Message of the Day - Beta

Discussion in 'The Veterans' Lounge' started by Stephen51, Oct 9, 2021.

  1. Velisaris_MS Augur

    By making an in-game announcement, Daybreak basically said the quiet part out loud...that certain individuals/guilds get special treatment with regard to the beta for new expansions. We all know it happens, but seeing it plublicly confirmed is just unsettling to some people. It gives weight to the notion that certain guilds have "a man on the inside" to give them an advantage over other guilds.
  2. Skuz I am become Wrath, the Destroyer of Worlds.

    Nothing the early invitees see will be super secret sauce that everyone else in Beta won't get to see & test so any uneasiness should be laid to rest.
    All they will be doing at most is testing an even rougher/unbalanced version/draft of the expansion content than what gets iterated on during beta for everyone else, and they provide a stability test of the beta sever environment prior to the masses being let in the gates.

    Been on the outside looking in many times and on the invite list a few times before, you aren't missing anything except perhaps the odd wipe/bug or two.
    -----Cinexa----- likes this.
  3. Skuz I am become Wrath, the Destroyer of Worlds.

    Processing.

    Loading all that data in for each player (i.e. the server looking up your items from the places they are stored on the back end) every time they log in adds up.

    Dragon Hoard is the tech needed for EQ with it's massive inventory demands/loads.
    I hope one day the entire housing storage/banking system is shifted over to Dragon Hoard tech.
  4. niente Developer

    The beta copy script is very archaic. We do not use it often enough for it to be rewritten in a sane way (and, well, it mostly works). One of the issues with the beta copy command is that you don't get immediate feedback that it worked and your copy was successful.
    When you type /beta, your character and account name are written to a text file on the server. When the beta copy script runs, it reads these files from all servers, performs the copy, then deletes the file that previously contained everyone who had registered for a beta copy.

    If there is a problem and your character is not copied, there is no feedback for you. You log into beta and no character will be there. Having your own character to test on is important, and it can be a lot less fun to play on beta when you don't have all your clickies, flags, and items from Live.

    Each year during beta since I've started, the code team will have to spend time helping copy beta characters who encounter a technical issue that causes them to not be copied, on a mostly daily basis, especially when beta first begins. From a player's perspective, it is very frustrating not to have your character. Beta copies can break due to an issue that caused your character's name to be deleted from the file but not copied, or if you copied more than once and deleted your character, etc. There are a myriad of ways the copy can fail to work properly. Even though it is manual work for us, we want to help because we appreciate your help testing and know these characters are important to you.

    The MOTD was set in this case because I had worked late to fix the beta copy script. I did this because it alleviates stress to have it fixed sooner rather than later, and knew a lot of people unknowingly had their character copies fail. It was primarily a way to avoid the extra time spent manually fixing things later.

    Some CRT members have access to beta now, but there is not a lot they can do on their own except look around and let us know things like, beta copies aren't working (so that it can be fixed for everyone promptly). They are helpful to the development team, and get far less advantage than you might expect.
  5. Marton Augur

    Any chance we could get a list of CRT members? Dreamweaver promised to post it but then he left ...
  6. Skrab East Cabilis #1 Realtor

    Cool, but doesn’t explain why you would set Beta copy as the message of the day for the entire population when you haven’t announced anything yet. You could’ve just dropped the line into Discord for the CRT members.
  7. Zunnoab Augur

    Thanks for the explanation. And yeah we had a hilarious bug last year in which someone not even in the guild would magically show up in groups and our raid instances. They would see group chat but others couldn't see them, then POOF trying to fix groups they would magically appear in the raid roster.

    It was like two totally unrelated characters shared some sort of ID and the server had no idea what to do about it. I assume it must have been beta copy shenanigans.
  8. Elyssanda Bardbrain

    we must have been trying Tantor once at the same time you were Zunn, I had a parse with someone like Rikki or Metanis show up on it.. and I was like WHAT the ever loving heck!
    Metanis and Zunnoab like this.
  9. Zunnoab Augur

    I had no idea it was affecting others too.
    Elyssanda likes this.
  10. Waring_McMarrin Augur


    Because anyone is able to run that command at this point and time and they will have their character copied over when beta starts? I know I would be happy to have it done at the start and not have to wait until later to get it and I am sure I am not the only one who feels that way.
    Yinla likes this.
  11. Riou EQResource


    There are a bunch of people who expect Beta to start during the usual time when previous expansion Pre Order sale ends, and for these people it also lets them know they have to re /beta to have their characters ready day 1 of pre order access
    Yinla, yepmetoo and Sancus like this.
  12. Szilent Augur

    that's not an EQ bug, most likely those players' pets have matching names
  13. Svann2 The Magnificent

    Im guessing it was a glitch. Stuff like that happens from time to time. This was an announcement from last years beta, and probably not intended to go up yet.
  14. Skrab East Cabilis #1 Realtor

    Cool, but how does that prevent them from announcing the expansion and beta dates a week or weeks before it starts?
  15. Yinla Ye Ol' Dragon

    Not just CRT members are doing /beta, many players are doing /beta ingame now in anticipation of beta starting soon. They want their chars on beta the day it opens. Knowing the system has failed gives them a warning that they need to do it again if they want their char there on the first day.

    Many players do not use the EQ forums, Discord or even Facebook, so the best way to get this information out there is to put it on the MOTD.
    Waring_McMarrin likes this.
  16. Zunnoab Augur

    This is a specific beta bug last year. We're talking not even in the same guild or instance.
    Elyssanda likes this.
  17. Szilent Augur

    no it was not. read the thread.
  18. Elyssanda Bardbrain

    nah, Zunn is on Luclin with Inverse logic, Rikki and Metanis are his guildees.. I moved to Cazic from Luclin from Inverse Logic, I know them, they are friends.. that's how I recognized the names.
    They are definitely NOT the names of pets in ROTE.. Pretty sure even with all of the IL people who moved to ROTE over the last 3 years, I am the only one who honors a former Luclin friend, by naming my familiar Funstuff after a mage on Luclin who has passed, but was a dear sweet man.
    Metanis likes this.
  19. Skrab East Cabilis #1 Realtor

    Cool, but why not announce your new expansion before announcing the Beta for your expansion? See, how that doesn’t make any sense. Announcing the Beta creation effectively marked the end of the CoV sale period.

    Announce ToL, and then MotD the Beta stuff.
  20. Yinla Ye Ol' Dragon

    Communication has gone down hill since we lost Dreamweaver. :(