After Initial Fears Of "Empty Test Servers", Corepunk Now Has So Many Testers They're Halting Sales

Alpha testing can always be a little rough around the edges. By its very nature, things are supposed to break and lessons are supposed to be learned. In this current day of "alpha" being a sales tactic more often than not, this ends up putting games that run actual true alpha testing in a rough spot. Corepunk and the team at Artificial Core learned that lesson the hard way.

Hell, the top-down MMO even delayed some alpha tests until more systems were added, namely progression, after the initial round of tester feedback. When it came time for the next round, disconnect issues plagued the game and I'm certain sent some backers running to a different game for a while. Balance and server stability are big factors in keeping your players, and Corepunk learned this lesson.

You know what else Artificial Core learned? That if you have a compelling gameplay loop for your live service, players who truly get the idea of true alpha testing will stick around. Not only did they learn that, but the Corepunk team acknowledged that and thanked those players in a new post.

"To be frank, after all the technical and gameplay failures we've experienced, our biggest fear was having empty servers during the test, without the chance to test the game properly. But you, our community, had a different idea—you showed us the immense potential of our shared ideas and their implementation. Corepunk receives incredible support from you every day," reads the post.

As testing continues, the team is looking forward to the launch of early access on November 26th. However, if you aren't in the current round of Alpha 4 testing, you can't get in via pre-ordering anymore. The team is halting sales of their pre-order pack as was part of their initial plan. They have enough testers that are continually logging in to complete the fixing of bugs and balancing changes they want to complete by the time early access arrives.

While you will be able to buy the game again once we get closer to the early access launch, it will not come with any of the perks or bonuses that pre-order packs came with, so if you didn't already grab a pack you're out of luck now.