The closed beta test for "Xia Ke Xing" is already in preparation, but the date for the open beta test in September has not yet been set.
The general consensus was as follows:
"If we do it later, we can have more time to debug. After all, this is the first time we've made such a big game, and the backend server has only been tested twice. If the debugging process is longer, we can ensure that there are fewer problems."
"But if it's earlier, maybe we can still catch up with this year's game review by the League of Legends."
That's right, even when Blue Star is making games, they now take the schedule of the League of Legends Association into account!
Because they know that "Xia Ke Xing" is currently rated A in the test, and once it is officially released, there will definitely be testers from the Jia Lian (a gaming organization) to give it a rating.
Once rated, "Xia Ke Xing" has a high chance of being nominated for this year's Game of the Year.
Mingyan personally oversaw the design of their flagship product, which must be at least a 9.0 out of 100—no one has ever doubted that; they are that confident!
This would be completely unimaginable in any other studio.
Mingyan also considered it and concluded that, given the lengthy reaction time of the Jialian (a legal entity) process, it would take at least two months to complete the process.
If "Xia Ke Xing" is launched in early September, there is indeed a possibility that it will catch the last train of this year's ceremony.
Mingyan then smiled and said, "Alright, let's tentatively schedule the public beta test for early September. Horace, how's the server preparation going?"
Horace said confidently, "No problem. We've rented two extra sets of super-large temporary servers, and they've already undergone two stress tests. Even if a billion players come that day, we can handle it perfectly well."
Chapter 111 Public Beta Launched
September 1st.
Blue Star's two regular server groups for "Xia Ke Xing" and two temporary server groups, along with the entire maintenance team stationed there, are all confidently welcoming the influx of players.
...Then, full of confidence, I exploded.
"Huh?! Could you please say that again?"
"It's been 15 minutes since we went live, and the average number of player requests is 2.5 billion, with a peak of 3.1 billion! Boss, all servers are under high pressure, and all external links are blocked!"
"Where are all these players coming from?! How many download channels are blocked?"
"Boss, we didn't know that either, because the official website on the blog is down, let alone the download link..."
Even before the public beta began, the official website of Bluestar had already made the official version of "Xia Ke Xing" available for download.
However, before 12:00 on September 1st, all servers were closed to the public, and players were unable to log in to the game.
The game is naturally distributed to various partners by the studio.
This includes two major platforms, IPP and Atlas, countless other small and medium-sized digital media distribution platforms, self-media websites such as blogs, comprehensive online live streaming platforms such as Fat Cat TV, and finally several game news sites.
For example, major game review and player voting websites such as Gaming Studio released the page for "Xia Ke Xing" early on, indicating that it would be released on September 1st.
For games like these that haven't been released yet, players can't rate them, but they can click the "Looking Forward To" button to indicate that they want to play the game.
Even before the Blue Star Carnival, the anticipation for "Xia Ke Xing" had exceeded 10 billion, sweeping across major websites and charts, and it was virtually undefeated.
Other game publishers in the Sixth Star Province had to temporarily avoid its sharp edge, and no one dared to continue scheduling their games for early September.
However, relative to the total number of players, most people are still more willing to download the game client a few hours before the game starts.
Naturally, around 12 o'clock when the open beta started, there was a peak in traffic requests.
So now, some people feel as if servers all over the world are on the verge of crashing...
—Blue Star's official website is incredibly slow!
I can't log in to my blog!
Even the real-time data statistics of the gaming studio crashed, and all you see when you open it is a blank page!
This is definitely one of the major "traffic accidents" in the history of the Sixth Star Province's network.
Holles, the backend team leader at Bluestar, was already sweating profusely, working with the operations and maintenance team to handle the emergency.
Fortunately, we had a backup plan in place and were able to rent two additional servers at a considerable cost to temporarily alleviate the pressure on the main server group.
It's important to understand that a server group doesn't simply have the effect of 1 + 1 = 2.
Simply integrating resources to allow all players to stay in the same world already requires the most advanced service technology in interstellar space.
Fortunately, the technical department on Blue Star is barely managing to withstand the pressure...
Otherwise, only about a third of these billions of players might be able to get into the game, and the rest would have to spend at least an afternoon in long queues.
Of course, even now, most players are still faced with a cold, impersonal queue prompt when logging in.
Currently in queue.
There are approximately 92 million players ahead of you...
Estimated waiting time: 1200 minutes.
Just seeing these numbers is enough to make one feel hopeless.
What's even more disheartening is that the server's estimated wait time may not actually be accurate.
It's obvious that the players who were able to enter the game wouldn't leave the game anytime soon.
—Any truly fun game will definitely keep players entertained for at least three hours the first time they play! Anyone who takes one look, logs off, and then comes back to queue is a fool!