Early Access Time Windows

This is certainly far down the line but it's a question that can be for both the alpha and the beta, but mainly for beta because that's going to have more people than the alpha (and be more stable)

What i would hope is that the beta and alpha are from Day1-DayX 24/7 capabilities with no constant online DRM. That's the best case scenario for me. It would be very straining and hard to update mid-alpha but you guys can take it down for a few hours/days and it wouldn't be a problem.

What i would hope that wouldn't happen is bursts where It's the weekday from X:XX AM to X:XX PM and only during weekdays or once a week. I've seen this before because it is less work for the developers to have less people bombarding their servers, but it gives less information and doesn't really help the game be ripped in search of bugs and glitches.

No, i am not asking for a calender date to mark on my calender, i am just hoping we have a flow of information for the developers to continuously consume.

When they're ready.

Mike

While I hate DRM as much as the next person, without some sort of DRM it'll leak out within a week, tops. Kinda messes up the idea of early access being a reward for backing, I'd think.

Though if they made some sort of one-time DRM that, for instance, verified your account with the MAC address of a given computer, and limited the number of computers that could be linked, that could work. Still circumventable, but it'd be harder and/or take longer. But I dunno. DRM helps with piracy, especially in a beta or alpha phase, but also makes it harder on the players.

At least, I support DRM for multiplayer.

You will need a valid account (with a gamekey attached to it) to play online and that's it. I wouldn't exactly call that DRM. It's just a logical thing to have in MP. At least that's what I understood so far.

I would be surprised to see the alpha/beta be time limited. The only server Uber needs to provide is the master-server that manages the list of servers, apart from that people can just host their own servers. In case of smaller games it will probably work fine if one of the players acts as the server as well. Sure Uber will probably offer some extra powerful gameservers, but I don't think they will be mandatory for normal games.

I still do hope that they will announce the start of alpha a few weeks ahead.
Would be way more convenient to plan out. I want to make sure I have a bit of free time for it.

EDIT:
This made me thinking: Is there actually any information on how the online-client will work?
Something similar to GPGnet? Or more like Battle.net?
I'd love it to be an external application like GPGnet or FAF, that's way easier to handle than something embedded like Battle.net.

I'll be ready.

The game is MP focused... so why should you need DRM?
who would download a pirated game just for tutorial lol

There is actually a huge amount of people who just want to play vs AI, maybe with GW.
I cant understand them myself, but they have their reasons.

The real "break" point is when we release the server so anyone can run one. Once we do that it's pretty wide open.

Certainly once the alpha begins it will be available 24/7. There is no reason to time limit it.

And when will it begin? *Hopes for answer other than 'When it's ready' or other vague, cryptic answers*

How can I give you a real answer when the answer depends on so many factors that it's not answerable? In reality all I can do is make something up which doesn't do anyone any good.

July 4th. There you guys go. Mark it on your calander. Lable it "Possibal unlikely release date for alpha/beta/complete game"

Everyone keeps asking for a release date. Personlay I don't mind if its this time next year. The longer it takes the better the game will be.

yeah like

APB: All Points Bulletin

Duke Nukem Forever

stick rpg 2

Star Trek Online

Spore

Ultima IX: Ascension

EDIT: AND BRINK (OH GOD I WAITED SO PATIENTLY FOR THAT GAME)

...

I think pa annihilation will be great and they can release whenever they want, I just get rather annoyed whenever anyone says that.

you could make a progress bar of somesort, it could be with the names of the things you have to overcome, or it could just be a progress bar and every time you overcome something you can let the progressbar develop like



it doesn't need a time estimate, but it would be nice to have any idea whether it's a couple of weeks from now or a couple of years.

There is a type of progressbar that fits perfectly.
Here you go:

So much impatience . . .
Watch half of these people burn themselves out during the alpha/beta periods and get bored of PA within a couple of months.

The rest will have unreasonable expectation of the Alpha/Beta and say that PA "disappointed" them! xD

Mike

I really hope that PA will:

a) be supported good enough for weird bug to be fixed quickly.
b) be gameplaywise good enough to play it for years
c) develop a nice community with an active "pvp"-competition

I think the chances to get these conditions are quite high, tbh

If they can be met it will be near impossible to burn yourself out.

I'm not impatient I just wanna know what have to be finished now before we can get our hands on it, because they say they already have a playable game and I really want to play with that.

This!!! Just reading over the forums daily I can see what's likely to happen.
There are so many comments I want to make about all the speculation but just can't think of a way to be nice about them so I just sit and observer and quietly look forward to a alpha

Marco