Reign of Guilds by Atlant Games has just concluded their 5th playtest, and it didn’t exactly go as smoothly as they would have hoped. Over the course of their test from the end of September to early October, players across the entire community were met with lost items, missing loot and trouble transferring between the tutorial and starting island.
Recently, Reign of Guilds underwent its fifth playtest which revealed several issues that the development team is now addressing. During this playtest, players encountered several problems that initially was isolated to the Russian community, but many of the problems eventually made their way to players in other regions as the server stack used by Atlant was at least, in part, located in Moscow. The team acknowledged that some of the server problems were related to some outages in Russia as confirmed by several players in the region, which was a major factor in the ongoing problems that plagued the test for several weeks.
During the test the development team urgently implemented a system of direct communication between servers to resolve these issues, but this led to an unintended error that allowed players to duplicate items using real estate chests. To prevent such situations in the future, the team has added a mirrored backend between different locations and “decided against a unified backend in the neutral zone” which they believe should alleviate the issue during their next testing phase.
The team also noticed that only 26% of applicants for playtest 5 downloaded and launched the client which was a stark departure from the 70% participation that they saw in previous playtests. The team believes this is primarily an issue with loading the client itself, rather than a lack of participation, and they hope to see a resolution to this heading into playtest 6.
Atlant also outlined numerous changes that players can look forward to in the next test, from better weapon and magic balance to changes in bosses and loot tables. There will also be a UX/UI visual overhaul that, when finished, will make crafting and refining easier. The team also put out a new video showing off character creation and combat from the previous tests.
Set in a dark magical middle ages world, Reign of Guilds emphasizes guild development, with up to 10 levels of progression, and offers a classic MMORPG experience with, what Atlant Games professes as a focus on community and player interaction. If you’re interested in getting into the next playtest, you can request access on their Steam page, and hopefully you’ll be chosen leading up to playtest 6. Despite the game running into multiple problems over their 5th playtest, the game is still in early play testing, and there is no better time to find and fix these issues than well before a public release.
