 What's up everybody I'm the Magus, you were awesome and Undying Games conducted the first stress test of their ambitious new 3rd person MOBA on November 20th. They opened the servers, got some stable games going, and then continued to add in more people until shit broke a few hours in. There are some obvious parallels with predecessors last stress test, however there were some key differences that I want to discuss today. I'm also going to discuss the things I liked about the actual game as well as some of the things that need to be improved. Let's start off with some of the stuff I liked about the game. The feeling I get when playing Ethereal is much like the feels I got when I first played Paragon. Everything is new and interesting with just endless possibilities. You have Lea, a skyscraper class myth flying around the map, Malaya using her reaper ability to climb over terrain, and Aron literally bursting through walls to gank enemies or open up new rotation routes for your entire team. You can walk to the edge of Fire Lane and look across the Ice Lane or down on Void. You can leap down to rotate with a bit of fear that you may have not jumped correctly and are about to drop off the map to your death. You have to take special care when flirting with the edges of lanes lest you be yeeted to your doom by Aron. Along with the verticality provided by the map structure, the lanes themselves have plenty of dips and jungle paths that you can take in order to get the drop on your enemies. Along with the 6v6 gameplay comes an increased amount of abilities for each myth which serves to keep things interesting especially since one of those abilities provides some risk when it's used. Selecting two spells or items at the beginning of the match offers some customization even when playing the same myth as someone else. The items all have interesting passive abilities and there's a separate 7th slot just for boots so you don't have to sacrifice movement speed when you go to full build. There are also separate item slots for potions and wards. The gameplay is engaging with danger lurking behind every twist of the lane and destructible portion of the environment, even the skies are a dangerous axis that needs to be taken into account. There's a variety of neutral objectives to take with four jungle buffs positioned throughout the map. There are two wyverns, one in ice lane and the other in fire that each provide team wide buffs and of course a central objective called a tropos that buffs your entire team and your minions. All of that is fairly standard to mobile players, however, ethereal also has the trolls that, when defeated, open a portal that links to another troll location and provides more rotation options for your team. Some of the ambitious ideas first proposed by undying games have needed to be changed or removed, but most have remained and are fully realized in ethereal's current iteration. Above all else, the game is just flat out fun. Looking at the abilities, imagining what you can accomplish and then pulling off is very satisfying. There's enough items in the game already that you can dream up all sorts of fun builds for the various myths. The map design, hero kits and constant subtle sense of danger all combine to make for a very enjoyable experience that just makes time fly by. A 45 minute game in ethereal feels like 5 minutes, whereas I've played other games where a 20 minute match felt like an eternity. Now what I didn't like. The game is in pre-alpha state so of course much of it is very rough. Projectiles are a bit slow and very hard to actually land. I have no idea how people are playing Undying's ADC Dante. There are also of course a number of bugs with people becoming stuck in place after stuns or continuing to deal damage after death. While some of the particle effects are quite nice, many of them look a bit meh. The animations are not good. Undying is known that myth animations are their weak spot for a long time and they have purchased a motion capture suit to rectify that problem. The map is also very busy. There's a bit of sensory overload with all the flora and structures involved. Also found myself getting stuck on outcroppings of rock or tree, which is always frustrating. The various innovations through the MOBA genre that they provide is fun, however it creates quite a steep learning curve that are going to have to have some very good tutorials to onboard new players. There's a distinct lack of clarity with the game, in the stress test at least. There was no in-game or draft chat which was kind of frustrating. You really want to be able to communicate what you're playing to do with your team. You also need to select two preferred lanes or rolls before you can queue. Look at this screen and tell me where you're supposed to indicate your lane preference. If you said the two diamonds at the top of the card, then you watch someone stream the stress test because it's damn near impossible to figure that shit out on your own. The lane indication symbols themselves needs some clarity as well. There is no way you'll be able to tell at a glance what anyone has selected. I've been told that new icons are being developed for roll indicators. When selecting your starting spells, you can pick a mask or a mark which will help you with supporting or jungling. However it looks like you have that available at the start of the game when you actually have to buy that item. This sort of spills over into the upcoming comments about how the stress test went, but still in the theme of clarity, when you attempt to log in when the servers are down you get the incorrect password message which is very confusing. Oh, and I must mention the confirmed match timer, holy hell you couldn't look away from your screen for a second once queued because that shit was like 2 seconds long. So what happened with the stress test itself? Undying said that they were going to conduct the test until something broke so we were properly warned, however I think everyone involved was a little disappointed when the test only lasted a few hours. The servers were very stable and they released more and more keys accordingly, however back into matchmaking broke. They began with the group matchmaking. I noticed something was wrong when I queued up with the bearded Wolverine. Apparently team-based matchmaking broke something, I'm not sure what. Undying attempted to correct the problem, patched the game and keep the test going, however that ended up breaking something else. As I said at the beginning there are obvious parallels with what happened with predecessor stress test, kinda makes me think it's an unreal engine problem actually. The big difference between the ethereal test and the pred test though is that I knew at all times what was going on and what was happening. Nothing stayed in constant communication with the community via discord and a presence in creator streams throughout the test. They also announced the end of the test as soon as they knew they had problems so those who did receive keys weren't just like sitting there in queue wondering what the hell was going on. The game itself lacked some clarity but the company was very transparent throughout the entire process. I've worn my community several times now that when these games come out, ethereal and the para-zombies, that ethereal is probably going to be my main focus. I've hooked my horse to the undying cart and the recent spate of revealed gameplay as well as my own experiences in the ether have confirmed to me that I've made the correct decision. The game may be rough around the edges but the core is strong enough to carry ethereal well into the future and possibly be the next big thing in the MOBA genre. Please like the video if you enjoyed it and subscribe for more 3rd person MOBA content but for now this is TheMangoo signing off, you guys have a good one. Mangooos! Shout out to ChannelMivers, Foolish Bloodhunter, Jelly Knees, Meowmix4Men, Stunt and Farith!