Last week ArenaNet had a little stress test for Guild Wars 2, and boy was it stressful. Seriously, AHHHHH! Okay, so it wasn’t that stressful, unless you’re one of the devs or community team. It was a nice one day event that helped both ArenaNet and the players find more issues to patch things up a bit. It wasn’t a huge event. Just think of it as them trying to find every little load-bearing issue that hides in the game. They weren’t looking for our opinions on balancing the professions this time. There were a lot of things that did come up for players, so let’s take a look at what was found.
A one day beta event seems a bit odd, and on a Monday it is confusing because people have to work. ArenaNet just needed one day for a good number of players to try to log in and see what issues are still around. Were people still having login issues? How were players PCs performing? Did any new issues come up that were overlooked from the last event? These are the questions they were asking, and by having us play for just a day they can get the answers to make things run better for the next larger weekend event. ArenaNet did say that they had a schedule in mind, but would change it when needed.
Players did post on the forums and the official Facebook page for Guild Wars 2. I read through some of them to see how things were running for other players. It seems that the responses were really mixed for performance issues. Some players had some serious frame rate issues in the previous beta, and those issues were continuing for them. Strangely enough, other players were seeing an improvement. This is a bit weird since this stress test was also CPU locked, but it happens. So if you have an insane rig, don’t feel bad if you’re still running the game with a slower frame rate than what you were expecting. After all this testing, the end result will be everyone seeing a huge improvement in performance.
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I wonder if this is what players meant by distorted.
Yep, some bugs are still running around and thankfully players were reporting them. They ranged from certain maps and missions freezing up while loading. Some complaints involved the game crashing while players tried to create new characters. I read one player that had an issue where the game was running and it had good frame rate, but the graphics were distorted. I kind of wish I would have actually seen that! These were just to name a few. These types of bugs weren’t as common last time, or rather, we just didn’t see them for all the other issues overshadowing them.
The major difference I saw in this little stress test was that players were being a bit more helpful than just going on a rampage, bashing everything that crossed their paths. Despite all the issues, players were actually giving as many details as they could to help ArenaNet identify issues. All this team work, people helping each other out, I might just start crying.
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For me, it was just another day of playing the beta while eating some chips.
Overall this stress test didn’t have anything new. No new content, and bugs and errors still plagued players' monitors. If you missed out on this tiny event, don’t worry. It wasn’t like we got to give the Asura or the Sylvari a try. Now that I think about it, when will that happen? Anyway, the biggest thing you missed out on was helping ArenaNet find something to do, but it looks like they have a to-do list already. With the next beta event right around the corner, and the notion of release day drawing closer, I think the real stress test is just beginning for the ambitious ArenaNet development team.
