Private World Test Server

Foxmonkey - Dreamweaver wrote: »

hmm this would be a good idea so you could have players test out stuff and see if they like it or not and maybe it could be a way you could test out the suggestions people put up and see how we the players actually like them and you don't like unless like a super bug that well ruin something till you have to fix it causing players to get angry and maybe quit making you probly lose money and it safes you money on paying testers to test stuff out for you

vagrant0 wrote: »

Disagree with the forced PvP option since one can easily justify sitting outside arch and nuking everyone that comes through as "testing the PvP system". There are certainly enough people around who would voluntarily turn on PvP just for the chance to play with a "high" level build to test things when there isn't any chance for significant loss. To put it another way, if you were testing something and someone came along and ganked you, or tried, you wouldn't be too happy about it since it would have likely ruined what it was you were testing for.

Dungeons would probably be either inaccessable unless that dungeon was being tested. There are certainly enough people "testing" the existing dungeons. And yeah, if some sort of collision bug was needing to be tested, these dungeons could likely be done without having any spawns in them.

But really, this whole idea sounds too much like the "players testing builds or themselves", rather than testing aspects of the game. While this might provide a legal alternative to using one of those illegal methods out there, it doesn't seem like it would really accomplish the task of making sure parts of the game are working any better than what is currently being done. If such a server were to be made available to players, it should be done either by GM invite, selecting people who have a good understanding of how things "should" be, or by being a player who has had an account longer than a year, is in good standing (hasn't been muted/banned/warned), has charged more than $500 of zhen in that time, and has been active during a 6 month period prior to opening the test server. Why? Because someone who meets that criteria has been around long enough to know the rules, follow the rules, know enough about the game, be active enough to do testing, and likely be one of those people who has bought many CS items before, and can give good feedback on pricing and usage. They would also likely be the sort of person who would end up buying any new CS items that make it to the main game for reasons other than "seeing what it looks like for a week".