After the experience was pulled from Steam because of an ongoing legal fight with Nexon, Dark and Darker Gold's developers decided to go underground, asking players to torrent the modern playtest. Shocking probably not a soul, that didn't allow for the most logistically sound weekend. "We desire to apologize for all your bugs, instability, and hurdles that you had to pass through during this playtest," Ironmace CEO Terence Park posted from the official Discord server today.
The weekend was indeed fraught with hurdles, with the initial torrent download link getting pulled first from Discord then Twitter, two subsequent hotfixes which are also written by torrent, and a few lengthy server downtime on Saturday. All that along with the normal bugs, PvP imbalance, and crashing you'd expect from a web-based game's alpha test.
In particular, Ironmace introduced a whole new map called The Ruins, a backyard setting much different from the traditional dungeon crawling corridors Through the last test, it says wasn't quite where it wanted that it is. "In our rush to show off the Ruins map we moved a tad too quickly and pushed it before it was fully ready," Ironmace said if it issued the weekend's first hotfix on Saturday. The developers changed the loot balance and lighting settings in the new map. On Monday, an additional hotfix mostly addressed bugs with class skills.
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"The quality wouldn't meet our standards and we will target improving the action for our fans in the future," the announcement today added.
Ironmace posted additional information about issues with the Ruins map from the Saturday hotfix. Portals as a result of a deeper, more dangerous level were removed, turning the map into a "single layer." It also increased the need for loot into the spotlight and reverted changes to lighting which it "may in addition have gone slightly overboard with."
I didn't be able to play the primary version with the Ruins map but as soon as I got into the action on Sunday I quite enjoyed it. The goblin caves and dungeon maps from the last test felt a little bit claustrophobic occasionally and made avoiding combat along with other players nigh impossible. The outdoor setting was obviously a nice change, as well as the more open map meant I was able to experiment with around with creating torches for many stealth-only extraction runs.
I did have escape portals yanked from under me not merely once, but twice in a single night, though, so maybe stealth isn't play of course.
I really enable the fear of being backstabbed to obtain the better of me there.
Ironmace hasn't announced any dates to get a sixth playtest yet, but says so "will you must do everything possible to get the overall game to our fans as quickly as possible and update you up as we can."
