The Shards Online Team is happy to announce our first playtest event for members of the Pre-alpha Playtester Program. The servers will be available Saturday, January 31st at 2PM EST (7 PM GMT) and will remain open for approximately 5 hours.

Your access code and download link can be found on your account dashboard. Please do not share this information with anyone. This access code will be used for all pre-alpha playtests and is unique to you!

NOTE: If you have Avast antivirus, it will falsely flag one of our DLL files as malicious upon extraction. The easiest solution is to disable Avast temporarily while you extract the game. You can also open the Avast User Interface, click “Scan” and then “Quarantine (Virus Chest)”. Then find the tcpnet.dll entries, right-click, and select “Restore and add to exclusions”. We apologize for this, we are working hard to correct this issue.

The specific goal of this test is to collect feedback on PvP combat balance. The starting templates create characters with max skills. Once logged in, join one of the faction teams and participate in the PvP mini-game to evaluate balance. Feel free to make more than one character to try each skill-set.

We’ve created a small game guide to help you out, which can be found here: http://shardsonline.com/game-guide. You can also refer to our community driven wiki: http://shardsonline.gamepedia.com

Playtest Details:

We’ve created a simple mod that encourages playtesters to engage in PvP.

  • The shrine game no longer runs continuously. It waits for enough players to be on each team and then starts a match. Teams are awarded points for holding more than one shrine. The team with the most points gains bonus loyalty at the end of the match.
  • Players can choose from three starting templates that created characters with maxxed out skills. (Warrior, Mage, Rogue)
  • The guard protected island has been closed off and players spawn on PvP island.
  • The merchant has been moved to PvP island
  • New loyalty reward items have been added including new mage staffs and a bag of gold