First, we definitely share in everyone’s excitement. This is another step in preparing The Old Republic for launch and the team is just as eager for this as all of you!
Since there is a lot of questions and discussion about Game Testing, I thought it might be a good time to start a new thread. A few threads you may want to check out, though:I’ve been reading through a lot of the posts and there are some really good questions in there so I’ll do my best to answer them.
First thing, what we announced is “Game Testing". This is currently underway and will end near the release of the game and happen in a variety of stages. We will be inviting people to different stages and just because you get invited to one stage doesn’t mean you’ll be invited back to another one. Unlike testing that many of you may have participated in with other games, we aren’t looking for people to test “everything". Each of our tests are focused on a certain or a set of goals and areas. We want people to have clear direction on what we’d like help evaluating.
The Game Testing Program is all about us validating the features and design of the game. If we find an area that people just aren’t enjoying as much as we’d like, it shows us that we need to adjust that feature. That is much easier to do when you have clear goals and ideas as to what we are looking for instead of just “the game".
Another thing I see people inquiring about is what I mean when I keep calling things the “service". While the game is a big part of it, it isn’t everything. We look at the entire experience as the service; the website, the community, the game, etc. This holds as true now as it will once we're done with development and fully launched the entire service.
Yes, testing is only in North America now. Currently the service is all supported here but it won’t always be here. Our entire community is very important to us. As you’ll note, with few exceptions, our updates go out simultaneously in English, French, and German. This is because we treat the community as one as much as possible. But we have some time till Spring 2011 (although it is getting closer every day!) and right now, we’re doing what is best for the service in the long-run. We could of just not announced what locales we’re testing in now but we felt it better to be upfront with our community. We also could of held back on testing altogether and not start until we can in all of the areas we’ll be launching the service but I think most of you will agree that we would lose valuable time and feedback if we did that. We’re not announcing just when yet, but we definitely plan on opening up phases of Game Testing to other countries before we launch (and not as a last minute “Open" test).
A couple quick notes/answers:- We didn’t announce that Game Testing Began today, we announced that it is underway… subtle difference but there is one.
- Make sure your email address is up-to-date! This means that the account name that you use to log in to the website is the email address we will be sending an invitation to if you are selected.
- For those worried about missing any of our transactional emails, make sure you add no-reply@bioware.swtor.com to your address book!
- How often will we send out updates? As often as possible! It will be different time intervals for different tests.
- You do not need to sign-up again if you did previously but I would recommend making sure your Additional Details and System Scan are up to date (as well as your email address)! And you can do this any time under "My Account".
- What data do we track? A lot. If you read the Terms of Service and Game Testing Agreement, you will get a good idea of it all.
- Since this is all part of the service, any accounts that are in a suspended status when we are sending out invitations will not be invited. As I said, it’s a total service and your account is treated the same throughout the entire service. If you are temporarily suspended, once your suspension is up, you will be eligible again for testing.
- Speaking of Community – No, post count does not weigh any in the decision of who gets into testing. If community participation was a factor, it would be based on the behavior and quality of interactions with the rest of the community.
And last but not least, I’ll reiterate the point that being able to have the community help us test The Old Republic is very important and valuable to the development process. The Game Testing Program allows community members to give us quality feedback so we can make adjustments and have a highly effective service and entertaining experience when we do launch. Our expectation is that players of The Old Republic will follow the terms of the Game Testing Agreement and ensure that the confidential pre-release information we’re sharing with community members remains confidential.
This thread is now open for questions and discussion!
UPDATE:
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Originally Posted by Deewe
Sean,
What are the forum rules versus posting about bata leaked footage we saw?
I mean we are all human beings, you know kids will do anything they can to access the sweets locked in the cabinet
The answer might need to be officially stated somewhere, because... it has started!
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Being able to have the community help us test The Old Republic is very important and valuable to the development process. The Game Testing Program allows community members to give us quality feedback so we can make adjustments and have a highly effective service and entertaining experience when we do launch. Since we have some time until the game is complete, some of the information testers have access to has not been released and may actually drastically change based on tester feedback before we go public with it.
This is why we take violations of any of our user agreements very seriously. Our expectation is that players of The Old Republic will follow the terms of the Game Testing Agreement and ensure that the confidential pre-release information we’re sharing with community members remains confidential. We will take action if that is not the case.
Anyone caught promoting confidential information (such as linking to, reposting, quoting, etc) will be contacted and such information removed from our community. Actions that can occur due to this can be simply removing the post to being suspended to being completely and indefinitely suspended from the entire service (including after we launch).
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Originally Posted by Thrasymicus
Is there currently somewhere we can report leaks?
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If you find one on these forums, definitely Flag (report) the post so the Community Team can quickly react to it. If you find them off-site, you can always send them to bwacommunitysupport@bioware.com or to me directly at sdahlberg@bioware.com. |