EXTRA: Primeiro update sobre os beta weekends tests.

Lá vamos nós de novo meus amigos,  para mais uma rodada de meias desculpas  e explicações previsíveis dadas pela nossa empresa mais do que querida a Bioware/EA, que ultimamente tem se superado em pisar na bola e jogar o pouco hype que ainda conseguem criar fora .

Vamos aos motivos alegados para a suspenção dos beta weekends tests, de acordo com o post criado pelo Stephen Reid no forum oficial , que vocês podem conferir na integra logo abaixo, o objetivo primário dos testes seria fazer uma simulação do dia de lançamento, ou seja saber como os servidores, que são novinhos em folha, vão lidar com um grande número de usuários. eles também queriam ver como as areas instânciadas , nesse caso os planetas iniciais, iriam se comportam com  o volume tão grande de jogadores executando as mesmas ações e quests e para a supresa do Dev team tudo subre esse aspecto ocorreu na mais perfeita ordem deixando um saldo muito possitivo dessa "pequena" avaliação.

Mas como nem tudo são flores, alguns jogadores tiveram problemas na hora de baixar os arquivos e alguns outros tiveram problemas até para entrar no jogo e agora eles estão dando uma atenção maior para esse aspecto para que em futuros testes ,e no lançamento é claro, isso não ocorra mais; Além disto eles ainda trabalham na criação do segundo client de download que vai conter os acertos feitos nos bugs mais reportados, a inserção correta do conteudo localizado (traduzido e dublado para o françês e alemão) para a Europa e a revisão do sistema adotado para o envio dos convites não repetir jogadores que já participaram do primeiro teste.

E a pior parte eu deixei para o final, os beta testers regulares puderam ler no forúm  fechado deles que o client que eles estão usando vai ser desativado e o serviço está suspenso até 12/09/11 quando um novo client vai ser liberado com todos os acertos prometidos. Para bom entendedor meia palavra basta.

Fica subentendido aqui que o prometido client novo(tanto do beta normal quanto do beta weekend, se for o mesmo é claro)  já esta praticamente pronto e isso vai obrigar a exclusão do client atual, junto com os personagens suas conquistas e tudo o mais que foi conseguido, para  baixar o novo  começando tudo de novo apartir da estaca zero. Alem disso foi mais uma vez foi confirmado que apenas os  jogadores da chamada green zone (E.U.A e partes da Europa) serão chamados para compor os beta weekends  caso eles voltem a ser realizados.

Agora nos resta apenas esperar e torcer que as bolas fora parem por aqui.

" Hello everyone. Now that the first-ever Beta Testing Weekend is over we wanted to give you a bit of insight into how it went and what our next steps are. If you haven't read our FAQ about Beta Testing Weekends, you might want to take a look at that in conjunction with this.

For our first Beta Testing Weekend, we invited a large number of testers to play Star Wars: The Old Republic during Labor Day Weekend (a US holiday). While the number of testers invited was larger than any previous invite - many thousands - the number was still a fraction of what we're planning for later weekends.
 
What were the objectives of the weekend?

Primarily this was a small scale simulation of a launch scenario. That means, bringing on a large number of players, starting with the invite process, then proceeding through download, install, patching and logging on to a fresh new server.

We were looking to have large numbers of players on the game's Origin Worlds, like a launch day; we were looking to test our limits on PCU (peak concurrent users); and obviously we were testing to see how all this 'felt' to new players and whether they enjoyed the experience.

On top of that, as always, we were seeking feedback on the game itself - how it feels, how it plays, what people like and dislike.

How did it go?

On balance, extremely well. Every goal we had was met or exceeded, and we had no major downtime. This is good news for us, as now we can move forward in future Testing Weekends and increase the overall number of invites.

There were hitches, as you may know. We had an issue introduced into our invite process that caused a number of people to become 'stuck' in a specific database state. That was fixed by our web team as fast as possible, and while that delayed the initial download for some, we got as many as we could into the game. We are thoroughly testing that process to ensure it doesn't happen again - it was in fact the very first time we've had invite issues since Game Testing began.

Here are a few random quotes from four different testers within their Forums:

“I absolutely had fun. I found myself still finding enemies and attacking long after I had fulfilled the requirements of the mission simply because it was fun to just blast my enemies. You guys honestly put my jaw on the floor with the amazing world you built... and the look of everything. Video's had me skeptical but being in game washed away any doubts I had. I think you guys have nailed Star Wars for what it is..a galaxy far far away and a long time ago..enough said.”

"I really can't wait to see how the story unfolds. In most MMOs I play, I pick up the quest without even reading it but with these quests I am listening to the amazing voice acting and building my own story."

"Words alone can’t express how epic the voiceover is. Normally I end up making fun of the voiceovers in other games but this one caught me off guard. In addition, the in-game music and ambient sounds was also amazing. I didn’t feel overwhelmed with the background/ambient sound and the in-game music matched the current situation very well. Like I said before, overall this is and will be an amazing game. I just purchased the Collector’s Edition."

"Overall, I would say I had a lot of fun. In addition to the quests and PvP, I would sometimes stop and just look around at the planet or station I’m on. The amount of detail that was put into the environment was incredible. Well done."

What's next?

We're rolling out a major new build for The Old Republic very soon, and we're waiting until that build is fully tested and ready to go before we invite people to another Beta Testing Weekend. We're still hopeful that will happen in September, but we have no guarantees.

Thanks for reading, and I hope this gave you some insight into this weekend's events! "