Testing phases

[thomasden2]

So i talked to my friend at blizz yesterday and he explaind to me the way they do there testing.
First there is 3 stages of the Alpha:
1. For the world developers
2. For all the develepers
3. And the stage we are at now, FnF stage

Then there is 2 stages of Beta
1. Where a very small amount of invites go out over a period
2. Where they start inviting alot of players into the beta

And he also told me the are consedering adding a Charlie stage
He told me about it and that is stress testing of basicly and that means everyone can download and play it

[d3rrial]

I guess nobody is going to believe that. I dont doubt your statement, but I think most of the others will do.

[thomasden2]

Im just putting it out here what i've been told, then people can belive it or not (:

[XpLoDWilD]

I'm laughing out loud at your friend at Blizz. NO WAY World Developers and "other" developers are having different alpha phases ! Hahahahaha ! ALL the developers of the WoW Team HAVE to work all together. Programmers are doing engine updates, tools updates and so on for world developers, world developers make the world, sound desginer find and/or build sounds, music composers do music for the zones, then they test it out, developers fix bugs for world designers, etc...

It's a teamwork, NO WAY developers and world developers are working on different phases ! xD
(I know what I'm talking about, since I'm an indie MMO developer).

I think Beta stages will be most likely like WotLK's one. Closed beta when world changes are finished, with the opt-in and such things, and MAYBE an open beta, but I don't think so since it would sort of "leak" the stories or Worgens and/or goblins to players without actually having bought the expansion. There won't be a "Charlie" stage : Blizz will chose enough people during the closed beta to stresstest their PTR server

[Xel]

Sounds really weird to me :O

[Iruxos]

During the internal Alpha, their framework is tested by the developers and system designers before they move into the game mechanics, while the artists create the assets such as the world, models, and the textures that are part of them.

The second internal Alpha involves not only the people working on the game, but also the rest of the company's employees, and it's mostly testing of the game mechanics previously developed by the coders and system designers. Artists continue on their work but it's not widely tested until the F&F Alpha.

The third is the F&F Alpha we know, when the framework, systems, and art assets are put all togheter to make a working, yet unfinished game. It's main focus is to test game mechanics and some of the improved versions of existing features. New features follow later on the F&F, or early Closed Beta.