Developer Tavernlight Games has officially announced that RavenIdle will finally go live on Wednesday, September 10, in the form of an open beta test, before launching the first proper season of the studio’s 2nd web3 game.

What’s New in RavenIdle’s Open Beta Test?

The open beta will be a limited time testing phase in which the blockchain gaming community will have the first public chance to try out RavenIdle and help the developers make sure the game is ready to fully go live with play to earn gameplay.

This stress test introduces a new and hopefully “bulletproof” backend that is said to be capable of handling more than 100k players playing at the same time. In order to make sure this new, rebuilt infrastructure for the game is actually able to handle those numbers, the team needs the community’s help with testing the foundation.

RavenIdle Season 0 was supposed to go live in early July, but ended up getting delayed due to the backend being “built poorly, even for a small audience,” according to an official X announcement thread. The number of players that showed up back then made them realize that their “Hail Mary approach” was not good enough, requiring the team’s engineers to undergo a full rebuild of the game’s backend.

Fast forward about 2 months later, and it looks like the studio is now almost ready to get the game up and running for everyone to enjoy. Instead of launching a season right away however, they want to be completely sure that the game is now ready for a big playerbase. To avoid the same mistake done with Season 0, the team is opting for this open beta approach, inviting everyone to test the game out to ensure the new backend is able to handle a global Season 1 launch.

Details on which game features will be live for this stress test were not announced at the time of writing, but it does very much seem that players will be able to try out all of the essential game mechanics, as the announcement states that “the knowledge you gain will give you an invaluable edge in the Official Season 1 competition!”

This does not seem to be a rewards-focused event however. Season 0 was supposed to have a $70k seeded prize pool that could grow up to $570k in rewards from Battle Pass purchases, but the game was simply not ready for a complete blockchain-powered economy at the time. The team probably doesn’t want to risk anything for this test session and looks to be reserving the prize pool for the official season instead. In fact, a development update thread near the end of July teased that the first season will even have increased rewards due to the additional time it’s taken to bring the game to life. Whether there will be some other kind of reward to commemorate your participation in helping out with testing was not announced.

What is clear however is that all player progress during this Open Beta will be wiped, so you’ll want to take this opportunity to learn the ropes of the game to have a better idea on how to start off your play to earn adventures in the fair launch of Season 1.

Depending on how well testing goes, we could see the release date for the game’s worldwide launch announced shortly afterwards. While the duration of this beta test was not announced, it is possible that we see this blockchain title fully go live by the end of September, if testing confirms the backend is stable enough for such a release.

If you’d like to help playtest this new game, keep an eye out on the game’s social channels for new info on how to participate. You might want to sign up on the game’s official website as well if you haven’t done so already before testing begins. Platforms do not seem to have been confirmed for this test phase in particular, but you can probably expect to play the game on your web browser. The official launch should make the game playable on web browsers, mobile devices, and Telegram as well.

What Is RavenIdle?

RavenIdle is a free to play web3 idle RPG and the second game in the Immutable zkEVM-powered RavenQuest ecosystem. In development in-house by RavenQuest developer Tavernlight Games, this new on-chain RPG has players build their own custom class through diverse skill trees and embark on increasingly challenging dungeons, clearing floors of varied fantasy monsters in passive idle gameplay, even while away from the game itself. Grow and customize your own land as you gather various resources and craft strong gear to become better prepared to compete for $QUEST rewards. Complete daily missions and unlock exclusive rewards as you craft and send out Tradepacks consisting of different resources to various cities for more rewards.

While the game will be free for all to enjoy, those looking to make the most of the web3 side of it and gain access to earning crypto rewards such as the $QUEST token will likely have to buy the game’s Battle Pass, with Battle Pass purchases set to fund the game’s growing seasonal prize pool, or that was at least the plan back in July.

If you’re a fan of idle games, then RavenIdle could be your next web3 game to play and earn in. In the meantime, you can play to earn in the team’s flagship MMORPG RavenQuest, which is available for download as a free to play top-down game on PC through the official website, and more recently, the Epic Games Store as well.

Last month saw RavenQuest launch on Epic Games Store with the Treasures Below expansion. On August 22, the team kicked off the game’s Expedition Leaderboard with a total of 2.8 million $QUEST tokens up for grabs over the course of 4 weeks.