Stephen Reid
Hello all,
There is no Beta Testing Weekend scheduled for this weekend. There may be further Beta Testing Weekends during September, but we're not going to guarantee it. The weekend that just finished was really our first dry run of Beta Testing Weekends as a whole, and we have plenty of data to crunch, and decisions to make before we start things up again.
Further to that, as Chris Collins explained in another thread, we are about to roll out a major new build for The Old Republic. That build won't be ready for this weekend. Just as we did not feel it was a good decision to ask potential EU testers to download our client only to have to download it again, the same applies for this weekend.
That does not mean, however, that as soon as our new build is available we'll be rolling out a Beta Testing Weekend immediately. As with any new build of the game, we need to get feedback from internal testing and our ongoing Game Testing program before rolling it out to a massive audience. That process takes a while, and that time varies depending on how testing goes.
We rolled out this previous weekend as a relatively small scale event; from now we will do bigger and bigger events, but that doesn't mean it happens every weekend. When we do resume, we'll be inviting many more people in.
While many of you are excited and anxious to know what's happening regarding Testing Weekends, I want to point out that a lot of posts on the subject with a lack of corresponding posts from us does not mean that we're not listening, or not aware of your interest. It shows your interest in the topic, which is understandably high, but we will not always be able to react instantaneously.
In the past couple of days we've been preparing a comprehensive FAQ regarding Game Testing Weekends as a whole, along with some details about the weekend that just happened. We'll post that tomorrow - in all languages, as we know the subject is of interest to everyone.
This announcement follows news of the postponement of the EU testing round which you can find details of at the offical forum thread.
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Posted 9/9/2011 1:09:05 AMDarth Hater Friends, put that in your URL! I AM SO ANGRY BUT HAPPY! Apparently, you need to go to this link: http://www.swtor.com/tester to see if you were invited to testing or not. APPARENTLY, I HAVE BEEN INVITED TO THE GUILD TESTING PROGRAM FROM THE LATEST AUGUST INVITE BUT I NEVER GOT ANYTHING IN MY EMAIL AND I CHECKED THIS RANDOMLY TODAY BECAUSE STEPHEN REID JUST POSTED THIS LINK AND SAID TO CHECK IT TO SEE YOUR STATUS!! The mix of emotions right now is crazy and I am stuck at work til 10 or later....
I hope this didn't happen to anyone else.... Just passing along this important message.
http://www.swtor.com/tester
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Posted 9/11/2011 9:30:40 AM- View User Profile
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Posted 9/8/2011 10:04:57 PM:-(
"Doing the same thing over and over, and Expecting Different Results".
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Posted 9/8/2011 10:16:30 PM1. Developers always work on the "tip code" -- i.e. latest and greatest software patch of the product.
2. Internal test team works on the last developer released code. This is the software version that they need to qualify.
3. Customers get access to qualified software product -- i.e. product that has passed through steps 1 and 2.
And now, since all three steps above are done in parallel, Product at 3 is always behind Product at 2 which is always behind product at 1.
All reported bugs are always retested first with tip code (product at 1) and then fixed and checked in at tip only. Eventually the dev team makes a collection of these fixes and builds a patch which is released to the test team in step 2 for quality. test team runs regression again and releases it to 3.
Did that make sense?
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Posted 9/10/2011 11:12:50 AM- View User Profile
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Posted 9/8/2011 9:59:23 PM- View User Profile
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Posted 9/8/2011 9:37:22 PMEdit: I should have said they would not have burnt down due to no testing this weekend. I am sure they would have found something to complain about over there.
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Posted 9/8/2011 8:15:29 PMEach new build is a build closer to the final one. Once that final build is put in, internally tested, then rolled out to be stress tested, we'll be that much closer to the launch. That is a silver lining to this cloud that I think too many people are missing.
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Posted 9/8/2011 5:58:35 PMI will still buy it, this really changes nothing. I am not sure Bioware said anything about every weekend but that is how I read it. I think there was a post somewhere saying "well we didnt say every weekend". Would have been nice if they were a little more clear on what they meant by beta weekends.
I thought it was going to be like rifts. Oh well here is hoping they fix what they need to quickly so that we can start up this beta weekend invites again. Would really love to do some testing, and I honestly mean that, not enough people actually test while in a beta.
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Posted 9/8/2011 6:00:07 PMYou mean every *other* week?
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Posted 9/8/2011 5:56:03 PMDuring GC and PAX they depicted things as if almost anyone who signed up for beta would be playing for at least one single weekend. Assuming that they were not lying - they believed to get in huge amount of people into beta during that 4 weekends. At least that's what they told us - repeatedly - over and over again.
Now the first weekend has passed, and they only invited a few people, instead of the big wave they were talking about, and as a result, they are now skipping the second weekend entirely. And no word about whether there will be a huge wave on the third weekend or not. Actually they seem very careful, not to talk about the third weekend at all.
Now with 2 of 4 weekends gone, and the 3rd one being unclear... this leads to the assumption that things are going much, much worse then they expected. Otherwise they wouldn't have talked like that during GC and PAX, now would they?
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Posted 9/8/2011 6:54:36 PMHow it reads really is as follows.
1.) A new client is about to be released (27G) vs the current (27G)
Issue: They did not want people having to download (2) 27G clients in a 2-5 day period, especially those over in the EU.
2.) They want to get any stability issues out of the way with the new client (via internal testing) before having "weekend warriors" get at it.
3.) My understanding is roughly 7-10K people where invited to this last "weekend" beta test. DO NOT ASK ME FOR MY "SOURCE"!! ;)
4.) The game is in far better condition then people are "thinking" based purely on the fact that they pushed a beta weekend.
5.) Never have they ever stated that "by applying for beta you will 100% get into one of the Sept beta weekends". It was only mentioned that a much, much large % of people would have a chance of being selected.
Wound in the Force::GoHann (lvl 35 Maurader)
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Posted 9/8/2011 6:01:49 PM- View User Profile
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Posted 9/8/2011 3:59:58 PMI'm not bummed that they pushed it off. I think it's totally justified. But they did a disservice to their client base by promising a full September of testing weekends at PAX and then not delivering. And then also not apologizing.
No, they don't owe us anything. No, this won't sway the masses from buying it. And no, a couple extra weeks won't hurt...
...But I never appreciate it when someone makes a mistake and refuses to acknowledge it as such.
In my opinion, this is one of their first big flubs in customer relations. So no worries. Not a bad track record for 3 years. :D
Cheers to a polished game, even if it comes out in 2012.
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Posted 9/8/2011 1:48:41 PM