Royal Quest Online stress-tests its new servers with a four-day beta

Royal Quest Online opens an open beta this Friday, August 21, and it already has a closing time: Monday the 24th at 12:00 Moscow time. The studio warned it may pull the plug earlier if technical trouble shows up, which is precisely what the test is for.

What's being tested isn't new content: it's server hardware. The team wants to measure load with real players on top of it, watch how the system behaves and find the weak points before what the announcement calls "the big launch", without saying what that is or when it lands. It's also a dry run of the open-testing format itself for future releases.

The test server runs on a copy of your main-server account. Steam inventory and Steam achievements are switched off for the duration, and any premium currency sitting on that copy can be spent but not topped up. The access code and the instructions for switching to the test branch land on Friday itself, right at opening, through the game's official channels.

The focus of the test is fishing, available from level 23, with tutorial quests from the NPC Rub de Guisier in Triozerie. There will be no official guide: the team wants to see whether the system reads clearly on its own, using the widgets and in-game reference already there. Bugs and crashes go by direct message to the account the studio named, @storm_maria.