Closed Beta Two Begins Tomorrow
Tomorrow at Noon (12 PM) US Central Time, we'll be kicking off our second Closed Beta Test which will last until Tuesday night. (Here's a handy Countdown to the start of the test).
If it's your first time in the Beta
Everyone who has backed the game at the Founder tier and above has the ability to participate in Closed Beta testing.
Be sure to check out the Getting Started Guide on the Wiki. There is now an in-game tutorial as well that you will see when you first log in on a new character, but the Guide is still worth reading.
Download the launcher to install the game: https://community.orbusvr.com/t/closed-beta-launcher-download/2687/
If you don't already have access to the Beta, you can purchase access on your My Account Page at any time.
For our testing veterans
This test's feedback thread is here: https://community.orbusvr.com/t/closed-beta-two-feedback-thread/2685
If you missed it, we previewed the things coming in this test in our previous two blog posts, which can read here and here.
And if you want the deep-dive on the specifics, the Patch Notes have been updated with all the latest info.
A quick summary of the major new stuff in the game includes:
- Private Messaging
- Fellowships and Fellowship Halls
- Desert Dungeon
- Player-Run Market Stalls
- Combat Re-work/Balancing
- Revised Loot System, plus itemization for weapons, rings, capes, and wrists.
- Potion Aging
- More than 2 hours of new quests
- And of course more!
A few random notes
There's a few random things I wanted to talk about before we begin this test. First off, although we were able to upgrade to the 64-bit client and I think that will fix some of the crashes people were experiencing, we really didn't have as much time as I'd have liked during this development cycle to tackle known issues. Things like getting disconnected and sometimes ending up in the wrong zone are still going to be happening, along with the other lesser known issues like the journal pages messing up sometimes and things like that. While we certainly weren't sitting around doing nothing as you can see from the massive list of new things that are now in the game, and it was really important to get that stuff in, I really want to carve out some major time before the next test to do some polishing. So, my apologies in advance if you run into an annoying bug you already told us about last time -- we're aware of most of them, we just haven't had time to fix them yet.
On another note, we tried including the new Unity-integrated Nvidia VRWorks support in the new build, but quite frankly it is not ready from prime time. We got all sorts of weird behaviour once we started testing things, including stuff as simple as the default Sprite shader not working, so we had to scrap it. We'll keep an eye on that and if they get the bugs worked out, we'll put it back in.
Finally, please give us your feedback on the new loot system and the combat re-balance. We didn't have time to thoroughly test every single encounter, dungeon pull, etc. in the game, so let us know if you come across things that seem way too hard or too easy now. Probably not intentional, just overlooked.
Okay, well with all of that out of the way, I'm really excited to see everyone back in the game after our longest-ever hiatus. There's an incredible amount of fun new things to test out and enjoy, whether this is your 5th test or your first. See you in-game!