Did they actually start this test without even announcing the dates beforehand or making a developer post? That really screams "minimal effort" to me...

I didn’t see any warning for it happening, but yeah, it’s not broken, this is on purpose.

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/674932/cyrodiil-champions-faq

The info

React wrote: »

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ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

React wrote: »

Did they actually start this test without even announcing the dates beforehand or making a developer post? That really screams "minimal effort" to me...

We have those coming out shortly. We need to make sure everything is running correctly before the post is up.

King_of_zor wrote: »

New campaign server (vengance) replaced the old campaign server (icereach) (and before the last one finished, so that's gone for now). Preset abilties, disabled all sets (crafted or otherwise).
Reset the beginning 'Welcome to Cyrodiil' quest which can't be done again (because you've already done it and they didn't reset that flag). This removes all of the missions.

going to check our the 'vet' campaigns now and se what kind of mess they're in, lol.

Thoughts? (he asks cautiously).

The test campaign is only going to be live for a week.

That's great, but really don't you think it would have been valuable to announce the dates of the test as well as any incentives people might earn for participating before the test goes live? To drum up interest and allow word to spread, perhaps increasing participation?

Maybe I'm just jaded. But that seems like the bare minimum that should have been done prior to this..

When you know it’s gonna go so poorly, you don’t even announce it

They posted about it several times on the news page

The camping already has a long queue. So please increase the pop limit!

Everyone who utilizes all the sources from ZOS to get information and updates about the game has been aware of this for months. If you chose to not pay attention then please blame nobody but yourself. The information WAS out there.

the queue is soooo long because it's FUN and everyone who goes wants in again. got golden rewards in less than an hour.

ZOS definitely did tell us about this test beforehand, as far back as January. There was a test on PTS first, back in January, and the dates of this test on Live were announced weeks ago, if not more than that.

But based on what I'm seeing in these forums, as well as in zone chat, there are a number of players who had no clue that this test was going to occur. I'm not sure what more ZOS could have done to notify the players.

Oblivion_Protocol wrote: »

Honestly? They could’ve put an announcement in-game. Or even a countdown to it with a link to an article explaining it. Everyone doesn’t read every piece of material ZoS puts out. Some of us literally just interact with the game and the forum.

And, this isn’t some event that you can skip out on or be pleasantly surprised by. It’s a change to an entire game mode that you can’t opt into. If you want to PvP in Cyro for the next week, it’s Vengeance or nothing. A little more widespread heads up would’ve been nice.

this information has been on the forums for 2 months.

@King_of_zor We think we got to around 250ish per alliance last night - which is pretty awesome - 45mins queue at most, so considering the major action it worked quite well. The server lag was pretty much non-existent, but we did have two crashes and one person had their CP reset when they left the campaign... But otherwise pretty flawless - even 'in-combat hugs' were almost non-existent!! All-in-all a great start to the test

@React I agree we could have done with something a little more substantial before the test went live - like a patch notes thing - as there was so many skill changes -- we relied on PTS information for all our planning - lots of us checking the news/forums regularly and reporting back anything found, and the dates announced in a picture in a news piece (directly searching for information on the forums drummed up nothing of use other than the 'Part 1' of the PvP Q&A (Part 2 was not AvA related), and PTS feedback which pretty much stated that they wouoldn't be changing much from PTS to live - as they just wanted to check it didn't break stuff when on PTS (just not directly).
Although, I don't agree that it needed any more interest 'drumming up for it', or more incentives - we got to large enough queues for it yesterday without the extra fanfare. 30mins queue is alright - you can do that while you eat your dinner before playing - 45mins gets a little tedious, and 1hr is hard to manage as you regularly mess up and accidentally port somewhere and break your queue if you have to wait that long. And, when just half the Alliance showed at a keep it was an epic show of numbers

@Dojohoda Thanks for the link to the faq, much appreciated

@tokyosaber If you avoid porting anywhere (or doing ingame mail) queues don't usually break -- occaisionally they do, but much much less often than if you try to do something that causes a load screen. Some of our guild rely on 'fishing' in one zone while waiting in the queue - I personally sit in a low populated area and eat dinner/read forums/catch up on guild admin, and set an alarm for 14mins and make sure my character is still active and queueing then reset the alarm (you need autoaccept for if the queue ends whie you're not looking at the screen).

@SeaGtGruff, @Oblivion_Protocol I think it just needed to be included in the patch notes? I think that would have done it for many people -- that used to be the only thing I ever looked at -- "ooo game is down, what are they changing?" *checks patchnotes*

React wrote: »

show previous quotes

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

React wrote: »

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

React wrote: »

Did they actually start this test without even announcing the dates beforehand or making a developer post? That really screams "minimal effort" to me...

We have those coming out shortly. We need to make sure everything is running correctly before the post is up.

King_of_zor wrote: »

New campaign server (vengance) replaced the old campaign server (icereach) (and before the last one finished, so that's gone for now). Preset abilties, disabled all sets (crafted or otherwise).
Reset the beginning 'Welcome to Cyrodiil' quest which can't be done again (because you've already done it and they didn't reset that flag). This removes all of the missions.

going to check our the 'vet' campaigns now and se what kind of mess they're in, lol.

Thoughts? (he asks cautiously).

The test campaign is only going to be live for a week.

That's great, but really don't you think it would have been valuable to announce the dates of the test as well as any incentives people might earn for participating before the test goes live? To drum up interest and allow word to spread, perhaps increasing participation?

Maybe I'm just jaded. But that seems like the bare minimum that should have been done prior to this..

We did announce dates at the beginning of the month. And we have articles going up in a few minutes to talk about the active Golden Pursuit to help with the test.

Ah, I see now that the date was mentioned in a section at the bottom of the 3/10 fallen banners release news article. I missed that one. Seems like most of the circles I'm a part of did as well. Here on the forums, the only information I could find was a comment from February stating the dates were TBD but would be shortly after the release of Fallen Banners on PC.

Will there be incentives outside of the golden pursuits or 2x AP? I know a few people had shared sentiments within one of the popular threads pertaining to the test that it would be nice to receive compensation via things like race changes, alliance changes, crown crates, or crowns directly, given the restrictive nature of this test. AP holds very little value these days, especially to PVP players who are often sitting on millions of it with no good way to spend it.

The discords I'm in missed it as well (tbh I just don't think they look very hard for this kind of info which I don't blame ZoS for). They were shocked when I mentioned it a few hours before raid last night lol.