Guild Wars 2

The big secret about Public Test Servers is that they really aren’t designed for catching bugs in the game code. The sample size that they generally have isn’t large enough to catch “heavy traffic” type bugs.

What they are designed for is for players to find game exploits before they reach the game, as well as for developers to see player tendencies (like finding overpowered skills and skill combinations).

So, sure… while a PTS for Guild Wars 2 isn’t a bad idea… it would do little to prevent THIS sort of problem.

Also there was a pretty close to public level test for EoTM that anet did use to test the map.

So no, public testing would not have solved these problems.

Draygo.9473:

Also there was a pretty close to public level test for EoTM that anet did use to test the map.

Good to know. What were the numbers of players in the final test?

Not saying a PTS would make everything bug free, but it’s definitely a tool that has been stubbornly left lying on the workbench.

Karizee.8076:

3.5 million players try to enter the same map at once, causes issue with map.

#FirstWorldTyriaProblems

They don’t have ‘one’ map. They would simply spawn as many instances of it as they need on as many servers as they have. They might have some performance issues but problems of this nature (not being able to play the character after the crash) speak to a coding error. And, of course a lack of adequate testing.