Alpha Test 5 Recap
Alpha Test 5 has now been completed, and it was a lot of fun! We introduced the new Alchemy Discipline along with some potions like the Giant potion which were really cool to test out in VR. Thank you to everyone who participated!
A few quick stats:
- The total number of participants was 80.
- The total number of hours played was 322, for an average of ~4 hours per player.
- Chrontron again played the most hours during the test, with a total of 15.
Overall, the testing trend continued of having a core group of users who participated. I've heard from a lot of people that they are either waiting until later in the testing period because they have testing fatigue, or they simply couldn't make the test because it's Summer and lots of folks have real-life commitments right now on the weekends.
Focus on Open Alpha
Our focus right now is shifting toward polishing the game for the Open Alpha. There are a number of bugs (such as the voice chat bug, a few crashes, getting stuck while moving, etc.) that we really want to make sure we've gotten fixed before that test. In addition, we'll be fleshing out the world more with environmental details, quests, new NPC models, and more.
Basically, we know there are a lot of folks out there who will drop by for the Open Alpha because they've heard about the game and want to give it a shot, and we know this will be our chance to make a good first impression on them. So we don't want to squander that opportunity. It will also be interesting to see how the servers hold up for that, since we anticipate that we'll have at least 4x the number of people in that test than we've had in the Alpha thus far.
Next Closed Alpha: June 30th
The next Closed Alpha test will begin on June 30th, 2017 at 11 AM US Central Time, and last for 36 hours. The focus of the next test will be:
- Adding the Player Journal feature
- Adding in a lot of new "real" quests (ones that will carry forward into the live game, as opposed to the placeholder quests we've been adding until now)
- Finishing the Player Tutorial
- Fixing as many bugs as possible, especially game-breaking bugs like spawning in "the void", getting stuck while sliding, etc.
- Polishing the game -- foley sound effects, environmental details, changes to the new Strength Indicators, etc.
- Re-balancing combat in the dungeons and overall among the Battle Disciplines
- Adding an easy way to upload your output log to us via the Launcher after you've had a crash.
Some of the other major features that we don't have in yet but we plan to have in pre-Open Alpha are:
- Potion aging for the Alchemy Discipline
- Fixing the annoying voice chat bug (need more output logs to help track this down...)
- Improved character models (e.g. hair)
- Pet companion system
- Death mechanic/repair cost for gear
- Reagents for some Runemage rituals
- Dungeon Finder / Group Finder
- At least a piece of the Runesmithing Discipline, probably the ability to make toys/tools, but not the ability to enhance gear yet (that will come in early Beta)
See you all in-game in a couple of weeks!