The Farse of Open Beta

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Lord DaKaren
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The Farse of Open Beta

Post by Lord DaKaren » Fri Aug 14, 2009 9:39 pm

FYI: The NDA on the Closed Beta testers was lifted at 05:57:31 PM EST today by Chrissay.

Lets take a blow by blow rip at the fluffy drek Mythic put out today about SA. My comments will appear in RED.

It’s official—Open Beta has begun! Join your fellow Britannians as you venture into the Stygian Abyss on our Retribution server. Explore all that Ter Mur, the Underworld and the caverns of the Abyss have to offer.

See the vast array of unfinished areas, broken code, buggy housing, craptastic art from 1997, and half-assed ideas! I mean chicken coops…Really? They spent TWO YEARS ‘designing’ this, not the two or three months that it appears. Yay.


What do we need from you? Data, and lots of it!

Our stalwart and tireless closed beta testers have been hard at work already helping us to reach this milestone, but now the time has come to let loose all the steely denizens of UO’s community—let all citizens’ voices be heard!

And ignored because they don’t care! The beta testers don’t think SA is ready to be published; neither the content OR the hideous Frankenstein ‘enhanced client’. Sorry, but a 16bit KR is not ‘enhanced’.

What can you expect?

You can expect BUGS, and LOTS OF THEM!

Part of testing is stress testing. This means we want to have so many people on the servers that they’re bursting at the seams. Why? Because it helps us catch issues we might not normally see. If problems arise, never fear! We’ll be standing by to ensure that any downtime is minimal, so you can get right back to testing!

This is BETA—Bugs Emerge. Take Advil.

Sorry, but these bugs have been around for months and you’ve ignored them. They aren’t new, Mythic is lazy, and YOU get to pay $29.99 for it. YAY!

However, beyond the morass and sulfurous steam of bugs and lag lays the Promised Land of the UO’s 8th Expansion. Fight the good fight, and help us deliver it with valor.

But not with professionalism, creativity, or quality!

There are LOTS of features and systems we want you to focus your attention on, so equip your + 2 Magnifying Glass of Indiscriminate Assessment (+5 vs. Arachnoids and EMs!)

Lots of broken features and systems. So many in fact that we can’t keep our documentation correct, or bother to tell you how half the things work! “Explore!”

And lets not being the EMs into this, they being us what we actually want, and have done an exemplary job of it.


The system where we need the most focus is Imbuing. While we want you to travel the world listening to the new soundtrack, slaying monsters, trying the quests, and simply exploring … we would also like to get more input on the system we feel will impact UO the most as a whole. We are updating this system daily, so please be thorough and detailed in your feedback.

Yes! Please test the hell out of the most uber, balance destroying, and resource intensive idea we’ve ever ripped off from Blizzard… er… No, sorry, can’t deny that Imbuing is a bastardized rip off of WoW’s enchanting.

We will be collecting player input the entire time, and have a Stratics House of Commons chat planned for mid-week to gather constructive feedback that will enhance the overall game-play before the final release of Stygian Abyss. Keep an eye on the UO Herald for more details!

Not that we are going to respond to any questions of comments that are in any way critical or negative about SA! Since we can rarely be bothered to respond to such things on the internal beta forums. Denial, it’s not just for supporters of Casca anymore..

As you explore, be sure to take a minute to fill out the introductory survey found HERE (http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=y ... EFxA_3d_3d). From these surveys, we can better measure how your play experience changes throughout the Open Beta Test.

Yes, fill out yet ANOTHER survey that we might, or might not bother to look at. Oh, who are we kidding.. We just like wasting your time...Its content!

It’s also worth noting that there are some goodies we’re holding close to our chest. We’ll have a publish during Open Beta week based on current feedback from internal testers, as well as initial feedback over the weekend that we feel has merit—so keep an eye out for updates.

Goodies? Such as? Like a finished client? Appealing art? Content that isn’t horribly, horribly broken? Another publish? Yay, more bugs! Keep an eye out for updates – meaning more cryptic messages that have words in a vague sentence-like formations but without meaning. Go Mythic!

Oh, and by the way, The Slasher of Veils cannot be killed. Don’t try. He is my favorite. So stay away. You will die. Oh yes. You will … die.

Sadistic much? Oh, wait, you’re pushing out yet another unfinished bug-ridden expansion on your paying customers. Rhetorical question. Sorry.

Two final notes:

You do not need the enhanced client to play the retail version OR to play on Retribution. We spent a lot time making certain that the content is playable with a special version of the Classic Client, which you can download HERE (http://l3-cdn2.nap.eamythic.com/uo/sa/U ... 25_35a.exe).

Yeah, ‘cuz holding on to a 13 year old client to appease the luddites that either can’t be bothered to bring their PCs into this millennium, or are so hung up on ancient artwork is a sound business model. Niche markets are your friend!

This is not the final release of the game. This is Open Beta testing to collect even more information from more people..

So we can ignore it and push out this gods-awful mess and get monies!


The devs are currently on Centerian time. It’s a 37 hour work day … so one of two things can happen … (Name that movie.)

37 hour work day. Yes, that would explain the state of things. The poor decisions, and assbackwards thinking. Crack that whip!

See you on Retribution!

Not so much.

------

Sigh. I’ve played the closed beta on Retribution.

So much doesn’t work yet, or lays unfinished. The enhanced client is still missing a ton of mission-critical systems… No chat logging, housing that looks like tinker toys, clipping issues like mad, and mobile artwork of such insanely POOR quality that the entire art team should be terminated immediately.

The decrepit 2D artwork looks like crap on the KR ground. Some things have partial black lines around them and look like they were pasted onto the environment like stickers. Other things blend in as if they are camouflaged. Mythic has been shown several methods by PLAYERS to remedy this issue so that the 2D art is somewhat acceptable. Have they shown any interest in improving the quality? Hell no.

The mobiles are of such a low resolution that a wizard’s hat seen from the back can look down right obscene. The avatar seems half dwarf/half crayon scribble - every mob is fuzzy and undefined. They turned the KR mobs (which were of a modern resolution) into shit.

Words fail at how epically Mythic has failed in bringing us a client that will last another ’10 years.’

My grade on the Enhanced Client: a VERY generous D+

My grade on the SA content: B-, not worth the $29.99
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-Lord DaKaren

High Chancellor of Virtue of the High Council of Britannia
Archmage of the Order of the Etheral Ankh

Administrator of UORPC.NET
do you have the character?

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