Guild Wars 2

Yesterday’s changes (bugs) to Stealth are a clear case (one of many) that a simple patch might break the Stealth functionality (already reported in the bugs section), which is a cornerstone of Thief gameplay, while also damaging the gameplay of Rangers, Mesmers and Engineers.

Please, ArenaNet, create a testing server for players to test whatever changes you might think of, because sometimes you might give us an unintended change like this, the playerbase is crippled in their daily dungeon runs (I do almost every dungeon every day) out of the blue, in a minipatch intended to solve login issues(or the next days, depending on how fast you’ll fix this).

Also, the sorting algorithm for prices in the sell/buy mechanics in the Trading Post is bugged as well.

Thank you for your time.

I have zero belief a test server would change anything. For one thing, a test server doesn’t exist, it’s just not a public one.

And I don’t think most people playing would play on a test server, when it’s in no way furthering their goals. I played on the test server on Rift. It was dead almost all the time and bugs still happened, often major bugs, every time there was an update.

The test server also slows things down, because you have another layer of people “testing” and then you have to fix the bugs they find.

Most of the major things are fixed the day of the patch or at most the day after. Creating a test server would serve no purpose here.

Vayne.8563:

I have zero belief a test server would change anything. For one thing, a test server doesn’t exist, it’s just not a public one.

And I don’t think most people playing would play on a test server, when it’s in no way furthering their goals. I played on the test server on Rift. It was dead almost all the time and bugs still happened, often major bugs, every time there was an update.

The test server also slows things down, because you have another layer of people “testing” and then you have to fix the bugs they find.

Most of the major things are fixed the day of the patch or at most the day after. Creating a test server would serve no purpose here.

I disagree. I’ve been a test player on many mmo’s and a few small incentives to play a test server can be the difference between a clean push or a borked one like the last two we’ve had….

I’m against a test server unless it’s a very select group, and that they’re under NDA.

I’m not convinced a test server would help, for the same reasons Vayne gave.

I played UO which had test servers and I’m currently playing ESO which has one and neither have bug free updates.

But also sometimes bugs appear when the software is moved over, even if nothing else is changed. This happened with our new database at work: it was installed on 1 computer and tested thoroughly by all 7 people who would be using it, doing all the things we normally do, until we were all satisfied that there were no bugs.

It was then installed on all our computers (no changes to the software, literally just copying the test version over) and suddenly we started getting new bugs, including one which crashed the entire program if you clicked on the blank space between two buttons. That was fun.

Often Testservers are also simply used to know some new glitches / exploits or
other good ways to make money already when the content is released and so
farm the heck out of it before it is finally fixed.

Else there are also so often errors that never occur on testservers but start as
soon as the stuff is pushed to live.

Vayne.8563:

I have zero belief a test server would change anything. For one thing, a test server doesn’t exist, it’s just not a public one.

And I don’t think most people playing would play on a test server, when it’s in no way furthering their goals. I played on the test server on Rift. It was dead almost all the time and bugs still happened, often major bugs, every time there was an update.

The test server also slows things down, because you have another layer of people “testing” and then you have to fix the bugs they find.

Most of the major things are fixed the day of the patch or at most the day after. Creating a test server would serve no purpose here.

Diablo 3 test server was always packed.
And the most enormous patch errors, the stealth and the WvW ones would have been seen in seconds.