Test Update 05/27/14

If by some miracle test comes back up tonight would someone be so kind to post it, stepped away from my anticipating it being down all night again.

Let's see.. Yup, Test seems to be up.

Very surprised to see this news. Thank you for informing me

...And down yet AGAIN.

The status message now says "Status: 5/28/2014 23:37 PDT - We are currently investigating a potential issue with the Test server."

The server has been clearly unwell lately. Poor dear...

Both times that the server crashed tonight I was invited to a group while in Bloodfields, and as I zone, I disconnect and then the server reports as down when I reconnect. Both times exactly at that time. I'm not saying I killed the server but this is a test server and I'm a tester and I wanted to let the dev's know the uncanny similarities in the server crashes on my end. I never have issues running the game or zoning. They were different groupmates but all in ToR I think. I was in Bloodfields(OoW version) working on cleric 2.0 drops.

EDIT: I would also like to point out that prior to this patch a large portion of the high end gamers in the Testserver were playing with ToR enabled via copying the dead hills file from live into their test folder. This also means that many of us already have a great deal of the achievements prior to ToR going live if that has any cause of the issues as well. Possibly did yall patch the deadhills file along with the rest for the client on the 28th or just add in somedoor files, if so then a good portion of us are playing with an old file that never got patched. I don't recall if the 28th patch made us all replace deadhills.eqX or not. Those same players could be logging onto the live servers in question with the obsolete file causing the global lag. All speculation but since you guys are having a very rough time solving the issue and communicating with us about it, I figure I might as well throw this in a place maybe 1 or 2 devs might read.

The one good thing about test crashing and all the downtime... Full PoFear spawn each time the server comes up!

I managed to get my Shaman a Child's Tear. I gave up on ever getting the Shaman 1.0 as PoFear is perma camped on all servers.

I was worried about roll backs. But during one of the brief moments the server was up, I logged in and verified the tear was still in my bag.

On a side note. I haven't had any lag in any zones. I also haven't zoned into ToR yet. I didn't do any file copies from live to test either. Heck, I don't even have the new maps yet.

Same thing with my wife, EQTrixy. We've been waiting for the golems in Fear so she could get a child's tear as well. I managed to track down Terror, we took him down and ended up with the tear. About 10 minutes later the server crashed again after my wife had logged out. Fingers are crossed that the tear will still be there when things come back up.

I'm crossing my figures too. I hope you two have the same luck I had, and that tear will still be in the bag.

Test down for 3 days now and counting. Makes me wonder if the Sony dev office is full of interns. I can't see any seasoned coders being this terrible.... Maybe that's how they keep EQ alive, by hiring minimum wage interns.... /sigh

I got a tweet from someone at SoE saying "Test server was left down because it's test server" aka who cares about us, we play for free so we are of no importance, nevermind the fact that many of us take the money we save from gold subs and use it in the marketplace, thus still spending money on EQ.

They best not have that attitude. I prefer playing on Test but at various points in time since 2004 I have had up to 6 paid accounts going (plus hundreds of dollars in SC and expansions; I bought 4 RoF & CoTF). I had to cut back (thank Obama for that), but still keep 1 active on Live. The Test community should not be ignored.

That's not true, a ton of money is spent on test in the station store by players that have established themselves there. They don't let us have that stuff to 'test' for free because they know people will pay real cash for it.

Heck, I know a guy that just spent 100 bucks making 3 heroic characters on test because you can't 'testcopy' over heroic toons. He could have gotten a year of gold for that money. Why would they block you from copying heroic character unless they wanted to force you to buy station store stuff ON test too.

If you use station cash or tokens on test they disappear from your live account too, do you think that was an accident? I don't....

Yup i try usually spend $40-50 a month on SC myself, whether it be for race changes, name changes, xp pots, heroes forge flag, whatever, If it wasn't for test i wouldn't be playing at all, so it's because of test that they're getting this money from me. I find it extremely difficult to believe that the team is that incompetent that they can't fix test after 2 days. Guess it is hard to fix something when you're not trying.

I think you misread what i said.

Test makes far less money for them than the other servers because most go to live to testcopy their purchase over and over whereas on live you'd have to rebuy the items. They do value players otherwise I would not have recieved all the rewards in my eqmail for all my various bug reports. They probably just have very little care for the people who play on test to play instead of test. I've gotten more loyalist points from bug reports than from having an active subscription.

Keep in mind that coding and configuration management can be (and often are) done by different people. The code itself may be perfectly functional, but if some bits were left on the floor by the people who put the patch together, well...

[quote/]I got a tweet from someone at SoE saying "Test server was left down because it's test server" ...[/quote]
Hope you are wrong with your conclusion, because I read this as... The issue is reproducible on test, so going to blow that server up a bit. Which will make it unplayable for longer, but it's still meant to be a test server, and players there understand that.
All the live servers are still complaining, I think, about a really bad lag issue from their update, even though they are 'up'. So, I'm going to hope that's what's going on...

Still toying with getting all-access, but only after they sort out the whole SC claim trouble. Not looking to 'test' that feature. I buy SC as a test player, still would even if/when I go all-access. Kind of a thank you so much for all these extra storage characters on free accounts. Heh.

Maybe not as much, as often, as a live player, but there is also dealing with the server crashing during raids, not being able to cast any spells without a Cloth Cap, ugliest human models ever seen (thankfully they didn't stay), odd bugs, etc. I assume some of these things still happen on test first, even if we can't test new high-end content.

We're so low on the totem pole, pushing a hotfix so an item no longer drops was higher priority than fixing test. Hell, i can deal with the lag that live is experiencing, i'd rather have some lag than not be able to do anything.

Just think of it this way: That only got Hotfixed on live, so when/if the server comes back up get over to TOR and farm you an evolving cloak.

Over the years theres been so many awesome exploits that got hotfixed on live that stayed abuseable for quite some time on Test. Theres alot of positive's to playing or occasionally playing on Test, ya'll are a bunch of whiners.

Obviously SC and Tokens (kronos?) are going to disappear if you use them on Test... They are consumeable items.

They disallowed Test copying HC toons, so enterprising people wouldn't make an account full of 85's for their 35 dollars. < This means they are aware of all the Test copying shenanigans, (also see the Double faction pots, less and less SC stuff is heirloom). Also its a business, they are trying to make money off that SC stuff. Allowing Testcopy shenanigans with SC bought items isn't in their best interest.