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Well a lot has been happening here at QGO towers, (Bradford Business and Innovation Centre)
Work has now been completed on commissioning the data centre and all the associated servers / firewalls. This small setup occupies 7 full height racks all interlinked with fire optics and other stuff. We can't tell you the exact specification of the machines used or the total number but to give you an idea we have twenty four game gate servers per world set.
Work is now ongoing to test the contingency and fall back options on the setups as well as to exercise the procedures for fault finding/monitoring and escalation.
The servers are also been subjected to stress tests to make sure they are operating in designed limits.
On another side of things we are currently hosting a large delegation from Wemade Entertainments who are working on the final tweaks to the application code as well as setting things up to work via the firewalls and systems etc.
A few “interesting” points/features for you are that the client fits on 1 CD and can be run as a windowed application. We are also releasing Mir3 with the latest version of the game engine and client Mir3 v2 This is only just out in Korea and is a total rewrite of things and includes all the latest versions of the anti cheat/exploits programs. As for what content will be in the final release (Maps, Mobs, and Quests etc) this has yet to be “frozen” and although we have all the current Korean version content translated and ready we are more than likely to release this as small patches on a regular basis. The reasoning behind this is to “open” areas as players reach the appropriate levels to be able to explore them.
Other news is we have now completed the contract with Inca Internet for the provision of Nprotect and we will be deploying this as standard and its use will be mandatory to access the game. We have also placed the first advertising contracts for Mir 3 so be on the look out, (word of warning its not traditional computer game based adverts!)
For those of you who have applied for jobs with us don't worry we just haven't got around to these positions yet and we will be inviting a few of you in for interview (please remember though we have had a lot more applicants than we have jobs to fill so some people wont even get an interview, although we will write to you all and let you know.)
The website will be up by the end of the month and the beta forums soon after that.
Now as to beta
1st Anyone who goes to Mir3Stock will receive the latest CD packed version of the game with the public beta code as well as been able to set up and register their beta accounts. The Mir3Stock Crew will no doubt be posting about that soon.
2nd We are waiting for confirmed delivery dates for the system that deals with our automated mail processing system. As soon as we have that we will be able to let the people who are going to be in closed beta know if they have been successful as well as start the shipping process for the CD's.
3rd Very very tentative dates are as follows. Closed Beta Commences: 28th July. Open Beta Starts: 14 August 2004, Pay to play September 2004 (please do note these are very tentative and subject to change, we will keep you posted.)
4th We are commencing a period of Alpha Testing of the main servers now and will be fairly tied up for the next few days and unable to deal with questions/issues with the speed we like, so please bear with us.