Unless you've been stuck in a hole, or hiking the Himalayans for wicked yeti action, or... well... perhaps playing some other MMORPG for the last 3 months, you'd know that the first SWG expansion, Jump To Lightspeed, is nearing release. With that comes testing. And with that comes bitching. It's all a part of the ying and yang, dontchaknow.
Tiggs, the newest addition to the SOE Community Empire, posted on the Test Center boards, stating that the Test Center server was coming down so those players that are a part of the JTL beta can, you know, test some things when the server comes back up. It's kinda the done thing on a test server.
Being the inquisitive little creatures MMORPGers are, a number of questions were posed to Tiggs, one asking whether a rollback was possible at the end of the beta test. Tiggs tried to assure the masses;
We will try to avoid this, but it is entirely possible that Test Center will be rolled back to the day we put JTL on it.
But the masses were not assured. Players began to sound off, demanding a straightforward-yes-or-no, black-or-white, keep-that-rollback-away-from-my-pHat-l3wt-or-not answer from Tiggs. Shouts of "How could they roll us back? There are harvesters to run! Money to be made!! Loot to be camped!!! Fire! Brimstone!! Ash!!! WON'T SOMEBODY PLEASE THINK OF THE CHILDREN??!!" echoed through the bulletin board thread.
Enter JustG, Senior SWG Producer, to try to settle things down;
Gentle peeps,
As stated repeatedly in the past, Test Center is a business tool for us to use to improve the Live service. This means we can and will do anything necessary with TC to accomplish our business goals.
We are not sure if we will or will not need to do a roll-back. But just to set your expectation properly, assume we WILL. That way if we don't it is a great bonus :-) And at least we won't be doing a total wipe (although if we needed to, we would).
We are doing something here never before tried with SWG - launching an entirely different game bolted on top of the original one. We are going to run into problems. We are going to need to anticipate these problems as much as we can.
That is where Test Center comes in. We HAVE to use TC in order to figure out how this is going to integrate with the ground game. This is what we built TC for. This is the risk you assume when playing here, and everyone that logs in to TC should know it.
All that being said, please know that we hold a special place in our hearts for the TC players. The Roughnecks are invaluable to us, and help us shake out innumerable issues before they hit Live. Your help is invaluable, and much appreciated.
Now buckle up and get ready to Jump to Lightspeed!!
Did this have the desired effect? Like an hot water bottle in hell, it did. One player, with testing bugs and patches obviously the foremost in his mind, went on to babble;
Actually your wrong my friend. Test Center for myself and many others is a "play" server. It's the only server we care to play on as the community is very close. You "may" not "play" here but we do...and it means the world to us just as a live server would mean to a live player. We understand the risks that must be taken but we had no prior warning that this might happen.
No prior warning? How about the fact the damn server you play on is called the Test Center? How about the fact that the Test Center official page states gems such as;
We may wipe characters or objects at any time, if we need to for testing. Character wipes are extremely rare (in fact, they have not happened to date, nor do we foresee the need to do one in the future).
Unless you're unable to draw a straight line between two points with even a frick'n ruler to help you, it's obvious that procedures such as rollbacks also fit in this category. So, in closing, a memo to those SWG players that got their Mandalorian knickers in a twist -
You play on the Test Center. You will be asked to help test things. Things will change. You may not like things changing. Deal.
In other news, beta tests are no longer used to fully beta test, and products will instead be tested at launch.
Oh, wait...
Comments