Road to Beta 3

The purpose of this post is to simply re-iterate what we consider a Beta, what content will be reachable during our 3rd Beta and how you can give your feedback to us. Beta 3 is intended to be our final fully open testing period with any more to follow being smaller invite / application only before launch.

The term "Beta" over the years has been co-opted to mean "Demo" for many people in part caused by other projects within the scene but undeniably also by AAA companies. It is important for us at Project Epoch to make it clear that our third beta is very much so a test of large system changes we have made alongside the infrastructure we have in place.

You will find bugs here and there, you may dislike aspects of the game, you may struggle to find quest locations or to defeat bosses you've never experienced before.

The main purpose of this third beta is to gain insight into the following:

Client Stability: A number of our features requires a custom DLL to function to attach extra functionality to the WoW client. There is a small chance this causes instability on certain systems, if this occurs to you please report this.
Server Core Stability: Crashes, Lag Spikes, systemic issues.
Quests: Writing, difficulty, pacing, style and more. We have over 1,000 quests available in this beta to enjoy.
World Edits: We have a variety of new locations in the world and adjustments to existing zones. Issues with pathing, terrain glitches or struggling to find new locations are all of interest to us.
Classes: If you find an ability not working as expected please report this. Alongside this please feel free to provide general feedback on how a class "feels".
World Difficulty: Starting from level 14 Creatures in the World and Dungeons receive increased Physical Damage, Spell Damage, Healing, Health and Mana gradually increasing up to level 60. We are particularly interested in how this feels within dungeons.
Racial Knowledge: At Level 60 you can take part in all Racial Knowledge chains and freely swap between Racials at Knowledge NPC's. Please note that some minor aspects such as descriptions, icons and spell visuals may still be awaiting implementation. Our key focus is on if the racial variants work.
Dungeons: Throughout all level brackets you will find increased dungeon difficulty, challenging new mechanics and other secrets within. Keep your eyes peeled and be willing to wipe before considering an encounter as "bugged" or uncompletable. Not all encounters have received mechanical reworks however abilities themselves should be far more impactful with our creature difficulty scaling in effect.
Max Level Content: With new Reputations, Dailies and other repeatable content to enjoy at 60 we'd love some feedback on if you're struggling to understand the new experiences.
Anti-Cheat: We have enabled and adapted Warden for our needs and will be running it in a logging only state. We will also be testing server side anti-cheat to correct for things like speed hacks, fly hacks, etc. This will also be running in a logging only state however if need be a GM may summon you to Jail purely to get a better understanding of what actions may have triggered an anti-cheat event. We are expecting some false positives to occur and will like to narrow them down and add exceptions.

Registration, Pre-Download & Name Reservation.

As of this post going live it is now possible to register and pre-download patches ahead of the 5th of April start date. For detailed instructions of how to get set up please visit our How To Play page. If you're having trouble the following channels in Discord should be your priority:

#launcher
#client
#registration
#common-issues

We strongly recommend using our Launcher however a Manual installation path is available if you hit issues. The purpose of this pre-download is to download the bulk of our custom content changes in the form of new sounds, textures, models, terrain, etc. Shortly before Beta 3 goes live we will ship a final < 15mb patch for last minute changes. At this point we will release the final patch notes for release 0.24.0.

Once we do ship this final patch, likely a day prior to go live, we will place the realm into Name Reservation mode. This will allow you to log in as far as character creation and set up your initial characters. Attempting to login to the world itself however will not be permitted and you will be ejected back to character selection.

A key feature however of this is at the moment of launch we can hot reload this state and you can seamlessly login. This is a key feature we know we are going to need for the actual Project Epoch launch so a thorough test is needed now.

At this point you will be able to see another important change, Project Epoch's final Realm name. While we have no intention to launch a secondary realm in the immediate future we knew that time may come whether we like it or not due to population and would need a way to differentiate them.

Going forward you will know our main realm as Kezan.

What Content Can I Not Do?

We have not marked any zones as forbidden. You are free to go where you please, however the following Raids / Raid Encounters are not available for testing:

Molten Core
Onyxia's Lair Encounters 2 and 3. We will unlock the 1st boss of Onyxia's Lair 2 weeks into this beta.
To avoid pre-release info gathering and keep BiS gathering a mystery until launch itself we have disabled many custom items across boss drops, reputation vendors and other sources. Some however have been left enabled as a slight carrot on a stick.

Beyond the above nothing else has been intentionally disabled. We want players to have free reign.

Will I Keep My Characters?

The account that you use to register for any of our betas will be the account you use when Project Epoch goes live, however after each beta phase we will first export character data for detailed analysis and then wipe them in time for the next beta. Characters will in no way carry over to live.

What Support Can I Expect?

During the beta the primary focus of the dev team will be actively monitoring feedback, fixing issues and analysing performance / crash logs. Due to this in game tickets are disabled. Expect bugs / soft locks.

We will not be involved in things like:

Item Restoration.
Loot Disputes.
Bugged Quests (Report, abandon and redo when fixed instead).

We will be involved in things like:

Character Stuck.
Character Unplayable.

Beta Reward Path

In previous betas we have offered companion pets that can be earned and unlocked for use on our live realm to support those who have truly pushed themselves. With this being our final beta we wanted to ensure you had a broad selection of paths to unlock an exclusive reward, and in this case it's a custom one. We'd like to introduce you all to Beetah the Beetle. With colours chosen to match the Blue and Golden Yellow theming of Project Epoch you'll stand out as a loyal tester when launch comes!

There are two possible ways to earn your Beetah the Beetle that we have named Common Requirements and Epic Requirements.

Common Requirements

Common Requirements are considered simpler to achieve and provide the most options for content to achieve them. To earn your Beetah the Beetle you can complete two of these requirements.

Boost from 1 to 45 and then level to 60. Utilising experience increasing effects is allowed.
Clear Upper Blackrock Spire.
Clear 4 of the following Dungeons:
- Sunken Temple
- Blackrock Depths
- Lower Blackrock Spire
- Scholomance
- Stratholme
- Baradin Hold
Level 2 professions to 300.

Epic Requirements

Epic Requirements are large challenges that we only anticipate a handful of overall testers will achieve. Completing one of these will instantly unlock the pet without anything else completed.

Level from 1 to 60 with no experience increasing effects or level boosts.
Defeat Ortorg in Onyxia's Lair once he is enabled.

Beta Helpers

Much like with previous Project Epoch betas we have a number of NPC's available in all starting areas and major faction capitals providing various features and items to help test. These include:

Ay Talor

Providing you a one way trip to a level of your choosing, broken into brackets of 5, this will be your first port of call in most cases if you are intending to begin your journey at level 45. He will teach you all your spells, weapon skills, give you a starting pot of 2g and then send you on your way. You will also be granted a full set of level appropriate flight paths unlocked at this point.

Please note that until 2 weeks into the 3rd Open Beta this NPC will only provide boosts to level 45. We will unlock direct level 60 boosts later.

Stefan Gawking

Stefan provides individual sets of armor for each class with a mixture of green and blue level appropriate items. Simply grab a crate and choose from within it the items that you want. These are broken into brackets of every 15 levels a new series of sets are available meaning you can experience content at varying levels of over and under gearing.

Rachael Ray

Rachael Ray will provide the option to learn and boost any primary and secondary profession including learning both Blizzard and Custom recipes.

Lana Wellway

Lana Wellway provides essentially everything a player might need to get started with their professions and questing including crates of level appropriate consumables, class reagants, trade goods, bags and so on. We have updated her store to include the tools you'd need to enter Onyxia's Lair when it is unlocked.

Lana Wellway now also provides Scrolls of Experience. These provide you with 50% bonus experience, stacking up to 100%. We may increase the allowed stacks as the beta progresses.

A stack of 200 of these new Scrolls will also be given to you if you utilize Ay Talor's level boost features.

Mags Grimefinger

While the level boost itself provides all your neccesary abilities some of your chosen talents may have multiple ranks. To allow you to quickly learn those ranks Mags serves as a single NPC who can train all classes.

Verner Weisenberg

Once you are ready to head out in to the world Verner can get you where you need to be providing access to teleports to faction capitals as well as zones throughout the level brackets.

In-Game Feedback

Going in to our open betas it is key for us at Project Epoch that you the players can report bugs, issues and critique that you find in a quick and easy manner to ensure that anyone can contribute. To enable that we have developed feedback and bug reporting tools directly into the game with just a button press to get going no matter the context.

What Can I Report?

This has been intentionally broken down into key categories targetting the information that we hope to receive from you our dilligent testers. These are:

Confused - Feeling completely lost and unsure how to proceed with something or where to find some of our functionality? Choose this option and provide us information so we can better improve our tutorials and in game helpers.
Bug - An all encompassing "Hey something has gone wrong" to be used as a fallback for if a specific category isn't available.
Quest (In Progress) - Visiting a quest giver when you have an incomplete quest from them will allow you to report issues with the quest that may have prevented you from completing it. Can't find the creature you need to kill? Convinced the item isn't dropping? Use this to inform us.
Quest (Complete) - The purpose of this feedback is to get general information about how you felt about a quest beyond "Can I complete it". This will be presented when handing in a quest that is completed.
Creature - Have you found something strange with one of the many denizens of the world? Creature has the wrong health? Stuck in a wall? Weird pathing? Wrong Name? etc. Report this to us so we can isolate these issues.
Item - More than 15,000 items have been edited by the Project Epoch team alongside new custom items. If you find something wrong with these please report them or any other feedback around items you may have.
Spell - With our TBC class changes we have edited thousands of spells. Due to this we may need your help narrowing down issues. If you spot any issues please feel free to report these problems.
Achievements - We have removed and adjusted hundreds of achievements alongside adding new ones. Due to this we felt it was important that issues with these can be reported in our beta. Can't unlock one? Did one trigger in a weird place? Please let us know.

How Can I Report?

The Project Epoch feedback tools are contextual and simply rely on you to hover over the item that you wish to report feedback for and press F6 when prompted. This will bring up our various feedback forms that you may fill in depending on the context.

The keybind used for this can be rebound at your choice within the Key Bindings options.

For other more general feedback feel free to utilise relevant channels within Discord.

To show you how simple this is here is a visual demonstration.

What Information Do You Collect?

For each feedback report we gather different metadata on the fly in the background without involvement which can include:

The level you were when reporting.
The type of report.
The ID of the thing you're reporting on (if any).
The time of when you reported.
Your position when you reported.
The body of information you provided us.
A small handful of report specific information.

Overview

Specific Details

Is There A Way To Help More?

Over the coming weeks we will be recruiting for a new QA role that will be responsible for parsing our feedback reports into actionable issues on Github, validating they are truly a bug and ultimately providing developers with concrete steps for reproducing an issue so we can focus on fixing them between beta and launch. Stay tuned for more information on this front. We sincerely consider this one of the more impactful roles we can recruit for yet anyone has the skillset to succeed.

Conclusion

We hope that the above has cleared up any confusion you have about how our beta process will work and how it will be expanded over the coming weeks. We look forward to seeing you in game!