Alpha-1 testing

Hail and well met glorious Ashes of Creation testers. My name is Sean Farrens. I am the manager of quality assurance on Ashes of Creation and on behalf of the Ashes QA team I would like to extend a deep and heartfelt thank you to everyone who participated in testing Ashes of Creation during the weekend of May 14 through May 16th for our Alpha 1 build. In spite of instability and uncertainty you have all proven to be invaluable in regards to your feedback and bug reports; and for that I cannot express my gratitude enough. As many of you know, developing an MMORPG is an epic endeavor that is filled with trials and tribulations that no other game will ever encounter; and your illustrated dedication has proven to our team that we are on a high road to the best MMORPG gaming experience to date. During this most recent testing period we received over 2,600 bug reports, which have been an absolute boon to our testing process. We review each report individually and I continue to be impressed with how detailed and helpful each of these reports has been. Like seriously you guys give repro steps and everything. Super duper handy. I greatly look forward to your feedback in the future and hope you enjoy our content so far, so thank you so much everybody. – Sean Farrens

While we will have specific spot tests for certain systems as we develop them post the Alpha one month, it should be expected and understood that after this Alpha one month there will be probably a significant amount of downtime where there won't be spot testing as we break apart a lot of systems, take what we learned from alpha one month and implement and iterate upon those learnings. So there's gonna be several months probably worth of significant downtime where there will not be access to spot testing, where we are going to go in and really rejigger a lot of systems – Steven Sharif

Phase	Release	Estimated/Actual date
Alpha-1	Alpha-1 測試早期預覽直播	2020年3月27日
	Alpha-1 小型 QA 測試 (保密)	2020年5月28日
	Alpha-1 預覽初次測試 (保密)	2020年12月18-21日
	Alpha-1 預覽二次測試 (保密)	2021年2月19-22日
	Alpha-1 預覽不定期抽樣測試 (保密)	2021年3月19-7月9日
	Alpha-1 預覽週末 (非保密)	2021年7月9-11日
	Alpha-1 測試 (非保密)	2021年7月14-8月15日
	Alpha-1 不定期抽樣測試	2021年8月15日後

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The term "alpha" is a tricky one, and it typically has 2 meanings in gaming. The development meaning for alpha is a point in the process where we are ready to test the fundamental systems in their core form, without polish and without much of the content. Then, there is the external or "marketing" term for alpha. This is typically applied to Eastern-ported MMORPGs, when in fact that is a completed game being localized for a region, and not really indicative of a true development alpha. As you may know by now, game development has many stages - from the initial tech demos to the pre-production and pre-alpha states, then on to the alphas and betas and eventually launch. – Steven Sharif

I want to make emphatically clear, our alphas and betas are true development alphas and betas, and some have said I am crazy to allow these phases to be seen without an NDA…maybe I am crazy? lol… But I am trusting the community of gamers out there to get a glimpse into the process, and understand the long road ahead for what will eventually be worth the wait. Given time and talent, amazing things can happen, so make sure you help us in communicating that we are in open development which means people get to see the bare bones before the meat. And look, I know people see our 4K footage and say, "This looks better than most released games!", but trust me when I say, you ain't seen nothin’ yet. – Steven Sharif

戰鬥系統改良

Alpha-1 角色上下身分開 近戰 戰鬥預覽。

角色揮動武器的同時可以移動，也可以一邊退後一邊繼續攻擊。攻擊的同時玩家可以完全控制角色。 – Steven Sharif

改良後的戰鬥系統將根據玩家意見在 Alpha-1 測試中推出。

• 改良的目標是希望給予玩家更多主導權，施放技能時可以更靈活流暢地戰鬥。
• 目前的 Tab 鍵和無鎖定混合戰鬥系統在改良後仍會保留。
• 改良後的版本並不是戰鬥系統的最終設計，但會反映日後開發方向。
• 此版本會持續更新，並在不同階段開放予玩家測試。

改良後的戰鬥系統中，角色的動作上下身分開。角色的上半身會被揮動武器的動作鎖住，而下半身可以自由行動。

揮動武器的同時，角色將可以自由行動，讓玩家近戰攻擊時完全操作角色。 – Steven Sharif

初期 Alpha-1 測試的重點是核心系統的運作，而不是戰鬥平衡。

我留意到很多人在談論傷害數值和生命值之類的東西。這方面有兩點：一，我再重申這不是為了測試遊戲內容，目前只進行了初步的平衡調整，大多的平衡會在特定系統日後實際測試時進行。我們目前的重點是這些系統的核心運作，而不是細微的調整。因此我不會太在意目前的平衡性。 – Steven Sharif

Alpha-1 availability

Pre-order pack upgrades are possible for current pack holders for the difference in price. Upgrades to Kickstarter and 夏季众筹 packs are also available in the store for the difference in package price.

• August 15, 2018 was the last day for purchases of Alpha-1 through Intrepid pre-order packs (History).

• Sales of Alpha-1 resumed on May 5, 2021 through the Adventurer 預購禮包.

• August 13, 2021 was the last day for purchases of Alpha-1 through the Adventurer 預購禮包 (History).

Alpha-1 participation

Alpha-1 testing was available to the following participants:

• Anyone who won and claimed an Alpha-1 Key through a giveaway.
• Adventurer 預購禮包 and Intrepid pre-order pack owners.
• Braver of worlds, Leader of men, Royalty, Hero of the people, and Avatar of the phoenix Kickstarter and summer campaign backers.
• Official content creators.

There were approximately 9,600 participants in Alpha-1 testing as of August, 2018.

• As of May 31, 2021, just under 5k additional participants have been added since Alpha-1 sales resumed. Less refunds and unclaimed codes, leaves a total of slightly over 13k testers.
• The weekend test of May 27, 2021 saw 5,300 unique logins over the 3 day period.

There were roughly 9600 if I recall A1 participants prior to my closing the preorder packs in 2018. Since opening them up again there have been just under 5k additional participants added. And prolly around 300 refunds give or take. Of the roughly 14,000 a1 testers, there are still about 1k unredeemed ks codes which leaves a little over 13k testers? The weekend test saw 5300 unique logins over the 3-day period. And I think discord flags stand around 4k roughly? – Steven Sharif

Alpha-1 servers

Alpha-1 servers were provisioned in the following regions.

• US East.
  • Resna.
  • Norlan.
  • Eradal.
  • Denaris.
  • Grenlaw.
  • Pelune.
• US West.
  • Lyneth.
  • Kal.
  • Shol.
  • Nimaneer.
  • Solunea.
  • Donale.
• EU East.
  • Tenok.
• EU West.
  • Kaelun.

以下某些信息最近尚未得到开发人员的确认，可能不在当前的开发路线图上。

Alpha-1 servers will support 1,500 concurrently connected users per server.

Alpha-1 NDA

Alpha-1, Alpha-2, Beta-1, Beta-2 releases are not covered by 保密協議 (non-disclosure agreement).

• Alpha-2 testing prior to the full release of Alpha-2 will be under NDA.
• Alpha-1 testing prior to the full release of Alpha-1 was covered by NDA.
• The developers will not necessarily announce when NDA testing starts.

We may not always announce when the NDA testing is, because we're not definitive how that testing is going to influence the future testing schedule; and we don't want to set the wrong expectation from a broader audience perspective on what they should be expecting with regards to testing. – Steven Sharif

Alpha testing system requirements

Alpha-1 stress testing, March 17, 2021.

These are fully operational NPCs. They have behavior trees, they have AI blackboards; they are functioning as an NPC would; and to my surprise, to everyone's surprise actually, the server handled it quite well: 5000 entities all within a very dense area. – Steven Sharif

Minimum and recommended computer specifications for Alpha-2.

Minimum Specs - 1080p

• Processor: Intel i5 8400 | AMD Ryzen 5 2600
• Memory: 12GB
• Graphics: NVIDIA GTX 1070 or equivalent
• DirectX: Version 12
• Network: Broadband Internet connection
• Storage: 100GB SSD Storage
• Windows 10/11

Recommend Specs - 1440p

• Processor: Intel i7 8700 | AMD Ryzen 5 3600
• Memory: 16GB
• Graphics: NVIDIA RTX 3070 or equivalent
• DirectX: Version 12
• Network: Broadband Internet connection
• Storage: 100GB SSD Storage
• Windows 10/11

Please note that these requirements will change throughout our testing phases.

Alpha testing zone

Map of Alpha-1 testing zone.

此翻译可能已过时

圖片來源: Axiom: Angelcry

The Alpha One map including nodes, dungeons, quest givers, POI, teleporters, and camps will be explorable! Note that this is only a small portion of the world of Verra.

Alpha-1 testing tropical zone featuring a war beast and a tribe of pigmy goblins.

This is a rather large tropical area; and what we use some of the creatures for is establishing character for different parts of this tropical place. So that even though it's the same biome, it feels different when you are going from place to place based on what's there and how those things are interacting with the environment. – Jeffrey Bard

Alpha-1 testing took place in a zone to the north west of the world map. This zone has many islands and a mainland area.

• The Alpha-1 starting area is set in the ruins of an Pyrian divine gateway.
• There are 12 different (sub)zones in the Alpha-1 testing location.
• The Alpha-1 map was approximately 70 km² of playable area.
  • This was previously estimated to be approximately 100 km² in size. This was about 17% of the total world size.
  • Previous estimates range between 20-25% of the map.
  • Traversing the width of the zone (10 km) on a mount would take about 30 minutes.
• Alpha island (also called Alpha-0 island) was the first open-world testing zone for Alpha-1 participants.
• There are approximately 4 biomes in Alpha-1: Flood plains, Desert (Desert), Snowy mountains, Forest.
  • A tropics biome was added for the December 2020 Alpha-1 preview tests.
• Temporary teleportation points will be present in early tests until ships are introduced later in the alpha testing.

其他

• Alpha-1
• 發布時間表
• Ashes of Creation