Zenith Closed Beta Stage

[rDy]

Hello & welcome to the closed beta of NewSquad!

I'll tell you a few things about us and our current and future objectives.

Firstly I'm rDy, formerly known as "ADMIN", the founder and administrator of OldSquad - one of the oldest and highest quality Season 6 projects (7 years old) for the hard style lovers.

I've built a new & fresh team along with 3 of my real-life friends (IPressPlay, Mario & BMG) in order to create and maintain one of the best "high season" projects dedicated for hard & semi-hard style lovers, a project that will compete with even Webzen itself.

And here we are, with a big ambition and plans, and with the desire & resources to turn them into reality, via hard work.

Since none of us have prior experience on newer seasons (and me & my friends stopped playing the game many years ago), we're both learning and working in the same time, in order to acquire as much experience as possible with the new content & features.

To make the things as good as possible from the start, we'll work closely with the players and their feedback / suggestions / reports.

What's the plan?

We've been through an Alpha Stage until now, that started in June. We've managed to set-up and correct a big part of the content, but just in their "initial/basic" versions.

We're now opening the Closed Beta in order for players to join and see what we've done, how it looks, and also to start discussing together about more important aspects as well as about what was done so far.

During Closed Beta, anyone can join the server, but we are not advertising anything for the large public. Basically, a small circle of players that already know about us and / or are invited by people that already know.

The server will work as a "Test Server", which means you have access to all kind of commands (set level, set stats, make items, test shop, etc.) in order to have an easier time testing around.

Starting from Closed Beta, we'll also start "working" on our Council group. The Council will be a group of selected players that will represent the overall playerbase and will be in direct communication with us as the staff, during Open Beta and official editions.

The leader of the Council will be Alex - a player that you probably know and that helped us a lot with feedback and discussions related to the project.

The most active & implicated players during Closed Beta & Open Beta will have a permanent slot in our Council, as long as they remain part of our project.

Ok, what about rewards?

Since our project will go through 2 different beta stages, none of the rewards would matter during them. Instead, your reports, suggestions, activity will matter and you will accumulate "credits" that will be delivered 1 week after the 1st official edition.

• You'll get between 20 and 100 credits for your confirmed (and fixed) reports, accepted & implemented suggestions/ideas or valuable feedback (decided on case to case scenario, based on impact).
• Depending on how active / implied you will be during closed & open beta, you will also get a bonus of 500~4000 credits.
• As stated before, the most active & implicated players will also get a permanent slot in our Council. Members of the Council will have permanent VIP on our (official) server as long as they are part of Council. 
  • Permanent slot means even if you will be inactive / not bringing value to our Council discussions, you won't lose your member status for an entire official edition, after that your member role will be at "risk".

Now to make things crystal clear, we'll tell you some important things you need to consider before getting involved with us:

1. You are here because you want to be, not because you are asked/forced to be, this is currently a private project and being here is a matter of choice, we don't have any obligations/responsibilities towards you, just as we don't have any expectations/requests from you.
Being here doesn't mean you'll get special treatment from us (at any point of the project) - we never ever do that - and also doesn't mean that anything you say will be considered at any time.

2. If you are bored of trash servers and want to be part of the root/inception of one of the best MU Online experiences, then you're in the right place.

3. If I didn't play the newer seasons doesn't mean that my 7 years experience in domain and 12+ years experience as a competitive gamer are less than your newer MU seasons experience.

3.1. By being open to your feedback / opinions / ideas doesn't directly imply that we will do exactly as you say, but that we are totally OPEN to change our vision / ideas IF your arguments are strong enough to convince us.

4. In order to get in line with us so we can correctly communicate, you need to forget your previous experience with any server/webzen/etc. and look at this project from a new, objective point.
We're going to rethink most of the game and you can basically see it as a new, different game compared to what you knew so far. Basically things like "you need to do x because this is how it was there or there" or "this must be that great/rare/easy/common because this is how it is everywhere" are totally wrong and not welcomed, it is like the people that came 5-6 years ago and told us "you need to have Arena and 1-point spawns because this is how it is everywhere".

5. We're (without any modesty) innovators in this domain, and we were the first project to bring a lot of new ideas/systems/balance/qols that were copied and used by other "projects" and even by other emulators.

6. And one last, very important thing to keep in mind. We're building a totally new community from scratch, this time doing it right. Which means we will have 0 tolerance for toxicity, bad competition (insults, trash-talk etc. between opponents), harassments and so on. If you know you're that type of human, don't lose time here, you probably won't survive long. We will no longer focus only on the quality of the game itself, but also on the quality of the community, which is way more important than the quality of the game. 
So if you don't want to be an ass-hole in an online game meant to relax and entertain the people that are part of it, if you want to respect and be respected, if you want to be part of a "virtual family" where both staff, veterans and new players can feel comfortable being part of, then you're safe, and we're safe.

What was done so far in Alpha Stage?

• Basic settings & S6 adaptation of previous content & features.
• Spots & Minimap.
• Shops & NPCs.
• Events (old, new & custom).
• Bosses, mini bosses & invasions.
• A basic economy.
• Client adjustments/fixes/improvements.

What wasn't touched at all:

• Characters and everything related to them (skills, balance, etc.)
• Monsters / bosses / mini-bosses stats (will be tweaked after characters).
• Game Quests - we'll probably not use them at all or only use part of them as a "Guide". We'll have our own quest system.

What's the Closed Beta stage about?

• We're testing what was done in Alpha.
• We'll start touching the characters & skills.
• We're building the overall gameplay along with your feedback.
• We're sharing ideas, views and everything else related to the server.

Once we have everything as good as possible, we'll move to Open Beta, where we'll start advertising the project and simulate "official" editions for few months (without "test-server" environment, but with "official-server" environment).

The Closed Beta will be the longest stage of our project, expecting to last anywhere between 4 and 8 months.