The plan for the next few days:

gregbert · **Posted:** Wed Feb 28, 2007 1:44 am

Hi folks,

As many of you are aware, we're getting ready to push Live 3 to the Live server - hopefully tomorrow if all goes well. First, please keep in mind that this is an extremely busy time for us in-house. Near the end of each rehearsal cycle when you may feel like there is nothing left for you to do, and entire threads appear saying exactly that and it seems like we've abandoned you, just remember what we said during the first town hall about the testing procedure: start with the new stuff. Test it extensively, find all of the bugs you can, in both singleplayer and multiplayer. When you feel you've exhausted all of the angles you can (like now), move to the older, existing material and test that as much as you can while you are awaiting fixes for the bugs you've reported. Here's a bit of guidance for times like these while you're just waiting for those fixes: think about what you know of the content that is coming in Live 3, the Ages where the content will appear, and anything it might affect. We have content rolling out in many of the existing Ages, so that means that those existing Ages have changed, and we need to test not just the new content itself in those Ages, but everything about the Age. Sometimes, adding new content to an existing Age goes nice and smoothly. Other times it's like placing that last card on your card house (you know, like when the whole thing comes a'tumbling down?). We need you to help us make sure the house doesn't come a'tumbling down everywhere the new content has been added. So to directly answer the question of 'what are we supposed to be doing' I will say "Test the older content while you wait for bug fixes". We test that stuff in-house a lot, along with the newer stuff, but as we've seen with things like the Library, Gallery and Museum doors, the markers that are only missing on the rehearsal server and never on our in-house servers, things don't always behave the same way under stress that they do while we are testing them in-house. So please feel free to test, retest and test again anything and everything that you find everywhere in game.

But I digress...

Live 3 will go out tomorrow morning. We will be leaving the Rehearsal server up for a time so that we can get to the bottom of the missing markers bug, and to add the latest Mac stuff so that the Mac Beta testers can get to it as well. Sometime after Live has been successfully pushed, there will be an update to the rehearsal server (probably Wednesday night or Thursday morning). That's just us adding some debug stuff for the marker missions, and the latest Mac files. The plan is to hopefully get a fix for the markers that we can hotfix out to Live, but it will need to be tested on the Rehearsal server extensively before we feel safe enough to do that - basically until you guys say it's fixed. At that point the Rehearsal server will come down again for a time while we prepare Live 4 for you. So basically:

- Live 3 goes out tomorrow
- The Rehearsal server stays up for now
- Latest Mac stuff with the next Rehearsal update, and some debug stuff.
- We're really going to need your help testing the missing marker bug fix when it comes, so keep an eye on the forums here for when that will be.
- In the mean time: test, test, retest, test again. Test the old and the new.

GB

gregbert · **Posted:** Wed Feb 28, 2007 10:28 pm

Hi Folks,

Ok, so logins are currently restricted, and we're pushing to the rehearsal server the stuff I talked about in the post above. When the build hits the server, we will be leaving the login restriction in place while we gather the information we need for the missing markers bug. We need to do this because the extra logging that is being added is quite verbose, so for now the fewer people we have in testing this the better. If this is a perfect world that we're living in, we'll find the problem right away, a fix will be added, and we'll lift the login restriction so that we can have your help testing the fixes. What this will look like from your end:

- You can't log in right now
- You'll soon see that there is another update available (which is us adding the mac files and the debug stuff), but you still won't be able to log in.
- Then you'll see another update as soon as we can get the fixes in for the items we're working on
- Then you will be able to log in again.

When we have something about to push to the rehearsal server for you to test I'll make another post in this thread. Until then...

GB

gregbert · **Posted:** Fri Mar 02, 2007 5:37 pm

Hi folks,

We should be lifting the login restriction sometime later today. Right now, we're testing the fixes that have been added, and as soon as we're done with our verification process there will be another update to rehearsal. Once that is complete, I'll post the all clear that it's ok to log in, along with a short list of fixes to verify.

GB

The plan for the next few days:

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