[quote user="writejustify"]
Are you an employee of the EQ group?
[/quote]
no, friends with one, acquaintances with several
[quote user="writejustify"]
First off, what does the QA team actually test? Just that the cds install? Do they run the CD installs and then test play on it?
[/quote]
the last.... it wouldn't be QA is they didn't test... why do you think patches take so long - they're testing all the things they intentionally changed
[quote user="writejustify"]
When I talked to them previously, they stated explicitly to me that no one actually installs from the cds there.
[/quote]
nobody in Content Design... that doesn't neccessarily apply to Code (which we don't know) or QA (which we know it doesn't)
[quote user="writejustify"]
This was when I was bringing to their attention that deleting everything but the patcher and running the patcher to install everything fresh would fix the problems I was seeing.
[/quote]
then obviously that wasn't the solution, it just seemed to be since the West bug is not a consistently triggering bug
[quote user="writejustify"]
Second, do the DEVS install from cds?
[/quote]
depends on which - content devs: no, code devs: don't know
[quote user="writejustify"]
The QA team doesn't do coding. The devs do. How can a dev test for reported bugs if they never actually manage to duplicate the bug?
[/quote]
QAs JOB is replicating bugs. That's what professional testers do, it's their job. When QA replicates a bug they give the exact replication conditions to Code. That's how testing works in big organizations. Even in my small organization I barely test my own code (other's test for me)- as i don't understand how it's being used, i jsut code to specs. Welcome to the real world.
[quote user="writejustify"]
When attempting to duplicate bugs, the first rule is to duplicate the environment.
[/quote]
thank you captain obvious for telling me something I've known since I was 12 years old
[quote user="writejustify"]
Third, I've talked to the gms before, and one specifically told me she and other gms do testing when expansions come out.
[/quote]
1st) GMs are CS, they are not QA, they are not Code, they are not Dev. Never trust what a GM says - they are talking out of their ass 99% of the time.
2nd) That's called Beta. Ever participated in Beta? Problem with beta is a lot of players don't report bugs they find because they want to exploit them.. asshats they are
3rd) Most of the problems are at non-expansion patches
[quote user="writejustify"]
In other words, everyone pitches in for QA on expansions, every 6 months. Do they even *have* a dedicated QA team?
[/quote]
Yes, what an assinine jump of logic "since everyone pitches in once every six months, then they must not have dedicated QA"........
[quote user="writejustify"]
Fourth, the whole game is rife with wtfs.
[/quote]
any 8 year old codebase that has been maintained by atleast three different teams with probably 100% rollover since creation is going to. The FreeSpace 2 codebase is a steaming pile of WTFs and it was Sim of the Year 1999
[quote user="writejustify"]
If you have an in with anyone there, get them to fix the bloody game.
[/quote]
in the real world fixing things isn't as easy as saying "fix the bloody game". You fix an 8 year old codebase of every bug, on a budget.
[quote user="writejustify"]
It's leaking customers like crazy because management insists on releasing expansions on top of a house of cards.
[/quote]
[quote user="writejustify"]
The latest wtf with the game is how they "fixed" the experience reward system for the new expansion with the result that old newbie quests rewarded high level people with AA points.
[/quote]
*twirls finger and makes a note to go get the AAs*
[quote user="writejustify"]
Early this year they released unintentional beta npcs on live that sold rare items cheaply, and then ran a rolling restore that caused far more damage than it fixed, without actually removing all the purchased items. Major wtf right there.[/quote]
That was due to a corrupt file on the server, which everyone who doesn't have their head up their ass knows. The Plane of Knowledge Zone NPC file was busted when it rolled to the production servers - but it was fine on the QA server. The Corrupt Zone NPC file has leftshifted columns that caused the unbinding of the script that forces those NPCs to insta despawn on production.
Anyone with two sense knows they should have STAYED THE FUCK AWAY from those vendors. NONE of my characters got rolled back. Only morons got rolled back.
(They maintain all the production servers, plus QA, Test, Beta/Dev)