Blog Post #84 Alpha Testing Week of July 10th 2014

Pexxx

The following belongs solely to goblinworks. Source https://goblinworks.com/blog/alpha-testing-week-of-July-10th-2014/

 

Alpha Test Update

We are preparing for Week 3 of the Alpha Test.  This week we will continue to use the build from last weekend, which we moved up a week to accommodate PaizoCon.  We are now on our regularly scheduled cadence of planning for a new build every other week.

This week the servers will be on line from 3pm (Pacific) to 6am (Pacific) Thursday and Friday.  If we elect to extend into the weekend we'll make that announcement on Friday.

We will be sending an update email to all the Alpha testers today (Thursday) with links to download the current version of the client as well as server hours.

Forging Magic

We've had a confirmed report that Vexx <DBM> successfully crafted a +2 long sword.  As far as we know this is the first player-crafted +2 weapon ever made in Pathfinder Online.  Congrats!

The Guards Are Filled With Eternal Hate

Be careful who you assault.  If you attack the Thornguards they will remember the offense ... forever.  You'll earn their eternal hatred and any time you are within their detection range the guard you attacked will pursue you.  Your reputation will recover (slowly) if you engage in PvP, but if you anger the Thornguard their hate has no limit.  It's been quite entertaining to see the occasional player zooming through a town pursued by an angry guard!

[ We are probably going to be updating this system during Alpha so the Guards may cut you some slack eventually.  But for now, know that once they know you they won't forget you! ]

All The Kids are Twitching

It's a thing.  Check out twitch.tv for people livestreaming their Alpha experiences.  The Goblinworks staff has been entranced by the opportunity to watch folks exploring the River Kingdoms.  And you can too!

Community Manger Bonny has assembled a list of links of people who have been streaming Alpha play.  When the servers are live we encourage you to watch their streams!

Goblinworks Official Channel
Dakcenturi
Nihimon
CBDunkerson
DeciusBrutus
Kitsune
Thurston Hillman
SDShannonS
Dario
Team TEO
Gol Morbis

Land Rush Updates

Lots of movement on the Leaderboard this week.  Some groups are adding and removing members as they consolidate and break apart.  Others appear to be manipulating their membership totals to disrupt the "Hunker Down" bonuses of smaller groups.

Remember that your Guild can participate in the Land Rush even if you didn't purchase a Crowdforger Guild Reward during the Kickstarter.  All you need is a person with Early Enrollment access to request to be added to the Leaderboard and then anyone with Alpha or Early Enrollment access can join your guild and add their numbers to your total.

The Leaderboard is a promotional event to generate the first 33 Settlements in the game.  You will not be bound to play with any group based on your participating in the Land Rush.  You don't need to be a Guild on the Leaderboard to reserve a Company name if you were a Crowdforger Guild backer (we'll have a different process for that closer to the start of Early Enrollment).

We encourage people to consolidate into larger groups.  As we begin the War of Towers in Early Enrollment having a large number of people supporting your Settlement will be extremely beneficial.  While the Land Rush doesn't commit you to an in-game affiliation it is a great time to start making community bonds that you can transfer to the live game.

Ideascale Crowdforging

We've been very happy with the Ideascale tool and the visibility it has given us regarding the kinds of things folks are interested in having us work on.

You can see our Ideascale Crowdforging tool at this link:

https://pathfinderonlinecrowdforging.ideascale.com/

In just a couple of weeks of operation we have received 180 ideas, from 364 users.  We're paying a lot of attention to what ideas get submitted and how the voting stacks up on each idea.  We highly encourage anyone who wants to suggest features for consideration to submit them to Ideascale!

PaizoCon Wrap Up

We want to thank Paizo for hosting us at PaizoCon last weekend.  It was really great to meet many of the folks from the forums and show the game off to the attendees of the convention.  We generated a lot of very useful feedback, saw a number of bugs, and were able to answer many questions about gameplay.

Our next public event will be GenCon in mid-August.