Astrae Oratio Sets October Global Closed Beta With 18 Characters and Its First Raid

NCSoft and Dynamis One have confirmed that Astrae Oratio's global closed beta will run from October 2-6 on iOS and Android, with selected testers being notified from September 23. The five-day test gives players access to three chapters of the main story, two side stories, combat and character-interaction systems and, for the first time, Raid content. Eighteen characters will be playable, while the client supports English, Korean, Japanese and Traditional Chinese.

Applications closed on September 21, so this is now firmly a test rather than another registration announcement. Astrae Oratio—also styled AsOra—is described as a Modern Dynamic Magic RPG, and the global CBT is an important step for a project trying to establish itself beyond Korea and Japan from relatively early in its public life. Mobile RPG tests are increasingly substantial productions in their own right because publishers need information on far more than whether the game crashes.

Retention, combat pacing, device performance, localisation, onboarding and the delicate question of whether players actually like the characters all need real-world data. Adding Raid content gives Dynamis One another particularly useful stress test: nothing exposes network architecture quite like assembling a group of enthusiastic players and asking all of them to attack the same enormous thing simultaneously.