Citadel Studios have released the August newsletter for the Shards Online community. The main focus of it seems to be on how player housing is implemented in Shards, which would make sense given that the August pre-alpha test of the game was all about letting players get in and create their own homes.

Which is the subject of the video embedded above, by the way.

And as per usual, Derek Brinkmann’s letter — which opens the newsletter — handily sums up all of the rest of what is discussed therein:

Time has been flying because the team has been so busy preparing Shards Online for Pre-Alpha 3. At this point, we have narrowed our team focus to 3 core areas: Game Balance, User Interface, and Polish. These are the areas we have identified as being the biggest barriers to fun in the game right now.

This milestone we turned Austin’s attention to game balance to make sure the character progression for each of the different “professions” in the game are rewarding and balanced against each other. You can read all about that in this months Designer’s Den further down the page.

Our new and improved UI for Pre-Alpha 3 has a ton of improvements. The biggest of which is the fully dynamic hotbar that lets you activate all of your spells, combat abilities, skill abilities, and consumable items with a single keystroke. Beyond that, we are tackling new conversation, crafting, and taming windows. I could go on and on about it but I think the screenshots speak for themselves.

Our Pre-Alpha Admin group has been kicking some butt too. Every day I hear about something new and cool they are working on for their mods. We are excited to announce the modding contest (read below) in which every single one of you Alpha backers will be get to be a judge.

We are currently looking at a Fall release for Pre-Alpha 3 and Alpha tier game access. I know this is a bit later than we originally planned, but we as a team need to make sure the game is completely ready for the influx of players. Citadel Studios will never release something before we feel it’s ready. It’s one of the advantages of not having big company executives dictating our schedule.

Click on through to check out the new UI, and many more images of player-made houses.