OK, here goes... I've had to downgrade to "Silver" status for the balance of May and its really bugging me lol...yeah I guess I'm spoiled more than a little. Got a 82 monk and a 85 (non-Heroic) Mage, but A5 mercs are just not cutting it for the things I feel like doing atm. Also, general boredom for those two toons is creeping in so its time for a little lowbie toon experimentation. Can't do it on my regular Live (Rathe) server; all my slots are filled with alts that I want to hold onto for now and, remember, as a Silver member my slots are suddenly limited anyway. Read up a little on the Test server, heard its relatively well populated these days, albeit with a lot of boxing (which I dont do, but have no issues with), and there everyone is Gold and you have 2x experience bonuses across the board. Sounds perfect for me for a little playing around. Questions: Does that old /testbuffme command still work...I think it used to boost you to 25th lvl (?) What do I need to know about economy differences/value of items etc.? "No drop" items tradeable? Any specific differences between Live and Test along those lines? Besides the obvious that is....the fact that certain changes (nerfs) are there already. Does SOE ever allow migration back to a Live server anymore? I'm not looking to scam/shortcut the system, after all it really is easy enough to level up 1-50 these days anywhere, double xp or not; I'm just curious about my options now and in the future...and no I'm not looking to /testcopy and migrate back and forth to end up with crazy loot and plat on Live, thats not the point of my questions. I guess I'm just looking for a primer on life on the Test server these days... Thanks
You can create a new PC and use testbuff but if you want to continue using your existing toons, use /testcopy. It will copy that char to test. Can you copy back? No. Not ever. As it should be. The big differences? No bazaar. No economy. Money is meaningless because everyone has a bazzillion plat. But you will see people give away sweet gear and stuff for free. Keep an eye on general. No drop is no drop. If you testcopy from FV, your stuff becomes no drop if it is no drop on a normal server. I'm a boxer who likes to group when I can find one in a place where I want to hunt. I play on bertox, bristlebane and test. I have gold, silver and ftp accounts. I bounce between servers and accounts depending on how I want to play. Recently on test, we have had a lot of downtime. Unexpected downtime. That's life on test. I was doing some trading and got rolledback. Argh. So I went and played on Bertox. Such is life.
Hey thanks for the info and response! No big surprises there pretty much as I envisioned it. I'm a pretty solo-centric player myself, though social (if that makes sense)...love chatting in Guild, or the occasional group of course, when I can find them. Someone on Test told me you practically NEED to box if you want to progress on Test, but I'm not really that kind of player anymore, hell I've been playing on and off since 1999 and STILL have never had a max-level toon lol. And I don't sweat that at all, if I'm having fun doing what I'm doing, its all good for me. Thanks again
I wouldn't say that the economy is completely non-existent on the Test server. When Heroic characters were first added on Test a couple of months ago, I created a few to see what they were all about. Since I had access to effectively unlimited platinum, I checked out the Bazaar often. There wasn't a whole lot of stuff for sale at any point in time, but new things frequently popped up. In a few days I had a complete set of level 92 gear, the best tradable focus item for my Mage and so on. All of these items had been copied from live servers. Prices were generally higher than on live servers, but again, with unlimited platinum, it didn't matter. If I started running low, I just copied a few characters from my home server. The only other thing that I noticed was that there was very little ooc chatter in the GL, but I didn't stay long enough to draw any conclusions.
A lot of players do box on Test, but many don't. We don't have a vibrant economy, so it can be hard to get what you're looking for, but the community is generous. Downtime can be sporadic and unannounced, which also affects the bazaar (I haven't loaded up my mule in almost a month! sorry). The boxing thing, really, is overblown. I don't box and I've made it "further" in progression than most on the server. Another thing worth mentioning: a lot of the server, perhaps a majority, certainly a disproportionate amount, is in raid gear. It's a popular trend nowadays to get a bunch of raid gear on FV and then /testcopy that character at level 1 - that way you have some of the best gear in the game waiting for you once you hit max level. Some enterprising folks have testcopy kits available for just this purpose, costing you 200k-500kpp (that's FV platinum!) each. We have more boxers than live, and lots more people running around in raid gear (that they may or may not know what to do with! makes for a great circus sometimes).
Wow thanks for the details, it does sound like a fun, kinda crazy circus. I'm not particularly rich on my Live server, but yeah I understand I can just /testcopy to effectively duplicate plat if the need arises anyway. I'll be watching the General chat too, as suggested above, would love to stumble across some halfway decent gear!
GO get your War flags slacker. As for the raid geared toons that don't know how to play the class. Test has the market cornered on that one. We also have one of the oddest collective of nerds in any general on any server I've ever played on, So bring your D20's. But overall its a fun place to hang your hat, and MOST of the people are generally helpful. Other then Feiddan, hes an iksar and can't be trusted. Also its a one way train. The last time they let some of us off (and I was one of them) was a month before FTP launched. They haven't allowed anyone since then off and probably won't again.
