Folks, I understand the concerns some of you have regarding Early Access and us launching into Early Access was obviously something we’ve discussed internally up and down and frankly, I’m extremely glad we chose to go with EA and our current development approach 
As you all know, we always had big aspirations for No Rest for the Wicked and if we had to just go with another boxed product, we’d never have been able to do all the things we still want to do with Wicked.
Early Access to us doesn’t mean that you get an almost finished product that just needs some balancing. Instead, we knew we wanted to achieve something remarkable that can really change the status quo and that is a massive undertaking.
So the only way for our studio to achieve this was to release into Early Access and let players already get a taste of what we have while taking in all the data and feedback and allowing all that to perfect the final experience
I’m not at all concerned about us still making bigger changes to systems - I mean, you see the Diablo crew constantly making drastic changes to Diablo 4 and that was a full-price game that will now also have full-price expansions, etc.
Making ARPGs is incredibly difficult and time-consuming. This isn’t a linear single-player game that you just play once and you’re done with it, instead, we always wanted to create this kinda experience that you could play for an insanely long time while still always finding new ways of enjoying it and that in itself is just many magnitudes more complicated to design.
And I think we’ve seen this approach paying off already, even with the amount of content that’s available right now - some players have already put 50-150 hours into NRFTW by making multiple realms, trying various different classes, etc. - and that number will just grow and grow the more content we’ll be adding 
I’m also not sure it’s apt to compare Wicked to Hades 2 - Supergiant is a smaller team and hence, they made a smaller product that perfectly encapsulates what they can bring to the table. It’s also a sequel to Hades 1, which means that it’s using the same engine, a lot of the same mechanics, etc. that you already saw in the prequel. I like Hades a lot, but I think comparing Wicked and Hades is comparing Apples and Oranges.
We started this from scratch and want to ultimately make a much, much bigger, fully formed experience that you’d normally only see a studio of a massive size being able to make. Speaking of Hades 2, ultimately our Crucible is going to end up giving people that rogue-lite kick they get from a game like Hades. But in Wicked, it’s going to be just one way to play the game instead of that aspect being the entirety of the game. And that just gets me super excited. We built all the systems and tools to make that happen
And frankly, I doubt most AAA studios would even get a project like No Rest for the Wicked greenlit these days because it’d be deemed too risky, too different from the norm, etc. That’s probably why Diablo 4 is still very much following in the footsteps of Diablo 3.
Our goal ultimately is to just ship an amazing ARPG experience and there’s just no other way we could have accomplished that. So yeah, if you’re not into Early Access, no hard feelings, I can totally empathize with that. In that case, play what’s there right now and then wait for 1.0 to come out, at which point I promise you you’ll get the super polished, fully featured package you’re expecting
I’ve been a game developer for the better part of my life now and I’ve never been this excited about where we’ll be heading. Listening intently to the community and getting people excited with all new ways of playing Wicked while finally pushing the genre forward and setting a new direction is what gets me out of bed every morning. If you want to be part of that journey, you can follow along on our Early Access journey. But if you want to just wait and play the finished product later down the road, that’s totally fine, too 