[Organic]

Here's a list of what we saw and learned during the Open House. (I didn't stay to booze it up, so hopefully folks can update this when they get done partying later tonight/early tomorrow morning.)

Also, just so it's stated, everything was provided directly by an EME employee (or two).

1. The current client is two or three patches behind Korea, but getting closer. This is probably the same client we'll see during Alpha testing later this year.

2. The Elin changes are in a Release Candidate version (almost accepted). It was in the build we played today. There are no tights and the folks promulgating that "rumor" are...wrong. In fact, I dare say that most of the Elin lovers would be hardpressed to even notice the changes. Mainly, the armor went from g-string panties to *very* short "shorts". The changes are minimal and the Elin look great. (Amira has pictures.)

3. I got all 12 lore questions answered. You can go here for those. (Scroll to the bottom of the OP for the Q&A.)

4. Chronoscrolls. I personally think it's a very good idea. Frogster did, too, and will be implementing this as well. Crisp isn't going anywhere either. Pat said there will be some type of limit to protect against credit card theft (if you could buy dozens in a month, that's a lot of cash EME has to refund to the credit card company in a charge back). He said the cap will probably be a few in a small window of time. He didn't specify the size of the window, but I assume a few a month is PLENTY to be purchasing.

5. EME has an incredible view of the Seattle piers. Essentially, their office is on the west side of the building, so their entire outer wall is a bank of windows overlooking the water. Gorgeous. There's only one "office" in their office and it is part recording studio. Even the executive management have a desk with everyone else out in their open floorplan. There's a HUGE whiteboard blocked out in a spreadsheet form where folks can say what level their TERA character is and makes it easy to find parties there at EME. With each new patch they receive from Korea, they use another large whiteboard-spreadsheet to complete validation of every region of the game to be sure nothing broke.

6. We had several community member teams participate in the Necromancy Cell instance. All of the teams cleared the content, but there was an EME competition going on to see which of their "pro healers" could get their group through the content the fastest. I was in the final group to attempt the instance and despite our Sorc dying three (four??) times, we cleared it in the fastest time! Go team! :) There were quite a few EME staffers in the room cheering and yelling at the screens calling for heals and complementing the players when they scored huge crits or succeeded in emergency, timely blocks or evasions.

7. Pat answered a question from a community member about the best way of breaking into the business. The answer was "QA". Pat said every studio has a big ramp-up in hiring right before their game launches. By demonstrating out-of-the-box thinking, and proving you have initiative (e.g. researching issues and providing potential solutions to your management), as well as facetime spent talking with other industry members at events such as PAX, you can easily go just about anywhere.

8. Apparently the Elin were kind of "added for Japan" and the Aman were "added for the West". BHS assumed a few of the races would be flocked to by different cultures and world regions.

9. The grab bags were pretty great. They included TERA courier bags, a poster signed by nearly 40 EME employees, our very own chronoscroll wrapped in a ribbon (all attendees will be receiving a chronoscroll at launch, before any other player can purchase one), a TERA t-shirt, and the satisfaction that everyone in attendance will be automatically included in the very next round of testing. There was also a TERA lanyard and a pet rock with TERA printed on it. Oh, and there were a couple race/class pins that were pinned to the bag.

10. I also talked with Pat about an iPhone or Android app for security. He said they're not as secure as folks would expect and that another authentication process has already been hacked. He said it probably won't make it in before launch, but they are definitely considering other ways to make our accounts more secure.

11. There were supposed to be 32 community members on the invite list. It looked like some of the name tags didn't get used, but there were probably at least 30 of us.

12. Since I am a foodie (and I answered food-related questions about what we were served at last PAX's community event) EME served chicken satay with pineapple and peanut dipping sauce, a crudite platter (mixed veggies with dip), mini croissant sandwiches (ham and egg, turkey, mozzarella with veggies, and something that looked like spicy tofu), cookies, brownies, and cupcakes. There were also various beverages (soda/pop/soda pop and bottled water).

13. There were two very largescreen TVs set up in the reception area where folks could create new characters or play premades. That gameplay was happening during the "team competition".

14. ALTS. They are working on ways for alts to receive attention and make it easier to level up. One of the ways is to receive an "egg" after doing repeatable quests. Those eggs could contain potions from lvl 10-40 and you can put them in your shared account bank for all your lowbie characters to have access. Also, some eggs contain XP inside, so it'd be a way to transfer XP to your characters. Also, EP (Extra Points) that I referred to over here IS that mechanic, but it's not implemented yet as they're still figuring out a good way of doing that. Brian was not sure it'll make it to launch since they're trying to focus more on main character instead of just alts, but it is on the roadmap.

15. There were actual EME employees WORKING while we were there. Two guys in the Operations section. One of the guys was downloading upgrades to some Cisco software.

16. There were probably 15 or so EME staffers who participated in the event (in addition to the two Ops guys who were working). They were from marketing and PR, operations, some executive management, Scapes, a couple of the writers along with David Noonan, an IT guy or two, Aaron (the Art Director), etc. It was a great group and they were very excited to answer just about any question thrown at them.

In all, a really terrific event. Aaron was recording for EME, so I'm sure they'll post a walkthrough video. Also, Mark (from TeraBlah.com) recorded as well and he and Aaron talked about sharing the voice recordings since it was tough to get the right angles and sound for the entire open house.

I'll add more as I think of it. Also, if you have questions, please post them and I'll do my best to answer based on what we learned during the Open House.

[Karantor]

Thanks for the write-up Organic! Just as a point of clarification, do you have any information on what 'Crisp' is?

[Kiojii]

awesome stuff. I'm skied for the cronoscrolls.

[Maladhiel]

Karantor, on 28 August 2011 - 02:25 AM, said:

Thanks for the write-up Organic! Just as a point of clarification, do you have any information on what 'Crisp' is?

Go here to read up: http://www.tera-onli...ead.php?t=21488

Organic, I love you. If I were the kind of woman who wanted to have kids, I'd bear your children. That was a nice bit of information you provided to us. I'm happy to hear about the Elin. Now maybe people will calm the hell down.

So was the "Exciting News" they promised us related to the Chronoscrolls?

[radeeeeeeee]

omg i deleted my post by accident >3<'

~ Yes the "big news" they promised us were the Chronoschrolls. What is that? i'v never heard of them before o3o.Im like that little kid at christmas who got clothes instead of toys and the fun stuff.*me gusta*

Also when can we see elin tights? ^___^ im so impatient.

[Organic]

radeeeeeeee, on 28 August 2011 - 12:45 PM, said:

omg i deleted my post by accident >3<'

~ Yes the "big news" they promised us were the Chronoschrolls. What is that? i'v never heard of them before o3o.Im like that little kid at christmas who got clothes instead of toys and the fun stuff.*me gusta*

Also when can we see elin tights? ^___^ im so impatient.

Definitely NO "tights". No leggings. Nothing crazy. These are like Daisy Duke short-shorts and in some angles, you can't even see them because of the way the Elin chest piece armor flairs out at the bottom.\

And yes, Maladhiel, that was the big news!

[Maladhiel]

Organic, on 28 August 2011 - 01:01 PM, said:

And yes, Maladhiel, that was the big news!

Some folks are going to be disappointed.

[radeeeeeeee]

I just want to see some type of photo

[Maladhiel]

I'm sure Amira will type something up ... and if she's allowed to share the photos, she will.

[Organic]

Maladhiel, on 28 August 2011 - 02:04 PM, said:

Organic, on 28 August 2011 - 01:01 PM, said:

And yes, Maladhiel, that was the big news!

Some folks are going to be disappointed.

Why? What else would be the "big news"? Alpha is months away, beta is a couple months after that. Those things are far too distant to have an announcement about. The official statement about the "big announcement" said that Pat was going to take questions immediately after, so it was pretty much guaranteed it'd be a security-related item.

[TazZy]

Awesome walkthru, appreciated!

[Maladhiel]

Organic, on 28 August 2011 - 05:21 PM, said:

Maladhiel, on 28 August 2011 - 02:04 PM, said:

Organic, on 28 August 2011 - 01:01 PM, said:

And yes, Maladhiel, that was the big news!

Some folks are going to be disappointed.

Why? What else would be the "big news"? Alpha is months away, beta is a couple months after that. Those things are far too distant to have an announcement about. The official statement about the "big announcement" said that Pat was going to take questions immediately after, so it was pretty much guaranteed it'd be a security-related item.

Yeah, but you know some people would have loved to have heard something along the lines of: "Alpha is happening in September" or some such thing like that. I'm not saying that I was disappointed. Your report was very informative and I liked it a lot. But you know there are those out there who just will never be satisfied by anything that EME tells them from this point until the game is finally released ... and even then, some folks won't be satisfied.

[Amira]

Hey guys! I literally just got back from PAX. I can and will share the photos! I'll have a post up in a few hours :)

[radeeeeeeee]

Amira, on 28 August 2011 - 06:58 PM, said:

Hey guys! I literally just got back from PAX. I can and will share the photos! I'll have a post up in a few hours :)

Oh my! cant wait! lol i've banned from the forums till august 30th or i would make a thread on the photos. Been banned for at least 5 days now. who the heck bans someone for that long? seriously. So many good topics there i would love to discuss Oh and i know they arent TIGHTS. Just that EME has been saying "tights" for at least 5 months now Really happy they went for the "shorts" look. Guess we will all really see how they look when Amira posts them ^_^

[Maladhiel]

Amira, on 28 August 2011 - 06:58 PM, said:

Hey guys! I literally just got back from PAX. I can and will share the photos! I'll have a post up in a few hours :)

*glomps Amira* I hope you had a fantastic time. Did you get any swag (aside from the swag from the community event that is)?

[Googsy]

Nice stuff Organic! You can imagine how much envy I have!

It's also nice to see EME oriented to the players and paying attention to what makes the community suffer!

Thanks!

[Amira]

radeeeeeeee, on 28 August 2011 - 07:05 PM, said:

Amira, on 28 August 2011 - 06:58 PM, said:

Hey guys! I literally just got back from PAX. I can and will share the photos! I'll have a post up in a few hours :)

Oh my! cant wait! lol i've banned from the forums till august 30th or i would make a thread on the photos. Been banned for at least 5 days now. who the heck bans someone for that long? seriously. So many good topics there i would love to discuss Oh and i know they arent TIGHTS. Just that EME has been saying "tights" for at least 5 months now Really happy they went for the "shorts" look. Guess we will all really see how they look when Amira posts them ^_^

Here they are! :)

Maladhiel, on 28 August 2011 - 07:24 PM, said:

Amira, on 28 August 2011 - 06:58 PM, said:

Hey guys! I literally just got back from PAX. I can and will share the photos! I'll have a post up in a few hours :)

*glomps Amira* I hope you had a fantastic time. Did you get any swag (aside from the swag from the community event that is)?

<3 Hey you! I had a great time; wish you could've been there :( All the swag I got from the TERA event is in the news post! It's pretty sweet!

[EarlHarewood]

OMG SO JELLY!!! >.<
Could you imagine working in a place like that? I'd have to pinch myself every few minutes to check I wasn't dreaming.