Jason said:Nirrtix said:
As to Alpha it self, it will not be out for a while :P
I'll be more than happy to play some PRE-alpha then. Just send the link to the client in my inbox. Thanx in advance :)
medousa said:
Jason said:
Nirrtix said:
As to Alpha it self, it will not be out for a while :P
I'll be more than happy to play some PRE-alpha then. Just send the link to the client in my inbox. Thanx in advance :)
Rofl, gold! I have donated an amount for pathfinder pledge, that was yesterday and I will not receive a pledge, which I knew I would not due to the subs being taken down last week! Hopefully I will be invited Into alpha though! It will be an exciting time for all of us!!
Alpha will be a closed and controlled event with paid members mate, a lot of pledges still have Alpha/beta access, we just removed the lifetime subscriptions that would hurt our subscription model longevity going forward.
You are welcome to purchase a pledge to get in on Alpha though and there is no guarantee that we will remove that too once we feel we get enough, we don;t want to flood alpha, it will be strictly testing of mechanics, algorithms, combat, features and Beta is more for stress testing and bug fixing with more people, so we may open up some Beta events for everyone but the majority of it will be for our paid backers :)
Not going to lie the games I have Alpha tested I normally burn out on, but they normally turn out to be pretty polished and none of the issues persist that i had reported which is nice.
If I support to an alpha package etc I will mainly just do focus testing on certain things, or requests from the dev team they want us to work on. I really dont want to kill the final game for myself, but will be more than happy to test specifics, and certain things I feel are my pet peeves of broken things in mmos.
I've been a tester since the mid 90's and I just don't understand something about this system. You would value a tester who pays you money over someone with my experience ? This isn't about playing a game its about developing a game so maybe i'm misunderstanding something.
DJay said:
I've been a tester since the mid 90's and I just don't understand something about this system. You would value a tester who pays you money over someone with my experience ? This isn't about playing a game its about developing a game so maybe i'm misunderstanding something.
Adding alpha/beta to donation tiers was a way to entice people to contribute. It's a paradigm that a lot of MMOs are using now. They become a defacto early access.
Reht said:
DJay said:
I've been a tester since the mid 90's and I just don't understand something about this system. You would value a tester who pays you money over someone with my experience ? This isn't about playing a game its about developing a game so maybe i'm misunderstanding something.
Adding alpha/beta to donation tiers was a way to entice people to contribute. It's a paradigm that a lot of MMOs are using now. They become a defacto early access.
also the amount of money to get into alpha is quite a bit, and considering the sum i think it speaks to the dedication of the donators to make this game as great as possible.
Chimerical said:
Do you tend to test those races/classes you plan on playing when game goes live, or do you test races/classes you don't intend on playing, to keep an element of surprise when game goes live? I've done some testing in past, but never alpha and was wondering how you manage to keep content interesting if you've extensively tested it?
As a pre-alpha member, I intend to test as much as I can. I consider this period more about sending feedback than learning the game - there's a high probability that things will very drastically change between pre-alpha and release so trying to learn combat skills etc at that point is just a waste of your time.
As to keeping content interesting, I don't play these games for the content - I would have quite happily never seen most encounters in Vanguard again after completing them for the 10th or 11th time - no, I play for the community and the friends I make in game, the guild spirit and comradery :) Extensive testing won't change that.
Gawd said:
Reht said:
DJay said:
I've been a tester since the mid 90's and I just don't understand something about this system. You would value a tester who pays you money over someone with my experience ? This isn't about playing a game its about developing a game so maybe i'm misunderstanding something.
Adding alpha/beta to donation tiers was a way to entice people to contribute. It's a paradigm that a lot of MMOs are using now. They become a defacto early access.
also the amount of money to get into alpha is quite a bit, and considering the sum i think it speaks to the dedication of the donators to make this game as great as possible.
only $45 for me :D i got the early explorer pledge package with alpha invite
I hope that I am in alpha/Beta but we shall see. If I get in I am going to go really old school when it comes to choosing race/class combos.. I am going to pull out the d12 for classes and the d10 for races. Each will race/class will be assigned a number and when it is time to log in for testing purposes I have the choices already made for me :)
Gelax said:
Gawd said:
also the amount of money to get into alpha is quite a bit, and considering the sum i think it speaks to the dedication of the donators to make this game as great as possible.
only $45 for me :D i got the early explorer pledge package with alpha invite
I think he probably meant pre-alpha which was $375 IIRC.
I have whichever pledge got a lifetime sub and pre-alpha access. I'd actually upgrade my pledge since I like what the team is doing, but I think I would lose both my lifetime sub and pre-alpha :(.
Anyways, I'll probably try a bit of everything in pre-alpha when I can, but the pre-alpha is really for testing whatever the devs specifically need tested, so that comes first. The pledges with pre-alpha imply its focused testing at developer direction.
On a side note, Caesium, did you play a rogue in EQ on the E'ci server in a guild called Last Hope?
Mannikin said:
On a side note, Caesium, did you play a rogue in EQ on the E'ci server in a guild called Last Hope?
Not me I'm afraid, Vanguard was my first and only really-seriously played MMO so far (dabbled in Aion, Rift, GW2 but none of them had a patch on VG obviously).
Caesium said:
Not me I'm afraid, Vanguard was my first and only really-seriously played MMO so far (dabbled in Aion, Rift, GW2 but none of them had a patch on VG obviously).
I figured it was a long shot. Would have been cool to stumble across an old friend here :)
Mannikin said:
I have whichever pledge got a lifetime sub and pre-alpha access. I'd actually upgrade my pledge since I like what the team is doing, but I think I would lose both my lifetime sub and pre-alpha :(.
This might be something Kils or another green should talk about publicly in another thread.
Vortikai said:
Mannikin said:
I have whichever pledge got a lifetime sub and pre-alpha access. I'd actually upgrade my pledge since I like what the team is doing, but I think I would lose both my lifetime sub and pre-alpha :(.
This might be something Kils or another green should talk about publicly in another thread.
This is pretty straight forward, if you have a lifetime sub and you now move to a new pledge without one, then you lose it, what ever the pledge packages say now, is what you will get and have honoured if anything changes down the track, those that were quick and got in early got lucky but we will not be giving anymore lifetime subs away in the future while we try and maintain a sustainable subscription based business model for you all.
We are working on ways to let you donate as much or as little as you would like but it is proving to be difficult on this site.
To those of us that started this thing from the beginning, and donated a lot to see this through I can tell you that we as a whole are more then dedicated to make this game transition as smoothly as possible. We put our money where our mouths are so to speak. People have been waiting YEARS to see something like this come to fruit, and we want to make that happen. Are there alpha/beta testers that are out there that can do just as good a job that can't afford to put up the cash? Of course there are, and who is to say some of those special people won't get invited to join us on this endeavor ( I mean I wouldn't mind at all). You just have to be very careful on how you flood the alpha/beta testers, because most just want to play the game, and not give any critical feedback. I remember doing alpha VG it was brutal, but I also remember when it finally went live I was glad things that I had problems with were fixed and running smoothly. Not saying all things, but some were. I look at Rift as one of the most smooth easy launches on the planet before it went live. They had tons of beta testers to make sure everything went as planned. Not a lot of crashes, bugs, downtime waiting on servers etc. If Pantheon were to model a launch like that it would be all about beta not alpha in my opinion.
Kilsin said:
This is pretty straight forward, if you have a lifetime sub and you now move to a new pledge without one, then you lose it, what ever the pledge packages say now, is what you will get and have honoured if anything changes down the track, those that were quick and got in early got lucky but we will not be giving anymore lifetime subs away in the future while we try and maintain a sustainable subscription based business model for you all.
We are working on ways to let you donate as much or as little as you would like but it is proving to be difficult on this site.
Thanks for pointing this out - I originally pledged Journeyman on kickstarter, and had it transferred over via the Bridge pledge - I think that's the one that gets me pre-alpha and $1 subscription, right? What you're saying here is if I donate any more money now, I'll lose that? That kinda sucks, cos I was hoping to get upto a purple name sometime :(