The first closed alpha weekend

Last weekend people other than me played Tales of Orrin for the first time: an invite, an account on account.tales-of-orrin.gg, a launcher that downloaded the game, a Play button, and a character standing in Hollybank on Windows.

That path was the test. The account site has to hand out invites and logins, the launcher has to fetch the right build and carry on after a dropped connection, the client has to start on a machine I have never seen. It all held. The bugs were in the game, where I want them.

The first fixes went out on Sunday evening. Corpses slid away from where people died, so ghosts could not find them; now they stay put and ghosts get an arrow. The quest tracker ignored quest items already in your bags. The ships sailed stern first.

One realm

Before the weekend there were two test realms, one for the classes and one for the world. On Sunday they became one, Alpha 1, and everyone started over. Eight updates since, four of them yesterday. The biggest:

• A second people, the ylvar, with their own starting forest, the Gloamholt.
• Four classes with a spec each: the Frostguard mage, the Wrathbringer paladin, the Stormbringer druid and the Harvester warlock.
• Greymarch and Kingsfall, about a hundred quests between them, and Hightide Bastion, the Accord's capital on the cliffs over the Rift.
• The Kindred's shore across the Rift, reached by ship, and the Barrows of Cairnmoor, a five-player dungeon at level 60.
• Every quest and greeting voiced, orchestral zone music, footsteps that match the ground.
• A feedback button in the game. It sends the bug straight to us, with a screenshot if you want.

The numbers are placeholders. A Frostguard at 60 in the dungeon shows the systems work together; balance comes later.

Next is how the realm holds with many more people on it at once, so the alpha is open to more players now. It is free. Ask on the Discord and you are in the next wave.