Anthem is now a little more than two months away from launch, but some players are currently already playing a slice of the game, thanks to its closed alpha testing, which is now live for those who managed to get in through registration. Recently, the game’s creative director Jon Warner put up an update on BioWare’s official site to talk about the alpha, its purpose, and what players can expect to see from it.
After briefly mentioning the recent story trailer that BioWare showed off for Anthem at The Game Awards, Warner went on to discuss the closed alpha, saying that the primary purpose of the testing is to make sure that “key systems and technology that power the game will hold up” when the game launches. He mentioned that during the testing phase, BioWare will shut down servers and games multiple times without notice, also making it clear the slice of the game that players get to play right now is not representative of the quality of the final product, or even the stage it’s in right now in development. Additionally, the closed alpha will focus on multiplayer activities, and not on what goes around inside the single player hub area Fort Tarsis.
“We conduct playtests to ensure the key systems and technology that power the game will hold up when we launch,” Warner wrote. “For this one specifically, we are focusing on load balancing and scale testing our servers and matchmaking. We will be focusing the time windows of the playtest to give you the best opportunity to experience a slice of the game with others. We will also shut down the servers and games multiple times without notice and bring them all up again. This playtest is all about the group experience and the dedicated servers. We’ve focused the content on what is outside of Fort Tarsis to give you a chance to enjoy that experience. We’ve purposely built a small slice of the game, so we can look at those things while you play and enjoy the game. Therefore, the content in this playtest is about a month old and isn’t reflective of how the game looks and performs today or how it will at launch.”
Anthem launches on February 22, 2019 for the PS4, Xbox One, and PC.