Kwoung

Anytime man, its not like its secret, you just needed to play on Test and open your eyes to see it. As for friends, naaa, I knew Moorguard, Blackguard and Scott from one Community Summit was all (maybe drinking beers with me is a curse?)... I play on live now with some long time guild friends(multiple games), much easy to play and way more fun than Test, although I still support/run the Everquest II Test Server Community for everyone that plays there.

And I still agree with all of SOE's actions on Test, anything to make that server viable and a decent platform for catching bugs pre-live is worth giving a shot.

Holymoly

I know that I'm a bit late on the scene so far as this thread is concerned but I thought I'd throw my tuppence in here as I have been active elsewhere on the topic and the official forums seem to be having problems today anyway so...meh!

My opinion is that there should be no reason why the Devs (or any SOE employee) should not be allowed to play EQ2 so long as they don't use their positions to give themselves or others an unfair advantage.

If it is found they break this rule then they should be subject to the same penalty as anyone else caught exploiting.

The issue this thread is alluding to, specifically Aeralik, however would seem to be slightly different. SOE have openly admitted that they can't adequately test high end raid content unless it happens on the live servers so it would appear that in these circumstances the Devs were officially sanctioned to do what was neccessary in order to conduct the testing.

SOE has been totally silent on this issue on the official forums and PMs I sent to Aeralik, Grimwell and Smedley have gone unacknowledged. What are we to surmise about this whole sorry episode? Well...I think that it goes to show that SOE rubber stamped Aeralik's actions (let's not also believe that this will have been the only time this will have occurred either, just the first time they were caught). SOE are now making a big push to get the Test server to be more active, they are obviously realising that this is a can of worms that is likely to explode if the continue operating they way they have up until now.

We won't EVER get an official response from SOE is my belief. They must think that their actions do not fall within the same moral parameters they expect the rest of us to operate within and so our disquiet over the matter does not deserve an explanation. While my original statement was that I thought SOE employees SHOULD be allowed to play EQ2 I ended up voting they shouldn't be allowed to play. Purely because I don't trust SOE to adequately police their employees to the same rigorous standards they apply to the rest of us. How sad is that?

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Misiri

If it's that vitally necessary for Devs and other SoE employees to test content on a live server rather than on Test, then SoE should have a special guild created just for their staff and conspiculously named to identify that this guild is the SoE staff guild. That guild should then be flagged as ineligible for any discoveries, server or WW 1sts. That way they get to test the content without providing any real game guild with an unfair advantage.

And Aeralik should still be fired for what he did.

Canul

I said yes, if they keep it secret.

I would place conditions on them playing on a live server, like they have to level a woodworker to 80.... twice!

They should only be allowed to join PU raids, and get crappy group setups.

my 2 cp

Angelys

It's not necessary to test content on a live server, most of the time the bugs can be seen/found on the first few pulls, and a lot of these bugs are just old bugs that somehow came back, no one can honestly say shit is being properly tested and thought out in EQ2 without looking like an idiot. Add to that the bugs that have been reported while on beta and still made it to the live servers, and you know why SOE are doing things in the wrong way and have no excuse for testing their game on a live server.

Also, what about the guilds on the same server as this dev guild? It would suck for them and be totally unfair, it's not just about the ww1st race.

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Angelys Moonlight
(retired) Illusionist 70 - Sage 70

silentnomore

[quoteuress;372864]Clearly, because I was about to ask if you really meant that?

Maybe I'm jaded from previous online games but the worst devs were the devs who look strictly at how shit looks on paper rather than seeing how shit works "in the wild." And while many people on this site provide excellent feedback, I honestly don't think devs would be able to parse all the data without any sort of experience or context in the live game because from what I understand, their internal test server doesn't properly mimic "real" behavior and Test server itself hasn't proven particularly effective for catching bugs and imbalances.

If devs can't make a test server work then they should quit. You can't justify giving others an unfair advantage because devs are either to lazy or inept to make a test server work. I would bet if u looked at the guilds in top of list you will find a dev. If a dev has to play let them play on blue server as to minimise their effect on others