Why can't I be an alpha tester?
So? What's the big deal? I'd be great at it?
I'm sure many of your are asking similar questions, and I don't blame you. We've all lost something that was important to all of us in different ways (or just really want to try it for the first time after hearing so much hype), and we want to get in and jump around.
Well, there are a bunch of reasons why we're both keeping things so small and being so picky about who we're letting in.
Group size:
@aroha did a great job outlining some of the reasons we're keeping the group small, and most of them are technical in nature (http://wp.elevengiants.com/?p=398). Aside from that, since we're working a bit more on stability and scalability (while rolling out some features that we've been working on getting working again), we don't have too much direction to give testers aside from, "Just play around in the game; try out as much as you can, travel as much as you can, just do it all". We've been monitoring how the server has been holding up to the stresses that the group we've allowed access to have been causing it, and expanding the group accordingly every time it seems we've gotten the server to behave a little better. So it's basically just a balancing act between trying to allow as many people in as possible so we can test how the server holds up and keeping the server from crashing so frequently that we need to concentrate more on keeping it up than on fixing things (this actually happened a few weeks ago, when we shut down in order to fix a couple of issues that were causing constant crashes and stuck players). Trust me, we want to get more people in as much as you want to get in.
Pickiness:
Basically, since the group is so small right now, we're trying to keep the group restricted to people that have earned our trust in one way or another. We want to make sure every person in our testing group is somebody that we know will be able to interact with ourselves and the other testers in as positive a manner as possible and work within the organized structure that we've set up to perform alpha duties well. And rest assured, even though most of you may feel you'd work well with this, we probably just haven't interacted with you enough to get a good feel for that. Don't worry, once the testing group gets a bit bigger, we'll start letting most anyone in.
-Kaiyon
I'm sure many of your are asking similar questions, and I don't blame you. We've all lost something that was important to all of us in different ways (or just really want to try it for the first time after hearing so much hype), and we want to get in and jump around.
Well, there are a bunch of reasons why we're both keeping things so small and being so picky about who we're letting in.
Group size:
@aroha did a great job outlining some of the reasons we're keeping the group small, and most of them are technical in nature (http://wp.elevengiants.com/?p=398). Aside from that, since we're working a bit more on stability and scalability (while rolling out some features that we've been working on getting working again), we don't have too much direction to give testers aside from, "Just play around in the game; try out as much as you can, travel as much as you can, just do it all". We've been monitoring how the server has been holding up to the stresses that the group we've allowed access to have been causing it, and expanding the group accordingly every time it seems we've gotten the server to behave a little better. So it's basically just a balancing act between trying to allow as many people in as possible so we can test how the server holds up and keeping the server from crashing so frequently that we need to concentrate more on keeping it up than on fixing things (this actually happened a few weeks ago, when we shut down in order to fix a couple of issues that were causing constant crashes and stuck players). Trust me, we want to get more people in as much as you want to get in.
Pickiness:
Basically, since the group is so small right now, we're trying to keep the group restricted to people that have earned our trust in one way or another. We want to make sure every person in our testing group is somebody that we know will be able to interact with ourselves and the other testers in as positive a manner as possible and work within the organized structure that we've set up to perform alpha duties well. And rest assured, even though most of you may feel you'd work well with this, we probably just haven't interacted with you enough to get a good feel for that. Don't worry, once the testing group gets a bit bigger, we'll start letting most anyone in.
-Kaiyon
Comments
for myself, i've waited this long, and a few months back i never thought i'd tread the streets of Ur again, so just the thought of it happening again sometime in the future is enough!
To think I could hum a tune
In Ur by July or June
Or even ever...
also, how soon can we start throwing moneys at you all to help the dev?