Guild Wars 2

Assume the following (because they seem likely based on past experience)
1. Any Anet employees who do play WvW don’t cover all servers and all time zones.
2. Following on from 1 – Anet may not actually know who would make a representative sample of players to test things as they develop the WvW update.

Whilst I would like to say everyone should have a chance to help, this may not be possible for early testing…

So who would you recommend to be asked to test the new WvW update, and why choose them?

I’ll start the ball rolling:

A big Guild: Knights of the Rose because we’re a large PvX guild that has a decent WvW presence at reset and some players who play WvW off peak. We also have players from a number of different servers, so a cross section of tiers and play styles.

A small Guild: Lemmings are Lost because it has a few dedicated WvW players who are still to be found playing WvW – mostly roamer and small group activity.

A Commander: Ins – don’t know him/her personally or even which server he’s on but he’s posted some sensible ideas and seems to understand many of the different aspects of WvW. I’d trust him to represent us fairly I think.

I have run alongside several good WvW guilds on IoJ. Sorry I haven’t named you all, but I’ve not been on as much as I used to be and I’m not sure who is still active.
If you’re on the forums please add more suggestions.

They should have people sign up to become testers like every other company does. There’s no need for a popularity contest.

Yes Anet could ask people to sign up, or ask everyone to join in. But they won’t. They could even look at their metrics, but I’m not sure if these include individual time in WvW maps, or indeed whether the metrics differentiate between EotM and “real WvW” (simply looking at WvW rank would not do this for example).

This thread isn’t intended as a popularity contest. It’s an attempt to identify those guilds and commanders that we as a community would consider representative of our game play.
There may well be too many names to select them all (assuming more people post) but the alternative is that Anet selects players for testing who they believe participate in WvW; and this will be based on either:
a) players they have met during their own play time (which limits the servers, tiers and time of play)
or
b) players that publicly play WvW – ie streamers.

I’m simply proposing that we, the community, put forward another list for them to look through too – that’s why I asked for reasons.

So because they won’t take volunteers, you believe favoritism/cronyism is the best compromise? They already used several streamers for testing the desert borderlands, look how well that turned out.

Yuffi.2430:

So who would you recommend to be asked to test the new WvW update, and why choose them?

Everyone.

Anet already have the tech to give everyone a new character slot that’s dedicated for a test server.

Simple as that.

Yuffi.2430:

Yes Anet could ask people to sign up, or ask everyone to join in. But they won’t. They could even look at their metrics, but I’m not sure if these include individual time in WvW maps, or indeed whether the metrics differentiate between EotM and “real WvW” (simply looking at WvW rank would not do this for example).

This thread isn’t intended as a popularity contest. It’s an attempt to identify those guilds and commanders that we as a community would consider representative of our game play.
There may well be too many names to select them all (assuming more people post) but the alternative is that Anet selects players for testing who they believe participate in WvW; and this will be based on either:
a) players they have met during their own play time (which limits the servers, tiers and time of play)
or
b) players that publicly play WvW – ie streamers.

I’m simply proposing that we, the community, put forward another list for them to look through too – that’s why I asked for reasons.

Wouldn’t it be possible for Anet to access info such as WvW ranks and Maps frequently visited? Or is this too much work? I am genuinely curious. In this scenario they can pick out players who obtained most of their WvW ranks in maps not named EotM.

Dawdler.8521:

Yuffi.2430:

So who would you recommend to be asked to test the new WvW update, and why choose them?

Everyone.

Anet already have the tech to give everyone a new character slot that’s dedicated for a test server.

Simple as that.

WvW betas involve downloading and using a separate client that connects to a separate set of WvW servers. You used the same “account” but had no access to any of your live game account. There’s no way to overlay “overhaul” WvW mechanics and rulesets on top of current WvW servers. The in-game PvE betas and betas of new classes/specs for HoT didn’t mess with the mechanics of current matches.

You could get a small group of longtime WvW players, hopefully ones experienced in all aspects of WvW to pitch ideas and comment on Anet’s ideas. That would be good.

But once you start testing those mechanics and ideas you need full map queues of testers to really make sure things work properly. Maybe even a public test server for WvW. Otherwise you’re just going to get things like Oasis event that just don’t work when exposed to the rigors of WvW demands.

I have perfect idea for metric. Invite everyone ever who has posted in WvW forums.

As I am reading this post again I’m not sure if I sound sarcastic or serious.

I have tested early PvP developments in other games and it’s boring, tedious and unsurprisingly buggy.

For testers you need people with a lot of patience, time, excellent understanding of game mechanics and a willingness to report errors. You also need all your testers to be available in the same time period. So picking a big guild and asking for a few people who fit this criteria doesn’t seem like as big a deal as people are making it out to be.

I feel a lot of people are viewing this as an exclusive beta, its not. There is a lot of testing that takes place well before a Beta. What these people will likely see will be far from a finished product, not to mention time consuming and frustrating to access.

There will be public Beta’s when they are ready. I personally wouldn’t volunteer to touch it until then.

I doubt Anet has sufficiently detailed data to know who levelled up in which maps. WvW level and hours played will be held in our account information as total values. I doubt this includes detail, and certainly not a history of where and when a player gained levels.
I suspect Anet can access historical map population data but I doubt this includes a list of specific characters. I think it more likely to be based on the number of client requests for data each map instance gets (in other words how many players are on that map). Collecting and retaining information about who these requests originate from would be a lot of data to collect and store for little benefit – so it doesn’t seem likely that this is done.

So I come back to my original intent and question. How can Anet tell who plays WvW and would make a reliable and effective tester for new content? If you look through the posts here you’d be forgiven for thinking that everyone has left WvW entirely, that all the major guilds have disbanded and only a few inconsequential players remain to enjoy the PvE aspects. This is of course untrue – the API data clearly shows structures flipping so there must be players on those maps.

So, who is left? We, the players, should know, which is why I suggested we list guilds, commanders and even players who we know are still active. I thought the list would be useful, however judging from the responses so far most people who have replied either disagree or don’t understand the basic idea.

It’s a sad indictment of this forum community that the most popular threads are the negative ones.

I’ll leave this with one final statement for Anet – in case they read this.
If you want some idea of who else you could invite to test WvW ideas, you might look through the sticky thread about the Desert Borderlands and select the players who actually gave thoughtful and constructive feedback, whether you agree with what they said or not.

Yuffi.2430:

We, the players, should know, which is why I suggested we list guilds, commanders and even players who we know are still active.

So, it’ll be a list of <insert popular guild/player here>? How is that really different from the Anet approach?

I’d prefer they just test it live for a week if they had changes to make.

Would be more fun and useful that that kitten golem week for sure.

Don’t become EVE though. Their player " player counsel" turned out to be kitten rife with self-serving recommendations and demands. In the end it only served a set group of large corporations (same thing as guilds). The damage they’ve done to that game is no small matter.

edit: Lol. I got a “kitten” and I didn’t even say a bad thing. I guess that might be a matter of opinion though. No worries.