Today marks a huge step forward for Shards Online. The Shard Server is now in the hands of our Pre-Alpha Admins ($200+ tiers). This means they are running their own servers and learning the modding system.

I am personally working closely with this group to make sure they have everything they need to get up and running and creating mods. We’ve even announced a contest where a prize will go to the best / most creative mod. Of course, we need to give them some time to create these mods, so the judging for this will happen in a few months.

Derek ‘Supreem’ Brinkmann
Project Lead

What does this mean for Pre-Alpha Playtesters?

As these admins get comfortable with their servers, they can choose to post the login details on the Pre-Alpha Playtesters forum. To connect to one of these shards, just put the address they post in the “Address” field and click connect. In the next build (0.1.15), they will be given the option to list their server on the main server list. This will make it even easier to try out these player run servers.

Please keep in mind, at this early stage, the admins are still getting familiar with the system and their servers may not be available 24/7. Things will get better as the servers get more robust and the admins get fully up to speed.