Alpha-1 testing

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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 release schedule

Timeline06.png
Phase Release Estimated/Actual date
Alpha 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...

Alpha-1 NDA

Alpha-1, Alpha-2, Beta-1, Beta-2 releases are not covered by NDA (non-disclosure agreement).[18]

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.[21]Steven Sharif

Participation

  • Alpha-0 had over 2,500 participants.[22]
  • Alpha-1 testing had approximately 9,600 participants as of August, 2018.[23][24] There were slightly over 13k participants as of May 31, 2021.[23] There were 5,300 unique logins during the 3 day weekend test of May 27, 2021.[23]
info-orange.pngThis section will be updated as soon as information is made available by the developers.

Alpha island

Map of Alpha-1 testing zone.[28][29] 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.[30]

Alpha-1 testing tropical zone featuring a war beast and a tribe of pigmy goblins.[31]

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.[32]Jeffrey Bard

Alpha-1 testing took place in a zone to the north west of the world map.[33] This zone has many islands and a mainland area.[34]

See also

References

  1. Livestream, May 28, 2021 (1:36:43).
  2. Livestream, July 30, 2021 (20:30).
  3. 3.0 3.1 March 2020 newsletter.
  4. 4.0 4.1 Video, March 23, 2020 (0:01).
  5. 5.0 5.1 alpha-1-nda-2.png
  6. 6.0 6.1 6.2 alpha-1-nda-1.png
  7. 7.0 7.1 steven-a1-testing-start.png
  8. 8.0 8.1 Creative Director's Letter, 2020-04-1.
  9. 9.0 9.1 9.2 9.3 9.4 9.5 9.6 9.7 Blog: Creative Director's Letter, October 16 2020
  10. 10.0 10.1 Livestream, February 26, 2021 (14:58).
  11. 11.0 11.1 Blog: Creative Director's Letter, January 2021.
  12. 12.0 12.1 12.2 12.3 12.4 12.5 12.6 12.7 12.8 12.9 Alpha One Schedule Update, May 10 2021.
  13. 13.0 13.1 13.2 13.3 An Update on Alpha One Schedule, March 12 2021
  14. 14.0 14.1 steven-a1preview-end.png
  15. 15.0 15.1 Ashes of Creation Twitter - Alpha-1 Preview Weekend Begins
  16. 16.0 16.1 alpha-1-end.png
  17. 17.0 17.1 release-dates.png
  18. Livestream, January 18, 2018 (49:26).
  19. Livestream, September 29, 2023 (55:34).
  20. Livestream, May 29, 2020 (31:37).
  21. 21.0 21.1 Interview, July 9, 2023 (26:35).
  22. Interview, August 24, 2018 (12:18).
  23. 23.0 23.1 23.2 steven-a1-participation.png
  24. Livestream, August 17, 2018 (24:07).
  25. 25.0 25.1 25.2 Livestream, November 17, 2017 (28:50).
  26. a2-participants.png
  27. Livestream, January 27, 2023 (11:05).
  28. Alpha-1 screenshot.
  29. toast-a1map.png
  30. Guide to Alpha One.
  31. 31.0 31.1 Livestream, November 30, 2020 (12:09).
  32. 32.0 32.1 32.2 32.3 32.4 Livestream, November 30, 2020 (22:43).
  33. 33.0 33.1 Livestream, November 30, 2020 (9:51).
  34. 34.0 34.1 alpha-1-map-size.png
  35. Livestream, March 26, 2021 (16:05).
  36. Interview, January 14, 2022 (3:50).
  37. steven-a1-map.png
  38. Interview, July 19, 2020 (1:21:49).
  39. Podcast, April 11, 2021 (53:01).
  40. Livestream, November 30, 2020 (25:45).
  41. steven-pi-not-alpha-island.png
  42. Livestream, January 29, 2021 (26:38).
  43. Livestream, October 16, 2017 (12:08).
  44. Livestream, November 30, 2020 (24:51).