Elite Dangerous' Odyssey alpha was scheduled to end on April 30th ahead of the mid-May launch of the expansion. However, thanks to player feedback, that alpha has been extended a few days.
Now, instead of shutting down ahead of the launch next month, Odyssey's alpha has been extended, now scheduled to close now on May 5th. Frontier Developments cites player feedback in a forums post as to why the team is extending the alpha those extra few days.
Greetings commanders! Thanks to your feedback we will be extending the Elite Dangerous: Odyssey PC Alpha to Wednesday 5 May 2021! Check out our forums for more details: https://t.co/5MGZQwQRjy pic.twitter.com/zwBTXO9qZv
— Elite Dangerous (@EliteDangerous) April 23, 2021
"We have been listening closely to your feedback and many members of our community have requested longer in the Alpha to experience the content and share your valuable feedback. This is why we are pleased to confirm that we will be extending the window of play for our fourth phase, and therefore the Alpha will now end on Wednesday 5 May at 08:00 UTC / 09:00 BST.In addition to this, after a number of community requests, all stored ships captured in the snapshot will now be made available during the Alpha with reduced transportation time and cost to bring those ships into the playable bubble."
This is good news too, as the Phase 4 of Elite Dangerous Odyssey's is coming on April 28th. Whether that date is influenced by the new Alpha end date, or if it was truly only going to be two days testing the Odyssey systems across the whole of the Mlky Way is unclear. However, Commander's have to be happy to get a few extra days to truly experience Elite in the same conditions they would normally play within.
However, to do this Frontier will need to take a snapshot of the current servers to implement them into the Alpha itself. The snapshot is happening today, and will be added to the Alpha servers starting on April 26th. The Alpha servers will be down till the 28th at that point, when they will come online for the last phase of testing.
Elite Dangerous: Odyssey is coming officially to PC on May 19th, launching on the Epic Games Store, Steam and Frontier.
