Guild Wars 2

Just curious as to how Anet thinks they’ll have a closed beta test that is worth anything with all the random bugs that are currently floating around in the game.

Today, I am getting the ‘network error, booted from game’ problem when trying to port at times.

Seems farfetched to me that they will have enough of these bugs fixed by the 26th to have a valid stress test in closed beta.

jmo

It’s not a stress test, it’s a beta test. Presumably that means they’re testing everything, including stuff like skills that don’t do what they say they’re supposed to do, visual glitches, none of which have anything to do with server crashes.

Also it’s entirely likely that a lot of the bugs we’re seeing are actually due to behind the scenes updates preparing for the changes coming.

Yeah it’s a beta test. It’s not really a free-preview test just cuz you wanna play it and complain it’s buggy

But for anet, the worth is in the few that will take the time to file actual coherent bug reports in a closed beta environment. This can be rather beneficial towards development.

Ironically enough, the purpose of a beta test is to search for, identify, and fix bugs. It’s not meant as an early access, it’s meant to get rid of all those bugs before release.

Most people that got the HoT Portal/Invite to the beta will sit and play it as if it’s early access.
Few will actually find bugs, try to reproduce them and actually report them to Anet

(This is the purpose of a beta test by the way – at least it is imo)

It’s just a shame that people who farmed DryTop/Silverwastes to try to actually beta test the new expansion will miss out vs players that will spend the time playing and “having fun”.

I’m not against having fun, but that’s not what at least in my opinion a beta is for

Crystallize.8603:

Most people that got the HoT Portal/Invite to the beta will sit and play it as if it’s early access.
Few will actually find bugs, try to reproduce them and actually report them to Anet

(This is the purpose of a beta test by the way – at least it is imo)

It’s just a shame that people who farmed DryTop/Silverwastes to try to actually beta test the new expansion will miss out vs players that will spend the time playing and “having fun”.

I’m not against having fun, but that’s not what at least in my opinion a beta is for

I’ve got my notebook and pen ready ^.^

What about people like me who think finding bugs is fun? Especially ones that let you get out of the map.

(And yes, I do always report them, I just take my screenshots first.)

Yea, I realize that beta testing includes finding issues/bugs and reporting them. I have been in betas with other games, and I always tried to take notes and report things during the testing phase. And agreed, Crystallize….sadly, there is always a good portion of the beta testers that view it only as early access, and not for its intended purpose.

And I realize that the beta testing might be taking place on independent servers, so the current bugs that are being encountered ingame might not be present in the beta testing. If I were a beta tester, I would sure hate to see the wp portal disconnect bug currently in areas of the game also be in the beta test.

Happy beta testing, anyways!

I think with current beta tests and the given duration, they are likely focusing on if meta stuff works. If a couple of bugs get found here and there and reported (especially crashes) great, but I doubt that is the main focus.

The beta is targeted, to short and very lmited on scope to be considered broad bug hunting. Those betas will likely appear closer to release and last whole weekends like before.

Yeah it IS a stress test. There really isn’t going to be a lot of time or space to find and report bugs.

The way I read it, we’re just adding numbers to something they can monitor on their side.

DarkWasp.7291:

Yeah it IS a stress test. There really isn’t going to be a lot of time or space to find and report bugs.

The way I read it, we’re just adding numbers to something they can monitor on their side.

er stress tests are open beta at peak times, usually extended times. These two hour spurts during week-day office hours with limited testers is so to give you time to report your findings between each test block as they look for recreatable/repeatable bug errors. This is typical of an early/closed beta cycle, not of stress tests. We will see a number of these short tests, eventually building to an actual stress test.

I imagine they will open a closed beta forum here in the future, so we can collaborate and retest the findings.

DarkWasp.7291:

Yeah it IS a stress test. There really isn’t going to be a lot of time or space to find and report bugs.

The way I read it, we’re just adding numbers to something they can monitor on their side.

Uh, no, it’s not a stress test, did you even bother to read what we’re testing? Outpost events, even a preview of the day/night cycle. To quote from the actual announcement on the GW2 home page:
‘The upcoming closed beta will help us test the stability of our new PvE outpost-event content structure. Participants will be able to use a revenant—or any of the existing eight professions—to play a small amount of expansion story content, followed by two beta versions of outposts and their corresponding adventures in part of the Verdant Brink map. An early, partially completed version of the day/night cycle meta-event experience from Verdant Brink will also be available.’
If you want to call it anything, call it a stability test.

I’m also going to say that based on the findings from this Closed Beta, the next Beta event will either be one more Closed Beta or the next one will be the first Open Beta.

Indeed, it’s not a server stability test, it’s a test to make sure the events don’t break. Or to figure out why they do.