to see what is there currently.

Ehh soon enough I guess.

I was likewise impressed getting to see the early stages of the game. It makes me more excited to see the polished version for sure. I'd fanboy out over it but, you know... exclusivity and all that.

Posted By Gnoll at 0:37 AM - Tue Aug 02 2016

Posted By Brynath at 4:25 PM - Mon Aug 01 2016

Yeah I Laughed when I saw the guy Jumping up the stairs... It really is a very early prototype video, I could see where some people would tear it apart and question everything. I however loved it, and wish that I could walk around that city to see what is there currently.

Ehh soon enough I guess.

I was likewise impressed getting to see the early stages of the game. It makes me more excited to see the polished version for sure. I'd fanboy out over it but, you know... exclusivity and all that.

You guys are talking as if there's already an exclusive area for lerge-influence backers...have I missed something?

Posted By Barghest at 4:00 PM - Mon Aug 01 2016

Posted By Gnoll at 0:37 AM - Tue Aug 02 2016

Posted By Brynath at 4:25 PM - Mon Aug 01 2016

Yeah I Laughed when I saw the guy Jumping up the stairs... It really is a very early prototype video, I could see where some people would tear it apart and question everything. I however loved it, and wish that I could walk around that city to see what is there currently.

Ehh soon enough I guess.

I was likewise impressed getting to see the early stages of the game. It makes me more excited to see the polished version for sure. I'd fanboy out over it but, you know... exclusivity and all that.

You guys are talking as if there's already an exclusive area for lerge-influence backers...have I missed something?

Nope, I was able to catch Caeoltoiri on Discord, and she linked me the Video.

Posted By Caspian at 1:10 AM - Tue Aug 02 2016

Posted By Barghest at 5:00 PM - Mon Aug 01 2016

You guys are talking as if there's already an exclusive area for lerge-influence backers...have I missed something?

Over the weekend we were linking the video to people who came into IRC with more than 3,500 Influence.

So there's a couple dozen people who've already seen the video.

Ahhhhh alright gotcha, that's fine then, thought I'd somehow not noticed a new area of the forums. :P

Just posting so I can brag about hanging out in very influential circles. I mean, wow, look at those numbers: 6k, 15k!

On a more serious note: Thanks!

So for the link is it just being given over the irc and those that ask in the discord channel? And @sagart, 30k :p