Star Citizen Alpha 4.0 was officially made available to all Wave 1 testers. This means everyone who is either a Centurion or Imperator subscriber can now play the upcoming patch in the EPTU channel but don’t expect a smooth experience.
Since the EPTU channel was opened to Alpha 4.0 testers, a massive flood of players has joined the servers, causing a rough experience for everyone around the server. Playing Alpha 4.0 will remind you how unready the game is for a bigger amount of players with long lines in front of shopping terminals.
But that’s not the main problem. Currently, the servers that host Pyro are having serious troubles as gamers witness Server Errors almost every 10 or 15 minutes, disrupting the gameplay flow and the missions.
Other than that, elevators also struggle to work most of the time, which prevents players from even exiting the hab area on space stations or cities.
Another big problem is the long queue time for opening the hangar doors. Due to the fact that a large number of players try to take off at the same time from each station, the ATC put them all in the queue, and regarding the frustrating response time of servers, it might take players over half an hour to finally get the permission to exit the hangar.
All of this, of course, is quite normal for a Wave 1 build which never ran at full capacity during the Evocati stage. To be honest, the server stress testing has just begun for CIG, and we will probably see more improvements going forward, and maybe a change in the player and server count to find the best combination.
So, take this as a warning if you have not joined Wave 1 yet. It’s going to be a rough experience, and may not even manage to leave the hangar after hours of trying. It’s best to wait for at least a few more Wave 1 updates and then join if you are looking for a smoother experience.
