D&D 5E Next wave of VT invites going out sometime later

mudbunny · Mar 11, 2011

Trevor just posted that the next wave of VT invites will be going out on Monday. This phase of the VT beta will eventually (once all the invites have gone out, over several waves) include *all* current DDI subscribers who have opted into communications from WotC.

So I'm back with some good news. I've just confirmed that we will be launching the next part of the beta this coming Monday, March 14th. We have everything lined up to go and our first batch of invites will be out by that afternoon. This first batch will include those people from the friends and family beta who are eagerly waiting to get back in and back to running adventures.

After we get the invites out on Monday I'll stop back in to let you know how things are going. Remember, if you're a DDI subscriber and you want to participate in this part of the beta, make sure you have followed these instructions so we can invite you.

New info as of 3/14/2011

Over the weekend, the DDI crew found a fairly substantial memory leak in the VT which resulted in them pushing back the opening of the next phase of the beta test until it is fixed. No date has been given as to when that will be.

From Trevor here.

Hey all. At the end of last week I stated that we would be moving forward with the Virtual Table beta today. However, on Sunday we found a memory leak issue with the current build of the D&D Virtual Table. This is definitely something we need to fix before we start inviting people back into the beta, so we’ll be pushing the invite date back. Right now we’re still assessing how long we need for the fix and for testing. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but I’ll be back as soon as I have some solid information on the first wave of beta invites.

Trevor then expanded on what happened here.

I won't get in to too many details, but here are the very basics of what happened this time around.

We found an issue Sunday.
We start digging into the problem and getting info to the people who need to know about it.
Everybody (basically) is in the office on Monday.
We still have all sorts of regularly scheduled meetings and workload that we're dealing with, and now we have to determine exactly what the problem is (we had a pretty good idea, but with more eyes and people we double and triple check).
Problem is defined, fixes applied and checked.
New round of testing begins for the fix.
We have a meeting with all the important peeps about the timelines involved, how this affects the invites and shifting schedules of individuals to make sure all the moving pieces can happen in order when we need to launch the beta again.
Talk about communications - Do we have a firm date yet? What information do we have? We strive for a level of transparency and useful information, so I dig until I find what we're most certain about.
I put the info together and it gets reviewed and I pop in here to put it up

I'm missing all sorts of details along the way, but that's the basics. This doesn't happen every time I have some information to share, but when it's an important and timely/reactionary thing like this, something similar to this likely happens. It's not as simple as have all these people drop everything else they're doing and work on this and only this until we get everything worked out.

As to opening back up the beta group, it's good to hear you guys enjoyed that environment. This time around we'll be inviting a lot more people into the beta, and the day we send out those invites, we want them to have access to the group and the table with no waiting - it's just a better experience for all those people new to the beta. That means front-loading all the waiting unfortunately, which we're dealing with now (points to the afore posted mention of how awesomely patient people have been).

I know we're excited, and I know we all want this, and because we're human, we want it yesterday (well that and we said we were going to have it before yesterday). This is a beta. We are tinkering around with features, UI, etc. There will be problems like this. We will deal with those problems while dealing with everything else that we need to on a day-to-day basis. Balance that with the fact that you guys are , and the longer you wait, that will likely turn into . And this is what I'm balancing - in the face of delays that have to happen, getting useful information to you in as timely a way as I can in order to combat as much of that as possible.

And with that said, I'll get back to finishing up drafting tomorrow's DDI update post so I can go home and grab some food. Hope that was helpful and not too rambling/stream of consciousness - I blame writing too many things at once

mudbunny · Mar 11, 2011

Some more info from Trevor:

The first batch, going out Monday, will include all subscribers that were in the previous phase of the beta. Dates for subsequent batches of invites will be given on Monday.

Baron Von Mandrick · Mar 11, 2011

Wow, pretty cool. So every DDI subscriber with open communication will be getting an invite even if they hadn't expressed any interest in beta?

I'll have to try it out. It really looks promising. As a player I'll probably try and use the system to join a game. I don't know any DM's that use DDI yet, so I'll have to find a game that is at least a little random. I'll check what system for character creation the games want, and make a character as quickly as I can and check it out. I'm really excited. One DM I know was waiting to see how VT worked before subscribing to DDI. I can maybe provide him with some feedback.

samursus · Mar 11, 2011

The current beta group has been running games almost constantly since it started, so any wanting to play or DM should have little problem.

kaomera · Mar 12, 2011

Well, I hope I get in. I seem to have opted in, except that I haven't been getting any other communications... I'd contact customer service to double-check, but apparently I don't have permission to actually use that link...

666Sinner666 · Mar 12, 2011

I was part of the original Beta for the VT and while there were plenty of games it seemed like everyone was either across the pond, on the pacific side of the US, or in Australia. None of those are condusive to someone in EST. If you are not on the EST zone then you should not have a problem finding a game at reasonable hours.

fba827 · Mar 12, 2011

totally off topic. maybe i'm just tired, but I read the thread title as "Next wave of VD invites going out 03/14" (note the change of the single letter) -- obviously, i was confused as to a) why it was being announced here and b) who signs up for that!

But, yeah, i'm just tired. :-D

Anyway, back on topic ...

Sounds like fun stuff. Maybe, just maybe one day i'll look into vt options.

mudbunny · Mar 15, 2011

Note that the beta invites have been delayed. See the added part in the OP for the details.

Dannager · Mar 15, 2011

mudbunny said:
Note that the beta invites have been delayed. See the added part in the OP for the details.

Trevor is being awesome to be this forthcoming with information not just on what the problem is and what the timeline will be, but by listing out the entire process by which the problem will be addressed. It's admirable on his part, but kind of sad that he feels this is something they need to do in order to keep the hordes at bay. The fact that he feels he needs to do some serious damage control like this with a delayed beta phase doesn't paint a pretty picture of what we fans get like when things don't go the way we want them to.