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Pirates of the Burning Sea Dev Journals: Life with Beta
Pirates of the Burning Sea Producer, John Scott Tynes, describes his "Life with Beta" in this newest developer journal.
By Guest Writer on January 10, 2007
Life with Beta
Pirates of the Burning Sea Producer, John Scott Tynes, describes his "Life with Beta" in this newest developer journal.
Operating an MMO beta is fantastic. You get all the fun of interacting with real players who are really playing your game, but you're still below the radar enough that the pressure isn't overwhelming. It's a great opportunity to learn what it's going to be like to run a live service.
We started our beta program a year ago, in late 2005. Players who tried the game back then and then tried it again more recently are amazed at how much has changed. But that's what a year of development gets you! The game has come a long, long way in that year and is much better than ever before.
;)
This past December, just before the holidays, we made the big jump to 24/7 operation. Prior to this, we were opening the servers on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday evenings, and also on Saturday and Sunday mornings. We kept the times restricted so that our testers wouldn't burn out too soon and also so we could have GMs in game to solve problems.
Happily, though, we just don't have many problems that require GM intervention. And now that we're about to release the level 31-50 mission content to the beta, we're not so worried about burnout. Plus, we really wanted our testers to fully engage the player-driven economy, and that means they need more frequent access so the production and auction systems can really work.
So, we rolled out a new build, turned on the servers, and left the office for the Christmas holidays.
Oops! We didn't really talk through the 24/7 switch as thoroughly as we should, because the beta has really been pretty problem-free. What happened next was a great reminder of how transitioning from product development to a service-oriented mindset can be a challenge. But that's why they call it a beta . . .
;)
The new build introduced a bug we didn't catch in our testbed session, which we run prior to releasing a new build to the full beta. One of our servers was taking an unusually long time to start up, long enough that our automated cluster controller was killing it and starting a replacement. This meant it couldn't start up successfully without manual intervention after the daily reboot.
With our staff scattered to the four winds, it became a game of hot potato every day to ensure that someone could remote desktop in to the beta cluster and kick the server into starting up. For a couple of days I would check the beta forums at some idle moment, expecting to read about happy players sailing along, and find that once again we hadn't dealt with the server startup. Argh!
Fortunately we got a handle on the issue and applied a fix to the server startup problem. But it made for a couple of exciting days right in the middle of opening presents and making Christmas dinner for the family.
;)
I gathered some statistics about what our beta testers were doing before the switch to 24/7 and after to compare the effect that had on the beta. Here are some numbers you might find interesting about what happened after we switched to 24/7, based on a comparison between two three-day periods before and after the switch:
- Broadsides fired: up 44%
- Missions completed: up 78%
- Recipes used: up 14%
- Auction listings created: up 31%
- Auction items purchased: up 61%
The best news for our testing purposes here is that while participation in the production side of the economy went up slightly, participation in purchasing player-made goods went up hugely. We thought moving to a 24/7 schedule would greatly improve the auction system and sure enough, it did.
Anyway, that's the word this month from the Burning Sea. We're six months until launch and full steam ahead!
- John Scott Tynes
Producer, Pirates of the Burning Sea
Sigh six months to release - - - - - - - - Six months before i can havoc the carribian seas with my SeaHawk.
Its reads and looks good -
Have you also noticed that you cant find a single, Beta is bad topic, leaked anywhere on the net. Ive tried and tried to find one and theres absolutly nothing out there.
A beta running with no problems???? Beta left to its own devices ove xmas with no trouble and little gm intervention!!!!!! Apart from the remote server star up. This is unheard of with 6 months to go . What an amazing job Rusty and the crew must be doing. /clap.
I played the game for a little bit at Gencon and met the developers. They were AWESOME! You guys are going to be completely baffled by the character creation. There is so much different things you can do it's MINDBLOWING. I have never seen this sort of character customization. I was also surprised by how crisp the game looked. For a game that has been in development for so long, I was expecting outdated graphics, but received a colorful eyeful.
This is one of the few MMO's I'm actually looking forward to. Vanguard? No thanks. WoW's expansion? Fun for a few minutes. Conan? Meh... Warhammer? WoW, take 2....
This, and *hopefully* Star Trek: Online will keep me interested for months/years to come.
Edit: Oh yes, and Hero's Journey looks very intriguing as well.
I've always liked Pirates! and such, but I'm no grognard of historical navy vessels, I just want to have some fun in a setting I've always thought very interesting (I do wish the Dutch were a "Player Nation" in the game).
Now if they'd just let me into the beta...
One comment I was/am worried about was a comment from a pirate beta tester who said that his big 50 gun ship was turned into a bathtub due to "terror skills" and that he was unable to move or even shoot has me extremely worried about the power of such skills over player ships. NPC's don't really mind when you "snare" them "stun" them "charm" them, but wow, players sure do. Its definitely NOT fun to have the control taken out of your hands because some other player has "LaserPewPewPew skill at level 5" and there's nothing you can do about it. No skill, no tactics, just a algorithm.... grrrr....
The devs did respond to my concerns and are weighing all of that stuff apparently, but I'm against even the slightest control removal from players in PvP combat.
This is the first truly different MMORPG to come out in a while, it's refreshing to see something besides elves and mages. I have been following it for a few years now and what is amazing is how the proposed design has changed over the years. In it's original design plan I would not have gave you 10 cents for it, however it has evolved into a top shelf title over the last couple of years. The current game play movies are awesome and the reports from PAX and E3 last year by people who saw and played the game are what really grabbed my interest.
This one may well be the big surprise hit of 2007 and anyone who is really looking for something new and different needs to be watching this one.
Lol looks like Pirates Of The Caribbean
My sentiments exactly. I haven't been this excited about a new game since City of Heroes was first announced. Its not that I'm tired of playing a spellcasting elf and axe-swinging dwarf, exactly, its just nice to have options.
must be a good team who is working on the game, since the problem free develubment.
cant wait saing Yerrrheereeerrrrr maty Aye !
In short, this game smells like top quality!
Same here, with the community thats already there and that without ANY press campaign!
If you see how many ex-SWG are going to play this game....amazing.
I realy hope u are right! And things looks like u are..