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Upcoming NA TERA Testing Plans
Late in January, Bluehole Studio completed a record-breaking MMO beta test in Korea. TERA was literally everywhere, from billboards to bus-stop advertisements to filling screens in cybercafés across the country. Some of our En Masse team were on-hand to experience the excitementbe sure to read about it on our blog. Two weeks later, on January 25th, Bluehole finished the process of bringing TERA to their eager audience with a hugely successful, official game launch.
After hearty congratulations to our colleagues at Bluehole, we here at En Masse went right back to work. After all, our North American audience is champing at the bit to see TERA, and it's our job to bring it to you!
There is a plethora of screenshots, YouTube videos, and forum posts featuring TERA's Korean launch, and we couldn't be happier interest is at a fever pitch. In those videos, you can see the results of feedback from our Focus Group Tests in the game clientfrom Achievements to controller support to a myriad of game mechanics adjustments. We continue to focus on delivering an incredible game for our audience.
Next month, we're going to host our first game event this yeara Community Play Event to show how TERA has evolved and where it is now. We have brought back everyone who participated in previous tests, and also invited those who have provided thoughtful and constructive feedback within our community (and our contest winners from previous months!)
This event will be an introduction to where we are now, so the community can track our progress in the next few months. Participants will not be under an NDA and can freely share their experiences with everyone. More importantly, this group will help us test another very important aspect of TERA: our game servers.
En Masse hit a huge milestone in January by launching and configuring, for the first time, our final remote game server hardware. Until now, we've used in-house, temporary hardware for our servers. Not anymore! This is the final hardware you'll log into when you join the game. The Community Play Event will help us test this configuration and make adjustments. As you might imagine, bringing a game like TERA to life in North America is no mean feat, and getting our servers right is extremely important.
A couple of months later, we'll host a second eventthis one open to a far larger group. This event will help us further refine our server architecture and plan for contingencies. This will also be the first test of our other huge project, the account management and support systems for TERA. More importantly, it will put the game client in the hands of many more people, so they can see the continued progress we've made.
And after that? It's beta time! The beta cycle will be a multi-part odyssey through TERA where players will be able to see the game in its various phases before we launch in North America.
We've got a lot of work to do (and you guys have a lot of playing to do!) so here's to a great 2011. Now, we better get back to our desks!
See you all in-game!
The En Masse Entertainment TERA Team
http://www.tera-online.com/forums/showthread.php?t=14386
If anyone is interested in getting into the TERA Event next month, signing up now would be good. There's also a contest running that is giving out invites.
Sup.
Comments
{Mod Edit}
Thanks OP!
"Participants will not be under an NDA and can freely share their experiences with everyone. More importantly, this group will help us test another very important aspect of TERA: our game servers."
I have never tested a beta before, but this looks worthy of a first try.
{Mod Edit}
About the news... good to see that its moving forward, but it needs to move faster
{Mod Edit}
OT, finally we can try the new client after a year from the last FGT, and there isn't NDA this time. Thanks EME.
Well some told me this game is a big Grind plate ........ some said no way it's a grind game coz ppl got to the lvl cap in 3 days or so.......... any way if this game is in any way like Aion am sure i won't waste my time or money on it, just to get new mouse every week, and hurte over all the clicking
Which Final Fantasy Character Are You?
Final Fantasy 7
They are lying.
No offence but you should listen less to what other people say, and instead make your own opinions when it comes to your own money and entertainment.
Velika: City of Wheels: Among the mortal races, the humans were the only one that never built cities or great empires; a curse laid upon them by their creator, Gidd, forced them to wander as nomads for twenty centuries...
Aaaaargh, it can't come fast enough!!!
It takes longer to level in Rift than it does in TERA, how on earth could anyone possibly call TERA a grind?
The odd thing is, Diablo is a grinder and that game is world famous, people are itching for Diablo 3, but its just a dungeon grinder.
Thats what Tera is like, its morel ike a super polished dungeon grinder. Not like Aion really, Aion's grind wasnt fun because you were limited to one or two area's.
So yea, im looking forward to this, just disapointed by how long its going to take to come out =[
The longer the wait the better IMO. Tera looks to be a fun game now but it still has issues that need to be fixed. The longer the wait the less bugs we will have. Korean's can be quite forgiving....NA / EU less so.....
Velika: City of Wheels: Among the mortal races, the humans were the only one that never built cities or great empires; a curse laid upon them by their creator, Gidd, forced them to wander as nomads for twenty centuries...
Call me again when Frogster get's invovled and ready to lainch the EU-version.... sometime in 2013 *facepalm*
There is no IP block between NA & EU. As a matter of fact their were quite a few EU players that tested Tera on EME's seattle test server.
Velika: City of Wheels: Among the mortal races, the humans were the only one that never built cities or great empires; a curse laid upon them by their creator, Gidd, forced them to wander as nomads for twenty centuries...
yea im fairly certain that when I've read about the 'western' release, they always said "North America and Europe"
To be fair, korean games that come over are usually highly polished, with Aion apart from the hideous Queue's at the start there were very very few bugs.
Well, they are also getting ready for their test in March
http://tera-europe.com/en/news,id277,european_tests_tera_get_ready_rock.html
You know there can be more types of grind like in AION the xp grind, the kinah grind, the AP grind, boss drops grind
I dont care if I can level fast. But if I need to grind 287479128734 money to be competetive or I have to run one instance 2318749 times to get better gear or I have to spend one year PVPing to get some decent PVP gear... That is grind not only the XP
At least one person here gets it. TERA has grind in multiple aspects of the game, I never said it was a level grind(although I have been told thats in there too). TERA has more of the typical Aion/Lineage 2 style grinds in it where many aspects of the game require bulk time to achieve anything or to get anywhere. As much as I liked Aion and have stuck with it I cant handle another of this type of MMO. I am also very weary of these Korean / overseas companies that not only do not understand the Westerization aspect but also the wall of communication between what western players want and their designers is always a problem that none of these foreign companies seems to have overcome...or even seems to want to.
When wow was released in Korea they don't change the gameplay increasing the "grind" or adding random "east" stuff, they simply translate it. We all know that Tera is a east game in the first place, and we will like to play a eastern mmo not something completely different. Translation + a better exp curve is what the fans want. Nothing more.
RPGs are BY NATURE grinder games.
How many of you have played FF7, raise your hands, ok good almost all of you.
Now think back, how many times did you run back and forth trying to get random encounters to level your toons and get rare drops and level up your materia and work on your golden chocobo.
Ah now you remember, grinding, its literally the MEAT of an RPG.
Yes, grind is a timesink, but there is redundant and boring grind like many F2P games with no end game content, and intelligent grind like in Tera or Wow or GW2, where you have a lot of quest and missions till the cap and a lot of content. Grind is unavoidable in any mmo, west or east, but can be do in different ways to make the game more fun without feeling the grind at all.
Well then what kind of grind IS it then? Its clearly not an xp grind, thats been proven by many people playing. Its not a boss drop grind as the drop rate in TERA is almost WoW easy. Its not a gold grind, because gold falls into your lap while leveling. And there is no AP in TERA. So which is it? I mean, obviously your friends must know if they played it, right?
The only thing I've remotely seen that takes long in TERA is soloing elite mobs and instances, and instances are significantly faster and more fun than in Aion. Honestly, I really cant see this comparison to Aion at all (gameplay-wise, not artstyle).
Sup.
I don't get it.Isn't there the same gear/gold grind in every mmo out there?Or not?Kinda confused right now
. And where is the point on getting everything valuable there is in a game without effort?
By the way if you think that leveling in tera is grindy,then form a group and get 1-38(38 being the level cap in korean beta) in 4 days maximum.
I'm guessing Aion is their first MMO and they've never had to do the whole raiding for gear thing in WoW or other MMOs.
What you mean by effort ? Spend ridiculous amount of time runing some stupid instance gazilion times (in order to get that 0.1% drop rate) which requires absolutely no skill ? or a skill based instance/raid where you need a group of skilled players but when you finish it you have 100% chance on some best loot ?
In other words. Today's MMO games needs to be causual (time) friendly in order to be successful. You know the players that can play 10hours each day are very tiny group of potential MMO audience
How do you know so much about Tera's endgame? Are those even true? Because i have no clue about how endgame loot will work,but for level ups the best gear you can get(except some artifact drops from bosses) is from crafting and it requires almost no grind at all.The dungeons are also a lot of fun.I mean i did 4 of them and i repeated them 4-5 times each,not for the loot, but because the boss fights were completely different from any other mmo out there and were a lot of fun to me.
Edit: The 27 level + dungeons dropped an artifact each run.And after all,i can't see how 20 people zerging a boss requires more skills or tactics than a five man group.