Portalarium’s Chris Spears confirmed today that Developer and above members will be able to give some advanced help to test the servers before next Thursday’s scheduled Release 3 test.  As just a reminder, the big new feature is multiplayer mode, which is a big step forward from single player online mode which was used in R1 and R2.

Here’s a link and a selection from the message Chris Spears posted on the Dev+ forum:

We would like for the Dev Plus guys and gals to patch up and join us for “Lunch with SotA Bunch”. Friday, 2 – 3PM CST, we will open up the Live servers for 1 hour to do a limited load test. For tomorrow’s test we’ll cap the max players per map at 64 to see how well things work. We’ll be watching server load, data rates, and client performance during the test. If things go poorly, we should have data to fix the problem before the next test session. If things go better than expected, we’ll probably Turn the max per map up a bit and try again another day! Keep in mind, this build only has the most minimal of optimizations. Things will only get better and better with each build.

This is exciting news for many of the backers at higher levels.  The Multiplayer Options as well as the Upcoming Features in March’s Release 4 have been a major focus in the forums as of late.  Not to say that there are not other important news on the horizon (Upcomging SotA College of Arms Announcement to name just one).

For those of you who are able to take part in the event please share your thoughts and feedback with not only the development team but the rest of us in the community.  The beter the quality feedback and data, the better online multiplayer will be upon release later this year.