Guild Wars 2

Public Test Realms, or PTRS is something I experienced with playing World of Warcraft, for those who don’t know who PTRS are, let me explain.

Public Test Realms in WoW are realms that are designed to test content, patches, and balance minions, bosses, and classes.
It involves, you, the community to test the game’s content on a daily basis and provide feedback before the content hits the retail game itself. Almost every patch in WoW, content update, etc, hits the PTR before it hits the retail version. You can either start at level 1 and level your way up to 80, or choose to have an instant level 80 with max gear.
So why does this matter?

BUT WAIT. We do beta weekends! Isn’t that enough?
You might ask… well, no it’s not enough and here’s why.
While beta weekends are good for getting the hype train moving and stress testing the servers, very little beta testing get’s to actually go on compared if we had a constant test realms for people to play in. The HoT Beta Event this past weekend was just horrible.. imagine if we had more than just 4 days to test the content? Patches could’ve been rolled out to fix the quest chains, story quest. Then we got to test that patch for bugs, find bugs, new patch comes out, and on and on. Then we could’ve test the other content that progressed into the next area for bugs and such. Beta weekends are just not enough time to beta test a massive game like this. It leaves majority of the game in a bug riddled state at lunch.

Here are some pros and cons to having a public test realm.

+ Better class balancing.
Since the community is playing these PTRS and Arenanet makes a buff/nerf patch, this patch can hit the PTR first and they gain feedback on the patch and make adjustments to the patch before hitting the retail game.

+Bugs.
I don’t know how many staff members Anet has, but it’s nothing compared to the countless thousands. of players who are just trying to break your game, figure out glitches, and cheat your system and exploits bugs.
Developers who play their own game isn’t the same as a player. As players we may think of 1000 different ways to do a certain task that might make the content either too easy or boring by finding in an exploit. Which this rolls into my next reasons.
(Also, since WoW has done this, their bugs have been reduced 50-60%)

+Redesign content.
With testing the content before it hits the game, we could have the chance to go back and redesign how it works because the players have found a way too cheese the system, or maybe the content is too hard and stats need to be tweaked. Or maybe the content is way too easy!

Example:
The Shatterer, Shadowbeast, and more.
Some world bosses are just too easy and boring compared to Jormag and Tequatl.
These could be easily fixed by adding more chain of events and more attacks for the bosses.

Example:
Do you know the Molten Furnace Fractal?
How for the entire time at the end, you just stand in the corner when all the AoE hits?
That could’ve been redesigned in PTR before it the retail game to make it a better experience than just to stand in the corner and wait.
This could be done for all content potentially, dungeons, fractals, everything.

Example:
You know how nobody runs Citadel of Flame path 3?
Well, that could’ve been tested before it hit the game and changed to make it a better experience.

+More active developers and community.
A more active role between the community and the developers.
This as whole benefits everything and makes the community feel more important in the game they have paid for and support.

Cons!

- Splitting the community.
Some people may choose only to play on PTRs instead of the retail game.

-Resource cost.
Of course extra servers cost more money to maintain.

- Spoilers!
While we play all the new content for an extended amount of time, we will see everything before it launches to retail. Although we all know how the story ends, we’re going to defeat the big bad guy at the end and that’s that. While plot twist may be spoil, in my opinion this is a small price to pay for a better over-all experience.

I love this game so much and I want nothing but the best for it, but coming over from WoW and sad to see there is no PTR for this game was a little disappointing because of all the benefits Blizzard has gained from having a PTR. This could be a great addition to Gw2 and help Arenanet understand the community better and the wants and needs of their player base.

ANet do not.like spoilers. So we will.never see a PTRS.

I have played other games, WoW and DaoC, that have had test servers and the only times I ever saw anybody there was when they announced a weekend test for something specific. Sounds kind of like a BWE to me anyway.

Very few ,if any, were actually playing the test server to “test”. PTRS seems like more of a waste of a server to me.

kratan.4619:

I have played other games, WoW and DaoC, that have had test servers and the only times I ever saw anybody there was when they announced a weekend test for something specific. Sounds kind of like a BWE to me anyway.

Very few ,if any, were actually playing the test server to “test”. PTRS seems like more of a waste of a server to me.

Still, being able to test patches/constant creates a better experience and far less bugs and far less upset people that their class got very unfair nerfs that demolishes their builds. There’s to be more interactive with the devs and players.

Think of it like this:
If a ptr was up the whole time, it would be stuck where it was this beta weekend still. Broken events, skills or traits needing fixed or buffed, etc. It would stay that way the whole time, till they got enough feedback to code and change what they feel needs changed and fixed.

So, what would be the point in leaving up the servers stuck on the same patch? None really. People are going to keep posting the same bugs or ideas till the next patch. So instead of keeping it up, shut it down, re-open when next patch rolls out. Gather feedback again.

Not only Wow but many MMORPG’s have something like this, either a public version or private test server. Most go the first route and simply avoid “spoilers” by not releasing too much, too soon. In my experience, some games leave their servers up all the time but most do not. They put up builds that don’t release too much, and release what needs work and give the volunteer testers the level characters and gear they need to test it, then take down the realm when they have the information they need. (Or let them keep characters for testing/let them level new characters through it. Really depends on the game/build/circumstances.) Not all work this way but some do, and this (or private test realm working under similar conditions) would probably be the best fit for GW2.)

Either way could save them a great deal of resources in QA, balance and bug testing and while nothing perfectly emulates a live environment, a test realm would work toward catching some of the major problems that have made their way into live builds.

ALL MMO’s have bugs, regardless of their testing procedures, but it seems that Arenanet’s desire to handle information on future releases in a secretive manner works against them in this regard.

BrotherBelial.3094:

ANet do not.like spoilers. So we will.never see a PTRS.

and very glad Anet does not do this. and hope to god they never ever do

Dovienya.6597:

Not only Wow but many MMORPG’s have something like this, either a public version or private test server. Most go the first route and simply avoid “spoilers” by not releasing too much, too soon. In my experience, some games leave their servers up all the time but most do not. They put up builds that don’t release too much, and release what needs work and give the volunteer testers the level characters and gear they need to test it, then take down the realm when they have the information they need. (Or let them keep characters for testing/let them level new characters through it. Really depends on the game/build/circumstances.) Not all work this way but some do, and this (or private test realm working under similar conditions) would probably be the best fit for GW2.)

Either way could save them a great deal of resources in QA, balance and bug testing and while nothing perfectly emulates a live environment, a test realm would work toward catching some of the major problems that have made their way into live builds.

ALL MMO’s have bugs, regardless of their testing procedures, but it seems that Arenanet’s desire to handle information on future releases in a secretive manner works against them in this regard.

How do you know that ArenaNet doesn’t have private test server?

Zaklex.6308:

Dovienya.6597:

Not only Wow but many MMORPG’s have something like this, either a public version or private test server. Most go the first route and simply avoid “spoilers” by not releasing too much, too soon. In my experience, some games leave their servers up all the time but most do not. They put up builds that don’t release too much, and release what needs work and give the volunteer testers the level characters and gear they need to test it, then take down the realm when they have the information they need. (Or let them keep characters for testing/let them level new characters through it. Really depends on the game/build/circumstances.) Not all work this way but some do, and this (or private test realm working under similar conditions) would probably be the best fit for GW2.)

Either way could save them a great deal of resources in QA, balance and bug testing and while nothing perfectly emulates a live environment, a test realm would work toward catching some of the major problems that have made their way into live builds.

ALL MMO’s have bugs, regardless of their testing procedures, but it seems that Arenanet’s desire to handle information on future releases in a secretive manner works against them in this regard.

How do you know that ArenaNet doesn’t have private test server?

It was well know they did with GW1. The people.who did the testing where know as the Krew, and had to sign NDA’s. GW2 might have the same thing.

Zaklex.6308:

Dovienya.6597:

Not only Wow but many MMORPG’s have something like this, either a public version or private test server. Most go the first route and simply avoid “spoilers” by not releasing too much, too soon. In my experience, some games leave their servers up all the time but most do not. They put up builds that don’t release too much, and release what needs work and give the volunteer testers the level characters and gear they need to test it, then take down the realm when they have the information they need. (Or let them keep characters for testing/let them level new characters through it. Really depends on the game/build/circumstances.) Not all work this way but some do, and this (or private test realm working under similar conditions) would probably be the best fit for GW2.)

Either way could save them a great deal of resources in QA, balance and bug testing and while nothing perfectly emulates a live environment, a test realm would work toward catching some of the major problems that have made their way into live builds.

ALL MMO’s have bugs, regardless of their testing procedures, but it seems that Arenanet’s desire to handle information on future releases in a secretive manner works against them in this regard.

How do you know that ArenaNet doesn’t have private test server?

Of course they have one. To think they don’t is just silly. It’s been mentioned by devs in the past, in fact.