New expansion and impact on test server, with bottom line implications

"Once they promised not to do any more wipes on test it became a free to play all access version of EQ. Again, that is just my opinion."

I really understand what this sentiment is. I also understand that people think, "Listen to those whiners on test complain about having to pay for something now". The fact of the matter is, I would never pay to play on the test server. Its not a high quality server to play on, I don't believe with all the mini changes popping in and out its ever really stable. We still have bugs from CoTF present and crashes going on. Its not something I would ever pay to play on in any fashion, ever. If I was going to pay to play EQ I wouldn't pay for second rate EQ I'd pay and and go back to raiding on Live. There is absolutely no way I am going to pay to test broken things for SoE on a server that isn't afforded the same standard of quality as a live server and pretend its ok to fork over the same amount of money for it, or any amount of money for it for that matter. If I'm paying for something I want it to be good, not second rate broken crap that is subject to change into another form of second rate broken crap at any moment with no prior notice even during the middle of my raids, missions, instances, groups, grinding or whatever else I happen to be doing when it just goes down with a no notice update, again. If you want my money to play on test then turn the Test server into a Live server and maintain it as such.

you understand that in a game studios, you pay people to test and to help with bugs right? a long time ago a beta test was actually a beta test and not a way to market some hype... eq does have real beta testing still, most games don't and they chose to do everything in house.

and in like with old beta testing, you played the game for free, you got a copy, usually a limited time, but you didn't pay for the access to test.

ill play on the test server, ill report bugs i come across or have someone in my group do it... look through my post history and you will see i'm not the most qualified to write a report of any description.

hell, while i have people to play with i'm even ok with paying a monthly fee to play the game, but i am not paying to play the game, for the expansion, for the right to play on a server that has no population at the high end (see new expansion) to play with, i would move over to live.

im also fairly sure that even if you aren't reporting, they are still getting data off of you just by how you play and what you do.

the tl:dr
developers pay people to test their games, you want me to test the game without being paid i need perks or why would i put up with the testing environment?

Just in case people actually think most of the /bug reports coming from Test actually get any attention anyway, there's a particular bug 100% reproducible since at least RoF when a friend and I found it that allows you to instantly crash and repop a ton of zones whenever you want. I've sent at least 5, probably more like 10 /bug reports on it in the last couple years and as of a month ago when I quit, you could still farm a zone worth of nameds, then instantly crash it, see if enough more nameds spawned via track that you want to farm em again, or just cycle the zone until there are.

This is pretty in line with what Shang was saying...there's no reason to give anyone benefits for being on the Test server really anymore because all the stuff the devs actually care about is tested by people on live who copy over to Beta or Test, run parses totally for free, then go back to Live. That'll continue regardless of what happens as far as freebies for people who play on Test, so why not milk them for whatever extra cash you can?

FV used to have free transfers. there were even dev posts saying there were "no plans at this time" to eliminate the free transfers.

eventually free transfers stopped without a warning.

they can change their policies whenever they want. they were not obligated to provide free expansions on test for the rest of the game's life. they could even remove the free all access from test at any time if they wanted to.

That was a poorly thought out change as well SpamFactory.

Free transfers to FV were a CS nightmare. Dealing with "borrowed" characters that got shipped over and parted out for cash must have taken up a bunch of time.

The other side that I didn't even think about was farming things on normal servers and shipping them over to FV to sell.

To be on topic, RIP test raiding. Maybe in 6 months TDS will become free on test and you guys can try restarting raiding with a tiny crew.

indeed, sorry Legions of Blackburrow.

Consider what those "borrowed" characters are "worth", it does absolutely nothing for CS issues. All it did was meant some SC on the account was cashed it or maybe SOE made a small sale. Considering that small sale could very well end up as a chargeback it probably increased the burden on customer service to end free transfers.

Shipping things to FV is largely unaffected with any degree of volume. Pre-nerf farming especially the Lake of Ill Omen drop for the Anniversary XP potion on any other server and then moving a bank full of drops to FV is well "worth" the fee. Even "only" 25 potions means the fee is $1 for 5 hours of double XP, look in marketplace and figure out if that's a good deal.

Yes, the fee does stop someone like me from claiming a bag or two of loyalty plat to buy up things like Kyanite and other drops related to the Omens era focus augs since I'm not going to pay 2500sc to move 10kpp worth of items from Xegony to FV. That was among the largest impacts of ending free transfers to FV, next time you buy Discordant Scoriae go "woo hoo, I'm so glad there aren't free transfers to FV".

Sony is certainly not obligated to show respect to its player-base, you are right. But as a business, it may be in their best interest to.

It's unfortunate that no one at the EQ team was inclined to work with Legions of Blackburrow to sort out bugs & test raids & other things since that's what the server was originally intended for. Just a waste of a golden opportunity that makes no sense whatsoever. But they also seemingly ignore most /bug reports & let way too much stuff get pushed to Live due to a lack of communication & interaction with the Test community which are mostly good people & in some cases great players as well.

LOB already had a tiny crew to start. But yeh RIP Test Raiding.

We were an awesome tiny crew there for a while though

Corwyhn Lionheart where exactly do you get your information " Most people aren't on test to do testing they are there to play for free and testing is a side line"

i have been an avid tester on "Test Server" since 1999 and 3 of my toons are pre wipe.

i don't really feel that i am entitled to much of anything except accurate communications
if there is anything that will drive me away from everquest after keeping at least 1 or more active subscriptions for 15 years its this zig zag crap.
example SOE announces Free expacs to testers and Free to play then rescinds expansions
then i can see them rescinding free to play. what ever pay or not it doesn't matter to me its the back and forth.
my time on the test server i have had my gear wiped 3 times i have had roll backs where i have lost levels and completed entire raids in one night only to watch the server drop and loose everything.

how many people on live experience that and continue to play?

how many people actively pursue every quest in a zone and take note of the quests that are bugged or done work and /report /bug.. no one but the devs and coders will know.

in my opinion every single person that logs to test server just by logging in they are testing all the coded functions.

yes we get to play for free
and we get to lose entire days sometimes weeks of progress for free to because there was incorrect coding or spells and abilitys where to powerful, the amount of nerfs i have experienced have really killed any desire to play my main character.

and really free to play for a large corperation like sony online entertainment
is a huge bonus they do not have to pay people to Test their code and for almost 10 years they had people paying to test their game for them.


so i may buy an expansion for one of my accounts. but it would be at this point to just check out the new content with the ( yes its free here you go to Nope pay us for this) has really killed a lot of peoples desire to play on test.

then you have other games like guild wars 2 where its not as complicated to play at the end level you don't have 100 different skills to activate just to maximize your depus and you buy the game and ALL expansions are free they don't drop the servers for days or weeks and have excellent support.

more and more games are coming out like this and if everquest continues to build around the Group game its going to be more and more difficult to log in and play when there is no one to group with.

Nobody was friggin testing anything of merit on the Test server anyway. The few bugs we DID find went ignored. The only thing SOE cared about bug testing at all were bleeding edge raids and ROI tested those, not LoB or anyone else on Test.

We're still testing those.

LoB has been doing fine. People didn't log in for the first couple of raid nights after the expansion dropped, but this week we've been doing 3 or 4 events a night and knocking off early because we want to leave stuff up for later in the week. I don't think I've seen us at 54 and telling people to drop boxes, but we've been in the mid-40s and maybe even 50-52 range most nights.

Now if only the last 10% of Tower of Rot wasn't so godawful, maybe we'd even get CoTF finished.

That's because SOE chose not to utilize LoB & other Test players. It's not their fault & they shouldn't be treated poorly for SOE's mistakes.

Should we still expect 'sometime soon' after your post is from over a month ago?

Their never was going to be a Sense Heading post on Test server getting TDS for free, it was just something said to get us off their back.

Quote from roshen in another thread "There are no plans at this time to offer The Darkened Sea as free content on the test server."

https://forums.station.sony.com/eq/...es-tuesday-november-11th.215102/#post-3145844