Posts with tag Testing

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It is pretty obvious that the public testing realms are a very useful tool for Blizzard in order to determine what exactly the kinks are in the newest content it is going to roll out -- and even a way to gauge popular opinion on new builds, talents, and bosses. However, the PTR seems to only really cater to one sort of personality: a personality that enjoys seeing everything before it is even brand spankin' new, possibly a little broken (or a lot broken, as the case may be).

There have been times when I've been so jazzed about the public testing realms that I've downloaded the server and patches as soon as they are available and jumped right into trying out the freshest raids or quests, and other times, I just don't give a hoot. PTRs are often the lifeblood of up-to-date bloggers and theorycrafters, but for me, it really all depends. Sometimes I like finding bugs; other times, it just doesn't seem worth the hassle.

Do you find yourself lining up to get into the latest quests and raids on the PTR? Hitting the testing dummies? Or is it all something you'd rather digest from the front page of WoW Insider instead and leave the testing to the experts?

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This Breakfast Topic has been brought to you by Seed, the Aol guest writer program that brings your words to WoW Insider's pages.

Blizzard puts up public test realms (PTRs) for testing new content all the time. At times the PTRs are unplayable, either due to bugs or overcrowding. At times they are ridiculous because of the economy, because people transfer all the gold on their account to a single character before copying them. Some major guilds go whenever there is new raid content to practice it on the PTR, so they can get their world firsts whenever the content does go live. Some people seem to go just to stand around and complain about the changes yet not actually test anything. However, all the problems aside, the PTRs are the only way to experience the new content or class changes prior to live.

I tend to copy over to the PTR whenever there is a new raid instance or a major revamp of my class. Having been in the betas for the last couple of expansions, I tend to file lots of bug reports and hope that at least some of my issues are addressed. I have gotten frustrated with people attempting to make a ton of gold in the test realms because they do not seem to grasp the fact that the money doesn't come with them to live. Whatever is done on the test realm stays there and dies there.

The PTR is there for testing, and testing requires people to be able to have access to the new material. Because a lot of people don't actually test on the PTRs, we tend to have several mini-patches in order to fix bugs with a major patch. So actually use the PTR for testing, since it will only help cut out some bugs for when it goes live.

Do you actually use the PTRs? Do you participate in sending in bug reports? Are you one of these people who copy over all your gold and charge exorbitant AH prices on the PTR?

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Burning with desire to slip into the Cataclysm beta test, grab a goblin or worgen and run wild? Not these players. We asked readers to tell us why they do or do not want to participate in Cataclysm beta testing -- and while plenty affirmed their beta aspirations with desperately ardent pleas, we found ourselves more intrigued by the reasoning of those who said they weren't interested. Why would they pass up this opportunity of a gaming lifetime? What could they possibly hope to be doing for fun, instead? Read on to hear the opinions of three players on why, when it comes to Cataclysm beta testing, they will be opting out.

Halls of Reflection, the 5-man in which we're going to face down Arthas (finally -- we've been waiting for this moment since the end of Warcraft III) is now live on the PTR, and the staff of WoW.com is going to head on in there to see what there is to see. And you get to watch -- we'll be streaming our run of the brand new 5-man this Friday afternoon, starting at noon Pacific / 3pm Eastern. We'll be live on our Ustream page, with full in-game video and commentary from yours truly, as five intrepid WoW.com bloggers go and see what the Wrath of the Lich King really looks like.

Of course there will be spoilers, although if you're interested in seeing what the PTR has to offer, this will be as good an opportunity as any to do it. We've embedded the Ustream feed after the break on this post, so just come back here on Friday at noon to jump in, chat with us and other viewers live, and check out the action. If you have the Ustream iPhone app installed, you should be able to see it on there as well, so if you're out and about that afternoon, you can still watch. And we'll be recording the whole thing on Ustream, so if you can't watch it live, you will be able to come back later and check it out for yourself. Should be fun -- we'll see you back here on Friday afternoon at 3pm Eastern.

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Patch 3.3 is the last major patch of Wrath of the Lich King. With the new Icecrown Citadel 5-man dungeons and 10/25-man raid arriving soon, patch 3.3 will deal the final blow to Arthas. WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.3 will keep you updated with all the latest patch news.

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Patch 3.3 is the last major patch of Wrath of the Lich King. With the new Icecrown Citadel 5-man dungeons and 10/25-man raid arriving soon, patch 3.3 will deal the final blow to Arthas. WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.3 will keep you updated with all the latest patch news.

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Daelo has posted this week's raid testing schedule for the patch 3.3 PTR, and we're going to get more looks at what the Icecrown raid has in store for us:

US Servers
Monday, October 26 at 7PM EDT / 4PM PDT – Festergut
Wednesday, October 28 at 7PM EDT / 4PM PDT – Icecrown Gunship Battle
Thursday, October 29 at 7PM EDT / 4PM PDT – Sindragosa
Friday, October 30 at 7PM EDT / 4 PM PDT - Valithria Dreamwalker

EU Servers
Tuesday, October 27 at 19:30 CEST – Lord Marrowgar
Wednesday, October 28 at 19:30 CEST – Lady Deathwhisper
Thursday, October 29 at 19:30 CEST – Professor Putricide
Friday, October 30 at 19:30 CEST - Rotface

A little bit of analysis about the schedule after the break.

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Patch 3.3 is the last major patch of Wrath of the Lich King. With the new Icecrown Citadel 5-man dungeons and 10/25-man raid arriving soon, patch 3.3 will deal the final blow to the Arthas. WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.3 will keep you updated with all the latest patch news.

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Excited to jump in on the Icecrown Gunship battle today on the PTR? Too bad -- Daelo has posted on the forums that due to instance server issues, today's testing has been canceled. He posted that on the EU forums, so we're not sure if that means it's also canceled on the North American realms, but we'll presume so. If we hear otherwise (as this is the PTR, all testing and data is subject to change at a moment's notice), we'll let you know.

As for what this means for the testing cycle, probably nothing at all -- delays and changes are pretty standard for the test realm, and even as they said in the original announcement, bosses can go up and down whenever the devs want. I do think we will see the gunship battle tested on the PTR at some point, though -- it seems like one of the more complicated encounters in the instance, and Blizzard will surely want to put it under a microscope sometime before the patch goes live.

Update: Apparently the gunship battle is live right now (4:40pm Pacific) on the test realm. If you want to see what it's like, get yourself a raid and head on in.

Blizzard has posted the schedule this week for testing of the new bosses in Icecrown Citadel on the patch 3.3 PTR. Here's what Slorkuz on the EU forums says is going down:

US PTRs
October 21 at 7PM EDT / 4PM PDT - Festergut
October 22 at 7PM EDT / 4PM PDT - Icecrown Gunship Battle

EU PTRs
October 21 at 19:30 CEST - Rotface (this test is already over, unfortunately)
October 22 at 19:30 CEST - Icecrown Gunship Battle

As always, these schedules and everything else on the PTR is subject to change at a moment's notice. You can find short descriptions of what we know about the bosses after the break.

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Patch 3.3 is the last major patch of Wrath of the Lich King. With the new Icecrown Citadel 5-man dungeons and 10/25-man raid arriving soon, patch 3.3 will deal the final blow to the Arthas. WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.3 will keep you updated with all the latest patch news.

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Lead Encounter Designer Daelo has posted over on the forums that the testing of Icecrown for patch 3.3 will begin tomorrow, October 15th, with the Lord Marrowgar encounter. Blizzard will also have the trash before him up and working as well -- the Icecrown raid preview describes the fight as an army of undead guards, commanded by Marrowgar, "a monstrosity fused together from the bones of the undead." Sounds like good times to us.

Stay tuned -- we'll definitely have a few players available to test the encounter and give you some impressions from the PTR tomorrow, and if we can get enough folks together, we might even stream it again. As Daelo points out, the testing schedule will be extremely flexible, so Blizzard will likely pull bosses up and down at a moment's notice -- they've got a lot to test and probably less time to do it than they'd want. Note also that this is for US PTR servers only -- the EU will have a seperate testing schedule that will be available on their forums when it's ready. To Icecrown!

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Patch 3.3 is the last major patch of Wrath of the Lich King. With the new Icecrown Citadel 5-man dungeons and 10/25-man raid arriving soon, patch 3.3 will deal the final blow to the Arthas. WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.3 will keep you updated with all the latest patch news.

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Thanks, Low!

Daelo posted an official schedule for testing the Trial of the Crusader content on the current PTR, which further explore the perils inside the Crusader's Coliseum. There are two different schedules for players on North American and European realms, who will be squaring off against different bosses:

On the North American test realms:
Anub'arak - Tuesday Night, July 21, starting at 7pm EDT. Normal and Heroic.

On the European test realms:
Val'kyr – Wednesday Night, July 22, starting at 19:00 CEST. Normal and Heroic.

Blizzard is implementing both Normal and Heroic version in varying difficulties and set-ups. Daelodev also mentions having different Test Patchwerks that hits "VERY hard" to better test sustained tank damage. He reminds everyone that feedback from all the tests - which include their combat logs - is incredibly useful to the development team. He ends the post with the usual FAQ that notes that 1) there's no trash in the zone, 2) loot is implemented, and 3) Achievements are in place. Check out the official post for more details.

Lead Encounter Designer Scott Mercer, a.k.a. Daelo, posted an updated testing schedule for the Crusader's Coliseum on the Patch 3.2 PTR today. The good news is that EU players get to try another set of bosses -- this time the Faction Champions. The bad news is that the US PTR instance servers are still broken following last night's aborted testing attempt. Not good.

The updated schedule is as follows, with Daelo's full post after the jump:

Here's the current schedule for Trial of the Crusader PTR testing:

On the European test realms:

Faction Champions - Saturday Night, July 11, starting at 19:00 CEST.

The issues that were preventing raid testing on the North American PTRs are still not fully resolved. We're looking into alternative means of enabling testing on these realms. I'll update this thread when I have more information.

I was just bemoaning that we haven't gotten a chance to see patch 3.2's new raid content yet. It looks like that chance will come sooner than I expected: tomorrow night!

Daelo has just posted a testing schedule for Trial of the Crusader (a.k.a. Crusader's Coliseum).

• North American realms: Lord Jaraxxus, Thursday, July 9, starting at 7 PM EDT
• European realms: Eydis Darkbane and Fjola Lightbane, Thursday, July 9, starting at 19:00 CEST

Both of these fights will be available in normal mode (10 or 25) only, not heroic. The new 5-man, Trial of the Champion, will be open "later in the PTR cycle."

He also notes that Koralon, the new Vault boss, will be up, and you'll be able to access it if your side has Wintergrasp. Tanking and DPS Patchwerks will make a return. Unlike the patch 3.1 PTR tanking Patchwerk, this one just hits really hard ("as hard as Algalon"), all the time (instead of ramping his damage up over time).

Oh, and one more thing: there is, apparently, no trash at all in this raid. Woot?

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Patch 3.2 will bring about a new 5, 10, and 25 man instance to WoW, and usher in a new 40-man battleground called the Isle of Conquest. WoW.com will have you covered every step of the way, from extensive PTR coverage through the official live release. Check out WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.2 for all the latest!

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