"In the final minutes of Pre-Beta... we never gave up. We never gave in. We looked into the eyes of the THE DESTROYER OF WORLDS and we saw hope. BATTLE ON!"
CLOSED BETA is LIVE!
"It is the END OF THE (Pre-Beta) WORLD!"
On Monday we started the upgrade of AdventureQuest 3D to CLOSED BETA. At the request by @Final_aqw on Twitter, I posted an up to the minute, play by play as team does daring open heart surgery on the game servers in preparation. Put on your surgical masks, wash your hands, and refresh this page periodically for the breaking news as it happens. Posts will be made in reverse order so you always see the newest things first.
QUEST: You are part of the team on this too. When you read this... go down and comment "Reporting for duty!" (Say it in your head with the Counterstrike voice.)
TOP 10 "End of the World Tokens"
During the last hours of Pre-Beta villains came to destroy our world. Rare End of the World Tokens started dropping on their armies of monsters. It was completely a chance thing.. but the results can be viewed as a fun little leader-board!
Zhirael - 12 Tokens
ESCMemes - 12 Tokens
Phineas - 9 Tokens
OrokiNz - 9 Tokens
Xanalar - 8 Tokens
Moom - 8 Tokens
LuisazoXD - 8 Tokens
Phantom - 8 Tokens
EVIL ZANT 7 tokens
pou123321 7 Tokens
Did you find any? If so, post how many you got below.
Oishii and Content team still have bugs, but says we can roll out the current content and do a Hot Fix shortly after release.
Cross-server communication issue fixed.
Warlic reports his code is committed.
Korin is animating horse things... he had a very scared look on his face (if you can see it through the brown paper bag he wears) when committing to the Friday Deadline.
Several Guardian reported needing a change of underpants after reading the SURPRISE announcement.
We are getting close to show time... get ready to help us test Closed Beta!
Guardians just got bumped and are now getting the Collector's Edition Items and Badge including Elite Guardian Rider Mount Transformation. We also loaded their accounts up with Dragon Crystals and Potions.
12:00 "IT IS HIGH NOON!" - It is always high noon somewhere.. and that somewhere... is here.
While it is not possible to do proper mounts in AQ3D (Yet)...
We had a clever idea...
A very clever work-around....
Guardians about to get some love.
10:30am - Dages Photoshop goes on 3D Strike O_O
After updating his graphics drivers, Photoshop's GPU acceleration stopped working... this does not impact the current release in any way... but it is a indicator that the machines are plotting to rise up and take us over. Be on guard!
10:00am - Entire team at their stations and online!
Checking in with Zhoom on Database Progress
Checking on cross-server sync issue
Oishii reports that they are still working on a balancing issue
Artix is finishing the post he promised you for today :D There are going to be some happy Guardians
Apparently the Infernal monster in Crimson Caverns continues to respawn defying all logic. Yergen just did the equivalent of the Star Wars Episode III Darth Vader "NOOOOOOOO" in response.
The sentence above threw me into a laughing fit... further illustrating the dangerous side effects of sleep deprivation. When was the last time I blinked? *sips more coffee*
10:00pm -Testers are bug hunting.
9:00pm - Got a new record for Mosquito bites walking Daimyo
6:00pm - SERVERS OFFLINE FOR UPDATE! (See you tomorrow!)
Thank you to everyone who joined us for the "End of the (Pre-Beta) World!"
Get a good nights rest and be ready for Closed Beta to open.
Artix announced that Guardians and Backers will be receiving several big unexpected rewards in addition to the backer rewards being released in Closed Beta. Full post on that coming early tomorrow, so check the site in the morning. (The shocked Player reaction online was PRICELESS!)
Through the night we will be focusing on a vital server to server communications issue and a gameplay issue that needs to be resolved before launch. So we sent the content team home... Programmers.. BACK IN YOUR CHAIRS! *WHIPS*
5:00pm - SERVERS ARE GOING DOWN AT 6PM! THE LAST HOUR OF THE WORLD IS HERE!
Join us for the End of the (Pre-Beta) World
The servers will be down for 19 hours minimum
Launch ETA - Tomorrow Afternoon
4:30pm - Pre-testing Database Update
It is nice that we can leave the existing Pre-Beta up until we have everything 100% ready to go.
Zhoom has us verifying that the database upgrade scripts he made are delivering the correct rewards.
The skeletons in the closed beta tutorial are killing us all O_O Ultra hard mode?
3:30pm - What to expect when the servers go down
Unlike usual updates, the servers will be down a long while.
I will continue updating you as we perform each step of the update.
We will post the new patch notes for you to read :D
We will make an announcement Design Notes post for Guardians and Kickstarter backers detailing all of the rewards released with this update and how to get them :D Short answer: Guardian Alistar is standing just outside the tower and will have most rewards until the Guardian Tower is finished being constructed.
Because things will take so long some people will make fake claims that the entire team secretly snuck out of the lab, hopped on a plane, and flew to Japan to eat sushi and shop for electronics in Akiba.
The chanting for "CLOSED BETA NOW!" ... "CLOSED BETA NOW!" will intensify.
There will be riots in the streets and all the major news channels will be covering it.
World Leaders will meet at a summit to talk about the release of AdventureQuest 3D
By this point, the national Coffee reserves will have run into an all time low creating the stocks for coffee companies to sky rocket throwing international trade into a frenzy.
Artix will suddenly remember he needs to walk Daimyo.
I am sure everything will turn out fine. Just fine.
Excuse me, I need to walk Daimyo and in an unrelated note, look up plane ticket prices.
2:00pm Warfiends take control of the Town of Battleon
The Mysterious voice from the fountain is gone and the Destroyer has taken center stage. An army of Warfiends as seized the town of Battleon.
Artix is doing rounds and checking in on the team to get an ETA.
1:30pm - Why are they so tiny!?
The world's smallest and fastest Sneevils are swarming the town of Battleon... "End of the World" tokens are now dropping from monsters at 2% (Only three people have managed to get one thus far.)
The 3D content is almost fixed that urgent map bug. It is my experience that certain bugs hide and only jump out to scare you when you are ready to release.
1:05pm - The Ghosts got bodies.... BIG BONE BODIES!
Giant undead skeletons are now attacking the town of Battleon.
They got bigger... anid how have a 0.5% chance to drop an end of the world token.
1:00pm- GHOSTS!
Meanwhile, in the last hours of Pre-BETA it is the end of the world, a wave of Ghosts have appeared in the town of Battleon. Ghosts of our future selves coming back in time to haunt us...
Xero made something special for Guardians. As you know, we do not have a system for formal mounts in the game yet. But using the features we do have working, we crafted something special...
12:30pm - BUGS!
Giant Spiders have started attacking the town of BattleOn
Team is debugging a server to server data refresh sync issue (impacts Closed Beta only)
12:15pm A MYSTERIOUS voice has appeared in-game on the Pre-Beta server.
Claims are being made that a player among you is the destroyer who will bring about the end of the world.
It is known that whomever this player is... the prophecy says they will post a weird screenshot on Artix's Twitter. (If you might be the Destroyer, post some screenies!)
12:00 "IT IS HIGH NOON!" - It is always high noon, somewhere.
Everyone is finishing work on remaining critical systems... we will leave the servers online until all remaining tasks get the big green check mark.
TOP TASKS: Waiting on 2 models, Testing the redeem system, Re-statting items, and Platinum Lady discovered a few new major bugs requiring map updates.
Maybe I should log on and mess with players during the last hours of Pre-Beta while waiting for the team's status updates >_>
11:30 am @Final_aqw requested a play by play... OMG... O_O so much do. Maybe other people will enjoy it. But I have to say everything that happens in a play by play. What if things going terribly, terribly wrong!? People will see us fall on our face. Or maybe.. just maybe... they will see us actually pull it off. Only one way to find out -- it is GO TIME!!!
11:00 am - Oishii came in! She may be a zombie. Waiting for Paladin to do a "Sense Undead" check.
10:00 am - Team reporting for duty!
Cysero came in! Still sick and will likely infect us all like a plague dragon.. but glad to have you here!
Xero came in! He told me "I was really concerned when I read the design notes yesterday and found out I had a serious infection and might die." *crickets* Then he showed me a Dragon.
Artix, Dage, Zhoom, Llusion, Thyton, Warlic, and rest of team in position!
9:00 am COOOOOFFFFFFFEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
8:30 am - Oishii has gone eerily silent... may have been KO'd by Sandman at Keyboard
8:00 am - Oishii is still up making database changes
7:00 am - Oishii is still up making database changes
6:00 am - Oishii is still up making database changes
5:00 am - Oishii is still up making database changes
4:00 am - Oishii is still up making database changes
3:00 am - Oishii is still up making database changes
