Thursday, April 18, 2013

Weigh In - Sprang a Leak

Wildstar Wednesday was a little late today, I'm sticking with my morning weight though at 219.4 pounds. It's been a bad week for my motivation. Bad weather, mild illness, too much fast food, too much soda. The thing I am most concerned about is adherence to my workout schedule. I get down to the gym 50% of the time I should and I haven't done a single sit up or push up since I got back form Boston. I am working on a new Shame Chart to shove over there in that crowded right column. For tonight know that I just got back from the gym and I have the frozen rain soaked shirt to prove it. Again, WTF APRIL!

Carbine showed us its true character today, and I'm not talking about that stout green fellow. A copy of the current beta patch notes made their way onto the internet via some ne're-do-well over the weekend. In response to this leak Carbine posted the full notes on their webpage so that honorable fan sites and news networks could cover this now public information. Additionally Jeremy Gaffney popped over to Wildstar Central and offered to answer what questions he could for curious fans. I was kind of impressed that he spent his Monday evening doing that. I was really impressed when he was still doing it close to 2am when I went to bed (central time) and I was just blown away that he was still active in that thread (now over 22 pages) today!

I could spend some time going over these patch notes and dissecting every little tidbit of information but honestly, beta patch notes...especially just one set of them, are basically worthless from an outside perspective. Sure, we've got ability names and crafting profession notes, some mission types for Settlers. I guess that's kind of neat, but not really useful. It doesn't tell us much about what the game will look like in six months. (Calling it here, October, I'm never wrong, except for always.) On Friday I will devote a lot of time to the Gaffer's thread on Wildstar Central. Today I want to talk about Wildstar Wednesday

At some point today David Bass took a break from making forts out of the couch cushions to get Jeremy Gaffney to take a break from trolling internet forums in order to give us a beta report.
I present to you, the first Beta Tester to set foot on Nexus


Dat Hair.
Dem Eyes
Love this art style!

In honor of this purple haired young lady the air director brought in 200 Pop-Tarts to the office last week, flavors were not specified. It's beta, some things still need to be held back.

Gaffney went on to offer some specifics on how beta is going and what the goals are for the team. something  he was crystal clear on was that he really appreciated the tester's time. He knows that they are "players" and as such want to "play" a game, and testing doesn't always feel like playing.

Carbine will be collecting tons of data from the beta test. They want to see what combat times are like, what leveling speed is, what amount of time players spend traveling, as well as who gets killed, how often and by what. Currently topping the list the Deadstar Rifleman with nearly double the kills of any other creature on the list. No surprise, he's also the only one listed as having a gun -- kind of an unfair advantage.

Jeremy went on to give some details on future beta phases. Current level cap is 22 and it focuses entirely on Exiles content. The next phase of beta, slated for 4 weeks from now, will raise the cap and switch to Dominion only content. They will take the 5 weeks of phase 2 to polish the Exiles areas based on tester feedback. Phase three will switch back and allow for another pass of testing. Rinse. Repeat. Release.

He concluded with the following promise:
"I will, however, in as non-bullshit-as-possible fashion, promise that we'll work our asses off to make the game better month after month, with the help of our players."
Two teasers were offered
  • Arkship EU attendees will be able to publicly discuss, among other things, Wildstar's first dungeon, Stormtalon. We can expect some fun reveals next week.
  • Jeremy Gaffney let slip the official release date. Everyone mark your calendar for the first day of "When it's ready."

You can read the whole post here.

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