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Posted on 12 December 2002 at 05:17:14 TSKEN FROM THE FORUMS ON E&B WEBSITE:-
Test center galaxy
Several people have asked if and when we would put up a test center galaxy to help improve patch balance and catch some of the bugs that might otherwise be missed. We’re working on it now and are very close to having it ready. The test center is currently scheduled to go live in January.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with what a test center galaxy is, I’ll take a few seconds to explain it. Basically a test center galaxy is similar to the regular galaxies you play on except we publish patches to it early, meaning you need to download an optional patch and switch to the test center client to play. You won’t need to use one of your 5 character slots to play on the test center.
A test center helps us make patches more stable and balanced in the following ways:
1. Player feedback on balance issues can be gathered from a test center so we can act upon your concerns before the patch goes live to the entire population. 2. Load related problems are extremely difficult and often impossible for us to find on our internal QA server. We don’t have hundreds or thousands of people to test a patch and a test center galaxy is the best way for us to find certain bugs. 3. Additional QA time from players on the test center. Players often do things that we never thought would happen and the test center allow us to find and fix bugs that we might not have normally encountered.
Now there are a couple of downsides to playing on a test center. First, the game on the test center will probably be less stable than on live. You may experience more crashes, lost items, broken missions, etc. Customer service will not assist you with these items; rather we’ll want to gather information from you so we can fix the bug that caused the problem. Second, there may be a need to delete or wipe your character’s progress and items.
Despite these downsides, playing on the test center is great if you want to see what’s coming in a patch before anyone else or if you want to help make the patches better.
Avatar and ship re-colorization
For the December patch players will be able to purchase different colors and styles for their avatars and ships. You’ll be able to change the following items:
Ship - Hull - Ship name - Paint colors - Decals
Avatar - Shirt style and color - Pant style and color - Hairstyle and color - Skin color. Those of you spending a lot of time in Valkyrie Twins can now show off your tan. - Eye color - Tattoos and scars - Accessories like glasses and ear pieces
If you’re in a guild and everyone wants to have the same decals on their ship, this would be a good time to start thinking about which one you want.
As always, this is not a 100% inclusive list of what we're currently working on or what will be in the next patch.