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mr.miffmiff

Face of Mankind

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You may or may not have heard of this. This game has gone through a bunch of ups and downs. But we're not focusing on that.

The new FoM is now in Closed Beta Four. I got accepted for this phase. I've played it twice. TWICE! I tell you. I am now addicted. Completely and totally. This game will probably ruin my life.

This MMO is completely player run. Markets, trading, and fighting. No NPCs, whatsoever. Obviously, it's largely PVP-oriented.

It is a single consistent universe. No alternate servers. Everything that happens happens all over the game. Not surprisingly, this prompts many players to roleplay, and as such the game is largely roleplay-oriented as well, although that is not required.

There are many factions to choose. Some of them belong to the Dominion, the government, other oppose it, and still others are freelance. I personally belong to the LED, the Law Enforcement Department, the police, one of the two factions that have the power to arrest people :P

It takes place in many star systems in OUR universe, just far in the future. Only humans are playable, so if you wish to roleplay, no need to learn behavior of fantasy races.

Items can only be gotten by buying them from the "World Market," where things from other players are sold, or by mining raw materials, producing crafting items from those, and making the items from those.

If anyone wants more info, I can give.

So if you want to play, sign up for Open Beta (I'm assuming CB4 is the last Closed Beta), and when you're let in, hopefully you'll join the Dominion. That would be the LED or the FDC (Freedom Defense Corps), the army. If you do, look for an LED officer named Darian Rogue. That's me :) Of course, you don't have to look for me, especially if you join the FDC.

Okay I'm done.

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The new FoM is now in Closed Beta Four.

I never understood the use of beta then a corresponding number, surely the 4th beta would actually be the epsilon build? Pre beta is called the alpha build, so why not continue the model?

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I never understood the use of beta then a corresponding number, surely the 4th beta would actually be the epsilon build? Pre beta is called the alpha build, so why not continue the model?

It actually denotes the state of the game and the type of testing. An alpha build is not a fully playable game - it's more like a proof of concept, with the initial gameplay and some environments, so that any immediate problems can be spotted before too much work is put in.

As content is created it is added to the alpha build. When the game becomes playable start-to-finish, it normally goes into beta. This is where you unleash your full army of low-paid testers on it to find all the niggle bugs and iron it smooth. Every developer approaches this differently, but generally there will be a preplanned number of Quality Assurance "passes", with the occasional extra build thrown in when something urgent crops up (ie often). For online games you will probably want an open beta to check the server setup and so forth.

In theory only bug fixes and polish and cosmetic changes are added to the game during beta, but not infrequently more substantial changes are commited, even as the launch window nears - much to the chagrin of QA departments everywhere.

It's theoretically impossible to iron out every little bug, but once all the big ones and annoying ones and review-score-affecting ones are addressed and the person whose job it is to make these decisions decides that no more changes are going to be made to the code, a final Gold build is compiled and printed to disc. Then everyone gets very drunk (or drunker). Then once they sober up they are reunited with their loved ones, who they have not seen for a long time.

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On-topic - the game sounds both interesting and utterly terrifying. From you description Miffmiff, it sounds a bit EVE-ish? is it?

P.S. Just noticed that this week I passed my 2000th post. Go me.

Edited by DanJW

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I wouldn't know, I don't play EVE. All I can say is, death is imminent at some point. And so is diplomacy, if you're in that one non-combat-most-of-the-time faction. And so is going to jail, if you commit crimes. I can oversee to that. :P And I was just killed today by an ally who went rogue. Good for me!

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