Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two Phase III testing has begun! During this phase, our realms will be open every day, and we'll only have downtime for updates and maintenance. We'll keep everyone up-to-date about downtimes in Discord.
If you have Alpha Two, you can download the game launcher here, and we encourage you to join us on our Official Discord Server for the most up to date testing news.
Alpha Two Phase III testing has begun! During this phase, our realms will be open every day, and we'll only have downtime for updates and maintenance. We'll keep everyone up-to-date about downtimes in Discord.
If you have Alpha Two, you can download the game launcher here, and we encourage you to join us on our Official Discord Server for the most up to date testing news.
The Importance of Internal QA
daveywavey
Member, Alpha Two
We seem to be stuck in a cycle of big releases, horrible glaring problems, rollbacks, and fixes (some of which start the cycle again).
And yeah, you can say: "That's what Alpha's for", and you'd be right, in a way.
But lots of these issues should have been weeded out in the Internal QA process. It's such an important part of the release cycle, and it can't be rushed or skipped.
There are so many biiig bugs that are making it through, and after working in software for as many years as I have, I find myself stopping and thinking: How the fuck did that get through QA?
Can I please suggest that you either increase the size of your QA Dept, or give them sufficient time and resources to do their job.
Ideally both.
Cos you're starting to make something of a name for yourselves, and it's not a name that you'll want to have associated with you.
We still believe in you and this project. But please, let the QA team have the resource and time to do what they need to do. Cos, some of these bugs could have been found with a few simple clicks on the screen.
Your Alpha Testers are not your QA Team.
#QALivesMatter
And yeah, you can say: "That's what Alpha's for", and you'd be right, in a way.
But lots of these issues should have been weeded out in the Internal QA process. It's such an important part of the release cycle, and it can't be rushed or skipped.
There are so many biiig bugs that are making it through, and after working in software for as many years as I have, I find myself stopping and thinking: How the fuck did that get through QA?
Can I please suggest that you either increase the size of your QA Dept, or give them sufficient time and resources to do their job.
Ideally both.
Cos you're starting to make something of a name for yourselves, and it's not a name that you'll want to have associated with you.
We still believe in you and this project. But please, let the QA team have the resource and time to do what they need to do. Cos, some of these bugs could have been found with a few simple clicks on the screen.
Your Alpha Testers are not your QA Team.
#QALivesMatter
2
Comments
QA should technically get your sympathy almost above all other technical staff because they are the ones who get dismissed the most in situations like this one.
"I don't think this is working, it doesn't feel good."
"Well the Designer likes it/thinks it's the best way to go so just make sure it's working mostly right and we'll push it to get confirmation from the players."
"What about the bug I reported that we haven't fixed yet."
"Eh, it's non-blocking, so we're gonna go forward."
For anyone who hasn't been 'back there', this is the life of Internal QA a meaningful amount of the time.
They absolutely do get my sympathy! I want them to have more staff and more opportunities to do what they need to do, cos I've seen them get sat on too many times over the years, and I know how important they are.
He has budget constraints.
He has the nda-a2-ptr servers, trying to offer a more polished a2 experience.
Truth it that mmo development speed is never fast enough from player perspective.
We can dig up some old prediction threads. Back then, a 2028 release date was probably very pessimistic.
Maybe Steven too would not believe back in 2016 that he will be still working on it 15 years later, and loosing money doing that. After full release, we will get expansions too, he said. Who will test them?
Internal QA needs to do some serious soul-searching and the team in general needs to find a direction and stick to it - the economy revamp has been a disaster for the game and its community and I know behind closed doors that they will all be questioning how much more the players can take.
It's the design team that's borked the economy, not the QA test team. They just need to be given the means to do their job.