Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen's latest producer has begun to set the stage for the eventual 24/7 pre-alpha testing the MMO. While pre-alpha testing has been occurring, mostly once a month and for just a day, the goal is to, by September, have a build that will be available for testers to start providing some feedback.
Pre-alpha testers have been able to check out Pantheon for a while now, however, those have been in pre-determined tests that typically only last for a day or so. However, Visionary Realms laid out what it's doing to get a build going 24/7 for those who paid for pre-alpha access to start providing more data for the development team to build upon.
"As you may or may not be aware, Pantheon is aiming toward 24/7 testing. The first candidate client will be released to our Pre-Alpha pledges in September. Once any initial hiccups are addressed, the servers will be switched over to full time availability. This will allow us to gather more data points in terms of peak activity, population, popularity of content areas and so on in a constant stream of data. It also helps us fortify our networking code, server load, and measure demand. These are all data points we need before we increase the player base and invite more players in."
Visionary Realms states that in order to get the build ready for this goal, there will need to be some content aimed at replayability. One of the reasons the devs state they have opted for shorter tests so far is down to the "limited content availability." To address this, Pantheon is adding in a new play mode for pre-alpha players with aim to add progression that is "engaging" while content is still being built out for the MMO.
Once testing has been done and the team has been able to address the feedback from pre-alpha players, the goal is to flip this into a full-time build that players can test at their heart's content and provide valuable feedback for the Pantheon devs.
"This play mode is not a replacement for the full Pantheon, but instead offers a way to consume existing content in smaller doses while more gets added. We will share the details of this mode of play once the Pre-Alpha testers get in to try it out and offer feedback in September. This endeavor has taken about 5% of our overall efforts while the remaining 95% have been focused on building content."
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