Recap R#179/R#180

Hello runners,

First of all, we apologize for the mess created by patch R#179. The purpose of this thread is to recapitulate what went wrong and why it went wrong.

We felt that we needed to publish R#179 sooner rather than later due to severe security issues which needed to be addressed. However, after internal testing, we were confident that including everything we had been working on in addition to the fixes for the security issues was working correctly. Therefore instead of excluding everything else which we had been working on lately, we left it inside the patch; a huge mistake.

By making Neocron less forgiving in terms of several errors, we opened Pandora's box. A number of issues which only surfaced rarely in the past nowadays happen far more frequently. The problem is, most of these problems only surface when the server load is high, therefore fixing those bugs on Vedeena first is not a realistic option. This is sadly the only way we can finally fix the bugs our predecessors left us with. We will do our best to fix them as soon as possible but their random nature makes it hard to trace them down. Every single, detailed, report on issues/rare bugs will help!

What will be done to prevent those issues in the future? We will build a new quality assurance team. This project is named: "QA lab". To work out the procedures, it will be on an invite only basis at first. Once everything has settled in and we are confident that the workflow we put in place works flawlessly, we will make an open call to give everyone in the community the opportunity to join the QA lab.

What do we expect from QA people?

• proper and detailed bug reports
• willingness and motivation to test things over and over again
• initiative of his/her own
• at least moderate English skills

Thank you all for your support, we highly appreciate it!

Sincerely
Your Neocron Support Team

Is this also something we have to apply about at applications@neocron-game.com?
Or are the QA people chosen from the community, by you?


EDIT:

Sadly I am no GFX artist (far from tbh :p ).
• However, I have done some pretty detailed bug reports in the past - not game related, but Windows Server related, but I doubt it is much different.
• I am obviously willing to test things over and over (although I am mainly a PVP'er, but I hope those are needed aswell).
• You dont get chosen as hosting partner of the year two years in a row (as the first hosting company in the world) without showing initiative (obviously not only because of me, but as a small hosting company I do think I can take some of the glory :p ).
• English is not my native language, but I think I do alright.

• I want the best for NC, and can (or do my best to) see the bigger picture.