Tribes: Ascend to enter beta November 4

The free-to-play rejigging of a classic shooter IP, Tribes: Ascend goes into beta next month.

"We have a date. The team is working hard for closed beta to start on Friday, November fourth, so a few weeks away. We plan on announcing that more broadly next week," HiRez Studios' Todd Harris told Cyberlink in an interview.

Harris offered a detailed explanation for the beta's delay from a tentative dating of last month, citing brand new features since the game's alpha testing.

"As you may have known if you've been following us, we wanted to start in September originally. That was kind of our original plan, but there were a few adjustments that we wanted to make before beta," he said..

"Specifically, some things we've been working on are character progression elements, those were things that weren't in alpha but will be in beta.

"Secondly, with the changes or improvements based on feedback from the alpha testing group - Disc jump strength was one, some challenge that people had in chasing down flag cappers which is a big part of the game, basically ability to quickly gain momentum from a standstill, and even overall speed of the game."

Tribes: Ascend is a free-to-play re-imagining of the classic team multiplayer shooter credited with helping to popularise the genre on PC. It was expected by the end of the year on PC and Xbox Live Arcade, but is now scheduled for full release in early 2012. Beta applications opened in September.

Thanks, That VideoGame Blog.