Hey everyone, and welcome to This Week in Arkheron! Things are quieter than usual this week since a lot of us are heads down getting ready for the Crossplay Beta kicking off on September 25. We still wanted to take a beat to share what’s going on though, so let’s get into it! 

Friday, September 4 - Saturday, September 5

On Friday and Saturday, we’re back with another limited tech test of Endless Spires. This is our 3v3 arena-style game mode with no cap on the number of Floors you can climb – so the sky’s the limit! 

Last week’s test provided us with a ton of helpful insight around performance and stability, especially for players with certain AMD cards – we want to give a HUGE thank you to all who participated! And, because of how successful the tech tests were, we’re extending the tech tests to take place every weekend until the Crossplay Beta starts. 

One major change we want to call out: these tech tests will be limited to North America and Europe. Data from last weekend’s test showed us that the player population across Asia-Pacific and South America didn’t reach the threshold needed for what we believe makes for quality matchmaking – things like fast queues, balanced matches, and minimal downtime. Rather than asking players in these regions to deal with a suboptimal playing experience, we’re focusing testing on regions with higher player density so that we can get some of the technical insights needed to improve performance. 

If you’re in Asia-Pacific and South America, you can absolutely still queue up by changing your region, just expect to see longer wait times. You can also join in on Bots and Custom Games as usual, and of course we’ll have the Crossplay Beta in a few weeks you can hop into. 

Here are the server uptimes for each region:

• North America: 8:00pm - 1:00am EDT | 5:00pm - 10:00pm PDT

• Europe: 6:00pm - 11:00pm BST | 7:00pm - 12:00am CEST

Have an awesome week, everyone. See you in the Tower!