NS2 Playtesters Wanted
What a holiday. After spending some quality vacation time at the top of the Steam sales charts, NS2 ready for the new year. There are tens of thousands of new players fragging away amongst the battle-scarred veterans of old.
UWE is back in the office after a break. Our primary objective is to keep making the game better for all of you, whether you have just started playing NS2 or have been with us since the stormy days of the Alpha.
To do that, we need your help. Many developers have large, dedicated ‘quality assurance’ teams. These teams are paid to find out just how badly the programmers, artists, game designers, and micro-transaction lovers have buggered everything up.
At Unknown Worlds, there is no paid quality assurance (QA) team. We were going to hire one, but after paying for all the plants around the office we couldn’t afford it. Besides, there is a better alternative to paid QA. A passionate community. You.
The NS2 Playtest team is recruiting, and Flayra wants you on it. One of the most special parts of the NS2 development is the fact that all the entire QA program is community driven. Community members design it, organize it and run it.
Playtesting is tough work. It requires a time commitment of several hours per week. During these hours, there can be monotony. At any one time, there are hundreds of known bugs in NS2. Playtests often involve checking a large list of these against claims of ‘fixing’ by any number of people named Brian. (Love you Brian!). This can, for example, lead to situations in which five playtesters attempt to chase a Gorge through a Crag wall while singing ‘God Save the Queen’ over voice chat.
Because, somehow, that particular set of circumstances caused the server to crash.
Through all the bugs, the sweat, the tears, and outstanding playtest group has developed. People like WasabiOne, Ironhorse, Obraxis, Toothy and more make playtest time a hilarious and chummy experience. Cory has often said that if it wasn’t for Toothy chatting to him during playtests, he just would not be able to get through the day.
Of course, the company of Ironhorse and co is not the only thing you can look forward to (Not that you really need anything else!). Playtesters get to see new units, new maps, and new gameplay changes before anyone else. Dual-wielding ********* on Descent anyone? Finally, the best part of many a long playtest day is getting to kill Flayra over, and over, and over again.
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