The October Newsletter from the Shards Online team at Citadel Studios was posted last week. As per usual, project lead Derek Brinkmann’s letter handily summarizes what is discussed in the rest of the newsletter:

Hey everyone!

Many of you are probably wondering what’s holding up our Pre-Alpha 3 release? While we still aren’t quite ready to release an exact date, I can give you some insight into where we are in the process. We are fast approaching feature complete for the release which means all that is left is polish and bug fixes. Here are the remaining tasks we are finishing up:

• New player quests – This is the subject of this month’s Designer Den
• Animal Taming UI – The animal taming window allows you to inspect your creatures and add commands to your hotbar.
• Basic Character Customization – We are adding face/skin tone and hair selection
• Radial Menu – We are replacing our placeholder context menu with a proper radial menu and adding lots of additional ways to interact with objects.

As you can see, we are working on things that will make a real impact on the ability to enjoy all the systems and content we have already packed into the game. The temptation to release PA3 now is strong, but we as a team want to make sure that our Alpha backers who are getting access with this release get the best experience possible.

With that said, I’m also really proud of all the work we have done since the last major release. If you compare our current build, to the initial PA2 build, they seem like different games. Here are some highlights of the new stuff coming in:

• In-game Map – Finally! You don’t have to open a web browser to look at the map of Celador. The map will also show you your current location.
• WASD Movement – One of the most requested features by the playtesters has been added. Still needs some tweaks, but its working great.
• New Spells – We are continuing to flesh out the initial set of spells for mages. The newest addition is Spike Path and Wall of Fire. You have to try them!
• Hotbar Improvements – We heard you like hotbars so we put hotbar pages in your hotbar so you can hotbar while you hotbar.
• Rare Resources – We’ve added a rare ore to Celador called cobalt. In addition we have made some tweaks to the other crafting resources like adding actual cotton.

It’s so exciting to see all these awesome changes going in. As always, we really need your feedback on these recent improvements. If you are Founder’s Tier and above, jump into the game this weekend and try out all the new features. I will be sure the Test Server is up so you can use the special commands to set stats / skills / spells.

This was published just prior to the Halloween event, which is (I expect) what the last paragraph quoted above is on about. Hopefully a few of you were able to experience that!