With great anticipation, I was pacing in front of the Britain Inn and then poof, there he was, the very first non-Mythic employee to pop into the world of Kingdom Reborn.
It took him a minute to get acclimated to the new UI and to learn to press return to chat. We talked for a few minutes, him asking perfectly reasonable questions and me struggling not to pester him with the one question that I wanted to ask: "What do you think?"
Finally, I had to ask. And his response was exactly what I wanted to hear after more than a year of us working so hard to get ready for our first real player: "It�s all so beautiful."
I wish I had taken screenshot of that. I�d print it out, frame it and put it where everyone on the team could see it at least once a day. That kind of reaction is what we do this for. Getting an immediate response from a player inside the world you�ve built is what makes working on an online game so satisfying.
However, this first week of limited public testing hasn�t been all pancakes and syrup. We�re getting exactly what need from our testers, lots of bug reports, lots of feedback, and lots of suggestions. We�re taking it all in, documenting and dissecting everything, planning out what to incorporate before we launch. We have a lot of work to do.
In between the deep discussions of what�s great and what�s not about this first draft of UOKR, we often see comments as gratifying as that first one, but that first one was special. I have a feeling 20 years from now when I�m swapping tales at the Home for Retired Game Producers, that first comment, with its mixture of surprise and awe, is going to be one I talk about a lot, probably in between sessions of Kingdom Reborn 5, which by then will be in some kind of hologram suite I�m sure.
See you in Britannia!
Aaron "Darkscribe" Cohen
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