Part Three: Ending Our First Beta Playtest

Welcome back! We wanted to kick things off with a HUGE thank you to everyone who played, we really appreciate your time and we hope you had fun. We have learned so much from the last few weeks, and as always, we’ll be taking what we’ve learned and applying it to make Ember Sword better. Although we had high hopes for the test, the amount that everyone has played the first, very small slice of our game, has gone well beyond our expectations, and we couldn’t be more excited and grateful.

Canavar Took A Helluva Beating

We launched our closed beta test in early July, with the goal of testing both the game and our infrastructure, and after a few days, we decided to open it up to more people because things looked very promising. Since then, it’s been a mind-blowing few weeks for Ember Sword with thousands and thousands of players, many different amazing quest partnerships, our creator program kicking off, and loads of $EMBER and land plots being given away, before finishing off with the grand finale of the "Canavar Must Die!" competition.

The Playtest in Numbers:

• More than 100 THOUSAND play sessions
• Players played from all over the world and spent a combined 41 THOUSAND hours in the game! That’s equivalent to more than 1700 days or 57 months or nearly 5 YEARS!
• 657 Canavar Heads! (nearly 90% of all possible drops!)+
• Discord grew to 80 THOUSAND members, and 151 thousand messages were sent during the playtest
• More than 800 THOUSAND impression on our social channels with 20 THOUSAND new followers gained

Up Next

Now that the Canavar competition has come to an end, we are winding down the first beta playtest. We’ve kept the EU server up but are closing the other regions for now. Today, we’re launching the 5th and final update to the current build on the 14th August, which will bring with it the last round of fixes that we want to test publicly for now. Our plan is to reset the game and leave it open until Friday August 23rd. This will allow you to experience the updated game again from fresh and we will continue to gather feedback and data, before taking Ember Sword offline for a while. But don’t worry, we’ll be back in a few weeks with a ton of changes, new features, and more content.

Why are you taking Ember Sword offline for a while?

We have so much content, features, and changes planned and taking Ember Sword offline helps us implement them much faster. After we’ve made significant progress, our plan is to open to the public for another test later this year.

What changes or improvements are you making?

The team is hard at work on expanding the playable world and adding many new features. Here are some examples, but please note that this list is not exhaustive (we’re working on more than is listed here) and not all of this will make it into the next update, some things might arrive later.

• Mantle Integration
• New Cosmetics
• Merging Cosmetics
• New Weapon
• Making Navigation Easier
• New areas added
• New Features: Caravans, Treasure Maps, Quests, Vending Machines, and Friends List
• New Resources
• New Creatures
• New Bosses
• New Tier 3 Armor and Weapon Variations
• New Professions: Jewelry Creation, Cooking, and Fishing
• The Capital will become a safe zone again thanks to players’ getting rid of Canavar … And much more!

We’ll be releasing loads of amazing content, including a deeper dive Dev Stream in the coming weeks, so stay tuned to our socials for more info!

Thanks again for your passion and support, we can't wait for you to play what we have in store next.

The Ember Sword team.