Next Release Says Multiplayer Will Be Active

So far SotA is awesome, I have really enjoyed playing the releases.
With the next release it says that multiplayer will be activated! I am really looking forward to that because multiplayer is the most important part of the game to me.
The chat I've been able to try out when my friends were online, and got to pester Lord British himself hehehe.
The emotes *shrugs*, I never used the in game ones in UO and I have tried GW2 and the emotes were amusing for about 3 minutes.
Seeing the next town will be pretty cool, so far my favorite one is Kingsport because of the coastline.

What are your thoughts of the next release?

"RELEASE 3: February 20 - 22, 2014

• Open Multiplayer Online: FINALLY we will let you see what the other players look like BUT we’ll be taking away your house for the month as we prepare housing to have persistence in the multiplayer space for Release 4.
• Chat: You know, so you can talk to your friends!
• Emotes: More than 30 emotes online so you can look like a clown with your friends.
• Town 3: A third municipality opens up (perhaps the lovely oceanside village of Kingsport)."

 

I know the Releases are for testing certain features, but I'm hoping we see expansion in crafting and in a few other areas on top of what is planned for R3 already. Because if R3 is simply "Add multi-player but take away housing" and nothing else, there's not going to be a whole lot to work with IMO. It shouldn't take too long for me to log on, see other people, make sure they aren't lagging or crashing my client, make the appropriate reports and be done.

Hopefully there will be a little more "meat" than that.

 

I agree that there should be more stuff than only that, even with release 2 I ran out of things to do rather quickly, but I am thinking that as with R2 things will be added or changed. Maybe with R3 shopping will be made available since it was dropped in R2.

 

I'm also hoping for more, because I HATE multiplayer. I'll definitely be exploring the new town though!

 

Well, the next test phase will obviously contain additional functionality.

I mean they provided Kingsport in R2, so that line item is no longer valid.

They also had to bump vendor buy/sell in R2 as they spent too much time implementing jumping. So I suspect that will probably be in the mix in R3.

It is entirely possible the entire schedule is completely derailed by now. Perhaps all the line items are invalid.

Me thinks someone should probably update DarkStarr's notes for relevancy so we know what to expect.

 

Was nice to be able to take a look at all the houses in R2, what i miss is being able to take a look at the different basements to.

 

Right, I expect to see buy/sell added and some fixes to current systems, plus all the previous features (besides housing/decorating) will be in there for testing.

I'm wondering how Friends online play will work at this point? There are a lot of people on the forums I'd like to add to my friends list so during R3 we can hang out and chat.

R4 is what I'm really waiting for though, that will be amazing. I wont hold it against them if they can't meet the deadline, that is a ton of features they are packing in the next 2 months.

 

This is not a bad idea. Now might be a good time to relook at the Release Notes and tweak R3 and R4 accordingly.

 

Well I think kingsport just got switched around, likely the other town and background stories wasn't ready yet. They probably had more designed for kingsport since we've seen teases of that for awhile now. I expect to see a small village in R3. (Smaller than kingsport even)

 

Nah, It's ready now, just gotta wait for the timeline, Combat was sorta working months ago.

 

I would imagine R3 will have additional crafting recipes as well. At least I hope so

 

I do expect to see some improvement to the existing systems and would like to see them call that out in the R3 instructions when that's posted. If you like, you can answer the Bonus Question in the R2 poll, which was about which system you'd want to see improved the most for R3.

 

I Hope they add a little more life into the npc's that inhabit the areas as well, not counting the real people that will be playing because seeing the same faces replicated over many npc's is pretty lame and seeing them stood there doing nothing apart from a couple of guards walking around, or slight movement in a couple of the npc's that are around the markets does not add to immersion. And please make inns a living place and not an empty lifeless room apart from the bar man and a couple of static nps,s.

 

Does that mean we will be able to take some tea and buscuits in our super duper fancy houses all together?