Regina hopped on the Guild Wars 2 Twitter account and Facebook accounts to let everyone know about the next GW2 stress test:
11
Aug
2012
2012
GuildWars Insider Staff Openings: Find out how you can join GWI!
Great Elementalist Communication in WvW
12/14 Patch for Elementalists
Playing with the Elements: Elites for Leveling
Engineers are Better Mesmers
Engineering for the AETA: C-C-C-C-Combo Maker! An Introduction to Combos
AETA: Leveling Your Engineer 41-80
The Vanguard: On the Offensive
The Vanguard: Guardian Leveling 41-80
The Vanguard: Understanding Guardian Skill Combinations
Engineers are Better Mesmers
12/14 Patch for Mesmers
Big Swords & Butterflies: Blink Is Number Seven
Death Becomes You: Terror from the Deep
Death becomes you: How to be a better dungeon crawler
Death Becomes You: Jumping into the Puzzle
First Characters, First Adventures
Companions’ Crossing: Playing The Ranger 101
Companions’ Crossing – In Close Quarters
L&K: A Discussion of Thieves via Reddit
A Thieves’ Takeaway From Wintersday
L&K – Shadow Return; Why Breaks are Good
© 2012 All rights reserved. Caution4 LLC
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@JosephHauptman sigh..I see this was already pretty much handled (thanks community! You're awesome!) But for the future, please do not swear, even if it's "gangsta" speak. There might be impressionable young kids around here and god forbid we end up with another generation of gangstas. There's not enough ibuprofen in the world for that headache. Also, if you lash out at me for this slight reprimand, I will not only delete your comment, I will ban you. Just a friendly warning since you seem like you would not take criticism very well. But yeah..sorry to come down on you like this (and so late) but we don't really tolerate this kind of behavior around here. Thanks for your understanding! :)
(also, sorry I haven't been around much, guys, RL got kind of busy)
@JosephHauptman WTF does "fug" mean? Also, your sense of entitlement is showing. Arenanet has no obligation to give any of us more time with the game before launch. But you know what? Doing so will make the game better as a whole, for them AND you. So I would stop complaining about only getting an hour of a stress test, and be grateful that you're helping shape the game for the better.
@Helgrave He helped shape the game for the better by buying it. If a player signs into the beta weekends and files bug reports, or signs into the stress tests and gets booted every 10 minutes, they're giving extra, which is why Anet take the time to thank the players who participate.
He paid his $60. That doesn't entitle him to be rude, but it does entitle him to not feel obliged or grateful for the chance to join a stress test where he's unlikely to get as much out of it as he puts in.
@Xiang "How is the stress test not about him or us if we're potentially involved in it?"
Because it isn't. Stress and Beta tests are, and have always been a means to simulate launch and general traffic of players on your servers, as well as testing various systems. It is not about the user experience. If it was about the user experience, it would be called a demo, and you would be allowed to "test" indefinitely until launch.
"I went on and got some PvP done, and Anet got my contribution to their server traffic. Win-win. I definitely wouldn't have bothered if the connection quality was as trashy as the previous test, because that's win-lose."
Except that's not win-lose. Because in the end, your trashy connection quality is still providing valuable information for ArenaNet, which in the end will make for a better launch and a better game overall, for you. Therefore, it is still win-win. Again, it's not about your experience, is about the information retained by ArenaNet from your experience.
"Don't tell me that people play in these tests out of pure altruism and that they'd stick around if they had a 100% guarantee of not being able to have fun."
This is a side effect of developers and publishers treating beta tests as glorified demos. I cannot in recent memory recall a company other than ArenaNet that uses their testing phase for actual testing and iteration. Nor one that actually listens to the feedback from their playerbase.
Take SWTOR for example. If you beta tested that game, and then played the live version, you would have noticed very little change. And no matter how long the game was in "testing" it was still released buggy, and broken. Not only that, but they did not listen to the feedback provided by those in "testing" and many of the issues that were brought up during testing, were never acknowledged (Unresponsive combat was a prominent one that wasn't really fixed until 2 or 3 patches after launch).
So, in the hands of a smart company, a game's testing phase, and the experience of its testers should, in the end, be for the good of the game as a whole. Which means, yes, the perfect tester should be willing to forgo their own "fun" for the sake of making the game better for everyone.
Which leads us to:
"So if a guy wants to voice an opinion that a 1 hour test is too short to have any fun and it's all take and no give, he's entitled to do so without people telling him he should be 'grateful that [he's] helping shape the game for the better'. That's just patronizing."
I suppose you could see that as slightly patronizing, but it doesn't make it any less true.Because, again, the testing phase is NOT about the individual tester. "Ask not what ArenaNet can do for you, but what you can do to make the game better".... or something like that, you get the point.
@R0dst3r How is the stress test not about him or us if we're potentially involved in it? I went on and got some PvP done, and Anet got my contribution to their server traffic. Win-win. I definitely wouldn't have bothered if the connection quality was as trashy as the previous test, because that's win-lose. Don't tell me that people play in these tests out of pure altruism and that they'd stick around if they had a 100% guarantee of not being able to have fun.
So if a guy wants to voice an opinion that a 1 hour test is too short to have any fun and it's all take and no give, he's entitled to do so without people telling him he should be 'grateful that [he's] helping shape the game for the better'. That's just patronizing.
@Xiang The stress test is not about him, or us - it's about the developers needing to know more information about their game. I didn't make the window to stress test. Do I feel slighted or ungrateful because I didn't know in time to take advantage of it? No - am I excited to see the game coming soon, knowing they are doing all they can for a smooth launch? Absolutely. Paying his $60 entitles him and anyone else beta oppurtunities in the past, a 3-day head start on the game, and nothing else.