What is Testbed and how do I play?

[Misha]

What is Testbed?
Before we push a new patch out to the live servers that many 1000's of people are playing on, we first like to let a smaller subset of people test it. Obviously, we test it internally, but players are a creative lot and sometimes find things we missed. Also, y'all have a wider variety of hardware than we do. So Testbed is the cluster we push a new build to first. We let whoever wants to put it through its paces for a week or two then, if nothing horrible is reported, we push it out to the live servers.

Note that I said nothing horrible. We will sometimes push it even with known issues if we believe the overall package is better than what's currently out there. Another end-result of Testbed testing is a more complete list of Known Issues in the Release Notes.

How do I participate?


Station Launcher - Use the "Switch Versions" button above the Pirates of the Burning sea logo to select Test Server. It will copy your live installation and then patch it to the latest Testbed build.

Launchpad - Ever notice that Test Server button at the bottom of LaunchPad? If you click that, it'll copy your Pirates folder to a subfolder underneath it called TestServer. Then it'll run TestServer's LaunchPad and look for patches. (This is MUCH faster than downloading the entire game all over again.)

Once it's done, you can drag TestPotBS.exe to your desktop to use as a shortcut for accessing Testbed directly. You can always just go through the normal launcher, though, and click that Test Server button.

Testbed will almost always be the only server to choose from because the only servers shown are the ones with the same version as you've got.

What do I get for participating?
- The chance to see new content or new features before the general populace.
- The chance to try out different nations and play-styles than your usual character(s).
- Our eternal gratitude for helping us ensure a solid patch release.

Will my character be moved to another cluster?
No. Your character on a live cluster won't be moved to Testbed. And your character on Testbed won't be moved to a live cluster. You can start a new character from scratch or you may be able to copy an existing character from a live server to Testbed. Instructions can be found here. Note that's a copy. Your character on the live cluster will remain there, unchanged. Progress made on that character on the live server or the Testbed server will not affect the copy on the other server.

We try not to wipe any of our game databases ever but technical issues may force us to wipe Testbed periodically. So you run the risk even of losing your character and all its progress when you play on Testbed. But it's a fun adventure recommended by many a Beta tester.

[Misha]

I recommend you subscribe to this thread if you're interested in participating in Testbed. If you do, you'll automatically receive email notification when we push a new patch.