Guild Wars 2

GrandmaFunk.3052:

Which goes back to my point, who would be there?

People who enjoy testing, or just messing around within a game world without the hassle of actually building their characters. Back in the day, my brother would only play on Ultima Online’s Test Server. Sure, every few weeks things were wiped clean but he’d start a new character and get to work playing PvP on it.

There’d be people playing on it, sure. But . . .

would the size of the player base willing to do this be significantly larger than Anet’s QA team?

Probably a mixed answer: if they were, they probably would not be as focused on a problem as the employees. They’d probably be more fixated on trying to prove something from their own theories.

also, having a public test server means leaking the content of game updates much earlier than currently… how do you stop it from having an impact on the TP?

You don’t . . . there’s nothing to stop those players from leaking to blogs or Reddit what’s going on on that test server.

nethykins.7986:

Yup…mainly because issues like The Great “Precieved Loot thread” that outlined a bug, – which the devs constantly stood firmly that nothing was wrong until looking at it closer – would be found and rectified before it went live.

I don’t think it would be. In that case, the devs probably . . . at least from what I was seeing from the outside . . . were looking at it with a myopic vision. See, they’d worked on that code and reviewed it so much at the request they probably were seeing how they expected it to work rather than as it should work. I said before, and I repeat: I don’t think a public test server would definitely catch it.

I think it would make it easier to test to see if that loot code was working as intended, assuming that test server was exactly like a live server, and that the devs had people on hand just to keep an eye on the loot as it dropped to verify it themselves. Which . . . is probably part of how it got caught finally.

Then again, I’m not a tester, nor a programmer. I just write stuff about stuff and hope to let it distract me from my actual paying job :P

@tobias:
Essentially, that’s all the test server would be. A mirror of the live server, but with all sorts of kitten being tweaked frequently, or mass changes being added and viewing “live” player feedback from there, to build up on to the real server.

In cases of the loot bugs, mob drop rates, party bugs (like the ones we saw at the start of fractals, and even on release having party members not appear in the same dungeon instance!)… and even exploits that occur by the simplest of means (ie: Launch day ‘exploit’ with karma vendors and xmas Snowflake ‘exploit’) can be averted if an emphasis on testing was increased.

I’m not a tester now, but I used to be for mainly Bigger studios on AAA titles and some lesser titles too. Mainly consoles. From my experience, these would be things that any decent tester would be able to spot.
Can you imagine this: “Hey, look we just added a few new things to the xmas event, lets just test the dungeon instance, and leave it there – we don’t need to test the recepies”

LowestTruth.2635:

15 years in software testing here; American Express, FedEx, WorldCom before they went kaput, and a private banking-software company that handled stuff for the Fed, Citibank, Wachovia, the list goes on.

In the last company, our customers depended on our software to process and balance checks & ATMs. If there was a software bug because of a new release and they missed their deadline, it cost them millions of dollars in interest.

I was the only tester for two of the programs. My test cycle was around three weeks. Depending on the number of bugs fixed, it could take me the entire cycle to just go over the intended fixes. Forget about regression testing or integration testing. I’d smoke test the software to make sure the process worked from beginning to end without any customer customization (of which there was a lot), then I’d hit the “tickets” that were addressed by the devs. When the launch date hit, we launched regardless of whether I’d finished the cycle or not. Very, very rarely would I be allowed the authority to stop a build or delay it. When I got REALLY frustrated, I’d refuse to call it “certified”… and it launched anyways.

All of this is to say that this was with software that would cost customers millions of dollars if it was broken. An MMO does not cost people millions of dollars if it’s broken. I was a professional software test engineer, and gaming companies tend to hire entry-level people to test (ANet may be different, I dunno, but when I applied to gaming companies as a professional making over 60k they giggled at me and hired college students). Different industry, different priorities.

I don’t see it changing anytime soon. As long as the game doesn’t crash, explode, wipe hard drives, or prevent people from playing, I consider it a decent test cycle. Especially if they can fix the stuff in a few hours. I never, ever expect a patch for any MMO to go live without at least one hotfix.

My two dollars of contribution.

Bold: mine. Nice post.

35 years in the computer industry: Fortune 50 company, developer (software design/management/programming), science/research, consulting. Worked for government, and universities as well. World-wide products. Business, financial, scientific, engineering. Some tests would takes months/years, others are “qualified” based on economics/marketing. Bugs will always exist, are catagorized/prioritized and yes, some will exist “forever” as low priority.

Been a tester for many MMO’s over the years, both alpha and beta. Been in test situations that have left me “horrified” by the developer’s approach to setting and testing encounters.

See: highlighted important part of the post above. Game companies, as a whole, are operating with a different value set. I would not expect them to be able to afford the level of expertise required as baseline for many of the older, entrenched scientific and business segments of the computer industry.

Three things I’ve seen hold true over the years:

1) Customers never use the product in ways the developer intends or expects. Testing will never fully cover this.

2) Developers (especially MMOs) never have the level of rigorous testing required, either due to time or bodies (all a matter of economics).

3) MMO customers will always be “beta testing” as they are playing the released version.

At least one hotfix? You’re being generous. I always expect at least two. Within hours.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

tigirius.9014:

just look at DR plenty of other ways of keeping gold farmers out without harming players still using DR a year later.

I think it was said, or implied, it’s not just the gold farmers. It’s the people who just sit in one area and don’t move around. They would like people to get out and into other areas. . . rather than all congregating where the loot is best or the hunting is comfortable.

Sure, you could do it other ways. I can think of three off the top of my head. However, just because they’re my ideas doesn’t make them better :P

Just look at how pets die instantly, STILL even after the update, they won’t adopt the 90% immunity to AOE rule because Blizz WoW developed it (i believe but it’s the most well known.)

I think it’s because then pets would be way too good for certain aspects of play. If I knew my pet could take AoEs like they were nothing, I really would be letting it do most of my work.

If that were truly their goal they could move the types of loot we need to grind out the legendaries and to grind out the mats we need to craft our own gear to multiple locations but they haven’t done that have they, so that blows out of the water that theory that they are only trying to keep people from spending all day in 1 area doesn’t it because that would solve it instantly. There wouldn’t be a need for a single area for T6 mats or limiting them to WvW or making them solely available in dungeon runs would there?

Which means they REALLY aren’t on the side of or like the legit farmer players and are actually using these tactics to both get newcomers to have to purchase gems to catchup to their friends and to keep the economy manipulated so the prices are outrageous and extreme.

GrandmaFunk.3052:

Which goes back to my point, who would be there?

would the size of the player base willing to do this be significantly larger than Anet’s QA team?

also, having a public test server means leaking the content of game updates much earlier than currently… how do you stop it from having an impact on the TP?

Who would be there?

1: Anyone who cares about releasing bug-free content.

2: Anyone who wants to experience new content before anyone else.

3: Anyone who wants to explore the game world and is running out of new things to do.

I constantly see people bashing the game and saying “but the only reason I say these things is because I care about making the game better.” If this was true, these people would jump at the chance to beta test new content. (Spoiler: they usually don’t)

As for the TP, you can’t stop people from leaking details about the new content. Anything that is meant to be a surprise is not revealed on the test server, because within an hour it will be all over the forums, facebook, etc. Details can also change before it goes live, of course, so the info may not be accurate.

Vayne.8563:

I mean Rift had some crazy bad decisions even with the public test server. It didn’t seem to help at all.

Aside from catching some bugs, it won’t help. The players on the PTS are still players, and view the game as such. If you like playing a thief, then your feedback will be biased towards thieves remaining powerful, etc.

tolunart.2095:

I constantly see people bashing the game and saying “but the only reason I say these things is because I care about making the game better.” If this was true, these people would jump at the chance to beta test new content. (Spoiler: they usually don’t)

Ya, that’s basically my feeling whenever I see ppl throw out the “we need a public test server!” … i’d guess that less than 1% of the players that say that would actually be the ones selflessly offering up their time to test things.

GrandmaFunk.3052:

tolunart.2095:

I constantly see people bashing the game and saying “but the only reason I say these things is because I care about making the game better.” If this was true, these people would jump at the chance to beta test new content. (Spoiler: they usually don’t)

Ya, that’s basically my feeling whenever I see ppl throw out the “we need a public test server!” … i’d guess that less than 1% of the players that say that would actually be the ones selflessly offering up their time to test things.

There’s probably a higher than average percentage of the player base who would, because GW1 and 2 are a little different from typical MMOs and have strong support from some players. But I don’t expect to see the forum trolls there.

For someone who works within a type of testing, you havnt really thought this through.

Developers test extensively before releasing… Theres prob a few hundred hours that each tester logs. If you multiply that with the amount of testers (lets say 100 for ease) thats 20,000 hours of testing prior to a release. When the patch is released, within one minute the players have logged the same if not WAY MORE time than the testers.

No matter how good the testing cycle is, the amount of time actually tested can never be similar to a live release. Unless you have a 100k strong testing team.

Another thing is, some content is tested with as many testers as possible, however the nature of some bugs and crashes could be based on a player threshold so big, only the actual playerbase can come across them.

You have to look at how fast Anet sorts these problems out. It was an hour before the Molten dungeon was fixed. Why wouldnt anet have used a spare hour to fix it before the release unless it was an unforeseen issue that wasnt predicted or encountered until a mass amount of players tried to access the content?

Finally, id challenge anyone to find a MMO in which releases content without hotfixing it short after. Theres a reason why so many MMO devs go through this process.

nethykins.7986:

I’m not a tester now, but I used to be for mainly Bigger studios on AAA titles and some lesser titles too. Mainly consoles. From my experience, these would be things that any decent tester would be able to spot.
Can you imagine this: “Hey, look we just added a few new things to the xmas event, lets just test the dungeon instance, and leave it there – we don’t need to test the recepies”

We’re not talking about “testers” though, we’re talking about players who want to poke at being testers. I was going to say “play” but I bet the ones who would show up would be at least halfway serious about it. Still, it can’t be assumed they’d have any experience testing, nor that they’d have a good idea of how to do thorough testing.

tigirius.9014:

If that were truly their goal they could move the types of loot we need to grind out the legendaries and to grind out the mats we need to craft our own gear to multiple locations but they haven’t done that have they, so that blows out of the water that theory that they are only trying to keep people from spending all day in 1 area doesn’t it because that would solve it instantly. There wouldn’t be a need for a single area for T6 mats or limiting them to WvW or making them solely available in dungeon runs would there?

Which means they REALLY aren’t on the side of or like the legit farmer players and are actually using these tactics to both get newcomers to have to purchase gems to catchup to their friends and to keep the economy manipulated so the prices are outrageous and extreme.

Holy heck, that’s a broad generalization. And incorrect. Tier 6 Fine Materials drop in at least three areas I’m aware of, in the sense of “they can be gotten here”. Tier 6 basic materials are either mined/gathered or salvaged and once you hit 80 you have the chance to salvage Tier 6 basic (gossamer, orichalcum, ancient wood) out of items.

There’s a small list I used to have, but Southsun Cove is a good spot for at least four of the Tier 6 Fine Materials. Frostgorge Sound has a couple others as overlap. Cursed Shore doesn’t have all the Tier 6 Fine Materials, but four of them are “very common” there. Then you can still get them all from various places in the Borderlands or Eternal Battleground, off the creatures there.

So, to be frank, there is “more than one place” you can go to farm those materials. You do have options to move and do other things. (In fact, sticking to any one of those three is less likely to fill things like “Kill Variety”, which you can’t actually fill with 13 in Cursed Shore.)

Also, newcomers don’t have to purchase gems to “catch up” with their friends. Their friends are more than welcome to send stuff as a helping hand. I know I’ve done my share of that for people arriving late to the party, along with advice, guiding, and in general answering questions. Gems are one heckuva shortcut but they’re also not a magic bullet to get anything you want via Gem to Gold conversion . . . because you will wake up one day . . .

“Why did I ever spend $200 on gems? Where did they all go?”

tolunart.2095:

Vayne.8563:

I mean Rift had some crazy bad decisions even with the public test server. It didn’t seem to help at all.

Aside from catching some bugs, it won’t help. The players on the PTS are still players, and view the game as such. If you like playing a thief, then your feedback will be biased towards thieves remaining powerful, etc.

Or, to be more fair, just based on your experiences as a thief and not indicative of how . . . say . . . a mesmer would find the fight. We had a nice big topic in the Personal Story and Players Helping Players forums about one fight in the Human Street-Rat storyline where “thieves were screwed unless they powerleveled” but other classes had options to handle it better. The kicker? A couple people who passed through it as thieves said “It’s tricky, and teaches you a couple things about your skills, but it’s not impossible.”

I think Anet tries their best to get every new build thoroughly tested in time, and also localized in time (which is even harder). During the development of GW1, there even was a Test Krewe to help with some free testing (not because they were cheap, but they wanted input from fans of the game). So it should be pretty clear that Anet cares a great deal about testing, and about how the new content is received.

But, there have been a few updates that could have been tested better. When ever an update rolls out, and it completely breaks some fundamental game mechanics… yeah, that shouldn’t have gone unnoticed (like that time when every bandit spammed their most powerful attack infinitely, and everyone was being slaughtered). I have no idea how that gets through, but I wouldn’t mind helping them to test this sort of stuff.

GrandmaFunk.3052:

Which goes back to my point, who would be there?

would the size of the player base willing to do this be significantly larger than Anet’s QA team?

also, having a public test server means leaking the content of game updates much earlier than currently… how do you stop it from having an impact on the TP?

A lot enjoy test servers check out Champions Online it has a test server and there are many players in it 24/7 testing new content and what not..before it goes live..

According to a “reliable source” with GW1 updates, ANET tests things quite thoroughly! One class revision for example was months in the making, with over a hundred people called at once, every week to test it! And when the class update was finally released, it was met with incredibly positive reviews!

Will I get in trouble for revealing ANET put a ton of love and care into the Dervish update? The effort really shows!

Of course, that was GW1. I’m not too sure about GW2. I do know they have smaller, dedicated teams working on separate content from each other in the game. So while they do pump out a large variety of content at once with monthly updates, I do fear it comes at the price of polish and quality.

Time constraints and smaller teams could mean a huge setback if a single developer is a liability. This is probably why content like the Living Story are incredibly well polished, whereas the event scaling is totally out of whack… Unless ANET really likes fighting champions harder than world bosses themselves?

So in short, ANET probably has a ton of testers in GW2, considering how high-budget it is. However, they might not be able to fix certain things when under pressure.

That’s just my assumption anyways.

goldenwing.8473:

Developers (especially MMOs) never have the level of rigorous testing required, either due to time or bodies (all a matter of economics).

Hehe, this is why I have a job, testing is better left to the computers. At least at a basic level. Obviously a computer cant tell you if it having fun or not, but human testing is just inefficient, inaccurate, and slow.

The industrial sector is moving rapidly towards completely autonomous testing. IE a system that automatically designs test cases, executes them and if a test fails it will automatically generate a change request.

For some reason though even very critical computer systems are still really sort of in the dark ages of testing where they are run through expensive and inefficient “testing mills”. Even very basic test automation procedures when incorporated into development practices reduces the time, money and number of people required to do testing, all the while creating better coverage.

Kain Francois.4328:

One class revision for example was months in the making, with over a hundred people called at once, every week to test it!

For game balance, or for testing weather or not changes are fun, this is all fine. However for the type of testing being discussed here, IE new stuff not being broken, new stuff not breaking stuff that was working before, releasing new stuff devoid of major bugs ect.

That’s just never going to work.

DHK.8406:

goldenwing.8473:

Developers (especially MMOs) never have the level of rigorous testing required, either due to time or bodies (all a matter of economics).

Hehe, this is why I have a job, testing is better left to the computers. At least at a basic level. Obviously a computer cant tell you if it having fun or not, but human testing is just inefficient, inaccurate, and slow.

The industrial sector is moving rapidly towards completely autonomous testing. IE a system that automatically designs test cases, executes them and if a test fails it will automatically generate a change request.

For some reason though even very critical computer systems are still really sort of in the dark ages of testing where they are run through expensive and inefficient “testing mills”. Even very basic test automation procedures when incorporated into development practices reduces the time, money and number of people required to do testing, all the while creating better coverage.

We were using automated software testing 30 years ago. Not a new concept or implementation. People also threw random numbers at mathematical functions like floating point multipliers (even though Intel sorta slipped on that… once.) Those automated tests today still require human guidance. In the end, the testing is only as good as the people who think up the test cases, even if the testing is expanded by automatic software.

Yes, automated testing (regression) can cover basics.

-Implication obvious.

DHK.8406:

goldenwing.8473:

Developers (especially MMOs) never have the level of rigorous testing required, either due to time or bodies (all a matter of economics).

Hehe, this is why I have a job, testing is better left to the computers. At least at a basic level. Obviously a computer cant tell you if it having fun or not, but human testing is just inefficient, inaccurate, and slow.

The industrial sector is moving rapidly towards completely autonomous testing. IE a system that automatically designs test cases, executes them and if a test fails it will automatically generate a change request.

For some reason though even very critical computer systems are still really sort of in the dark ages of testing where they are run through expensive and inefficient “testing mills”. Even very basic test automation procedures when incorporated into development practices reduces the time, money and number of people required to do testing, all the while creating better coverage.

Hmmm…. if that were the case in industrial setting then the virus used to attack those industrial automation systems in a certain country in the middle east wouldn’t have worked…and I wouldn’t have read last week about all the SCADA systems whose not even password protected consoles turned up attached to and addressable from the Internet.

Yes, it’s possible to generate test cases once a human decides what those test cases should roughly be, whether the human is writing scripts (or even setting up a test harness which throws “random numbers” (weighted by a human for the corner cases) at a system under test). You can even check whether the system under test responds the same as a behavioral model…within limits.

It has also been possible to test hardware by scanning in pseudorandom test vectors and comparing some sort of hash or CRC of the resulting state to the response of a known good instance of the hardware, in a manufacturing setting, at least since the 1970s.

Based on a speech given at game developer’s conference by one of the ArenaNet leads over a year ago, I concluded that ArenaNet does at least some testing by creating a world full of AI mobs and letting them fight each other. Not sure in the absence of humans that this does more than stress test, but to the extent assertions are tested in the code (note humans put assertions in) and useful logging is done (which must in the end be interpreted by humans) this would be extensive test automation.

If security testing could be automated, we wouldn’t have the whole problem of consumer software package du jour being attacked by black hats (first it was Windows, then it was the Microsoft apps, then Adobe products, this year it’s Java). Yes, pen testing can be automated, but that’s just automating attacking vulnerabilities found by people.

Yes, there’s been some formal-proof kind of stuff through the decades, which has been so skilled labor intensive and limited in the scope of what it can address that it is largely academic and has seen little application in industry, particularly not as far down the food chain in industry as MMOs are.

The human merely sets the paramters for the test. That could be a behvioral model, that could be a fault tree, that could a value tree. It could be any number of things.

And maybe “industrial” is the wrong would. I mean on the high end and more towards the safety critical arena. Cars, Planes, Trains, Shipping, ect. ect. Even then we are perhaps 5-10 years off from seeing completely autonomous testing systems.

However I would not even advocate that level of automation for software, but that does not mean that the theories, principles and tools developed for the safety critical industrial sector cannot save money and man hours in the software industry. There are at least a few examples I know of where advanced test automation procedures have been worked into rapid release cycle consumer software with great success.

goldenwing.8473:

We were using automated software testing 30 years ago. Not a new concept or implementation. People also threw random numbers at mathematical functions like floating point multipliers (even though Intel sorta slipped on that… once.) Those automated tests today still require human guidance. In the end, the testing is only as good as the people who think up the test cases, even if the testing is expanded by automatic software.

Yes, automated testing (regression) can cover basics.

-Implication obvious.

You seem to be talking about more primitive stuff such as random walk, monkey testing, fuzzing ect.

That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about automated test design. Where some sort of model or parameters are provides and tests are intelligently designed by an algorithm to cover a set of parameters.

And yes human guidance is required, but less humans, less money and all in less time.

Kain Francois.4328:

According to a “reliable source” with GW1 updates, ANET tests things quite thoroughly!

I can confirm this.

Karizee.8076:

Because testing works SO well, lol.

http://i.imgur.com/H1K1q.jpg

Haha, the pally seal bug? I remember that at some point in Cata. It was hotfixed pretty quickly though and was a result of a change Blizz did. Worked in pvp too… seeing a group of 20 fall to a single pally in AV was pretty hilarious.

OT: We need a PTR. GW1 had a player test krewe but that was only for pvp I think.

Mathias.9657:

OT: We need a PTR. GW1 had a player test krewe but that was only for pvp I think.

No, we also tested PVE.

DHK.8406:

You seem to be talking about more primitive stuff such as random walk, monkey testing, fuzzing ect.

That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about automated test design. Where some sort of model or parameters are provides and tests are intelligently designed by an algorithm to cover a set of parameters.

And yes human guidance is required, but less humans, less money and all in less time.

DHK.8406:

The human merely sets the paramters for the test. That could be a behvioral model, that could be a fault tree, that could a value tree. It could be any number of things.

And maybe “industrial” is the wrong would. I mean on the high end and more towards the safety critical arena. Cars, Planes, Trains, Shipping, ect. ect. Even then we are perhaps 5-10 years off from seeing completely autonomous testing systems.

However I would not even advocate that level of automation for software, but that does not mean that the theories, principles and tools developed for the safety critical industrial sector cannot save money and man hours in the software industry. There are at least a few examples I know of where advanced test automation procedures have been worked into rapid release cycle consumer software with great success.

The “primitive stuff” you seem to claim to understand is nearly identical to the same automated testing that occurs in software testing today. Scientific and academic study/advancement has not produced anything significantly better than the models used 30 years ago. Yes, again, basics, where a model is “intelligently designed by an algorithm to cover a set of parameters.” That’s a very limited amount of testing and is useful in a narrow set of circumstances (we are talking computer industry here.) That narrow testing can be useful, for instance, in industrial settings with mechanical devices, and particularly those that use chips (who doesn’t these days?)

Software (financial, scientific, even micro world simulators – MMOs), is more complex. Glad you understand that full automation there cannot occur. And yes, the computer industry absolutely understands efficiencies of time/resources. They have had decades to innovate, develop tools and refine theories/strategies, which includes understanding where overlap occurs with other industries, study emerging processes and technologies and the experience to understand that “one size fits” all application
is a naive approach to solving complex issues.

I think this is a bit to complex of a thing to really discuss in depth here without more typing then I am willing to do.

But suffice it to say that the tools capable of this so far have been very limited in scope. However the theories behind them do scale. We have done several case studies on large computer systems with good success. However as I said before it has to be built into your design and development process for it to work.

nethykins.7986:

marnick.4305:

I work in automation too and the answer is pretty simple….

No lives depend on bugs in an MMO., while they’re far more critical in planes/cars … No seriously, no one ever died of an MMO bug. Crying, yes. Dying, no.

As long as people don’t die, delivering functional content has priority over making bugfree content.

Are you giving a free-pass to all devs – and practically all forms of entertainment – that you can release anything at a lesser quality…because no lives depend on it.
I understand where you’re coming from but thats a pretty naive statement.

I work in the media side of things, and that would not fly. Hence why we get do multiple revisions before stuff goes live.

I don’t give a free pass, but I do acknowledge that your media stuff is probably of far lesser quality than a nuclear power plant. On the other hand, a power plant is just ugly so it’s clear where the resources went.
I don’t want to come across as dissing your line of work, I’m merely stating the obvious fact that different applications require different types of polish. In your case, as long as the content looks and feels good, it doesn’t matter whether it’s made out of duct tape or stainless steel. There’s always a point where you can say “this is good enough”.

In response to the original poster, Anet uses alpha testers and their own employees to conduct tests. These tests include stress testing the servers, testing particular areas and dungeons and open world bug discovery.
During the alpha testing from April of last year to the release of the game Anet had about a thousand alpha testers. They maintained a separate forum for its testers which is similar to this forum and also a vent server. They expected the alpha testers to report any bugs or exploits and to give them feedback on anything. The main difference being an alpha tester is that you would have direct contact with Anet employees as you could talk to them on their vent server or group up with them in game.
During the main alpha testing period, Anet had two different servers for testing purposes. The main server was the beta servers which were accessible to the alpha testers 24/7 due to their login information, although it sent you to a different set of home worlds that the people who played beta could not access. The other server was a dungeon/area specific server. You entered a lobby when using this server which had equipment and leveling merchants similar to the heart of the mists. You then accessed a particular dungeon or area using one of the many asura gates that were in this lobby. The most important thing was to check out their testing schedule which is listed on the testing forums. Every day they had particular dungeons, areas and events that they wanted tested with feedback. Also every month there are a few hundred builds to this game and the monthly update you see is just one of the latest builds.
The current alpha testers mainly test new content and there are not as many of them as there was before the game’s release. If you want to become a tester, I would suggest looking out for the posts Anet puts out regarding the Testing Krewe. Also make friends with the Anet team as you can be sent personal invites to the testing.
I hope this gives you a general idea of the testing that Anet does with the help of their testers. Please realize that the testers and Anet’s employees is still well below one percent of the Guild Wars 2 population and that 2-3 of the large guilds on any server has more numbers than the testers.

Mazzy, my point is that having alpha testers 100 of them, 1000 of them 10,000 of them is just never going to work. It has been proven in academic research that more testers is not necessarily equivalent to better test coverage. It reaches a point where more testers in fact lead to less effective testing.

I dont want to become a tester at all, I spend my entire work day testing or designing and developing tools for testing. Its the last thing I want to to do in a game I play after work.

However I am curious why despite a good amount of evidence attesting to the fact that manual testing is rather ineffective by modern standards, even basic test automation has not worked its way into game testing.