On the heels of Global Agenda’s first weekend closed beta test session, dubbed CBT 1a, we caught up with Executive Producer Todd Harris for a debriefing. After an update on what was tested, how the beta test weekend went, and the kinds of feedback received, what followed was a surprisingly in-depth discussion about the role of player vs. environment (PvE) play in Global Agenda, a game more known for the depth of its player-vs-player (PvP) side. We finished up with how feedback from CBT 1a went so far as to alter the course of Global Agenda’s development, albeit slightly, heading into CBT 1b later this month.

Todd Harris: It went really, really well. We turned on the servers early just to give the folks a nice surprise and then went through late Sunday night and it really met or exceeded all of our expectations. We’re really pleased with how it turned out.

Ten Ton Hammer: Where were your suspicions confirmed? Were there any big surprises from CBT1a?

Todd: I would say that the things we kind of expected were confirmed were: a) PvP is indeed fun at all levels, b) these graphics are really cool, it’s a cool sci-fi look but it’s not the typical post-apocalyptic look. People liked the clean style and progression. All those things were things that we were expecting and were confirmed.

Things that were maybe pleasant surprises were the really positive response to group PvE, specifically. We knew people were going to love the PvP because we’ve been testing that ourselves for some time. The PvE is newer for us because we worked backwards from the devices that were balanced for PvP and then adopted the PvE systems around that. And as you guys know, we just introduced that fairly recently at E3. We had a lot of the building blocks in place over the past 4 years but we put it together for missions around the E3 timeframe. Since people really responded well to group PvE, that’s where we’re going to be working on more content in the short term.

Another pleasant surprise was the very enthusiastic feedback to the in-game voice. We do have in-game voice-over-IP and historically there’s been some debate I guess over how much players would want to use that, whether it destroys role-playing, etc. Certainly for our type of game, where it’s very quick paced and there is a big focus on combat and tactics and well-oiled teamwork required, voices adds a lot. The players responded well to it being built in, and we also got a lot of positive comments on the strong voice quality. Many said it was the best voice quality they’d experienced in an MMO, so that was good.

The third pleasant surprise was just the enthusiasm of the beta testing group. We thought we made good decisions on who we let in and of course you can’t let everyone in in the first batch, but really good enthusiasm as far as just a lot of play test hours. The number of people that packed in more than 40 hours in just these three days was exceptional - a lot of folks doing all-night marathons. I hopped on Saturday morning and there were folks that hadn’t gotten off yet that started playing Friday. When you only have three days, you know, they wanted to get all the way up to level 19, which is what we ended up capping it at. In fact, there were a number of folks that took all four character classes up to 19. All of those were very good surprises for us.

Ten Ton Hammer: Are you seeing players gravitate toward one or two classes?

For the answer to this question, and more please continue read at http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/72481