End of Week 3 Update : Patch 143 (Closed Beta) Status
In other news : Download Size Matters, PC Gamer's unclear headline, Anti-Spam Explanations and “Stay the Frick Away from Private Servers…”
Patch 143 (Closed Beta) Status
Alright – so now we are getting closer to defining the final shape of the first Closed Beta build. When RTW closed up shop, there was already a build known as “build 142” in the works which further refined some of the balance-issues and dealt with a whole range of fixes. For closed beta we are now working toward defining an official “build 143” which will be the foundation of the game going forward. This closed beta candidate will clearly do some key initial things (like integrating G1 credits, create a framework for the premium accounts etc.), but very likely will not yet cover all the items we want to have before we truly go live. Therefore we are very likely to launch a closed beta version WITHOUT the original character data, and then wipe the databases at the end of Closed Beta after we have been able to determine the impact of the various game changes, and then look to restore some of the original character data for the Open Beta start.

Now this is all still hypothetical, since the balance changes and code changes we are performing may cause issues with the original character data and we are not yet sure the original data will actually fit with the final version of the game. However, much of it probably will, and if so we will clearly try to restore a lot of it as part of the Open Beta launch. The details of how this will be done are still TBD, but I will keep this blog updated on the progress, and will share a lot more details as we get closer to Closed Beta.

Download size matters
One other critical issue we are working to solve long-term is the issue of initial download size. Because the game uses Unreal 3, the way content and data is packaged is very monolithic. It’s a great engine, but it was never really built to be friendly to streaming partial content or to easily allow lower content levels that can later be dynamically updated since it presumes someone out there will just pop in a DVD and be done. Therefore the current game (ie the game at patch level 141) is just above 7GB in size. That’s clearly a problem. When we look at our other games’ download completion statistics, we see great completion rates at below 1GB (around 91%), so-so rates at 4GB (about 70%) and pretty lousy rates at 8GB (50%). It’s also very driven by market (for example the US and former West Germany markets don’t suffer the same download drop for 8GB clients, but for other parts of the world this is a huge issue, especially in countries that still have metered ISP tariffs).

The solutions we are working toward include researching procedural texture generation (which reduces initial download size pretty well, but makes install times much longer), removing a large chunk of the pre-downloaded music, creating a package of lower quality assets for a “starter” edition of the game without forking the game, and researching going the route of WoW which has an initial 50MB streaming client. Unfortunately some of these solutions will take a long time to perfect, and it’s very likely we will be going in to Closed Beta with a client that is only marginally smaller than the current version. However for Open Beta we aim to have a reasonable first installer size sorted out, with further improvements then coming down the line over the next 12 months. Chances are we will use combinations of all the techniques above, plus other things we have not yet considered.