It has taken a couple of false starts to get the first beta test of VR sandbox MMORPG Ilysia to get going, but this past weekend saw Beta 1 finally go live for players, starting from this past Saturday and running until Wednesday, August 18th.
The primary focus for this first beta is to stress test the servers at scale, meaning that players are likely going to run into errors as testing moves forward. Sure enough, follow-up messages in the MMO’s Discord note that the servers had to be temporarily taken down in order to address multiple fixes, while an issue with players even getting to download the game itself had to be investigated.
“A lot of feedback from everyone on what they like and don’t like, whats working, whats not working, and we hear you! Getting our community into this current build will help us tackle further game or networking bugs and prioritize hotfixes through these testing phases. We are working on server performance, spell casting, and are discussing how to best re-implement freeforge and will have more information on this in the coming days. We are actively reviewing community feedback around features and content in Ilysia and appreciate everyone taking the time to provide their thoughts as they play through this testing phase!”
That feedback is pretty bristly from what we can spy in Discord; players are particularly grumpy over the missing freeforge class system, which was a key pitch for the game in the original Kickstarter (a clip for which we’ve tucked below).
In fact, players apparently made their displeasure felt strongly enough that Team21 has already promised it’s “discussing how to best re-implement freeforge.”
A second beta test for Ilysia has already been scheduled as well, between August 18th and 23rd. This test has been extended by a couple of days as a result of the aforementioned delays for Beta 1, and all those who bought in to the Beta 1 are being granted automatic access to Beta 2.
