When will the Test server gravy train end?

Did you make this account for the sole purpose of complaining about the Test server? (mr. member since yesterday) Do it on your main forum account~

A. Every game has a PTS...EVERY GAME. Many of those servers are given benefits not exclusive to live servers because they are TESTING SERVERS. Guess what happens on TEST SERVERS...bugs. All those bugs I imagine you would log onto your main forum account to complain about, but they typically don't make it to live because of the TEST SERVER.

B. Wah wah

C. Have you even been to the test server? If so, you know what it's like to play there. Yes, I actually encourage an ENTIRE GUILD to copy over there to help with raid mechanics. Test didn't just start being free yesterday...its been like that for a while now and I haven't seen 200,000 people playing there. For all those bells and whistles you're complaining about, almost everyone in the general chat knows everyone else now, that's how small the test community is. It took a huge hit when SoE let the transfers happen.

While live server code and data is not perfect. The test server is MUCH more likely to have random downtime, serious problems, and bad data. I remember cases where the server was unplayable for days, I even remember a time when just one class was unplayable. It is not unknown for the server to be unavailable over the weekends when there is a problem that crops up Friday night or Saturday morning. Sometimes a class will become super powerful for a few days, totally destroying balance for everyone else. There are many difficulties to playing on the test server.

Before we allowed simple testcopy and double exp we gave the community on the test server free transfers off and gave them a while to move off with the warning that once the time was up, no more server transfers would be allowed due to the often un-balanced nature of the test server.

If the test server becomes overcrowded, the team will find a solution.

It's a shame they let all those people that duped fully geared characters transfer off test and keep all their gear

No copied gear was allowed off Test except epics. Anything that had copied tag was deleted during the servermove.

honestly i can only think of 1 specific player that stopped paying their sub adn tranferred to test off my server, course the rest might not be vocal about it of course..but this one was agood thing bc he drove our server absolutely up the wall day in and day out, now he jsut comes over long enough to "borrow" items to copy to test then he leaves lol.

to liliana..yeah all copied items were deleted on teh transfers off, but you could copy an entire guild over in t3 gear of that year, farm tier 4 gear, then transfer off (at the time it was being allowed only) and they lost nothing. most players in the game upgrade incrementally so it all depends how long you are on test, if you copy over with a set and never upgrade, taht transfer off woudl be naked, if youcopied over then upgraded everything you used thef ree copy to get that upgrade adn then transferred off with now 2 toons instead of 1 for a very small effort. im not complaining about that jsut saying taht itso nly the originally copied stuff that poofed not everything you used that gear to then acquire better of once there

Yes, because those people who transferred over to live servers with UF/HoT gear really make a difference now

It was during HOT they allowed it and yes it made a difference you were allowed to transfer your max AAed test copy to a real server for free. It is so easy to gear toons now the hard part has always been the levels/AAs.

And here I thought all the tink masks/sods I farmed on test and reintroduced to live servers were a big deal

While on the subject of the test move to live servers, are characters that were moved off consuming veteran reward slots on live (they retained vet status on live)?

I asked this last year, was promised an answer after RoF beta was over, and never got one.

Doesnt appear they do. I hadn't noticed that they came back with vets activated, but then again I dont play on live so its not something I was looking for. And before anyone freaks out, they only have the vets your account is flagged for, not all like on test.

you DO realize you aren't given free levels and AA's there right? those people who got max aa'd toons did it the same way you did, the ONLY difference was those who copied over gear from FV. Even than, it doesn't affect ANYTHING now as they've had to upgrade their gear just like YOU have (unless you're saying they raid RoF with HoT raid gear?)

You seem to misunderstand. /testcopy keeps your original toon on your server + gives you a 2nd toon on test they allowed this 2nd toon to transfer to any server sometime during HOT. Is it relevant today ? Not really but it was relevant at the time and is why they should not allow it ever again.

I understand, I play on test a lot. Even though I still have a toon on live, it doesn't give me any levels or aa's like you claim. So, it's just like any other server transfer...you moved over a toon you got xp on. So essentially if I moved my toon from test back onto the same live server, I'd have one guy with less xp and/or gear than the one I used to /testcopy. There was no special gain other than the gain the player earned (oh and the gain of dealing with a server complete with bugs, messed up quests, and character issues they deal with so people on live don't have to).

For all those complaining about a moot issue (Contrition I'm looking at you) perhaps you should take the old adage "don't bite the hand that feeds" into consideration. If not for Test being around as it is, every possible bug & flaw in the game would go to Live instead & it would cause a lot more trouble than it does on just 1 server. If you're looking for a cause you can always take up whatever the current fad is, it's just a Google search away

Justify it how you like but some people sold toons, some people sold rare items that were no longer obtainable, etc. there are lots of advantages to it. I was merely pointing out that it was a shame.

There were a few methods people used to get around this, some people deleted gear before transferring then used reclaim tokens once they copied off test, other people shrouded down and made it so all their gear was placed in their shroud bank which could be reclaimed easily once back on live server.

I never personally did this but I know of a few people that did, though i'm not calling anyone out, someone else had already done that on the previous forums.

Apparently some people are just too creative. Though it would have been nice to not lose some of my older clicks like Anguish bps, vish clicks etc. I was just happy to have updated backups of my toons in case something happened to them on test. So my shaman has the original lvl 78 on Bristle and the updated 88 on FV. My bard created on test has a lvl 83 backup on FV which I actually had to use during VoA when my 95 on test was accidentally overwritten with a lvl 60 alt with similar name that I copied over for a progression guild... Gms couldn't restore, and I probably would have quit if I didn't have the backup.

It's unfortunate some took advantage of the situation and its obvious it wasn't intended for the copied gear to make its way to live.

The only thing I regret about test in its current form is the number of botters you see starting to show up. With the increase in population there was an increase in demand for a 3rd party program and it's obvious someone is making it available. I'm not sure if all the same checks are in place on test like live, but I hope they are, or are put in place at least soon.

You do realize I am not even the person that started this thread? I happen to came across it on an unrelated search. I was interested in hearing a Dev response, they responded, I thanked them kindly and moved on. I think there is much more vitriol coming from people like EverChanter. Not everyone in the world is going to agree with you. I happen to disagree with one small aspect of the way Test server is currently and that is only the free gold status. I'm not arguing against the existence of a Test server or anything else that takes place there.

In order to bring a little logic to the OPs question. When will it end? It may never end. The reason being:

Running an EQ server, especially at a discount since you already have the facilities and servers to run said machines is incredibly cheep. Less than thousands per year... maybe even under $1000 per year.

If they had 1 employee and one server this would be much more costly. But they have a bunch of servers and can task any number of employees to run said server, meaning the total time it costs to keep the server up is minimal and already payed for under the budget for development.

As long as enough random SC income is coming in to pay for the electricity and hardware replacements/upgrades (cheep over the course of years). I could forsee a gold like F2P status being the norm. Especially if EQ just cant hold permanent subscriptions anymore because it is getting dated.

Look at STO, totally F2P you get almost everything in the game. All paying does is accelerate the pace of achieving high end items and leveling alts. Its something raiders and End game pvpers pay for, because they want to compete at a higher level than the free players. SOE's store has lots of cool stuff to buy and with the player creation tools going in, the game is going to become even less subscription centric.

Also I would like to add that I have been a member of the test community since 2000 and EQ since launch. I don't see test server being an issue at the moment. I rarely play anymore other than hop on and off randomly to see who is still around. Theres bigger issues facing the game as a whole than test server. Likely EQ will live on with a server forever, even if its just run by donations from dedicated EQers at some point. Looks like things are going well keeping it alive and new content is brewing all the time.

Off topic, I really hope SOE succeeds with the player created content.

One very interesting thing you can (or used to be able) to do:

Test copy over to test.

Change your toons name (on Test).

Test copy over again...congrats you now have 2 duplicate characters. Do it again and you have 3, again for 4, etc.

Dupe plat, items, characters......neat.