when is alpha

People are a 'now' society they dont like to wait

Having said that I can only say 'hurry up I wanna play!!!'

Just kidding. I cant wait to try it though. It looks awesome.

 

Not to steer away from the EXACT topic, but...

I wonder, will we begin the alpha demo with whatever we pledged for, i.e. Citizen, Knight, etc.? Will we get some land and a home in that case?

Or will this be more like a single generic start for everyone in a sort of single-player demo where everyone has the same stuff to play with?

I'm guessing the latter, BUT I think that being able to actually GET an upgraded home in the alpha by pledging for one on the Web site might encourage a few people to fork over some careless cash.

I know I have pledged for ships in Star Citizen JUST to see them in my hangar a moment later. In a bizarre way, it seems worth it for the instant gratification, lol.

 

I'm thinking we'll all start off the same to test the newbie experience from the ground up. But at some point they will need to test that our accounts have the correct rewards attached to them.

 

By Xmas there are going to be alot of new or updated mmo, mmorpg, and video games in general, these are going to raise bars for this game, for example ok so i backed this game theres nothing out to play yet, this other game looks cool tho!!! star playing that one establishing your character and friends in there, SOTA is finally out! Well im busy with my other game(s), I know that a negative way to look at it but if theres nothing to play we find other games to play (which may even raise the bar Higher for this game) So when it does finally come out, it better come out fighting! There will be alot of other games to contend with by that time. I know for a fact alot of people are waiting to actually SEE something and try it out first before they buy into the game and support it, also i think they need to forget about episodes 2, 3, 4 and 5 and concentrate on Episode ( 1 ) only for the time being.(thats my opinion and what ive seen as far as gamers, now and then) so i can only go with that. The reason im supporting this game is because i liked UO his other game for so long even to this day i still play, so that is what i have to confirm what ill probably get from this game, but most kids now a days have never heard of UO, or turn thier noses up to it becuase graphics are so much better in other games.

 

My problem is how many companies use the term beta when they are actually doing a sneak peak. Alpha and beta is the build phase. I expect the game to be in a state where I need to give feed back. The earlier the better IMO.

They could easily give us a small cluster of hexes to visit. Even empty hexes that are added to as they progress would be good.

I don't need a preview, I am here to test and give some feed back. Without a publisher pushing a release date they have the ability to listen to what we report and adjust as needed. They have shown they listen to us and that is why my pledge is as high as it is.

If I thought they would be like all the trending games with a preview I would have waited till then to see if I was interested in purchasing.

 

Check the front page for the answer to your question

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 4

 

That's exactly what they ARE doing. They are actually having more of the opposite problem... people are expecting finished work when they are showing progress updates. No one understands what it actually means to be in the process anymore. They think it's all like the big companies where they finish something, test it, then show you "alpha" footage.... while they've already gone on to the next thing. Portalarium, however, is doing exactly what you said... they are getting things to us as quickly as it's even halfway presentable. More than once they've shown us glimpses of stuff literally while they are working on it. (The crafting benches come to mind.)

 

The method this team is using is much more on par with a beta than as I stated before. In the annoucement of the alpha/beta schedule it was pointed out that there is no reason to have people test something that doesn't work in the office. If it works for them, get it to us and let us break it and give feed back on how things flow.

This is a great thing. We have time to discuss and they have time to react.

It's the preview beta that I don't like. The "hey, come check out our game for a weekend" tyoe beta is not a beta.

 

Sure it is. If you want to test something briefly, then take time to digest the feedback (while not having to simultaneously support people still playing) it sounds like a good way to do it. Of course you'd like to play longer, but the point is a focused test. And that's a valid way to do it.

 

There's two ways to look at it, one is Ristra's perspective which assumes the alpha and beta are just going to be mini-demos of the game for backers, rather than a comprehensive, bug-squashing stress test that the game will need. I've seen MMOs that don't have high-level content playable until the day of launch, content that needed testing and balancing and feedback from players; feedback that can help keep the endgame relevant and fun. I can understand this perspective.

The other way to look at it is that Portalarium knows exactly what they're doing and are confident that they can put out a complete, relatively bug-free product even with shorter targeted testing periods. I'm hopeful, but that's also a bit naive given the complexity of these games.

Since we haven't actually played anything yet all we should be doing is expectantly waiting. Keep in mind the release date for the game isn't until Fall of next year, and we have plenty of opportunity to test all sorts of content until then.

 

That's not my perspective of what SotA alpha/beta will be like. It's a statement of what I do not like.
They detailed out the test schedule. It's clearly not a preview so I have no issue with it this being labeled a beta.

 

...except it -isn't- the Beta. That schedule is only the Alpha. Presumably a more open-world, full-scale, persistent beta test will begin sometime early next summer.

 

Just call it Module testing, and because of the mandatory connections between some of these modules we might be able to call it "game".

It is just nearly impossible for a normal user to give a detailed and helpfull feedback to the devs for a whole game.

 

Alpha and Beta are just milestones with quality objectives tied to them. They haven't told us what those are, so we can speculate all we want to no avail. What we do have an is an Early Release schedule with some features listed. How that relates to Alpha or Beta, we'll never know. The only thing we do know is that they have an agile or iterative dev model internally and this release schedule is likely an artifact of that model.

 

Im going to talk to all the NPCs and try to figure out how i can be a dwarf or elf or other races! Blaquerogue: "Hail great tavern wench!, doest thou know where one can be transformed into another race!?" Tavern wench: "well met milord!, it all depends on how much you spend for services!, if you spend 100gp you can be whatever you want me to believe you are milord!, Blaquerogue: "Very well milady, let me go out and kill off some Kolbolds and vile creatures! " The adventure begins....