Chapter 108: Open Beta
Chapter 108: Open Beta
Considering that bugs were hard to eliminate perfectly in the first place, it was similar to the developers somehow organizing and hiding everything neatly, only for dozens of children to rush in and overturn it all.
Moreover, in an MMORPG, user environments were so varied that reproducing bugs was not easy. Of course, even packaged games had differences in hardware and software settings from user to user, but here, network environment differences were added on top of that.
And the variables and difficulties caused by these environmental differences were not addition, but multiplication.
In an MMORPG, even bugs that could be roughly glossed over in a single-player game could deliver a fatal blow.
Item duplication bugs or gold duplication bugs could severely damage one of an MMORPG’s greatest weapons, its realism, and cause irreversible harm.
“If we do this wrong, the game could fail. We absolutely have to catch them.”
The team members still did not clearly recognize this point and only vaguely guessed at it, but Insu had personally witnessed games collapse several times because of bugs like these, so he emphasized it repeatedly and drove the team members hard.
The bugs were hard to find and hard to fix, yet they had to inspect them even more strictly. The only things increasing were the developers’ dark circles and deep sighs.
Save me...
Yoonsu thought this while checking logs until his eyes felt like they would fall out. Even though a game like the ideal he had imagined was being created through his hands and was now just about to emerge into reality, it seemed people still had to survive first.
But he could not do things carelessly either. It was partly because this was his job, but there was also the sweet reward he received every time a game succeeded. And although he had just thought he needed to survive first, this was also a game like virtual reality, something he had thought would only be possible in the distant future.
As the team leader said, a single mistake here could determine whether this world gained life or became fake and disappeared. He did not want to make a mistake he would regret for the rest of his life just because of temporary exhaustion and suffering.
Yoonsu was not the only one who shared that thought. Quite a few team members felt the same way.
To begin with, salary thieves who only intended to waste time probably would not have come to a game company, and even if they had, Team Leader Insu would already have driven them out.
And people like Brian, who could not become desperate without pressure, had no choice but to squeeze themselves dry under Insu’s whip and the atmosphere of the development room.
The open beta version of TLF Online, created through the developers’ blood and tears, passed its final inspection on January 26 and was released to the world.
On Parallel Soft’s own homepage and WET, both operated by the company, the release D-day countdown had been displayed in huge letters right on the front page.
However, the internet had not yet surpassed PC communication services, so they also had to post announcements on PC communication boards and similar places.
Of course, they did not forget to place advertisements in various magazines.
“This is when we need to spend money.”
Insu nodded with a bright expression at his father’s words. Even if Insu was practically the owner of the company, his parents handled its operations, so they were the ones who executed funding decisions like this.
Of course, his parents listened to Insu’s opinions very well. Still, recently, unlike before, a considerable amount of money had been going out for things like establishing the messenger business division and expanding servers, so he had wondered if they might hesitate. But as expected, his father had sharp instincts.
Even if this was called a test, it was being shown to the public without restriction, so it was no different from official service. The users secured at this stage would directly connect to actual profit, so this was a time when they needed to gather and swallow as many as possible, even if their stomach burst.
In other words, this was absolutely not a time to save on marketing.
“Should we look into TV ads too?”
“TV?”
But that did not mean they would spend without limits. Maybe later would be different, but at this point, internet penetration was still not that high compared to the number of TV viewers.
“I don’t think TV is right yet.”
After thinking about his father’s words for a long while, Insu eventually shook his head.
It would not be completely ineffective, but the efficiency would be too low. If they were going to do that, it would be better to buy more space in game magazines.
It might look somewhat petty compared to the way he had spoken earlier, as if opening a new world, but that was how TLF Online’s open beta was promoted: intensely enough that no one among the still-minority internet and gaming population could miss it.
And so, in one corner of the world, a game with enormous potential opened its doors.
Jamie had played diligently during the closed beta and submitted reports.
That showed just how fun he found the game and how high his expectations were.
Because of that, when he heard they were doing something called an open beta, he did feel disappointed that it was not official service, but he still waited for it with anticipation.
“But what’s an open beta?”
Fortunately, when he clicked the huge link displayed on WET’s front page, a detailed explanation was written there.
“So it’s basically a final test, and in exchange for letting us play for free, they’re asking us to understand if some problems happen.”
On January 26, as soon as Jamie returned from school, he immediately ran up to his room and turned on his computer.
“Ugh. What is this? Why is it taking so long?”
He had entered the TLF Online site he had bookmarked to check whether the open beta had really begun, but unlike usual, the page took a long time to open.
That was because so many people were flocking in. Also, with the opening, there was now a lot of data that had previously been inaccessible or had changed and needed to be downloaded again.
Only after waiting for a very long time did Jamie reach the client download page.
And then the waiting began again.
In truth, Jamie was a closed beta tester, so the open beta version was also scheduled to be delivered to him. But he could not wait until it arrived at his house.
“It’s so damn slow.”
The download speed was lower than usual. Jamie knew enough about computers to understand that this was happening because many people had gathered, but frustration was still frustration.
Insu had thought of pre-downloads in consideration of players like this and also to avoid the trouble of expanding download servers on launch day, but he gave up because of realistic limitations.
First, they had set a D-day for marketing purposes, but in development work, even meeting that D-day was not easy.
It was easy to say they should finish development ahead of time and upload it several days early with room to spare, but even developers decades later in 2025 often failed to meet D-day, and it was common for them to force a release and then pour out endless patches afterward.
For example, it was like studying. Everyone knew it was better to study ahead of time, but almost no one could study several years’ worth in advance. Even if someone did study ahead, once the exam approached, they still needed to review at least once to take the test properly.
In theory, people could easily say one should simply study everything up to high school while still in elementary school, but humans lived in reality, where all kinds of limitations existed.
Using the kind of pre-download common later, where players received an incomplete version first, then additional downloads after quality was improved until D-day, also came with several problems.
First of all, this was an era without proper version control systems, so it was difficult to automatically distinguish between a user’s client and the latest client. Naturally, creating an automatic update system was also difficult.
Manual patches were possible, but this was still a time when many users were unfamiliar with computers, so they might find it difficult. There was also the risk of file tampering.
Of course, they could simply insert version information into the client, check it, download patch files, and decompress them. But MMORPGs were games that required delicate file management.
On top of that, because the internet environment was poor, it was difficult to perform processes where data was exchanged, checked, and received in real time. If even one thing was missing midway, everything would have to be checked again from the beginning. If that was the case, it was better to simply download the entire client again.
And even if all the above problems were cleared, it was questionable whether automatic updates were possible with computer performance at the time. It seemed like nothing, but it required quite a lot of resources. Memory in particular was necessary, and with the eight or sixteen megabytes of memory common at the time, it was rather burdensome.
It was not entirely impossible, but when considering development difficulty and resource efficiency, its priority was pushed back.
“Ah. It’s done.”
After pressing download, Jamie had been doing his homework. Since checking repeatedly only showed that it was still downloading, he forced himself to stop paying attention and spent about three hours doing homework and studying before returning to the computer.
Jamie was not particularly fond of studying, but he needed to keep his grades up to continue playing games, so he had no choice.
“It’s not corrupted, right?”
At this time, the internet environment was so poor that files people struggled to download often became damaged and failed to run. Because of that, Jamie nervously executed the file.
“At least it’s installing.”
He watched nervously at the black loading screen.
Fortunately, after Parallel Soft’s logo appeared normally and the title screen came up, he could finally relax his shoulders.
“...It doesn’t work.”
The file was not corrupted.
He meant he could not log in. Jamie belatedly realized that he could no longer keep using the ID from the closed test version. He immediately pressed the registration button.
Registration was possible through the homepage too, but at this time, the internet environment was so poor that even loading webpages was stressful, so they had created a registration system inside the game UI.
Registration was not difficult. The required personal information consisted only of a name, email, and phone number. There was also credit card information for payment, but that was optional.
Of course, Jamie was a minor and did not have a credit card, so he could not enter one. Debit cards existed even at this time, but they were not commonly used, and in most cases online payment was not possible.
In any case, after finishing registration, Jamie logged into the game.
Next, the server list appeared. Unlike Korea, the United States was extremely wide geographically, so servers were divided not only to distribute users but also to reduce latency caused by physical distance. Because of that, American regional names were attached to them.
[Atlantic]
[Pacific]
[Midwest]
[Southern]
When Parallel Soft had recently expanded its servers and massively increased expenses, it had not meant simply bringing several computers into headquarters. It meant actually opening branches in the eastern, western, and southern United States, creating server rooms, and assigning management personnel.
Jamie connected to Midwest, which had the recommended label attached.
“What is this loading?”
But the loading was longer than during the test. This was because too many users had gathered at the beginning, and the servers were overloaded due to client downloads.
However, because the starting location was not fixed and was randomly assigned near major cities across the world, he did not experience lag caused by crowds. This was a system Parallel Soft had added after getting burned once during testing.
After entering the world, his first impression was that it did not seem particularly different from the closed beta. In fact, Parallel Soft had worked hard to receive feedback and revise various things, but since they were detailed changes, players usually found it hard to feel them before actually using those features.
“Whoa?”
More than those changes, what Jamie immediately felt was the difference in the number of players.
Before, he had to go to a city to see a few people walking around, but now, even just stepping onto a road showed people constantly passing by.
This was partly because there were many people overall, but also because everyone was still at the beginning, so the areas they roamed were limited to relatively easy places and had not yet spread out.
But considering that the number of users would continue increasing in the future, it was hard to know whether crowds like this would actually decrease.