Testing guide for the new at heart

[Adam-Savage]

I have had the change to beta and test alot of other games in my lifetime and I would like to pass on the little bit of knowledge I have gained.

Please be mindful of these items:

Stuff will get taken out of the game because of a bug.
The game freezes up.
Background sounds might stall.
Certain places might not be textured or the textures won't load for them.
Certain ingame items won't work properly or at all.
NPC's won't react to your presence or will react while you are still far away.
NPC's who will kill you in one blow and vice versa.
Missions/Quests can't be completed.
Walking somewhere on the map and suddenly find yourself falling through the floor.
A gate being open, But you can't go through because it doesn't recognize the player.
Immediatly starting the game you die for no apparent reason whatsoever.
Expect login servers and game servers do be down, A LOT!
Your character will be lost more then just once due to server wipes
Don't cry and whine it only makes for a less pleasurable experience.
Be respectful of all other testers.

There are also several things to do and look out for
1. Finding ways to get to places you're not supposed to go.
2. Finding holes in the map through which players could fall.
3. Exploring the edges of the world maps for holes which could lead players off the map into unmapped space.
4. Try all different animations of your character in several different orders.
5. Explore the world listening for sound problems, and graphics related bugs.
6. Try out quests and report all bugs to the developers team.
7. Try your weapons to make sure none of them fail to work.
8. Kill mobs in correct order and see if they deduct points correct manner. (i.e health dropping, armor decreasing etc.)
9. Try different graphical settings from low quality to (if your PC can handle it) very high quality.
10. Try out parties/raids, Part of the game means you have to work together, So make sure there aren't any bugs in there.
11. Guild creation, Explore every aspect of it. Try different name combinations, Try promoting people in the guild and see if it all works according to plan.
12. Try out different items you can use for enhancing your character, Make sure they work properly.
13. Find all stargates and test them out, Do they work, Don't they work?
14. Approach locations from different directions. (I personally have found this too lead to server crashing on several occasions in WoW)
15. Gather as much people as you can together in one location and see if the server can handle all of them together.
16. With said people (#15) go find some instances and once again check to see if the server can handle all of them in action.
17. Explore every nook and cranny of the maps while trying to find any texture problems (i.e textures which won't load, or simply aren't there)

From: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/threa ... 1518&sid=1

[Saturo]

This is in my experience true. If you want to "test" a beta server, you can go try a private server. They will often bug in these ways.