A Glimmer of Dawn in the Darkness

Fang Zheng had naturally given this matter careful thought. Indeed, in an ordinary online game, as Ya Wang had said, players who got in early during testing would more or less have an advantage. Their familiarity with the systems and skills, as well as their proficiency with quest procedures, would ensure that they were more experienced than players who had just entered the game.

However, the developers and operators were not entirely without ways to address this. As Fang Zheng had said, internal game testing mainly served to test the game's smoothness and whether its various data met the requirements.

For example, if a quest required you to collect ten rabbit furs in exchange for a bandage, then during internal testing, players might only need to kill ten rabbits—or perhaps even get ten furs from a single rabbit. That was not impossible. After all, the test was only meant to verify the process: whether players could obtain rabbit fur, whether it dropped properly, and whether they could successfully turn it in for a bandage and experience.

But once the game entered open beta or official operation, the drop rates would definitely be adjusted. During internal testing, one rabbit might drop one fur, but during open beta or official operation, it might take two or three rabbits for one fur to drop.

Likewise, the drop rates for all the items and equipment guaranteed by boss farming during internal testing would naturally be adjusted as well.

In that way, the early players would be held back somewhat, making it harder for them to stand out so easily.

More importantly, in Fang Zheng's view, even if those early players possessed all sorts of advantages, a single drawback would be enough to erase every one of them.

Margin for error.

In other online games,