We’ve just pushed a new release out to testing to test some infrastructure changes ahead of the upcoming new live universe release.
This testing version is based on a completely fresh universe so if you try it out you’ll need to create a new character when you log in.
The main change we want to test is that this release is now performing user authentication against a new backend server system. We’re populating the new backend server with all your existing user accounts, so if you’ve already been playing the game you should find that you still get automatically logged in. If you try out this release and find that you’re being asked for username/password etc we’re interested in hearing about it.
In addition to this we’ve added a new feature to reserve existing character names. We’re going to reserve all existing in use character names when we wipe the live universe. So for a limited time only the user who was using a character name pre-wipe will be able to create a character with that name. This should prevent random people stealing your (potentially well known) character names in the new live universe.
So if you have a bit of spare time to give it a go please do and let us know if you have issues. There aren’t any gameplay changes in this version so we’re mainly interested in testing the login flow isn’t broken, make sure you can create characters you currently own on live (and maybe check you can’t create ones you don’t)
@Blake will this infrastructure stay up going forward until the wipe? If we wanted to test and try other things can we use this and expect it to be around for a few days?
I ask because I did want to try some things from complete scratch and don’t want to get a few days in and find it gone and the old testing network returned…
The name reservation is automatic based on your characters on live so if you had characters on live called ToothlessGamer, Player77, TheBestGamer at the point when we swap to the new live universe you would automatically be the only person allowed to create characters with those names in the new universe.
The machines will probably stay up but it’s possible we’ll find other things we need to test causing us to swap stuff around, maybe even wipe the worlds again. I don’t have another change for it planned but I don’t want to promise anything and then have to break that promise.
once i get 600 Cubits i will try calling me Boundmore/Jiivita etc because thats how i mean it ((it let me choose my name from my MAIN account)) which i have not ever called on this account
If you think you’re managing to steal a name you shouldn’t be able to PM me the details of the steam account, username, character name you think you’re stealing etc and I’ll check if it’s missing something in the checks.
Yes we store the capitalization you supply when creating a character so we can display it how you typed it in, but the backend enforces uniqueness of the name when converted to lowercase.
