Welcome to Testlive!

Hello and welcome to the Anarchy Online Test Server, commonly referred to as: Testlive

This post is an amalgam of a number of previous Testlive-related posts and guides. This topic now serves as an overall Testlive FAQ, Bugsy/Bug Reporting guide, and a quick reference for all things Testlive.

If you have any further questions, please contact an ARK Bug Hunter or Exploit Team member. Thank you.

ARK Bug Hunters

• Director Belaroth
• Asst. Director Pentaflake
• Advisor Ondelyne
• Advisor Militis
• Advisor Spacequest
• Advisor Aldewhin

ARK Exploit Team

• ARK ET Lead - Belaroth
• Pentaflake

Council of Testers

• Achilles
• Darkbane
• Johnycage
• Kapa
• Lucier
• Mala
• Mrgimpy
• Nefertiti
• Nolm
• Nubbs

___________________

Table of Contents

I. Testlive FAQ - Basics

- Guidelines
- What is the Test Server?
- Does Testlive have ______?
- How do I log onto Testlive?
- So I'm here...now what?
- Where is everyone?
- Chat channels
- The economy

II. Testlive FAQ - Bug Hunters & Exploit Team

- What is BH?
- What can a BH do?
- What is ET?
- What can a ET do?
- How do I report an Exploit?

III. Testlive FAQ - Council of Testers

- What is CoT?
- What can CoT do?
- How can I join CoT?

IV. Bug Reporting

- Character Name
- Type of Issue
- Reproducibility
- Patch Version
- Issue Summary
- Issue Description
- Steps to Reproduce
- Additional Information & Screenshots
- Exploits!

V. Troubleshooting

- Live to Testlive Crossover
- Copying over your 'Prefs' from the Live server

Appendix I

- Items Included with a Boost
- Level-Based Free Items

I. Testserver FAQ - Basics

A. Guidelines

The very same rules that exist on the Live servers also apply to Test live: The same Rules of Conduct exist here, as do the same regulations regarding exploits - Please read the Exploits/Exploitable Bugs FAQ if you have not already. Should you encounter an exploit while testing and playing, we urge you to report it to a member of the Exploit Team or e-mail exploits@anarchy-online.com.

B. What is the "Test Server"?

The Test Server (also known as Testlive) is used for testing upcoming patches and changes in the game before they are put on the Live Servers – Atlantean & Rimor.

Every member of the Testlive Community is encouraged to help out with testing new and existing content while providing bug reports and feedback, thus helping Funcom to make sure every update arrives as bug-free as possible.

Anyone with an Anarchy Online subscription (paid or free) can play on this test server. There are, however, some important things to be aware of when using it: There is no Support staff working on this server, and we cannot guarantee your characters' safety. We may from time to time have to do "player wipes" (i.e. erasing all player characters from the server), and we may do things that cause weird results on this server - so consider yourself warned. This is, after all, a permanent beta-test server.

C. Does the Testlive have ________?

Testlive is largely similar to the live dimensions, ignoring any large changes to the game world/game mechanics by the current patch.

Tower wars/PVP - The Land Control Areas on Testlive is functioning to providing personal tower benefits and organizational advantages to the Test Community to better facilitate testing. As such, attacking towers and engaging in PvP without there being a need to test tower battles, and receiving consensual agreement first, is highly frowned upon. Please be considerate and thoughtful of others in this regard, and do not attack towers without having a need to test something specific to towers, and receiving prior consent and arrangement with the organization to which those towers belong.

PvP on Testlive is by consent ONLY. That another player is flagged is not sufficient reason to attack them. The exception to this is outside the tunnel to ICC. This area is considered free for all. Travel there with a flag at your own risk. Further, PvP of any kind is NOT allowed in ICC.

D. How do I log onto Testlive?

In order to get on Testlive, you will need to download a duplicator (24kb). The downloaded file creates a copy of your existing Anarchy Online installation. Choose the path of your current install, and where you want to make a copy of it. The copy will allow you to connect to the Testlive server, by running the "anarchy.exe". More throughout instructions can be found here.

"Live's patch version is ahead of test, what do I do?"

-See Appendix A

E. So I'm here...now what?

It is recommended to register with Bugsy as soon as possible.

Testlive Tokens are the reward system for Testlive. These function similar to the BERIP rewards available for posting in the Report a Bug or Report an Exploit forums. Testlive tokens are handed out as MMOATP rewards and for generally helpful behavior.

F. Where is everyone?

The population of test is considerably smaller when compared to the live dimensions. The place where people are most likely to be is ICC in Andromeda.

Whenever you go to ICC, it may be worthwhile to check if your insurance is up to date...

G. Chat channels

• Global - The Global Channel is to be used by Funcom and Bug Hunters for official test related business. Please use the Social Channel for chat.
• Social - No swearing and no derogatory attacks. Testlive is a small community and the Social channel can be seen by all. Be courteous and considerate of others as what you say in the Social channel does affect others. When appropriate, please use vicinity, tells or team chat to communicate, to prevent the Social Channel from being spammed.
• Shopping - Test live does not have an economy, and as such, the Test Community often offers up items to give away. The Shopping Channel is the appropriate channel to post items which you are giving away.

H. The economy

Testlive is a small community and does not have an economy like the Live servers do. Members of the Testlive Community give away items to players who are in need. If one is in need of an item, ask in the Social Channel if anyone might be able to help. Please be patient and understanding that you might not get the item you need. Similarly, when you have items which you would like to give away, please feel free to post those items in the shopping Channel.

Members of the Testlive community do not sell items to each other - instead items are offered to those that need them. The only thing that is expected from you in return is that you offer up any items you do not need to others that might have some use for them. Please ask for things when you can use them or close to it, for instance at level 50 you do not need a Living Dragonflesh Body Armor but at level 128 you can use it soon (Lvl 130 requirements).

As with everything, be reasonable and use common sense.

II. Testlive FAQ - Bug Hunters & Exploit Team

A. What is BH?

BH (Bug Hunters) is a department of the Advisors of Rubi-Ka (ARK). The Bug Hunters spend a lot of time on the test server, helping the Development and QA teams check new patches and features for bugs, as well as helping to check balance issues.

B. What can BH do?

Members of BH are able to provide money, buffs, tradeskills, & IPR amongst other things. Some are also able to redeem Testlive Tokens. Note that provision of these is on their terms; do not directly contact a BH regarding these.

If there is a BH in ICC, feel free to ask your requests but if there are none, they are most likely doing something - do NOT send tells with requests.

C. What is ET?

ET (Exploit Team) is a sub-department of the ARK Bug Hunters. The Exploit Team is working on the test server, mainly to test players exploit reports, but also assisting the QA and Dev. team if necessary.

D. What can ET do?

The Exploit Team has nearly the same abilities as Bug Hunters do, with the exception of handing out Bugsy rewards. They can provide money, buffs and tradeskills as well as other things.

Do NOT contact an ET member if they are not in ICC. You can ask on social for help, but if none is available, they are probably busy with ET work.

E. How do I report an Exploit?

The best thing to do this is to visit http://help.funcom.com pick exploit in the text box and fill in the information about the exploit in the box. Via this webpage, you can also ask things like "Is this an exploit?" or ask other questions regarding exploits. GM Dengoro is responsible for this email and he will answer any question that will occur, also he is the only person in the team that is allowed to answer such questions, so please do not ask an ET member for information on a case, since they aren't allowed to answer.

If you are unable to send an email, however, you can see if an ET member is in ICC you can ask them nicely if you can tell this member about the exploit case.

Please follow the instructions given by the person and it will be all fine. Also, never ever share an Exploit with anyone! Not even with a Dev. Everything HAS to go through the website http://help.funcom.com, pick exploit in the dropdown box and fill in the information about the exploit in the box.

III. Testlive FAQ - Council of Testers (CoT)

A. What is CoT?

The Council of Testers representatives are active, dedicated and responsible members of the Testlive Community, responsive in the Test Community Forums as well as being active on the Testlive server—both in testing content and supporting the Testlive Community.

There may be times when Council of Testers is busy with other duties, on their play characters, or not available on Test live to help you out. Please be patient and respectful of others’ time, and someone will be able to help you out when they can.

The members of Council of Testers are players who volunteer their time, as are the Bug Hunters. They will do their best to help support the Testlive Community, but please keep in mind that receiving help and support from Council of Testers, Bug Hunters and other members of the Test live Community is a privilege, not a right.

B. What can CoT do?

Representatives of the Council of Testers are able to dispense credits, hand out Starter Packs and XP Nanos, assist with buffs and tradeskills.

The Council of Testers are volunteers. They are not employees of Funcom. They are not ARK/Bug Hunters. Council of Testers cannot spawn items for a player nor boost a player—only certain BH are capable of doing this (via the Testlive Tracking and Rewards/Boost System). The members of the Council of Testers do not have the capabilities which Bug Hunters do, such as teleporting, giving IP reset points, etc.

C. How can I join the CoT?

A very common question. There is only a limited amount of seats available, and to be selected, you must have shown a strong dedication to Testlive to both the Council of Testers and present ARK departments. Ambitious and helpful people are always welcome on Testlive, but few are allowed to wear the mantle of the CoT Agent.

If a seat opens up, an ancient ritual is performed to decide who will be the new member. I cannot say anything further, so do not ask. If interested, the best way is to be an active member of the Testlive community - Your efforts and good deeds will not go unnoticed.

IV. Bug Reporting

The Report a Bug forums have been created as a place for members of the Anarchy Online community to report bugs or oddities in the game. This is not a place to request assistance with a specific ingame problem; all requests for ingame assistance must be done through the ingame petition tool (/petition).

1) When starting a bug report, try to condense the issue into a single sentence, so at a glance, the handler will have an idea what the issue is. Make this the post name.

2) In the thread body, please explain in detail:

• What is the issue?
• How (and where) can the issue be reproduced?
  

3) With all bug reports, please include the full output from a [Shift]+[F9]:

Extended location information:
- 3263.8, 907.0, 3.0 (3263.8 907.0 y 3.0 655)
- Pf Proxy: Model=51100:655 GS=0 SG=0 R=655, resource: 655
- zone: 2941, area: "Nepal"
Server id: 3903, character id: 50000:123456789, time: 2011-02-07 12:25:12 (UTC)
Version: 18.4.3.0_EP1, map id: 18.4.3.0_10.01.2011_16.39.40, build: 49291.

4) Include any additional information that can help isolate and resolve the bug.

Posts made in this forum can only be seen by the reporter (aka you), the development team, the ARK Bug Hunters, and the Council of Testers. If you have any additional info to add to the report, please feel free to post a reply. While we don't have time to respond to all reports, we respond to as many as we can.

Rewards System

The Bug and Exploit Reporting Incentives Program is live! You can find further information on it here: BERIP.

As an added bonus, you will receive a Bug Finder Shirt for your very first report!

“Report a Bug” Administrative Staff:

• Anarchy Online Development team
• Funcom Quality Assurance
• ARK Bug Hunters

Rules & Disclaimer

Normal forum/conduct rules apply for this forum.

Please do not repost the same issue multiple times within the same patch cycle, as there will be no reward and it will not help expedite the resolution process.

Posting in this forum will not guarantee a fix to the specified issue in the immediate future. This forum does, however, present a new platform from which bugs can be reported.

____________________________________

Report Template

When reporting an issue, no single part of the report is more important than the others; all aspects require an equal amount of attention. Below is a basic Bug Report template involving: Title, Description, Steps to Reproduce, Version, Reproducibility, and Attachments/Additional Details.

Title (Thread Title):
This is the forum thread title. It should fully describe the problem in a succinct and concise manner.

Examples:

• Shop doors in Newland City do not open
• Ground Chief Aune sometimes gets 100% reflect at the end of the DB quest
• Redeemed mobs in the Adonis temple do not leave corpses

Description:
This is the bulk of the report. Please include ALL relevant information surrounding the reported issue: Who, what, where, when, why, how? The more information that is provided, the better. In addition to clearly describing the problem being reported, here are some examples of additional useful information.

Examples:
If reporting an issue with a Quest:

• Questline name
• Quest giver's name and/or location
• Current/Previous Quest completed

If reporting an issue with an Item:

• Item Name
• Item QL
• Item AOID (Or a link to it from a database site, e.g. auno.org or xyphos.com)

If reporting a defect in the world geometry:

• Full coordinates of the location (Shift-F9)

Steps to Reproduce:
A clear set of steps to reproduce the reported issue is vital, and is often what differentiates a strong report from a 'Could not Reproduce.'

If the issue is complex or not, attempt to break up these steps into as many simple components as possible.

Below are example steps from a fake bug report.

Example:
1) Log on with a Lv 220 Fixer
2) Zone into Andromeda (3302.0 890.0 y 0.0 655)
3) Equip an 'Envy of the Xan' (AOID: 280724). Note the listed weapon range - 25m.
4) Locate a Unicorn Guard (3439.9 1238.6 y 6.9 655)
5) Attempt to fire on the Unicorn Guard. Note that the weapon seems to only be effective from 10m away.

Version:
To provide information on the current Version, the easiest method is to Copy/Paste the full output from Shift+F9.

Example:
Extended location information:
- 3301.3, 889.1, 0.0 (3301.3 889.1 y 0.0 655)
- Pf Proxy: Model=51100:655 GS=0 SG=0 R=655, resource: 655
- zone: 2942, area: "Nepal"
Server id: 3903, character id: 50000:12345678910, time: 2011-04-24 16:58:32 (UTC)
Version: 18.4.5.0_EP1, map id: 18.4.5.0_07.04.2011_18.23.41, build: 49417.

Repeatability:
This could be touched on or included in the description, but it's good to always note how reliably this issue can be reproduced. Noting if the issue can 'Always' be reproduced or can only 'Sometimes' be reproduced will help during the testing phase.

Attachments/Additional Details:
Sometimes an attached image can be more beneficial to solving the issue than any set of steps or descriptive text. If there are any attachments that would help in reproducing the reported issue, please attach them and describe their relevance.

Similarly, if there is any additional information that may be related to the issue, but does not seem to belong anywhere else, place it here.

Do not be afraid of providing too much information! We would rather receive too much, than not enough.

If in doubt as to whether something is a bug or an exploit, treat it as an exploit, and go to http://help.funcom.com and select Exploit from the drop down and fill out the box below with the information..

I. For Exploits Only:

Send a report at http://help.funcom.com and select Exploit from the drop down and fill out the box below with the information.

Include your character name, and any information you can to help reproduce the exploit.

DO NOT speak about your discovery with anyone besides those from the ARK Exploit Team they are currently Director Thymbel, Coordinator Belaroth, and Guardian Fraoch.

Exploit reports are reported to http://help.funcom.com and select Exploit from the drop down and fill out the box below with the information.

Once you have reported an exploit, do not try to investigate it any further, nor use it to your advantage.

Continued emailing of exploit reports to the wrong address will result in verbal and written warnings, loss of points, and possibly exemption from the reward program in the future.

V. Troubleshooting

A. Live to Testlive crossover

There should always be a patch that should take you from last Live version to current Testlive version; however this patch does often not work properly for most people.

If this is the case for you, follow the steps exactly as lined out below to avoid any issues.

1. First to get the correct version number you want to patch from log on to Live and press Shift+F9.

2. You will then get something that look like this:

Extended location information:
- 204.0, 211.0, 17.7 (204.0 211.0 y 17.7 500)
- Pf Proxy: Model=51100:500 GS=0 SG=0 R=500, resource: 500
- zone: 80, area: "Parnassos"
Server id: 3136, character id: 50000:158027, time: 2010-02-23 19:03:50 (UTC)
Version: 18.3.1_EP1, map id: 18.3.1.4_10.12.2009_13.16.26, build: 48468.

3. We are interested in the line saying
Version: 18.3.1_EP1, map id: 18.3.1.4_10.12.2009_13.16.26, build: 48468.

4. From that line you can see that the Live version is 18.3.1 but you are interested in the part after map id: in this example it is 18.3.1.4

5. Now that you have the Testlive version number that is corresponding to the live version you have duplicated from previously it is time to locate your version.id file in your AO test directory.

6. Open the version.id file in notepad and replace the number there with the number you found in this example it would have been replacing 18.3.1_EP1 with 18.3.1.4_EP1

NOTICE: The "Cross over information" used here is just for example purpose and must be modified as described if the live patch version is older than 18.3.1

B. Copying over your 'Prefs' from the Live server

'Prefs' are the files that govern and maintain your hotbars, backpacks, nano listings, chat windows, etc.

While a transferred character may look the same, it is still an entirely new character on a new server. As such, it will spawn like any other new character, with default Prefs. Unfortunately, the process of migrating your settings is not as simple as copying your entire Prefs directory from your normal AO install into your Testlive. Here are the basic steps to move your Live server character Prefs to Testlive:

1. Log onto your character from the Live server where it exists and your Prefs are set.

2. Press Shift+F9 and locate your Character ID (CharID):
Extended location information:

- 204.0, 211.0, 17.7 (204.0 211.0 y 17.7 500)
- Pf Proxy: Model=51100:500 GS=0 SG=0 R=500, resource: 500
- zone: 80, area: "Parnassos"
Server id: 3136, character id: 50000:158027, time: 2010-02-23 19:03:50 (UTC)
Version: 18.3.1_EP1, map id: 18.3.1.4_10.12.2009_13.16.26, build: 48468.

Note: You can disregard the '50000:' that prefaces your actual CharID.

3. Locate the Prefs folder that corresponds with this CharID. Find your Live AO directory: \Funcom\Anarchy Online\Prefs\<Account Name>\Char<CharID>

4. Copy this file and paste it into your Testlive Prefs\<Account Name>\ folder.

5. Log onto Testlive with the copied character and press Shift+F9 again to get the CharID of this character. With the copied character's ID, log off of Testlive.

6. Locate current Prefs folder for your copied character and delete it. Then rename the Prefs folder from your Live character to reflect the CharID of the copied character.

7. Log back into Testlive to verify your Prefs were copied correctly.

Appendix

A. Level-Based Free Items

At certain levels you can get free items, all item excluding the XP-nano require a Bug Hunter Guardian or higher to be present.

The following items can be obtained:

• At level 10: XP-nano, contact your local Council of Testers person (CoT)
• At level 175: Sanguine ring and Lava Protection Boots and Skin Galvanizer
• At level 190: Pure Novictum Ring
• At level 200: Hold Hell at Bay and adjust faction for player to assist SK leveling
• At level 205: Inferno garden key.

NOTICE: ANY ABUSE OF THE SYSTEM, OR OF THOSE WORKING ON TEST (OTHER PLAYERS, BUGHUNTERS, GMS, DEVS, ANYONE), MAY EXEMPT YOU FROM ONE OR MORE OF THE SERVICES DESCRIBED IN THIS THREAD.