Goblin Squad Member
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It has been stated that the end of Alpha will include a complete character wipe and that the game will begin with Early Enrollment. I request that this be reconsidered to allow Alpha characters to retain what XP was earned during the Alpha stage.
If part of Alpha testing will involve direct manipulation of XP amounts (for instance, granting a chunk of extra XP to allow people to purchase higher tier abilities for testing purposes) then I would like to suggest wiping XP back to where it would have been based on the length of Alpha and the final decided-upon rate of XP accrual.
$1000 is a fair chunk of change and it would be nice to get an in-game benefit for that money. Early Enrollees will be getting an in-game benefit for their money compared to those waiting for Open Enrollment. I would request that Alpha enrollees get a similar benefit.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Early Enrollees will be getting an in-game benefit for their money compared to those waiting for Open Enrollment. I would request that Alpha enrollees get a similar benefit.
You mean other than all of the benefits EEs get plus advance familiarity with the terrain and game systems, participation in 'Monster Casting', and all of the daily deal items?
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Goblin Squad Member
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Actually, I just noticed that my list of benefits includes;
Three Months of Game Time
TWO month game subscription
Two months additional game subscription
I'm not sure on the source for each of those, but it implies that some of the extra game time options stack rather than overlapping... thus giving another possible 'in game' benefit to alpha above and beyond EE.
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Goblin Squad Member
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If I had bought a 1000 dollar alpha package I would have upgraded it to Magic Master for sure, or maybe even Itemmaster. Magic Master used to be 1200 dollars, that is only a 200 dollar upgrade. It is now 1500 dollar btw.
But that is just cheap old me who would still want to have something tangible left once alpha is over, especially now that we learned that alpha is probably not going to be a 6+ month thing.
Off course when I explain to someone that naming a Spell in a virtual game is actually something tangible to me, they look at me oddly, dunno why.
I think alpha's can be great though, I did it with Shadowbane and it's cool to run with the devs and be there from the start.
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Goblin Squad Member
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You knew what you were buying when you bought it, didn't yaThe details pertaining to an Alpha wipe were not provided in the GW store or the Kickstarter. So, in fact, no I didn't know when I bought it that it would get wiped prior to EE.
Well the term "alpha" certainly carries a strong assumption of wipe, at the very least. Heck even most betas don't carry over into release.
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Goblin Squad Member
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This is the first "Beta" I can think of with no wipe, but something tells me someone'll have another example. I've never heard of a no-wipe Alpha.
Pretty much every indie game does this now. Minecraft made it popular, and now it is a great way to develop a game with minimal investor contribution.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Looking back over the 2nd Kickstarteer, I calculated the following:
PFO Pledges
Unknown .... 98
Npn-PFO . 1027
Open ...... 2925
Early ....... 4625
Alpha .......... 57
Total ....... 8732
EE Pledges vs Players
Solo .. 3720 = 3720
Buddy . 717 = 1434
Guild ... 188 = 1128
Total . 4625 = 6282
Total EE Players: 6339
We may have picked some up since then, but we may also have some unfilled Buddy & Guild spots. Since I have no way to estimate either, I'll call it a wash. I'm not sure why there are 98 unknown pledges in the KS total, but perhaps those represent attempted pledges that ended up failing due to bad card information. At any rate, Alpha pledges are less than 0.9% of the expected EE playerbase, so I doubt GW would spend extra dev time on such a minority. The Pit Fighter thing hasn't come out, and the development time frame & frequency of use for monster play were never estimated, so who knows if those will happen. I'd like to believe that alpha pledges were worth it, but my expectations are pretty minimally-viable at this point. The 'not soon, maybe not ever' judgement on flight magic most of a year ago, plus the map design which uses elevation for chokepoints (making 'never' seem more probable) is likely responsible for some of my expectation deflation, but you can look at the numbers for yourself.
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Goblin Squad Member
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There are also 32 alpha pledges from the first kickstarter. Also, the 2925 'open enrollment' pledges got a "Head Start" bonus which will actually allow them into Early Enrollment one month prior to the start of OE. Finally, 4210 players (plus the 89 from the alpha) will get access to EE from day one.
Thus, roughly half the PFO kickstarter backers will join in the first month of EE, another ~20% in the second month, and the remaining ~30% in the final month. Most people using the store will get EE second month or OE access.