like World of Warcraft and Destiny to differentiate Dauntless from the Monster Hunter games. Houston said that they plan to make extremely difficult quests within the game, so that while most players will be able to reach a principle endgame state, only a few will be skilled enough to take on these quests, similar to some quests in World of Warcraft. The game's look and feel was inspired by the animated film Tangled and other Disney films, avoiding hyper-realism so that the game's graphics will age well. Since its announcement, the game has garnered a great deal of interest from players, prompting Phoenix Labs to be much more transparent about the development plans for the game and interact with their fans to help guide development. They also plan to move the closed alpha sooner by a few months to get more early feedback. They later announced plans to start the alpha testing in April 2017. The game was first revealed during The Game Awards in December 2016. Phoenix Labs planned to start with a closed alpha period, followed by an open beta period prior to the game's full release in the last quarter of 2017. The alpha was launched August 18, 2017; though players could register to be selected for the alpha, Phoenix Labs also offered premium early alpha access in for-cost packages that included in-game buffs, features for customization, and the ability to create guilds. By the PAX East 2017 event in March 2017, they had the basic combat for the game completed, and were starting the development of the impact of skills and boosts into the game. By September, Phoenix Labs pushed back the release schedule for the game, citing issues found during the closed alpha period including game stability and game balance in comparison to the Monster Hunter formula. The open beta was moved to early 2018, and formally launched in May 2018, though prior to that, they invited small waves of players to the closed beta to increase feedback. Within two weeks of the open beta period, over one million new players had played the game. By July 2018, they had seen over 2 million players. While there would be microtransactions in the game, the developers plan to limit this to cosmetic items and temporary boosts rather than to require players to access game content. Houston said it was important to them that players shown wearing