Random Stress Tests?

[Purple]

Being a private person I remember back when I made my facebook page I used the name of one of my old DAoC characters. The entertaining thing is I've gotten about a dozen messages over the years from people with the surname from, apparently, South America looking for relatives with the same surname. Funny stuff. I think I preferred the old screen name internet days to the days where so many people seem to use their real names, especially when it comes to some of the kids you see that have all their information public. There are just so many ways for that to go wrong.

My worries about information privacy aside, there's no discounting the speed facebook can provide information at. Still, out of the two of them.. I think I prefer twitter. It cuts out a lot of the fluff I never use anyways, and gets to the core of what I do use.

[Osprey39]

Osprey when you like a page yes you get crap on your page, however if you hover your mouse next to the title u'll see a drop down menu, and then you can choose hide this post then it will give u an option to hide all posts from that page ... seems to me that perhaps you need to look at stuff in depth instead of just fobbing it off as crap.

I know how that works bud. The problem is there is no way for me to separate the wheat from the chaff so to speak. I get all of the crap or I get nothing.

As I said earlier, I'm in sales. One of my mantas that I live by is 'never make it hard for your customers to do business with you.' I have customers that insist on us mailing them a hard copy of their invoices and not emailing them. Guess how we send their invoices? I also have some that insist on getting their invoices emailed. Guess how we send theirs?

Like it or not, there are a good deal of people that don't use social media and have no desire to do so. A-net can choose to ignore that or they can cast their net wider and send out updates and what not via email in addition to social media. In the last two days I have gotten emails from Eve Online and Rift (neither of which do I actively subscribe to anymore.) Pretty sure they both have twitter feeds but they still sent me email. That's all I'm asking for.

Enjoyed the largely circular argument but I have a guild I have to get ready for launch (most of which don't tweet or facebook :P)

[DrakeWurrum]

I know how that works bud. The problem is there is no way for me to separate the wheat from the chaff so to speak.

That's what your brain is for. Welcome to life.

[Fencers]

Osprey when you like a page yes you get crap on your page, however if you hover your mouse next to the title u'll see a drop down menu, and then you can choose hide this post then it will give u an option to hide all posts from that page ... seems to me that perhaps you need to look at stuff in depth instead of just fobbing it off as crap.

Feeling this post right here like the white hot light of a thousand suns.

[Kelesti]

Looking at me following them on Twitter, I see... Interview on MSNBC (48 minutes ago), site log-in issues with a headsup about maintenance (53 min and 1h ago), Client issues that may be affecting people 3 hours ago (grey spinning circle, anyone? 3h ago). Notice of a Stress Test itself 4h ago, promo with Alienware 11h ago, clarification of another wipe prior to headstart 20 hours ago. Stress Test info 20 hours ago.

8 tweets in the last 24 hours. Yup, totally blowing up my feed with nonstop spam that has zero relevance to me. Or not.

[Stellan]

So recently ive found this site.

http://gw2status.com/

It shows all the stres tests and how many servers are live as well as countdown timers for how long they last and when the game goes live.

notice anything odd?

After each beta weekend event prior to 3 there was only 1 stress test

And now there have been 10 the 10th only comming about 6 hours ago from time of this post.
And another that i was able to get into a day ago.

So what is with these random stress events, there are no emails and nothing on the official site about them yet they do happen.

It seems rather obvious that they are using the stress tests to promote the game.

[Kelesti]

It seems rather obvious that they are using the stress tests to promote the game.

Clearly obvious that they're using relatively unadvertised, buggy as heck, lag-and-disconnect-fests to promote a product that doesn't in any way shape or form represent the finished product. Clearly.

[DrakeWurrum]

It seems rather obvious that they are using the stress tests to promote the game.

Uh... no. They're using the stress tests to test the game.

[Deleted]

I think you can argument for both, however promoting the game via stress tests isn't what Anet solely is doing.
Update servers, optimizing the game which they couldn't with internal tests, so they need more numbers and that is why we get to stress test.

[DrakeWurrum]

The thing is, the people participating in these stress tests already paid for the game. There's really no point in promoting the game to people who already bought it.

[Stellan]

The thing is, the people participating in these stress tests already paid for the game. There's really no point in promoting the game to people who already bought it.

That doesn't make the announcement of the stress tests any less promotional.

BTW, has anyone ever mentioned to you that your tags get really repetitive and annoying?

[Kelesti]

In what way doesn't the Beta represent the final game? You think they have another game in the wings that they haven't shown you?

The state of the game in which it is in during a stress test is purposely overtaxing, often near unplayable levels for some games, simply for the sake of pushing the system until it breaks, finding weak points in the infrastructure to improve.

People look at a stress test and see a laggy piece of garbage, consistent connection issues, random bugs popping up all over the place, and think that's how the game's going to play at launch.

Again, not representative of the finished product. That's why it's called a "Stress Test".

[rhandric]

That doesn't make the announcement of the stress tests any less promotional.

BTW, has anyone ever mentioned to you that your tags get really repetitive and annoying?

How? People are either interested or they're not. If they're interested, there's little need to be promotional. If they're not, they won't see the announcements of the stress tests. The stress tests are purely for ANet's testing.

[Deleted]

Word of mouth, the fact you can get a refound and streamers, the daily vids of BWE vids / stress test vids, the WvW/sPvP vids, etc... it's a good way for Anet to get their game out there before launch and that they surely got.

With that said they also get to optimize their servers, and also let the people know what to expect from the game in it's current testing state... So yea it really depends how you look at it.

They get to optimize and update servers and also promote their product in the currrent state it's in.

[Shlamorel]

I don't have a FB account. I haven't had a Twitter account either until now. I made one just to follow @GW2 so I could get stress test opportunities texted to my phone.

Do I want to use FB/Twitter? No. But I also don't want to be like our grandparents when we hear them moan "back in my day..." when talking about how things were done in their time. For example, I don't want to become like them when I talk about how MMO's used to use email and communicate more directly to their costumers.

Sure, I'd prefer an email, but I'm going to adapt to the new age so I don't get left behind.

[DrakeWurrum]

But I also don't want to be like our grandparents when we hear them moan "back in my day..." when talking about how things were done in their time.

That's kinda why I push myself to get involved in things. When I catch myself being stubborn about something new, I try to find some way to get around it, somehow.

Have no interest in Twitter, but I still take the time to pay attention to it. And when I feel like posting something on somebody's Twitter is necessary, well, I've got the account for it. I just don't bother to get into it like some people do.

To be fair, I do tend to post random thoughts/events/actions to my Facebook much as somebody might do with Twitter. But why have two services for that?

[Volaric]

they do it randomly to test. Still get impressive #'s to test their shit, but save themselves from a flood. I like the spur of the moment, ooh, Stress test in an hour personally. Hoping for a smooth launch with all that they've been doing

[Deleted]

How long does it take to send out an email that says "We are having a stress test at such and such a time"? Not very damn long. Is Twitter faster?

Let's assume the system can send out 1000 messages every second. Let's also assume the number of customers is exactly two millions. This is of course not factual numbers, but we're just using them for reference.

Using email to each of the 2000000 individual customers, at a rate of 1000 messages per second, we can determine that it takes 2000 seconds (2000000 / 1000) to send out all those emails, or ~33.3 minutes.

Using Twitter to send out one single message to one service that then allows each customer to see it, at a rate of 1000 messages per second, we can determine that it takes 0.001 seconds (1 / 1000) to send out all the messages, or ~1.6e-5 minutes.

Thus we are able to extract that using Twitter as a messaging system is n times faster than using emails, where n is an integer equaling the amount of people you want to reach.

This math class was brought to you by Toaster Inc. - For when an open fire just won't cut it.

[Deleted]

I had a great fps improvement in the last small stress test. I couldn't join my friend through the "join" option thought, (it would prompt a network error).

[Disruptive]

Thank you, my good friend. Not only is my monitor covered with tea, but some of the inside of my nose is now as well!

---------- Post added 2012-08-23 at 10:42 AM ----------

The average person checks their e-mail a lot less often than Facebook or Twitter. Stress tests are usually done on short notice with a small window to even be online, an e-mail isn't a way to grab someone's attention for it.

Hell, the last one only had 10 minutes of a headsup on Facebook (6 on Twitter) before servers went live. What would be the point of an e-mail?

Yea my wife is into fb and follows gw2 on it. She told me about the stress test today literally 10 minutes before it happened. (technically yesterday as it's passed midnight.)