Early Version of Release 53 Now Available for Testing

The Shroud of the Avatar team has announced that it has deployed an early version of Release 53 to the QA server for players to try out. This build provides some tweaks and updates to a number of systems including rebuilds of several locations, the LFG tool, loot improvements, side quests, heraldry and many others.

Players who take part in QA testing become eligible for Testing Incentive Rewards "including gold crowns, the Ant Farm, Antennae, Bug Cloak and paintings.

Stress testing on QA will also take place on Monday, April 23rd and will yield Double XP on live servers if at least 50 people are partied up for 45 minutes.

Greetings Avatars,

We need to do some performance stress testing on Monday April 23 at 3 PM on the QA server (prior to Release 53 going live Thursday April 26). So we are going to have a dance party on my ship, the Queen of Chaos, in Rift’s End (a player owned town). During the party the programmers will be profiling and we will summon some boss creatures to fight (and of course degrade performance) underneath the ship.

Remember playing on the QA server and reporting bugs there makes you eligible for the rare testing incentive rewards. However in order to get as many people as possible we are also going to randomly award some additional prizes including some handmade gear by myself and Atos as well as some of the ultra rare testing incentive rewards (corpion chair!!!).

And if we get at least 50 people at the party for 45 minutes we will reward everyone by turning on double XP on the live servers for one week when Release 53 goes live!!!!

The newsletter, as always, is also packed with news and information about in-game community events, new locations, developer perspectives and much more. Head over to the Shroud of the Avatar site to check it out.