2008-09-08, 12:26 PM
I know I said this a bunch at Sleepywood, but some of you here apparently missed it.
So I'm going to say it again, here.
[SIZE="6"]TESTING CLIENT/SERVER IS/WAS A PUBLIC RELATIONS MOVE, NOT A MEANS TO HAVE BETTER QUALITY CONTROL.[/SIZE]
They didn't put the test server up so that they can fix bugs that were reported. Hell, I can tell you that there were hundreds, potentially thousands of unique bugs/glitches/typos identified, yet I can say with confidence that one could count the amount of fixes they made on one hand. Even after the patch data goes live in the official server, they still only fixed the bigger bugs, leaving some other pumpernickelty ones, particularly ones which have been known to exist for ages.
So then, why would they have players test content if not so that they could fix bugs? Because having a contest to play content early under the guise of beta testing gears up people and builds interest in otherwise uninteresting material. To be blunt, most people didn't even care about bug fixing, and this is particularly obvious when you take notice of how many people care that bugs reported during testing phase WERE NOT FIXED WHEN IT WENT LIVE IN OFFICIAL. But they just wanted people interested. Giving an exclusive contest to let players test content early, with a promise that they'll fix reported bugs... that's a big morale boost. I gotta tell you, I was hyped when this pumpernickel happened because I thought for once we'd actually be able to get new pumpernickel without it being riddled with bugs, and I actually figured with the fewer amounts of reports (compared to the flooding torrent they get from the thousands of regular players in the official version), they'd actually be able to identify and correct longstanding problems.
So again, tespia is for public relations, not for testing. New content being released directly onto the official version is not any more detrimental to the overall health of the game than if it had languished for a week on a beta world. Even if the new content is riddled with bugs, those bugs would still be present when the content hits official, and the bugs would probably only be fixed in the next official content patch after that if the bugs are particularly game breaking.
As a specific point of reference in regards to Pirates, this is new, massive content, and regardless of what you think, they may well go with the "omg new pumpernickel big surprise no one gets to test it" like they did with the Masteria expansion we all recently enjoyed. After all, like has been conjectured more than a few times, we could be potentially the first version with English Pirates, and that is a much bigger deal than feeding Korean quest dialogs through Google Translate and slapping it in the new quests for Ariant.
So I'm going to say it again, here.
[SIZE="6"]TESTING CLIENT/SERVER IS/WAS A PUBLIC RELATIONS MOVE, NOT A MEANS TO HAVE BETTER QUALITY CONTROL.[/SIZE]
They didn't put the test server up so that they can fix bugs that were reported. Hell, I can tell you that there were hundreds, potentially thousands of unique bugs/glitches/typos identified, yet I can say with confidence that one could count the amount of fixes they made on one hand. Even after the patch data goes live in the official server, they still only fixed the bigger bugs, leaving some other pumpernickelty ones, particularly ones which have been known to exist for ages.
So then, why would they have players test content if not so that they could fix bugs? Because having a contest to play content early under the guise of beta testing gears up people and builds interest in otherwise uninteresting material. To be blunt, most people didn't even care about bug fixing, and this is particularly obvious when you take notice of how many people care that bugs reported during testing phase WERE NOT FIXED WHEN IT WENT LIVE IN OFFICIAL. But they just wanted people interested. Giving an exclusive contest to let players test content early, with a promise that they'll fix reported bugs... that's a big morale boost. I gotta tell you, I was hyped when this pumpernickel happened because I thought for once we'd actually be able to get new pumpernickel without it being riddled with bugs, and I actually figured with the fewer amounts of reports (compared to the flooding torrent they get from the thousands of regular players in the official version), they'd actually be able to identify and correct longstanding problems.
So again, tespia is for public relations, not for testing. New content being released directly onto the official version is not any more detrimental to the overall health of the game than if it had languished for a week on a beta world. Even if the new content is riddled with bugs, those bugs would still be present when the content hits official, and the bugs would probably only be fixed in the next official content patch after that if the bugs are particularly game breaking.
As a specific point of reference in regards to Pirates, this is new, massive content, and regardless of what you think, they may well go with the "omg new pumpernickel big surprise no one gets to test it" like they did with the Masteria expansion we all recently enjoyed. After all, like has been conjectured more than a few times, we could be potentially the first version with English Pirates, and that is a much bigger deal than feeding Korean quest dialogs through Google Translate and slapping it in the new quests for Ariant.