It was difficult decision when I abandoned my test born ranger. One day I decided it was time and started a level 1 beastlord. I would eventually raid with that toon until he was also abandoned when they did the one time only transfers off. I was happy they decided to do it but I would have been fine even if they hadn't.
you guys just don't get it do ya? sony never cared about test server population back then and they sure don't care about it today. That is another reason I quit eq. I will never be back. I am done completely. I hope it rots in hell. retired. Warlordt 100 ranger Warlordd 105 ranger Gelane 102 shaman Healmenow 102 cleric yes I even bought TDS for 3 of my accounts.. What a complete waste of money.
Hey Warlordt, you should send me an Email sometime. Sorry to hear your quitting though, good luck bud.
I don't agree with the sentiment that SoE didn't care about test population in the past. We've been given perks, as a server, that say that they recognize that the people playing on test are valuable to the health of the game overall, and free expansions are one of the longest-running perks - we've been getting them for the last eight years, after all. I also don't agree that test is the domain of freeloaders. Doing a /who all 105 gives a Too Many Players response, and this is on a server with less than 200 people in general chat during the prime times. A good percentage of the people who are still playing have paid the $36-$40 per account to keep playing in current content. I will say that the change to policy with regards to expansions, after 8 years, implies that the internal perceived value of test players has dropped. Oddly enough, this came at a point where I honestly think the server was at its most valuable - we were active, if fairly low-population, and had a guild actually doing current content. We SHOULD have been providing more and better data for the developers than ever. The people asking to be allowed to move off the server are actually asking to go somewhere where they will be paying to play, without needing to sacrifice years of character development in the process. They're asking to give MORE back to the game we all love. This was given to the server as an option the last time they changed the rule set, back in 2011, and it's not an unreasonable thing to ask for today. Limit it to accounts that have bought TDS; require character transfer tokens like any other server to server move, restrict it to a single destination server that could use a population boost, whatever, but give people the option.
People were practically using "Come to test for double XP, free Gold, and get your RAF enabled, raid copied account from FV!" as their recruitment slogan... in these forums, no less! Good luck with the transfers guys, but this played out like any other good thing that has been similarly abused. Hey... maybe if people got behind me in my testing for simple changes to encourage new players to play, the population wouldn't be as low. Nah... why actually test things? Let's just PL every toon and get a raid copy and then tell everyone they are a newb for having difficulties leveling and gearing up.
Money probably had a factor in making test server buy TDS. But the reason that made it an actual decision was the fact that test server was pulling other populations from other servers. They really needed to do something or there would have been nobody playing live servers. Because lets face it. There is no server better than the test server. The average skill level of a test server person is much higher than someone playing on the regular servers. Also I would think having a group of vets playing the game being able to be on a different server and catching all the bugs/exploits before they go live would deffinitly add to the stability of live servers. Believe me you don't want these people on the test server finding and exploiting dupes on live. The test server and it's people do serve a purpose. Because stuff does slip by the dev's every so often. The guy who called test server players freeloaders probably doesn't understand that there was a core of players on test even before EQ went f2p. If the player calls test their home server. Chance are they have bought TDS for at least 3 accounts. Me personally I did the collectors edition for my main account. Also if everything I do on a live server will augment my playing abilities on test then why would I not be all access at this point? However "freeloaders" do exist but they are far and few between, and they usually don't stay long. Even if they offered free character transfers off the server all I would do is transfer to FV, get raid gear, and then copy back to test. To me live servers are nothing but drama. Guilds always fighting, rude people who don't respect play nice rules, and just general childish behavior. On test I don't have to worry about what everyone else is doing or how greedy and selfish they are. If you don't play and support the test server then to me you are the fool.
While I've never particularly understood the motivation behind buying raid copies (Hey! I'll buy a krono and get awesome gear and then never be able to improve my character through any of my own actions!), it did make for more people to group with, and they never rolled on gear which was kind of handy.
Does Test still serve a purpose these days? TDS going from Beta straight to Live was a rather huge writing on the wall. New content is tested on Beta, and then the testing simply continues on live servers with a much bigger 'QA crew'. Bugs still slip in, Test or not. If the number of bugs found in new patches during the 1 week on Test is approaching zero then there is no reason to have a special server for patch testing anymore. That server has always been abused by players for things not in any way related to testing. So if the amount of good feedback from it is no longer worth dealing with the abuse then they may as well close it. Of course, closing Test is also a big problem: what to do with the players? They can't just merge all those duped chars into the live servers are destroy the game economy.
When they changed the server rules in 2011 and allowed people to copy over with tradable items and platinum, they allowed anyone who had been playing on the server up until that point to transfer off, with the caveat that any item with the Copied tag (meaning it either came over from another server, or was created using tradeskill components that had come over from another server) were not transferred to the new server with the character. Now, apparently there were some exploits using housing or shroud banks or shadowrest or some such that let people actually get off test with copied items, but I don't know the details. Presumably they wouldn't let people leave test with any currency, but I'm not sure what they'd do about, say, people filling 32-slot tradeskill bags with stacks of rubies or other high-priced vendor items. We do find bugs still, by the way. I've had three bugs that I reported last year show up in patch notes, which is a great feeling even though I almost certainly wasn't the only person to report them. We're also not ALL raid copies - if you deleted every copied item on my accounts, I'd lose a bunch of Amulets of Necropotence, a few overhaste clicks, some trophy weapons and armor from Luclin and before, a few 1.0s and a warrior 2.0.
That's exactly the biggest problem: how to separate the 'normal' players from the copies, and that includes removing copied items and currency, and tracking down all possible effects. I imagine that would be a huge undertaking. I remember when some beta merchants were erroneously patched to live just for a few hours: serverwide rollbacks happened. But after years of copied items/currency blending with the initially 'pure' chars, there is probably not a single char left on Test that hasn't touched the copied stuff by now. They would have to come up with some arbitrary rules about what you can or cannot take with you if they let you transfer off Test. Inc lots of drama and headache.
You're seeing a population decrease due to the fact people can't play the latest expansion on test. I honestly doubt they are going to do anything to improve test from this point further. If you enjoy Everquest I would seriously consider switching to a live server, I see some on your server support SoE and buy expansions even though they only use test. I would suggest taking advantage of the fact you did purchase the new expansion and play it. Picking a server is probably the most important thing when switching. Luclin, Xeg, Bristle, Povar are some good servers I would recommend. Good luck!
Since they can't release actual numbers, I'd love to see a percentage of how much Test is out of the over all EQ revenue. I think a lot of people would be very surprised with that info unless I'm completely wrong. I personally have TDS on 5 of my accounts, numerous game cards & station cash & krono used across many of my accounts while I was on both Test & FV. I'm sure there are plenty of negative detractors but for awhile Test had a current content raiding guild doing well & a couple of active group guilds. Bug reports aren't the only means of letting the devs know about bugs. The content has to actually be used in order to Test it & it's not the Test player base's fault that the EQ team failed to utilize them in a more efficient & consistent manner.
That is one way of looking at the test server. The other way would be to realise that a good portion do have toons on live servers already. What I think a lot of people fail to understand is how gameplay in general is different on test. If they shut down the test server I would probably just find another game to play.
You skipped a step: buy 20mil pp worth of Kronos to trade for last expasion's gear... In regards to the test server, I remember blizzard priced their transfers at $60/apice when they first offered them, and so many paid. If Sony wants to make money, change the free sub/expansion policy on test and offer xfer off for, say, $80/apice. You can really put it at whatever price, u'd be surprised what people would pay for the sentimental value of keepin their favorite character... Just smart business
What I don't get is how someone can say that test's avg population is more skilled then live, yet then you see them talking about going to live, to FV to get raid gear ( instead of earning it ) and just test copying back. To me that's not even testing anything, just using test as a free EQ server aka being a free loader. Sorry if this offends anyone, but more then likely if it does, I just described you.
That's maybe the dumbest statement I've see on these boards in recent memory, and that's saying something. Have you played extensively on every server to document this? Because there are great and poor players everywhere. And for a server with a major selling point of (mostly) free to play, I doubt it fundamentally draws better players than anywhere else. If I had to name "top" people who are long term vets and the most knowledgeable/loyal, test wouldn't have more than any other server, in fact it would probably have less given its smaller population.
