Well, alpha has been going a few weeks now, and we’ve observed something we hadn’t really anticipated. There are lots of mages coming and going, but they don’t run into each other very often. We see someone come in, run around, and leave, and then literally a minute later, someone else arrives. Or, someone is in the Mushroom Meadow and someone else is in Bluewood Grove, but they never end up in the same place at the same time. There are so many near misses! And it’s not stressing our servers as we expected.

So, we’ve decided to throw caution to the wind, and open up the alpha gates to any Windows user that wants in as a tester. That’s right! Your wait is over!

Thus far, we have been letting alpha testers in by hand–very time consuming and tedious. We can’t go on this way. So we’re going to try a different way, using an eCommerce/download vendor. You can go here and “buy” the alpha client for $0.00. It won’t ask for your payment information, but you will need to enter your (real life) name and email. Then you can immediately download and install it.

The first time you log in, create your account by creating a mage name and supplying your email. On subsequent logins, be sure to just log in–only create an account once, please!

We’ll add you to the alpha forums by the next day (hopefully), and you’ll get an email with your alpha forums username and password.

You need to update by “buying” this free client as well (here), in order to be compatible with our server update and everyone else. When the client asks if you have already logged in, answer yes, and then just log in the way you have been.

We are hoping that this will result in more alpha testers in one place at the same time than we have yet seen. We hope to push our servers harder with this. We’d appreciate it if you would try to arrange get-togethers with your friends, so there are more people in one place at one time. And if the server crashes, pat yourself on the back, because we need you to make it crash in order to debug it!