ArenaNet Confirms Next Guild Wars 2 Stress Test

Written by: Scott Hawkes (@jarimor) | June 21, 2012 10:16 am

ArenaNet Confirms Next Guild Wars 2 Stress Test

80 Comments

Here we go!

Those worried about having to wait an eon for a scrap of new Guild Wars 2 info can breathe easy: the next GW2 stress test is imminent.

Just a moment ago, ArenaNet announced that on Wednesday June 27, the servers will go up for four hours “to gather additional data” in advance of the next — currently unannounced — beta weekend event.

Looking at the pattern so far, does this mean that the next BWE is imminent?

If so, that’s certainly a quicker turnaround than previously, which is very encouraging for when we might go running around in Tyria for a few days rather than a few hours.

The test will be between 10am and 2pm on the 27th and your characters will be preserved from the last BWE.

What do you think this means for the BWE timetable? Leave your comments below.

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http://www.facebook.com/JoeKey Joe Key

Can I download this game client ahead of time to participate in this test? If so, where? TY.
- http://twitter.com/cyanpill cyanpill
  
  Yes, if you pre-purchased then you were emailed a link to the forums, where there’s a download link. If you didn’t, there are some links around the web for the downloader, or you can look at torrents I was able to download a 13gb version a few weeks ago.
- http://www.facebook.com/BrianOrr.Author Brian Orr
  
  You can only participate if you have pre-purchased the game. Do that, get your cd key code in an email message with the info on downloading and you are all set.
- Roly Vento
  
  yes you can as long as you Pre-Purchase it.
http://www.facebook.com/forgottenheathen Travis J Abraham

10am-2pm? Who will be stress testing exactly during those times other than those of us who don’t have jobs???
- http://twitter.com/nemui_89 Nemui
  
  everyone in europe.
- Brosaxon
  
  I was gonna say the exact same thing.
  
  The only way I could possibly participate on this stress test is by taking the day off, sadly I think I’ll have to wait to the next BWE :/
- http://www.facebook.com/people/Evan-Iwerks/712235 Evan Iwerks
  
  The test is to see how stressed jobs become when they cause people to not be able to play GW2. I am reading this correctly, right? It’s all about stressing the people – they’ve already stressed the servers!
- http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1103680651 Dave Jeannotte
  
  Most likely those of us that have to work crappy GY shifts?
http://twitter.com/DontCallMeDaz Not Daz

What it means is on the 28th June 2012 at 14:30 there will be a further announcement

Looking forward to some live streams from during the stress test. Perfect time for us UK residents o/
Mabasploom

Always while I am working!
- http://www.facebook.com/people/James-Carter/100001522401213 James Carter
  
  Yup same exact thing for me too man. I swear they’re calling my job up to find out when I work….and then schedule the events on that day lol.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1488248928 Laurence George

you say its going to be 10am to 2pm. Is this American Pacific Time? UK Greenwich Mean Time?
- http://twitter.com/cyanpill cyanpill
  
  It would be PST, since that would be office hours for arenanet so they can monitor the stress testing.
  - Kemwer
    
    GMT-7 is Mountain Zone; Pacific is GMT-8, meaning this test will happen on 9AM to 1PM PST according to the post.
    No idea if they mistyped the timezone, or if they used a different timezone for some unknown reason.
    - MysticLlamaMan
      
      I’d just like to point out that PST is GMT/UTC-8 and PDT is GMT/UTC-7. During the summer months until Nov we observe PDT. So them saying 10am – 2pm PDT (GMT-7) is correct.
http://twitter.com/dularr Dularr

woot, get to work on my scepter dagger for my Charr Elementalist.
- ThnagglePuth
  
  Yeah, I gotta do that too … not to mention getting screenies of all the characters I want to rebuild at release (how did that nose look again???).
http://www.facebook.com/people/Evan-Iwerks/712235 Evan Iwerks

From GW2 site:

“Guild Wars 2 are invited to participate in our upcoming stress test. This four-hour test event will run on Wednesday, June 27th, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. PDT (GMT-7).”

So, 10-2 Pacific. Grats to the EU folks who get to play!
- Kemwer
  
  As I mentioned to someone else, GMT-7 is Mountain Zone; Pacific is GMT-8.
  - ThnagglePuth
    
    The US is currently on ‘Daylight Savings’ time, in which all time zones are effectively shifted 1 hour east, so it’s correct to say 10am PDT (UTC -7).
    - Kemwer
      
      So that’s what the D means. I’m not american, so I wasn’t familiar with that and always wondered why saying PDT instead of PST. Thanks for the correction, I like learning.
      - ThnagglePuth
        
        Keeping up with all these time changes for the summer months will get you talking to yourself for sure. My personal theory is that the only reason we go through these is to insure that people are forced to drive into the bright sunlight at the start/end of the work day and have more accidents, thus keeping the insurance companies busy settling claims.
      - Kemwer
        
        I know how it feels, I live in Brazil, we do the same, but in opposite times of the year. Sadly, it’s not also the opposite of annoying.
samhainous

What an odd time for a “stress test”. Middle of the week, in the morning….4 hours?
I know it’s summer but seems like a waste of time. I guess it’s just to test the infrastructure and all that.
- Randall_Wolfcry
  
  Well it’s a stress test so they’ve just got something specific to figure out and then they’re done. They probably don’t even need the whole four hours. Imagine if they said they were having a one hour stress test! Can’t tease players THAT much so they’ve given people some time to mess around.
  - Wilco Duijnhouwer
    
    In the morning, where the op lives… and four hours is plenty of time to collect data on login bugs. And specific stuff like, Upping the graphics settings to stress some vid cards and see if it causes problems.
Nicolás Zuasti

BWE3 will be the last one, they will launch at the end of July. Only a feeling but, they are really active.
- http://twitter.com/QuietNine Quiet
  
  they would probably want more than 4 weeks to market the release date.
Avan Gore

It’s funny how you see the same timezone ignorant comments as last time. Our planet, flat is it not! /facepalm
- Jay
  
  ArenaNet is also based in the U.S., so having a stress test at night would mean people working late as well. ANet always plays with the community during testing, so I think the hours make sense.
  
  Get some testing done, and have time left to read over the forum and start setting up potential bug fixes.
Randall_Wolfcry

Nuuu! I work then
Darketower

My guess is that the next BWE will be July 13-15, since they probably don’t want it the week before because of the July 4th holiday in the US.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1553926379 Phillip Park

does that mean that we those who played in the last bwe can just log into our client on wed?
- http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000267765226 Vegas Steve
  
  Everyone who prepurchased can. And you should fire up your client several times between now and then as there will probably be a patch or two.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000267765226 Vegas Steve

4 hours seems cruel…

How addicted are we all already if we jump at a 4 hour window?
- ZekePrince
  
  It’s not really a matter of being “addicted” as it is the scarcity principle. When something seems scarce (like time in this case) it is perceived as more valuable. Look at how infommercials play on this principle with their “act now!” and “you only have x amount of time to call for this deal!” advertising. It’s great marketing on their part to control the amount of playtime, plus they can build hype around events like this. Once the game launches and people have more flexibility as far as playtime, you won’t be as eager to want to get in and play.
- Camzillasmom
  
  Lucky me it is the time when I usually play. Starts 7 p.m. CET. Putting the kids to bed a bit earlier in case Anet wakes their kids errrr servers earlier. But it is sick in a way. Arent we all more or less weird geeks? Some of us know how to handle showers and soap
Sklys

HMMMMMMM, BWE then stress, BWE2 then stress, one more BWE3 and stress,
then launch. Would be nice
http://www.facebook.com/people/Kevin-Nguyen/100001530374129 Kevin Nguyen

yeesss I can finally test out my new ranger build!!
Old Ben

Stress tests in the middle of the week are obviously not really “stress tests”. They’re probably just checking if a couple of specific bugs are fixed.

Also, if they’re doing this now, that means the next BWE probably won’t be for another 2 weeks, which means they don’t have any major new things ready (i.e., Asura and Sylvari starting areas aren’t finished yet).
- http://www.facebook.com/people/Ryan-Webster-Sawyer/1266527926 Ryan Webster-Sawyer
  
  How do you know that the Asura and Sylvari are not just being tested in house and and not going to be in any BWE?
  - Old Ben
    
    Because “in-house testing” is what Bethesda does, and Arena Net isn’t that suicidal.
    
    Look at the number of bugs found in the human, norn and charr starting areas just in the last BWE. Bugged event scaling, NPCs that don’t respawn, skill challenges that become stuck, etc. And that was with internal testing _and_ with two large-scale beta tests (a semi-closed one plus BWE1).
    
    Now imagine if the game launched with the Asura and Sylvari areas in the same state that the charr and norn areas were in BWE1. Multiply the impact of those bugs by all the people that would pick Asura and Sylvari (because they were more curious about those races that they hadn’t seen yet).
    
    That would be a PR (and user support) nightmare.
- SiderFace
  
  I’m willing to bet the areas are “done” and playable. They are probably just tweaking and refining the cohesiveness of the sections of the areas as a whole. Just a theory of course.
  
  Because of the density of activity over the span of a very large world, the development or this game will take a TON of very fine and tedious tweaking and refinement after its “alpha” stage. I’d imagine the fine tuning of an area, and racial animation in different scenarios is upwards of 30% of the time of actual hard-copy creation and development.
  - Old Ben
    
    Tweaking and refining (beyond a certain point, anyway) is something you do after gathering statistical data.
    
    Maybe the areas are ready but the personal stories aren’t, or vice-versa. If they had those races ready for large-scale beta testing, they wouldn’t be doing this “stress test” now, they’d just wait for the next weekend and test more stuff, so they could spend the next few weeks fixing those areas (and rebalancing based on player statistics, etc.).
    
    Animation and coding are done by different people, so it doesn’t make much sense to say that one of them takes up “X%” of development time. Both things are done at the same time. I’m sure that, at this point, all their teams (environmental artists, creature modelers and animators, engine coders, event scripters, systems designers, etc.) are quite busy.
    - SiderFace
      
      The races are being played at the Alpha level. They clearly stated this many times. In fact, I was playing along side an asura for over an hour in BWE1.
      
      They do a MASSIVE amount of in-house testing. Wether they will keep it strictly to in-house is another question.
      I think you’re right though. They will probably make them all playable in the final BWE.
      - Old Ben
        
        The “races” have been playable since 2011. They might be missing some animations but, TBH, I suspect some animations in the first three races are also not final. The issue is those races’ personal stories and starting zones (and respective events, scripts, etc.).
      - Zumime
        
        What do you mean by “races” in quotation marks…are they not races? What are they, robots with different rubber costumes?
      - Old Ben
        
        They are actually virtual 3D models being rendered as an array of pixels. And those models represent different _species_ (if they were merely different races they would be able to interbreed).
        
        But I used the quotation marks simply to emphasize the point that “the race being playable” simply means the game is able to render an asura (or sylvari) model in the middle of your screen. Which is the easy part.
        
        But they’re obviously not going to let people roll asura characters and then feed them the human story or tell them to level in the charr zone. That would be pointless. “Testing the other races” means testing their starting areas and personal stories. The fact that your character is (visually) an asura is the least important part (in terms of testing and debugging).
- Zumime
  
  Our early day is not early in the rest of the world. You have to look beyond your normal America-centric viewpoint. That is most likely a good time for a large portion of Europe. 10 am for the west coast of America is 7 pm for France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands (etc.), and 9 pm for Russia (don’t know if the game is being released in Russia, but it’s a huge population so I figured I would add them for good measure).
  - Old Ben
    
    Huh? Who said anything about early days or America…?
Cyclops07

obviously because I have a job I won’t be able to take part in this I still feel though that there’s gonna be at least 2 more beta weekend events. If they think it’s ready for release sooner that’s fine just don’t turn this release into another star wars
- Joseph Gabrielli
  
  In order for GW2 to have a TOR release it would have come out in January
- SiderFace
  
  SWTOR may have been rushed and released far too soon. However, time and patience on the release doesn’t convert bad gameplay mechanics and lazy, spammed out settings into something different. The “open world” had a way of narrowing down where you would want to go, and (in most cases) where you even CAN go. I hope I don’t need to further list the ovewhelming aspects of complete failure of that game…
  
  Look at it this way. Analogy: I can really take my time perfecting my asphalt sculpture; I can work tediously with no dead line and no hurry at all. Problem is… I’m still using asphalt (rather than granite or limestone) to try to make a beautiful sculpture. Its simply not going to look as god, has potential to fail completely, and will have no longevity of life. All characteristics of SWTOR.
Damir Miric

I miss Sharuko
- http://www.facebook.com/people/Phil-Thompson/1646123599 Phil Thompson
  
  Me too,I miss his troll comments on why Tera is better then GW2,
  
  I guess he has no room to talk,seeing how Tera is begging people to come play it now.
- RBHgamer
  
  What I don’t understand is why its so important for him to have GW2 fail rather than have Tera succeed. I know Tera will be a success, they have an avid fan base and the game is pretty good. But he wants GW2 to not succeed which i think everyone knows it will. Will it succeed for 3 years or even 5 years? I don’t know but my guess is it will. Sharuko insists GW2 will fail after 2 months. Go figure.
Elevens

Confirmed via Twitter that they will be running the BWE2 final event during the stress test.
- Old Ben
  
  I had a feeling after the borked finale in the last BWE that something like this was going to happen.
http://twitter.com/Jacobite51 David Jacobs

Going pass on this one 4hrs hardly worth it specially as nothing new.I`ll wait till next BWE.
- http://twitter.com/bluechicken7 Jesper Petersen
  
  “hardly worth it specially as nothing new” am i really the only one that is a little sad that people have this kind of attitude towards a “beta” game ? i am by no means a tech nerd but im pretty sure that those 4 hours ARE worth it in the eyes of ArenaNet.
  
  its the same with all beta games i have been in people whine and cry out that the game is laggy/has some issue.
  i just die a little inside whenever i see comments that forgets what Beta testing is.
  - http://profile.yahoo.com/R5LCXTKOQ23X3N3PT2APUFUS3I dave
    
    totally agree with ya
http://www.facebook.com/people/John-T-Mullins/580205422 John T Mullins

It has to be the day of my dentist appointment. ArenaNet you are my enemy!
SiderFace

My prediction is that the BWE that has all races and classes playable at the same time will be the final one before release. And I also predict that they will give the release date DIRECTLY to the players in the BWE end celebration.It really seems like something they would do as a way of making the dev teams and player base feel connected. I don’t think they like the idea of being viewed as some sort of superstars that are from distant colony where they breed developers.
http://twitter.com/B_Amaysin Brian Mays

Why would they run a stress test at such an odd time? People do have jobs.
- http://www.facebook.com/iordache.stefan.7 Iordache Stefan
  
  cause oh dear… everyone in the world is working in the usa
  - http://twitter.com/B_Amaysin Brian Mays
    
    I’m sorry was this game made in Europe?
    - Old Ben
      
      Well, it was paid for and is published by a korean company, so maybe they should base their schedules around that…?
      
      From what I’ve heard, they have more pre-purchasers in Europe than in the US, so I guess it makes sense to pick a time when people in Europe are still awake, if they want as much statistical data as possible.
- http://www.facebook.com/people/Azimov-Valinor/100001723160042 Azimov Valinor
  
  6pm-10pm BST / 7pm-11pm CEST
  Seems spot on to me
  - http://www.facebook.com/christian.pittman.10 Christian Pittman
    
    I suspect because ArenaNet also have jobs, and this will be during their work schedule.
http://www.facebook.com/daniel.beverly Daniel Beverly

I’ll be most likely skipping this one. Four hours is not woth the time.
Unknownman14

Was hoping some BWE than a stress test, also its at a wednesday so I’ll be working most likely. Guess they are testing the non NA servers by the looks of it.

On the bright side some news about gw2 is better than no news. Hopefully the BWE will be announced right after the stress test.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000457397522 Joni Huumonen

nice news, but i would love if you guys would put up some more details on times. I doubt this is at WET? I expect it is PST, but you force me to check it out.

And I did put up that WET just cause it is so little used.
http://twitter.com/Zamite João Zamite

I think they are doing this to test some of the server glitches we saw in BWE2. Like some of the login servers issues we had on friday (which they stated on the forums they would be looking for a permanent solution) and the problems with the end event start (they are repeating BWE2 end event — see @GuildWars2 in twitter) to make sure they can simultaneously start events. Your thoughts?
- P V
  
  Well the troubling part is that they had to start another stress tests. Which could have been tested in BWE3 as well.
  They still have a problem maybe sharing data between data centers?
  - http://profile.yahoo.com/ITHF7XKYGVXFAPCDMDJTKHLBBU Lian Wan
    
    A BWE is really not the ideal time for a stress test. It’s better to fix things ahead of time if possible and it’s better for PR to do it this way. People aren’t likely to complain about problems during a stress test. Problems during a BWE will probably annoy or anger a lot of people. Besides, why wouldn’t you want to minimize the number of people affected by whatever problem that might crop up?
    You can also enable things like logging and tracing of everything during a stress test. Enabling those during a BWE would just generate too much data to deal with.
    
    It is also possible that they’ve made some optimizations to their server software and while those optimizations should theoretically help you can’t be sure without testing.
- http://profile.yahoo.com/ITHF7XKYGVXFAPCDMDJTKHLBBU Lian Wan
  
  The description of how BWE2 finale started sounds exactly like how all the holiday events start in GW1. I didn’t find it unusual because of that. As for no content change, that is expected too but I am pretty sure there was also a ~500MB update after BWE2.
  - http://twitter.com/Zamite João Zamite
    
    they did say no changes in content (to me this means their comits were not related to the actual content front end stuff but more backend changes).
http://twitter.com/Zamite João Zamite

— sorry double post—
http://profile.yahoo.com/2SZI7MOKR6OET3R6YXZJQC5WGQ John Athon

I watched Portugal vs Spain instead.

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