Company of Heroes 2 Open Beta

COH 2 is now in the open beta phase and you can check it out before the full game launches on June 25th. Game producer Greg Wilson actually states that the game went gold on June 4th.

The first piece of news for you guys is that we have officially gone gold! This means the disc version of the game is now complete and has been sent off to the factory for replication. One of the many benefits of the PC platform and digital era we live in is our ability to continue tweaking and balancing the game right up until launch in what’s commonly referred to as a “day 0” patch. The team is cranking away tirelessly to add the final layer of polish and squashing as many bugs as possible before it’s released into the wild.

So, while the game is gold, they aren’t finished tweaking, and that is why they are giving players an open beta before the launch date. The open beta also means that we can definitely expect a day 0 patch to fix some of the problems with the game. Furthermore Wilson weighs in on some of the changes they have made from the closed beta.

We’ve added new match-making servers, implemented a significant amount of Closed Beta feedback and fixed more bugs, compatibility and performance issues than I can count. The team will continue to read comments and feedback in our official forums and participate in regular playtests with the community. We’ll be patching the beta frequently and getting into a good rhythm for our post launch support cycle. Please keep the comments and suggestions coming – we do care and are listening!

Any progess made during the open beta will also carry over to the game if you purchase COH 2 within 60 days of release.

We also have some fantastic news for beta participants and pre-order customers. Anyone who participates in the Open beta will be able to transfer all progression and unlocks earned, if they purchase the game within the first 60 days of launch and play it on the same Steam account as the beta! That means any commanders, skins or bulletins you unlock in beta will be yours to use in the full game.

You can also check out a change log from the closed beta, which was posted on Relic’s forums.

– adding tracking for rare peer to peer error

– optimization: game won’t slow down after numerous explosions have damaged the terrain

– optimization: speed up terrain rebuilding for higher frame rates when the camera moves
– fix dead entities not snapping to ground when dying on bridges
– prevent enemy buildings from appearing as holes in the ground when FoW was active
– improve hang detection to reduce number of times the game crashed itself thinking it was hung
– fix a bug where projectiles would never hit a dropped mg42
– fix post game stat screen showing wrong info on save/load
– add OEM8 for mapping English physical key locations to French
– add new Commander Dispatch feature
– update performance test to feature snow
– most barrage abilities now target positions instead of squads/entities
– fix guard troops reinforcing for free
– catch networking problems when a user has trouble connecting to many users in a short period of time
– reduce pak43 and howitzer requirements
– normal mortar can now be deployed when you get the 120mm
– commander tank and officer limited to one
– 120mm mortar changed from 480 to 360 from free
– fix for quad50 audio in the distance
– fix ISU 152 having two abilities with the T hotkey
– add hotkey for transfer orders
– fix M shortcut for tellermine
– fix bug where playing a tutorial of watching a replay to completion would prevent the player from playing online
– fix subtitle overlap in tutorial

Again, Company of Heroes 2 will launch on June 25th and you can find the open beta in your Steam library. At the time of this post the Open Beta install states 13 days left, which means it may last until the 18th of June.