Hi folks!
I hope you're all enjoying the Winterfest update thus far and have had a chance to earn some unique titles, flairs and achievements! I would also like to wish everyone a safe and happy holiday season this year and to thank all of you for your patience and gratitude as we ironed out some critical bugs (and still some persistent website bugs). Since today is also the 25th, I'd love to remind everyone to log in to their Marble Blast account and visit your website profile to claim your festive winter hat flair for 2015 - there's some new colors this year!
However, as you could've guessed by the title of this announcement post, I'm here to unveil something extra special for everyone this year. Yes, after a little over Eight (8) Years of development, I'm finally ready to release a Public Beta of Marble Blast Fubar. I've had a handful of our community members testing the game client for me over the past year and I think I'm in a good state to start releasing public access of the client starting on January 1st, 2016 at Midnight EST. A separate news post will be provided on the 1st with instructions on how to upgrade your launcher to install the public beta client.
Now for the necessary disclaimers and details! The public beta will be available to everyone regardless of their membership status or account age. However, there will be a series of major patches introduced into the beta client over the next seven (7) months that you will need to be aware of - some of which will include a server-wide statistics wipe. The mandatory server statistics wipe will be conducted to ensure the leveling curve and content restrictions are calculated in a balanced manner (e.g., ensuring players are only able to access certain levels after a specified amount of game time played and/or difficulty of levels completed). This ensures the player has a minimal skill requirement to complete the restricted content. You'll understand this more once Build 50000 and Build 60000 are available. The server-wide statistics wipe will ONLY EFFECT MARBLE BLAST FUBAR statistics - Your MBP scores are NOT affected by this. Furthermore, your Fubar statistics are wiped (e.g., Skills, Mastery, Level, etc.) for Leveling Curve balancing purposes. Your top level times should be retained excepting the level has not been modified as a result of a beta build - any modified level will have its times reset for obvious reasons.
Please be aware that this is a BETA client, and as such things could change overnight and your progress could be wiped to assist with the testing process. There is also the possibility for certain statistics to be greatly modified to facilitate a specific functionality testing (e.g., an auto-level-100 weekend to test end game content.) If you plan on grinding Fubar for top times, I advise you wait until the final release to ensure your times/statistics are not wiped during the Beta phases.
Below is a rough time table of the expected major build release dates, including statistic wipes:
- Build 40000 - Anticipated release of January 29th - This release will introduce the Exploration levels. With the release of this patch, there will be a SERVER STATISTICS WIPE.
- Build 50000 - Anticipated release of March 1st - This release will include updates to several Conquest levels and may alter the level leaderboards. Any levels affected by this update will have their top scores RESET to ensure the leaderboards accurately reflect the revised difficulty of the level
- Build 60000 - Anticipated release of April 30th - This release will introduce the Adventure levels. With the release of this patch, there will be a SERVER STATISTICS WIPE.
- Build 70000 - Anticipated release of May 30th - This release will introduce the Achievements system. There will be no statistics wipe with this patch.
- Build 80000 - Anticipated release of June 30th - This release will introduce the second wave of updates to several Conquest levels and may alter the level leaderboards. Any levels affected by this update will have their top scores RESET to ensure the leaderboards accurately reflect the revised difficulty of the level.
- Build R1 - Anticipated release of July 30th - This release will finalize the Skills System and Leveling Curve. Any final tweaks, adjustments, and/or bugfixes to previous builds will be rolled into this update. This patch will mark the FINAL SERVER STATISTICS WIPE. All statistics accumulated after this date will be PERMANENT.
- Release - Anticipated release of October 1st, 2016 - This will mark the official release of Marble Blast Fubar.
Finally, I'd like to add that I will be opening up a sub-section of the forums on January 1st where folks can discuss Marble Blast Fubar content as well as provide bug reports/feedback to myself for review. I ask that any Fubar-related discussion be restricted to the Fubar Sub-Forum ONLY to ensure your comments and/or feedback does not go unread.
I'll also be holding a Fubar Q&A Session on the Marble Blast Webchat service for any questions some of you may have about the Beta release. As always, feel free to leave a comment on this news post below and I'll do my best to respond within 24 hours (still battling a cold, so I'll do what I can..)
Thank you everyone for your patience and motivation to help me finalize this highly anticipated release. I want to ensure the client is stable, enjoyable, and replayable for all of our community members, so please take this public beta as an opportunity to tell me what YOU would like changed/adjusted/added/removed so that I can make this the best experience possible.
Enjoy,
~Aayrl
Marble Blast Community Leader,
Marble Blast Fubar Leader