Assuring Quality � QA at ArenaNet

Assuring Quality � QA at ArenaNet


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Hi, I�m Jerramen �Yamen� O�Donnell, a member of ArenaNet�s Quality Assurance (QA) department. As a longtime Guild Wars player, I was lucky enough to join the company just in time for the big unveiling of the Guild Wars 2 demo at gamescom last year. During my time here, I�ve been really impressed with how ArenaNet incorporates QA as an integrated part of the development process, and I�d like to share with you what we�re doing to make sure Guild Wars 2 is the best game it can possibly be.
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��There�s a lot going into Guild Wars 2, and we test all of it��|||I enjoyed reading this insightful article about one aspect of GW2 creation!
I wonder if/how (important) "blind" wiki feedback is to the game creation and whether there is a way to more specifically help out on that front.|||A lot of MMO devs could(should!) learn from ANet in this.|||Quote:




So, I took it with a grain of salt when my team lead explained that writing feedback was an important part of my job. I thought, �There�s no way these awesome people want to hear my opinion.�
I couldn�t have been more wrong. In order to maintain a firm understanding of how the game plays in its current state, ArenaNet frequently calls upon QA to play certain parts of the game and write up our thoughts and opinions, both as testers and as players.




I must say, I rather find this part very important. This will insure that every single employee will want to work on it. And I think that if you do a job you like and where you are respected, no matter your position in the hierarchy, you will do the job much better.|||Quote:








A lot of MMO devs could(should!) learn from ANet in this.




can't agree more, sadly that's not the case.
they are ether ignored or extremely underestimated, as a GW fan i know better but you can't explain a layman about something technical.|||I like how the developers continue to say that this game will be the best game ever made. I'm actually not skeptical about that assertion since what I've seen so far is truly a huge step forward. I'm extremely excited to see how they've improved upon things in their next demo. Very high hopes and wishes for this immensely anticipated game.|||Now that is the reason why I will be buying the game.
So much effort is put into it.|||Not only effort, but more important to me, innovation where it's needed.|||Yeah, that too.
You can see how many new ideas have they created and actually how it has influenced the whole game.
I just hope a lot of people end up buying it and that it stays that way :)|||So I sent a PM to the age of conan game director linking this, didn't think I would get a response 0_o not that I think people here will be very interested, but anyway.

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Hi there,
That's actually pretty much exactly the same approach we take with our testing here Quite a few of the MMO-centric studios test in that manner and with that kind of approach as it is how you get good results from your QA teams. To be honest, if I was writing a community piece about or approach to QA, it would probably be pretty close to that one...
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Craig 'Silirrion' Morrison
Game Director




So now I'm just wondering how Funcom arrives at AoC and ANet arrives at GW while both having good QA...
On the other hand GW is quite limited gameplay wise compared to AoC, so there is a lot more that could go wrong in AoC compared to GW. Though I guess that's a discussion for the OTF, or a completely different forum where people care about AoC (which I don't know exists, aside from the official one).