Our next beta release, code named Falchion, will launch on Monday, December 6, 2010.
The standard times apply, and are all in Pacific Standard Time, which is where Los Angeles, California is. To convert it, you can visit this time zone site.
At 9am, I'll be marking all NEW beta registrations to receive their invite codes later in the day. Any beta registrations that come in after 9am will have to wait for our next release on December 20th.
We'll be doing lots of internal testing before we roll out any code to the live beta site, and as usual, I will post our progress on my twitter feed.
In the afternoon, when we feel the code base is tested enough, we'll send our next beta newsletter to ALL beta users. This newsletter will explain more about what we've been working on, what's in the new release, that sort of thing.
The newsletter Email you'll receive with your invite code will explain what we need from you as beta testers.
Once that newsletter is sent, I'll send out any invite codes for new beta signups up to 9am that morning.
It's important to note up front that several things will seem "missing" from the site, such as the forums, etc. This is to be expected, because we're rolling out the beta in phases where we add new features every two weeks.
The full details of what's going in the beta release, and what major pieces of the site are still missing will be detailed in the newsletter.
Our next release might get pushed by a week, to December 13, because last week was a short work week, and we have a lot of things we want to build into the next release.
Lesse, we get to test the new stuff, we get to find bugs in the new stuff, find bugs from Claymore, and (hopefully not) bugs from Broadsword. We also can provide more feedback to the older releases if something comes to mind. I thought the home page was spot-on though.
is there going to be any changes in the next beta sign-up? Or is it just for the people that didn't sign up before.
Users that signed up after 9am on our last beta release day will get into this next release.
this gives the team more time to work on that cookie/cache problem.
... which is hopefully solved as of a few moments ago.
will the invite code for claymore work on falchion?
Yes, you get one invite code assigned to you when you register for the beta, and it's good for the entire beta process. (Frank, I think he was asking just in case we didn't solve the cache/cookie problem)
A few tidbits to keep you all interested for an extra week:
1. We're looking at enabling the first part of our "activity stream" where users can comment on things happening around the site, such as people playing games.
2. We may be enabling a way for users to set a status message, sort of like Facebook, but I don't know if we'll keep a *history* of them or if we'll just store the last status update you write.
3. We're going to be introducing the first part of our friends & followers setup, and all of your existing "friends" from AG2 will become people you "follow" now on AG3. If two users "follow" each other, we're going to try to come up with a way to let you "upgrade" that relationship to a "friend" status.
4. We're hoping to get the initial privacy settings rolled out, as well as an ability to view each others profiles based on those privacy settings.
5. We're working on some behind-the-scenes stuff with regards to game administration, such as adding new database goodies for whether a game has an iPhone/iPad or Andoird version available, and other neat stuff.
6. We're hoping to let you rate games. These game ratings can be modified as much as you want at any time.
7. Overheard at the office: Larry: "Oh, *yeah*, we're gonna let users change their username to whatever they want so long as the name isn't already taken..."
