I have an idea - I'd like to bounce off of you people - so we can improve the plan - and then spread it's popularity and then maybe get Verant to listen. Basically it's so obvious I don't understand why MPOG's aren't doing this routinely.

When games are beta; people like to play so much - they can get hundreds or thousands of testers for free simply by letting them play for free. In the business world - we have to pay serious money to hire people to do our testing for us. Many software companies do this - we are lamenting the fact that Verant doesn't.

They are basically betting on the fact that we will do their QA for them on the test server while we pay $10/month. It's clear we aren't. Some people have suggested letting them transfer their characters and then they WILL - but I don't think that will be a successful long-term solution. I think they rightfully expect the same results as when they put the Race War servers up. They will have to deal with an overwhelming number of users who do it while it's a novelty - get bored and go back to their regular server. Even if it's a one-way move - (delete from non-test server) I suspect that the result would be the same. Move a character you don't play any more - try it for a while and then quit...

My suggestion is: Create a program like Guides where players are selected specifically to do testing on the test server. Here's the catch. Monitor their /played time. If they exceed a certain amount of playing on the test server per month - they play for free. If they go below - charge them - and eventually replace them with someone from the mailing list. Let them play for free on other servers for the amount of time over that limit. To make it better - find someway to reward the players who find the most bugs (GM quest items for their characters on other servers perhaps?)

I would guess a LOT of people would sign up for this. I would guess that as little as 100 players (assuming you make sure they are balanced class wise) would find a huge number of bugs that are now being missed. This would reduce Verant's revenue stream by a measly $1000/month. They wouldn't even NOTICE that. Shoot - they could even limit the application to people who have at least seven months of playing - so they already got $100 off the player ($40 for game + 6 months @ $10/month).

The only thing I would be concerned about - is finding a way to make sure there is a balance level-wise as well. You don't want all high-level chars - because they may screw up low level spells that wouldn't be tested. The other thing they may miss are things related to heavy server load. I doubt they will allow 1000+ to play for free.

I'm curious what everyone thinks about this idea..

Slyde