Switching from Live server to Test server Faster

Discussion in 'Test Server Forum' started by Gemo, Feb 6, 2018.

  1. Gemo Member

    How to get to EverQuest II Public Test server in 15-30 Minutes

    Once you switch to Public Test in the EQ2 Launchpad, the launcher will start downloading the entire Test Server client including 18GB of data. You can reduce that to less than 1GB (and reduce patch time to 15-30 minutes) by following these instructions…

    1. If your EverQuest II launcher is running, close and reopen it.

    2. Click the game version (US English, etc.) in the lower left corner next to “Version”

    3. Change the Game Version to “Public Test” and click “Apply”

    4. Allow the Launchpad to start downloading and run for 60 seconds. Now proceed to step 5.

    5. Click the Gear icon in the lower left corner of the Launchpad and then click “Open Game
    Directory” to open your EverQuest II folder.

    6. CLOSE the Launchpad and then follow 7

    7. FULL DOWNLOAD: Ctrl-click on your music and paks folders, and then press [Ctrl]-C. Click on
    your TestServer folder and press [Ctrl]-V. It will take a few minutes to copy your live files to
    Public Test.

    8. It will take a few minutes to replicate your EverQuest II graphics and music files from Live
    to Public Test. You can click “Replace” whenever prompted to overwrite any files.

    9. Now that the copy is complete, re-run the Launchpad and it will take another 15-20 minutes
    for patching to complete.

    10. Click Play! If Public Test is up and running you will now be able to play.

    Test server may have unexpected or very short notice downtime to fix issues.

    Thanks for testing the Planes of Prophecy Tradeskill Sig Line! :)
    luminosa and Uwkete-of-Crushbone like this.
  2. Panthur Member

    Faster to just have 2 folders of eq2. One for test, one for live. No downloading. Only launch the launcher that pertains to each folder so you know what's what. IE: name their shortcuts EQ2 Test and EQ2 Live, or skip the launcher entirely if you don't need to download any updates.
    Feara and Uwkete-of-Crushbone like this.
  3. Uwkete-of-Crushbone Well-Known Member

    I do that exact same thing for EU/US. I had 3 copies, once upon a time: one for US, one for EU, and one for Test. When you get a new expansion, you have to pare down everything back to one folder, but once you've installed the latest and greatest (and, probably, logged in to each with that one folder), then you can divide/copy them up again into the 2-3 folders. I personally am not having much in the way of problems at all with Test these days; haven't for a couple of years now, unless Test is being patched for actually testing things. But EU is always an issue for me. :-/

    Uwk
    who has a US/Test folder and an EU folder now currently
  4. Flightrisk Well-Known Member

    someone please help, please!!!
    I have loaded test server and followed all of the above directions , but while I can open and log into test server , and to judge by the sounds it has logged me in, to a character I forgot I had on test , probably to the thundering steps docks to judge by the ecology sounds, the sound will only come through my head set , even though I've gone to the eq2 options in the main file and changed the setting to '4 speakers' which is what I have set on the regular server and should allow the sound to also come through my desk speakers, but does not . at the same time the screen is a sad and peaceful black ... if I wander the cursor around to areas I know 'should ' have a ui button I can click on them , lol but I don't know what I'm clicking , and I can blind type enter /quit enter or enter /camp enter and it works ... but no graphics except the eq2 cursor on black with a lighter black edge at the edges of my screen .. I have gone over every fix I can think of including up dating my nvidea drivers , opening the regular server, minimizing it and then logging into the test server, which also didn't work . my husband put in a petition to try to get help , and got the following answer..
    Tommy N. (Daybreak Games)
    Feb 8, 11:16 AM PST
    Thank you for waiting on me to get back to you. In order to access the Public Test server in EverQuest II, please load up the LaunchPad and select Advanced Settings. Click on Select Game Version and select Public Test. The game will patch and once it is ready, you can try to load into the game. I hope this helps!

    as you might guess this answer was less than helpful... if anyone know where to find the setting that will allow the graphics to open or show .. I would genuinely love to know them as I would really really love to help with the stich in time testing

    thanks all
    Phlytrsk
    Uwkete-of-Crushbone likes this.
  5. Uwkete-of-Crushbone Well-Known Member

    Hey, Phlytrsk! I hope the post here can contain all these screenshots, but here goes:

    This is me, last logged in on the US region:
    [IMG]
    ...as you can tell by the red circled area. You'll forgive me if I trimmed the window somewhat, but, y'know, account names and so forth. :-/

    But where it says US English, that's where you left-click. You'll next get something that looks like this:
    [IMG]
    ...minus the red circle, of course; I just put that in for clarification. ;->

    Left-click on the drop-down menu arrow, and you'll get a list like this:
    [IMG]
    If life were kind, the cursor indicating all this would show up on a screenshot, but... /shrug

    Run down the list until you get to Public Test (yep, I've got toons on the EU Region, too :D). Left-click on that, and it will show that now heading the drop-down menu box.

    Like this:
    [IMG]
    It's hard to tell, but the Apply button is now brighter than it was (because the non-visible cursor is pointing to it. Sigh). I circled the US English bit at the bottom corner, because once you left-click on the Apply button, that will change, and this will be the last time you see that for a bit (until you log out of Test, back to the desktop, login again, and go through all this again, but choosing US English instead of Test. Can be a slight pain hopping back and forth).

    Okay! Once you've convinced the game you actually do want to be on the Test server/region, it'll run through its various files and see which, if any, need updating/installing/etc. Eventually, you'll get to someplace like this, like I did this time (sometimes, there aren't any files to adjust, and life is good):
    [IMG]
    You can see by the red circle that you are now, fully, on Public Test (don't get impatient and just presume that the first "All files are up to date" up there refers to Public Test; it doesn't. That was talking about US English. Be patient and let it do its thing). Two separate "Checking game installation..." notices in that Updated File List are pretty much required to make sure you're where you want to be, and two "All files are up to date" are ideal, but you'll probably get at least 2-3 files the game thinks need tweaking for whatever reason (Popup Bag Options??), and you'll eventually get to "Finished downloading ______ bytes in _______ seconds" blah, blah, blah.

    You can now left-click on the PLAY button and be whisked off to the Public Test server/region...eventually. Again, BE PATIENT. It might take a bit to run through the various screens (including the black one), but you will eventually get to the Character Select screen (if you haven't selected a character from the beginning, of course; upper right-hand corner), or the Create a Character screen if you don't have anyone there yet at all. :)

    Hope this helps! :D

    Uwk
  6. Flightrisk Well-Known Member

    First I thank you for the help ..
    but once again , apparently what I wrote out went unread ...
    I have done all of the above steps and more at least five times have combed the forums for answers ,asked for help in a petition and got a useless answer, even deleted and reloaded test to a new folder gave it its own shortcut as suggested .
    test logs in , it loads up , music plays the cursor shifts to the everquest2 gold cursor or the hand if the page under the blank blackness is the character creation page , and the test server is apparently still holding an old character of mine on test, Missfortune the fiftysomething defiler , which if I get it just right blind clicking in the bottom right corner of the blank black screen, will log in , and judging by the ecology sounds is on the docks ..some where.. cant tell where , because of the blank black screen... and the sound settings are messed up as well , I have a very nice sound system on my desktop computer with two speakers on the desk and a headset/mic as well , main US English server (Maj'dul) is set to 4 speakers and sounds come through all speakers desk and headset this lets me turn off the desk speakers which then automatically switches me to head set. test server persists in putting all sound though the head set..im not even sure how its doing that ..as they share a connection line ?? I've gone directly into the test file to the eq2 settings and switched it to 4 speakers ... to no avail .. and the screen stays black no matter what I do , I suspect its a simple graphics and or sounds setting .. but cant find it and frustration levels are reaching all time highs , not going to quit playing over this or anything , but I could still just scream and stomp something to pieces .. I won't but I'd like too
    Uwkete-of-Crushbone likes this.
  7. Mordridd1 New Member

    Hello, and yes ty for the help here, but people as much help as is being given, this is more of a technical odity that I ran into a few years back as well. The screen goes black, you hear music, you might actually login to the game based on sound only. One of the Devs eventually had to answer me when Sony owned the game and had me either edit or remove some key ini files before, but for the life of me, I can't remember and I have been trying to assist her getting the test server to work.

    First we have Windows 7, A GeForce 330 series card, so not the best but it works with the normal game. 16GB Ram and quite a bit of Hard Drive space. Basically I maxed out this System to everything it can be without purchasing a newer system... which I plan on when funds allow.

    That being said, I copied the entire folder to a separate folder and named it test so that we wouldn't screw up the playing folder more. When we were still trying the normal Launch Pad load, and switch to Test, I deleted the EQ2.ini file which of course lost our UI re-direct... no big deal there. Fixed that. In the new test folder however I deleted the Rescent.ini, eq2.ini, Cache folders entirely and probably a few others and let the Launch Pad re-patch... still no Joy. We deleted all of her Character files, as I remember that sometimes helped in these cases, still it just goes black, the sound doesn't re-direct to the speakers that we want, nor will it play on them when we select the 4 speaker configuration which is what works on the normal live server play.

    In older posts dating back to 2009, 2015, people are talking about re-installing Directx, or starting the main game first then load test up while it's running then it is supposed to work. I have exhausted all of this and I have tried contacting support, but they also have limited information, so they generally just provide canned response, which is ok, but still doesn't help. The only thing I have not done yet, is to download a clean copy and try the launch pad again. We have spent so much time though already, that I really would like to find the specific fix to get this running so that maybe we can run around test every now and then and maybe give some feedback there. Again glad for any suggestions that work to fix this issue other than just patch from launch pad and again the help is valued big time, we just need some help with this Black screen issue.

    Thanks! :)
    Mordridd1
    Uwkete-of-Crushbone likes this.
  8. Uwkete-of-Crushbone Well-Known Member

    Hnh! Okay, that is weird...if you have a separate copy of the game for the Public Test region, have you folks tried bypassing the stupid LaunchPad silliness ('cause the gods know, that can get glitchy and mess things up) and just gone in directly through EverQuest2.exe? I will say this: if you try that, you have to first go into EverQuest II and then find a sub-directory called TestServer, even on your separate copy. Click on that, then find the EverQuest2.exe file in there. There will probably be a lot of .exe etc. files; look for the most recent one. :-/

    If you haven't done that before, you'll come (eventually; I think LaunchPad actually does save some time, but on whose end is a guess ;->) to an old-fashioned login setup: the username should already be in there, and maybe the "World" (server/region/whatever); you type in the password and the character name you want to come in on. If the problem is caused by going through LaunchPad, this should be a decent workaround. If you have tried that already, I think there've been some threads about this sort of thing before (it sounds somewhat familiar, though praise be, I've never had issues with it), but I'm not sure what the ultimate solution was, other than new patches (probably to fix whatever the previous patches broke). :(

    If it's a graphics issue, it might be that old bugaboo of DirectX 9.0c being required, regardless of how many assurances we've been given that it's no longer the case. DirectX doesn't care, itself; you can have both the version the rest of your computer is happy with (12 or 13 or 87 or whatever it's up to now), and the one this game still requires. ;->

    Good luck! :)

    Uwk