Closed Beta Two Recap

Hey everyone!

Another Closed Beta test is finished and in the books. It was a ton of fun to see you all hop back in-game after we've been working hard to add so many new cool things. We had a few bugs at the beginning with some of the new stuff like the Private Messaging and Merchant Stalls, but overall I'm really happy with how the test went.

A few stats for your perusal:

• 344 player participated in the test.
• 1,800 hours was played during the test period collectively
• The player with the most time-played was Elk with 52 hours played

Overall, I was really happy with the participation levels during the test. We had around 40-50 people online right when the test started and for a good chunk of the first day, with the usual ups and downs after that. We actually had more people participate in this test than the last one which I think is actually a first for us, so that's cool.

Feedback and Thoughts

The main focus of this test was (in addition to all the new features like Potion Aging, Private Messaging, etc.) the combat balancing. We received a lot of feedback on this which was great. At the start of the test I think we had things tuned a little too hard for the lower levels, but now I think we've got it in a nice spot.

Generally speaking, the progression of difficulty in the game is:

Levels 1 - 5: Just getting started, fairly easy combat
Levels 6 - 14: Getting more used to the game, combat difficulty increases a bit
Levels 15 - 20: Difficulty really ramps up, being in a group is highly beneficial
Level 20+: Combat is tough, being in a group is required for many activities

Once you reach Level 20 you'll enter the "end-game" content, which includes end-game dungeons, heroic dungeons, and raid content. We'll go into more depth on that in a future post.

For the next test, our focus will be:

• Revamped networking layer to hopefully lay all the "disconnect" bugs to rest.
• All main story and main side quests will be in the game
• All zones in the 'overland' will be in the game, including the 4 Wilds zones
• Increasing the Level Cap to Level 20
• Introducing lots of new enemies, including more then a dozen new elites.
• Runesmithing, item sharding, and NPC Vendor selling
• Finishing the itemization of potions and fishing

...and hopefully even more! We'll be launching into a series of blog posts diving into these things beginning next week, so stay tuned.

Until then, see you in-game!