Difference between revisions of "Alpha-1 testing"

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Revision as of 03:43, 17 October 2020

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.[1]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[2]Steven Sharif

Phase Release Estimated/Actual date
Alpha-1 Alpha-1 early preview livestream.[3] March 27, 2020.[4]
Alpha-1 limited QA testing (NDA).[5][6] May 28, 2020.[7][8]
Alpha-1 preview pre-test 1 (NDA).[9] Dec 18 - Dec 21 2020.[9]
Alpha-1 preview pre-test 2 (NDA).[9] Feb 19 - Feb 22 2021.[10][11]
Alpha-1 preview intermittent spot testing (NDA).[12][13] Mar 19 - Jul 9 2021.[12][13]
Alpha-1 preview weekend (no NDA).[12] July 9 - July 11 2021.[14][15][12]
Alpha-1 (no NDA).[12] July 14 - August 15 2021.[16][17]

Read more...

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.[9]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.[9]Steven Sharif

Alpha-1 participation

Alpha-1 testing was available to the following participants:

There were approximately 9,600 participants in Alpha-1 testing as of August, 2018.[19][20]

  • 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.[19]
  • The weekend test of May 27, 2021 saw 5,300 unique logins over the 3 day period.[19]

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?[19]Steven Sharif

Alpha-1 servers

Alpha-1 servers were provisioned in the following regions.[21]

info-orange.pngSome of the following information has not been recently confirmed by the developers and may not be on the current development roadmap.

Alpha-1 servers will support 1,500 concurrently connected users per server.[23][24][25]

Alpha-1 NDA

Alpha-1, Alpha-2, Beta-1, Beta-2 releases are not covered by NDA (non-disclosure agreement).[26]

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.[29]Steven Sharif

Alpha testing system requirements

Alpha-1 stress testing, March 17, 2021.[30]

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.[31]Steven Sharif

Minimum and recommended computer specifications for Alpha-2.[32]

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.[32]

Alpha island

Map of Alpha-1 testing zone.[33][34] Image credit: 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.[35]

Alpha-1 testing tropical zone featuring a war beast and a tribe of pigmy goblins.[36]

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.[37]Jeffrey Bard

Alpha-1 testing took place in a zone to the north west of the world map.[38] This zone has many islands and a mainland area.[39]

See also

References

  1. Livestream, May 28, 2021 (1:36:43).
  2. Livestream, July 30, 2021 (20:30).
  3. March 2020 newsletter.
  4. Video, March 23, 2020 (0:01).
  5. alpha-1-nda-2.png
  6. 6.0 6.1 alpha-1-nda-1.png
  7. steven-a1-testing-start.png
  8. Creative Director's Letter, 2020-04-1.
  9. 9.0 9.1 9.2 9.3 9.4 Blog: Creative Director's Letter, October 16 2020
  10. Livestream, February 26, 2021 (14:58).
  11. Blog: Creative Director's Letter, January 2021.
  12. 12.0 12.1 12.2 12.3 12.4 Alpha One Schedule Update, May 10 2021.
  13. 13.0 13.1 An Update on Alpha One Schedule, March 12 2021
  14. steven-a1preview-end.png
  15. Ashes of Creation Twitter - Alpha-1 Preview Weekend Begins
  16. alpha-1-end.png
  17. release-dates.png
  18. 18.0 18.1 18.2 18.3 Ashes of Creation Store: May cosmetics.
  19. 19.0 19.1 19.2 19.3 steven-a1-participation.png
  20. Livestream, August 17, 2018 (24:07).
  21. 21.00 21.01 21.02 21.03 21.04 21.05 21.06 21.07 21.08 21.09 21.10 21.11 Alpha-1 screenshot.
  22. 22.0 22.1 22.2 22.3 22.4 22.5 22.6 Alpha-1 screenshot.
  23. alpha-1-participation.png
  24. 24.0 24.1 Interview, July 19, 2020 (1:21:49).
  25. alpha-1-phase-2.png
  26. Livestream, January 18, 2018 (49:26).
  27. Livestream, September 29, 2023 (55:34).
  28. Livestream, May 29, 2020 (31:37).
  29. 29.0 29.1 Interview, July 9, 2023 (26:35).
  30. steven-a1-stress-test.png
  31. Livestream, March 26, 2021 (12:34).
  32. 32.0 32.1 What are the minimum and recommend computer specifications for Alpha Two?
  33. Alpha-1 screenshot.
  34. toast-a1map.png
  35. Guide to Alpha One.
  36. 36.0 36.1 Livestream, November 30, 2020 (12:09).
  37. 37.0 37.1 37.2 37.3 37.4 Livestream, November 30, 2020 (22:43).
  38. 38.0 38.1 Livestream, November 30, 2020 (9:51).
  39. 39.0 39.1 alpha-1-map-size.png
  40. Livestream, March 26, 2021 (16:05).
  41. Interview, January 14, 2022 (3:50).
  42. steven-a1-map.png
  43. Podcast, April 11, 2021 (53:01).
  44. Livestream, November 30, 2020 (25:45).
  45. steven-pi-not-alpha-island.png
  46. Livestream, January 29, 2021 (26:38).
  47. Livestream, October 16, 2017 (12:08).
  48. Livestream, November 30, 2020 (24:51).