Q: Who has the honor to talk to us? State your name, rank and occupation!

My name is Sebastien Vidal, I've been working at GOA for 2 years and I am a Q&A manager for the Ryzom alpha test.

Q: What is your specific background in video games ? Any previous projects you worked on?

SV : I have been an editor for a french video games website and then a freelance translator for various video games publishers. I finally joined the GOA Dark Age of Camelot team two years ago before switching to the Ryzom team.

Q: What does your typical day look like ?

SV : After the usual email check, we have a meeting with all the testers in order to plan the work for the day. Then I usually update the test planning, check the new versions, create new test docs and then deal with all the usual administrative tasks.

Q: How many people are working on the alpha test ?

SV : About 15 people from GOA and Wanadoo Edition are currently working on the alpha test.

Q: What do you like most about Ryzom ?

SV : First of all, the graphics are awesome. Then there are all these new guild features and magic systems (I think people will love creating their own spells and giving them unique names).

Q: How do you communicate with Nevrax ?

SV : We are using a specialized database for the bug reports and we are constantly in touch with the Nevrax teams by phone and email in order to make everyone's work easier.

Q: What is the coolest thing you remember about the alpha test ?

It was when I discovered the first Zoraï town. Lightnings and building structures are breathtaking (but I might be a bit biased here, I'll be a Zoraï one day ;)

Q: And the worst thing ?

SV : That day we spent searching through the server settings files in order to find the one that was crashing everything as soon as someone tried to connect.

Q: When will the beta test start ?

The beta test is planned for Q2 2003 but as you can guess, it too early to give anything more accurate at this time.

Q: Anything you want to add, maybe something i forgot ?

SV : You can hear about "next generation" games everywhere, but this so called upheaval remains to be seen. Only the players will tell, but Ryzom could very well be the first step in that direction.

Q: Thanks for your time and answers.

SV : The pleasure was all mine...