[<a href='12654.html'>Next Message in Time</a>] | 
[<a href='12652.html'>Previous Message in Time</a>] | 
[<a href='12676.html'>Next Message in Topic</a>] | 
[<a href='12640.html'>Previous Message in Topic</a>] <br/><br/>
<b>Message ID:</b> 12653 <br/>
<b>Date:</b> Thu Jan  6 17:54:46 GMT 2000 <br/>
<b>Author:</b> Katy Westerman <br/>
<b>Subject:</b> Re: EQ Testing Procedure <br/>
<br/><br/>
<div id="ygrps-yiv-632972221">I think their procedure is similar to the one we use where I work.<br/>
Internal testing is done, but only in things we can think of that<br/>
would be affected by the change.  Then a beta is released to 2 or 3<br/>
customers who have agreed to use a beta in real situations to make<br/>
sure we haven&#39;t missed anything.  Then, finally a full release.  The<br/>
test server is liket hose beta testers.  We still sometimes get things<br/>
that slipped through in beta testing, we just don&#39;t have quite the<br/>
number of users that EQ has who will whine and/or argue about every<br/>
change made.<br/>
<br/>
This is the same method that most software places that I&#39;ve seen use.<br/>
They just use the test server as their beta testing ground and<br/>
apparently don&#39;t do quite as thorough internal testing in hopes that<br/>
test server people will get it.  It just kind of sucks that there<br/>
aren&#39;t really enough people on the test server to really effectively<br/>
test things.<br/>
<br/>
Some other issues 1) if they really did a kind of seat of their<br/>
pants bug fixing schedule, many bug fixes would never get made.<br/>
Companies that don&#39;t at least partially document their bug fixes and<br/>
their code don&#39;t get very far 2) Quite a few of the changes are<br/>
probably made to quests and things where they can&#39;t really tell us<br/>
what they changed.  These are the things that they should be fully<br/>
testing internally, or at least with a developer playing on the test<br/>
server.  And in a lot of places, it looks like they aren&#39;t.  I can<br/>
understand using the test server players to test spell changes or item<br/>
changes that they can tell us about, but if you can&#39;t tell us about it<br/>
test it yourselves.<br/>
<br/>
I dunno, I just get a little irked when people bash the programmers.<br/>
I mean, come on, they madet his awesome game that so many people play,<br/>
yet a large portion of them complain about it.  There&#39;s far more users<br/>
than there are programmers to handle some of these bug issues and a<br/>
lot are lower priority than others.  If you don&#39;t work there, you<br/>
don&#39;t really know what&#39;s going on.  Heh, for all we know they could<br/>
just be playing all day and not fixing bugs at all. =)<br/>
<br/>
Did I contradict myself enough in this message? =)<br/>
<br/>
Robynn<br/>
<br/>
<br/>
-- <br/>
Katy Westerman                           Don&#39;t lick something unless <br/>
<a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="mailto:katyw@...">katyw@...</a>                         you really mean it.           <br/>
<a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.cs.ucr.edu/~katyw">http://www.cs.ucr.edu/~katyw</a>             -Advice from the Naked<br/>
CS/Comp Math Major, UC Riverside         Dancing Llama</div>