Posts with tag beta-test

If you've got the free time and access to the Warlords beta, consider lending a hand to the development team and joining the Tanaan Jungle stress test, today, September 10th, at 3:00 pm Pacific time. The level 100 realms will be turned off for the duration of the test, and the Blues are encouraging us all to create new level 90s in order to test the server load on the Tanaan Jungle introductory quests. This is an important aspect of Warlords of Draenor, particularly because everyone will have to do these quests at the beginning of the expansion. The more accurate data Blizzard has on what their servers can handle, the better they can make the early expansion experience for all of us.

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Though there's always a lot of excitement when a new Blizzard game goes into alpha or beta testing stages -- both Heroes of the Storm and Warlords of Draenor are currently in an early alpha stage -- actually playing games at this point is sometimes less than fun. Alpha and beta games are meant for testing, which means they're full of bugs and prone to changes. But the worst of it, for me, is the fact that none of my character progress is kept -- anything I do in an alpha or beta version I'll have to do again later when the final game goes live.

It's completely understandable that Blizzard -- and other game developers -- need to wipe progress made while the game was still being tested, but for me it kills a lot of the fun because on launch day the starting content is already becoming a repetitive grind. The end result is that while I enjoy reading early news about betas, I don't tend to play them for fun. But what about you, readers? Are you already looking forward jumping into the Heroes or Warlords betas -- or would you rather wait for the finished product?

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Last November, Blizzard announced that they were working on testing updates to Battle.net's communication and login functionalities. That testing is ongoing and has now been moved to an open beta. Blizzard is looking for interested players to help them test a new desktop application designed to improve the launcher and login experiences for all Battle.net users.

If you're interested in being a part of this beta test, you can head on over to your account page and opt-in to a Blizzard game universe beta test. As is usual, invites will go out in waves, so you might not get yours right away. Happy testing!

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The most crucial piece of information for you to remember while beta testing is that the process can be grueling and frustrating. Servers will go up and down, instances will crash, and above all, the people playing the expansion's beta will be just as inexperienced as you are with the content. Here are some etiquette tips on how to stay calm during a productive group session during beta.

Be patient. Patience is essential to the beta process. Flaws in the software or gameplay are not discovered without time for those problems to manifest. Be a good tester and log on to WoW with the mindset that you might not be in for the smoothest run.

As a beta tester, your patience will be tried. You'll wipe, fail, screw up, die, whatever. It's a game that you're helping to make just that much better. Put aside the gung-ho group attitude and talk to your team about testing -- that helps me focus on the task at hand.

Dataminers have been hard at work combing through the Mists of Pandaria beta client that became available tonight. The new enchants coming for weapons and armor have names -- and here they are, courtesy of WoWDB.

• Enchant Weapon - Pandamonium Permanently enchant a melee weapon to sometimes grant 1,000 attack power for 12 seconds. Can only enchant a level 92 weapon.
• Enchant Weapon - Windsong Permanently enchants a melee weapon to sometimes increase your critical strike, haste, or mastery rating by 1,500 for 12 seconds when dealing damage with spells and melee attacks. Requires a level 384 or higher item.
• Enchant Weapon - Jade Spirit Permanently enchants a melee weapon to sometimes increase your intellect by 1,650 when healing or dealing damage with spells. If less than 25% of your mana remains when the effect is triggered, your spirit will also increase by 750. Requires a level 384 or higher item.

Let me begin by telling you I had an Arcane Brilliance column about halfway done last week before a family health emergency intervened, preventing me from finishing it. The column was going to be all about predicting what the new revamped talent trees were going to be like. Now that Cataclysm beta build 12479 has dropped upon us like manna in the desert, the entirety of that now-ancient text is so outdated as to be worthless. Let me assure you that it was witty, and brilliant, and possibly mankind's greatest written work -- art of such singular value that small children would have been taught of it from textbooks with my picture upon their covers. But, alas, now it is gone, relegated forever to a remote corner of my hard drive, never to be seen by human eyes. The literary world mourns.

Still, I was able to salvage one small fragment of it. It is but one of a batch of haiku I wrote about Improved Polymorph. I will reprint it here, because whatever else this monumental beta build has altered, my passion for this new talent remains.

improved polymorph
flaming warlock sheep corpses
snuffleupagus

On second thought, perhaps it's best that no more of that sees the light of day.

Anyway, let's move on the rest of the awesomeness.

This article has been brought to you by Seed, the Aol guest writer program that puts your words on WoW.com.

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.

Are you pining for a Cataclysm beta invitation? Do you love testing new encounters? Is your guild eager to "practice" as many raid encounters as possible? Are you in a hurry to see everything the expansion can offer? ... Or do you want to wait until everything is completely ready, pure as driven snow? Are you shunning the very topic of beta testing, waiting patiently until Cataclysm goes live? WoW.com is looking for a guest article featuring your best arguments for or against participating in the beta of the game you already know and love. Why do you want to -- or not want to -- be a Cataclysm beta tester? Explain your position thoroughly, pro or con, in 500 words or less. As with all guest post call-outs, only the best submissions will be accepted.

Here's what to do: read up about the Seed guest writer program, sign up (we won't accept submissions under pen names or character names), and then submit your article (you can't see the article page unless you have a Seed account). Unfortunately, we are currently only able to take submissions from individuals living in the United States; we hope to be able to accept international submissions in the future. We'll accept submissions for this call-out until 11:59 p.m. EST on Thursday, May 20. If you have questions, you can email seed (at) wow (dot) com.

We're all still slaving away on WoW.com, finding bugs and filing feedback. To help that process along, we're going to try a little experiment. I'm going to level a character from level 1 to level 80, and all of it will be documented on my WoW.com profile. The hook is that you guys are going to decide most aspects of this character, such as race, class, and talent spec.

Such things will be determined largely via polls right here on the front page of WoW.com, where I'll be giving weekly updates on my progress along with what I've learned about the class and the world and any other observations I might have. If you want a little more detail on the process such as where I'm going, what I've done, and any other little notes I make via the Adventurer's Note feature, you can follow that on my profile. If you don't dig our profiles portion of the site, hey, no problem. You'll still get weekly updates right here on the blog until I'm level 80.

There are two polls: Race and Class. I will play whichever choices are the most popular. If the chosen race can't actually be the chosen class, I'm going to go with whatever is the most popular class that I can actually play as that race. The polls are below, and there's a little more information behind the cut underneath them.

Update: Polls will remain open so those who voted can still see the results, but as of May 22nd, Gnome Warlock won the polls and the adventures have begun.

I don't really need to tell you that WoW has been a little rocky since patch 3.0.8 launched. The forums are filled with players who are angry and threatening to cancel their accounts. There are some that think we need to give a Blizz a break.

Snagger of Quel'dorei pointed out that there are risks involved in launching new programming. The PTR cannot quite grasp the effect of millions of users. I've experienced bugs in new software releases in many areas. Everything from the Windows XP security bug in service pack three to software developed for my employer that regularly crashes the computer. We come up with work-arounds and the the developers work to resolve the issue. What we're experiencing is not unique to WoW. If you're missing out on your favorite WoW activity, try something else: run battlegrounds, work on reputation, help some lowbies, roll a healer.

If you want to copy your characters over to the 3.0.8 PTR I would do it soon, as in the next few minutes. The copy is currently up and working via the account management page at worldofwarcraft.com (go there yourself and navigate to account management as to ensure there's no trickery involved in links, etc...)

The PTR client is not available to be downloaded yet, but we'll let you know when we hear that it is. Expect that to be anytime, probably before the end of the business day on the west coast.

There's a good bit of changes to check out over at the PTR 3.0.8 patch notes. Be sure you do so and stay tuned to WoW Insider for more analysis of specific class changes.

If you've hopped onto the Beta realms recently, you may have noticed the heavy lag that's been going on ever since the last wave or two of testers were accepted.

If you are one of those testers who entered so late in the process, then you, like myself, might be finding that despite your best efforts, the lag does tend to color your opinions and feedback about the various quests.

Personally, I try to add into the comments section that I might have rated the quest as more fun had I not died twice, failed to pick up the items faster than the characters with whom I was competing, or spent what felt like forty minutes trying to kill X number of mobs.

Nonetheless, while certain experiences seem so novel and interesting, others can drive players right back to the live realms because they get sick of investing so much time and effort into something that simply does not work with so much lag, or listening to the complaining and counter-insulting that goes on in the chat channels.

Are you stuck wishing you'd been able to enter the Beta when the population was more stable? Are you forging on, or have you mostly forgotten about your key and chosen to wait until release on November 13th? Were you an early tester who is now annoyed with the increase in lag and annoying behavior?

The Wrath beta realms are down as I type this. Not news, I know, for those who are actually in the beta. The realms seem to be unavailable frequently. I chalk this up to the nature of beta testing. However, today we actually got a heads-up on planned maintenance downtime, scheduled for tomorrow at the same time the live realms will be offline. Now, this is news to me because so far the patches to the beta have been released without any announcement. In other words, the only way I've found out updates were coming was that when I try to log on, and then I end up waiting an hour for everything to download and install.

According to Tigole, Blizzard will "try to patch" the Wrath of the Lich King beta today. Storm Peaks will open back up and should not crash the sever. No word yet if Naxx will be introduced in this patch. The servers should be up between 4:30 p.m. PDT and 6:30 p.m. PDT.

The XP required to level will also be reduced by 10% this beta patch. Things should go faster for all you playing around with leveling.

Finally, there will be a new beta realm opening up named Murmur. Tigole mentioned that the premade characters should not have been made available on the existing realms. He tells us that "they are being removed." There is no indication as to whether or not current premade characters will be moved to the new realm or just outright deleted.