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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