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Character Copy on the PTS

  • Enodoc
    Enodoc
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    @ZOS_GinaBruno‌ maybe you should add a bit of info to the PTS login screen message to alleviate this confusion. eg:
    EU server characters have been copied to the PTS for testing. All previous characters, including NA server copies and any created templates, have been cleared to allow for this.
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  • GrooverGabe
    GrooverGabe
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    how the ___ Do you use the templates?(got it sorted but auto inflicted w/ WW and don't appreciate it) ... i cant find any way to access, see, or the like.
    I would prefer to use my own chars but if you want our help give use the tools, and make it easy.
    I am even a member of a group asked for feed back directly but can't test properly .... not to mention. even if i wanted to test or check out a certain area ... i would have to rediscover it from the beginning after rerolling a new toon... not going to walk all the way to the capital to find the cart then walk all the way to DSA to do you a favour... I have a guild (I am the GM) and would actually like to find them or friends on the Test Server and try ...things ... but not contacts or othewrwise. i was considering trying a crime wave scenario w/ my guild, but can't promote it if cant have chars and or contacts
    Edited by GrooverGabe on February 7, 2015 6:37PM
  • ZOS_JessicaFolsom
    ZOS_JessicaFolsom
    Community Manager
    Tomorrow (Tuesday, February 10th) we will be publishing patch 1.6.2 on the PTS. During this time, we will also be copying North American characters from the live server to the PTS. The stamp for the copy is being taken at approximately 8AM EST tomorrow (Tuesday, February 10th). This does mean that European characters will be wiped during the maintenance. VR14 template characters will be available for testing. Also, we plan to have one more character copy (for European characters) next week.
    Jessica Folsom
    Lead Community Manager - ZeniMax Online Studios
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  • Gyudan
    Gyudan
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    Tomorrow (Tuesday, February 10th) we will be publishing patch 1.6.2 on the PTS. During this time, we will also be copying North American characters from the live server to the PTS. The stamp for the copy is being taken at approximately 8AM EST tomorrow (Tuesday, February 10th). This does mean that European characters will be wiped during the maintenance. VR14 template characters will be available for testing. Also, we plan to have one more character copy (for European characters) next week.
    Glad to read that. :)
    Can we expect the patch notes sometime during the maintenance as usual?
    Wololo.
  • ZOS_JessicaFolsom
    ZOS_JessicaFolsom
    Community Manager
    Gyudan wrote: »
    Can we expect the patch notes sometime during the maintenance as usual?

    Yep! They're currently being localized into French and German. :)

    Jessica Folsom
    Lead Community Manager - ZeniMax Online Studios
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    Staff Post
  • Elsonso
    Elsonso
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    Gyudan wrote: »
    Can we expect the patch notes sometime during the maintenance as usual?

    Yep! They're currently being localized into French and German. :)

    Great! Can we have them as soon as they are done translating, then? :smile:
    PC NA/EU: @Elsonso
    XBox EU/NA: @ElsonsoJannus
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  • ZOS_JessicaFolsom
    ZOS_JessicaFolsom
    Community Manager
    Great! Can we have them as soon as they are done translating, then? :smile:

    That's always the way we do it (plus formatting the post on the forums, but that doesn't take too long.)
    Jessica Folsom
    Lead Community Manager - ZeniMax Online Studios
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    Staff Post
  • RDMyers65b14_ESO
    RDMyers65b14_ESO
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    OK, today is 2/9 /15. NA characters tomorrow. Next week EU character copy and does 1.6.x go live in two weeks, such as 2/23 /15?
  • SG_Celerrimus
    SG_Celerrimus
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    Great! Can we have them as soon as they are done translating, then? :smile:

    That's always the way we do it (plus formatting the post on the forums, but that doesn't take too long.)

    For the love of Mara and all the divines, please tell me NPC guards can now be killed, and they are no longer the godlike terror of towns and cities.
  • Bloodfang
    Bloodfang
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    Great! Can we have them as soon as they are done translating, then? :smile:

    That's always the way we do it (plus formatting the post on the forums, but that doesn't take too long.)

    For the love of Mara and all the divines, please tell me NPC guards can now be killed, and they are no longer the godlike terror of towns and cities.

    No thank you.
  • Alcast
    Alcast
    Class Representative
    Why is it not possible to get acc copies for EU and NA at the same time? I really do not get it lol.

    And instead of copying 70% of inactive accs and people who do not want to go PTS you could set up a formula where you could register yourself for PTS and just copy these accs over..
    Now I do have to wait another week to test stuff and we cannot do Trials with our char copies on PTS which does not make it easier :(

    Or what exactly prevents you from copying both NA and EU on the PTS server? Lack of space? Lack of knowledge? what is it?

    @‌ZOS_JessicaFolsom
    Edited by Alcast on February 10, 2015 11:51AM
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  • Enodoc
    Enodoc
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    Alcast wrote: »
    Why is it not possible to get acc copies for EU and NA at the same time? I really do not get it lol.

    And instead of copying 70% of inactive accs and people who do not want to go PTS you could set up a formula where you could register yourself for PTS and just copy these accs over..
    Now I do have to wait another week to test stuff and we cannot do Trials with our char copies on PTS which does not make it easier :(

    Or what exactly prevents you from copying both NA and EU on the PTS server? Lack of space? Lack of knowledge? what is it?

    @‌ZOS_JessicaFolsom
    Try copy-pasting something named "My File" into a place where there is already something called "My File". The one that is already there is overwritten; that's most likely what's happening here.

    I agree with the suggestion that they could only copy accounts specifically registered for PTS, but then you may end up with a situation where someone from NA and someone from EU has the same character name, and you get "The destination already contains a character called Enodoc. Overwrite it? Y/N" To avoid this you then have to add another step where everything is renamed to "Toon Name[EU]" or something.
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  • Nazon_Katts
    Nazon_Katts
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    Not to forget they probably want to have as much data as possible on PTS (stores, guilds, inventory) to test in an as close as possible to live environment, to see if some weird DB issues come up.

    Why they cannot simply merge both DB by adding NA and EU suffixes, I do not know, maybe someone with more knowledge could share some insights. However, maybe it's just due to the aforementioned reason, since a merged DB doesn't mirror the live DB anymore.
    "You've probably figured that out by now. Let's hope so. Or we're in real trouble... and out come the intestines. And I skip rope with them!"
  • jaibierwb17_ESO
    jaibierwb17_ESO
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    Alcast wrote: »
    Why is it not possible to get acc copies for EU and NA at the same time? I really do not get it lol.

    And instead of copying 70% of inactive accs and people who do not want to go PTS you could set up a formula where you could register yourself for PTS and just copy these accs over..
    Now I do have to wait another week to test stuff and we cannot do Trials with our char copies on PTS which does not make it easier :(

    Or what exactly prevents you from copying both NA and EU on the PTS server? Lack of space? Lack of knowledge? what is it?

    @‌ZOS_JessicaFolsom

    Because your account works on both servers & some players have characters on both. As you can't have more that 8 characters, it would probably cause errors to have both available
  • nathan_bri
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    While setting up character copies so that both source servers can be resident on the test server at the same time can obviously be done given some programming, perhaps renaming characters a bit like how WoW handles character transfers, it's obviously not a priority. There's also the issue of how much storage to set aside for character and account information. Right now, they need only as much storage as their largest live server. If they merged both databases, they would need a bit more than the sum of both.

    It *can* always be done, but it's not a priority as other things are more important to them.
  • ZOS_JessicaFolsom
    ZOS_JessicaFolsom
    Community Manager
    OK, today is 2/9 /15. NA characters tomorrow. Next week EU character copy and does 1.6.x go live in two weeks, such as 2/23 /15?

    We are aiming to get Update 6 out on the live megaservers the last week of February, yep. If that changes, we'll let everyone know!

    Jessica Folsom
    Lead Community Manager - ZeniMax Online Studios
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    Staff Post
  • ZOS_JessicaFolsom
    ZOS_JessicaFolsom
    Community Manager
    Alcast wrote: »
    Why is it not possible to get acc copies for EU and NA at the same time? I really do not get it lol.

    We're working toward being able to do so, but technical limitations prevent us from doing so at this time.
    Jessica Folsom
    Lead Community Manager - ZeniMax Online Studios
    Facebook | Twitter | Twitch | Tumblr | Instagram | YouTube | Support
    Staff Post
  • Dagoth_Rac
    Dagoth_Rac
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    Enodoc wrote: »
    I agree with the suggestion that they could only copy accounts specifically registered for PTS, but then you may end up with a situation where someone from NA and someone from EU has the same character name, and you get "The destination already contains a character called Enodoc. Overwrite it? Y/N" To avoid this you then have to add another step where everything is renamed to "Toon Name[EU]" or something.

    The problem is not really character names. It is database keys. Character "Joe" on NA might have a database key of 521513714674. That key is also on all the database tables that contain Joe's inventory and Joe's achievements and Joe's skill point allocation and Joe's map markers and on and on and on.

    Now character "Mary" on EU also has database key 521513714674. How can the PTS tell the difference between database records with key 521513714674 that belong to Joe NA and those that belong to Mary EU? Give Mary EU a new unique key? OK. But what about her inventory and achievements and skill point allocation and map markers and on and on and on? Those would have to be changed to match her new unique key, too. Now we are not talking about a database copy, but updating potentially millions and millions of database records across many, many characters. And then all the database indexes need to be rebuilt so that you can easily link all these database tables together.

    And you need a significantly larger amount of disk space to handle two megaserver's worth of data on the single PTS.

    It is a lot more complicated process than just renaming "Joe" to "Joe_NA".

    It is certainly possible, just not trivial. They would need to put resources on it that they might prefer to keep working on Update 6 or working on console release or working on performance issues in Cyrodiil, etc.

    I think they will probably either have to do either:

    1). Two PTS servers, one for NA and one for EU, so you can copy without fear of violating unique index constraints,

    or,

    2). Limit copied characters to those that have logged in the last few weeks so that you have much less data to crank through and update + re-index.
  • Gandogal
    Gandogal
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    could we get some patch notes? :)
  • Alcast
    Alcast
    Class Representative
    Alcast wrote: »
    Why is it not possible to get acc copies for EU and NA at the same time? I really do not get it lol.

    We're working toward being able to do so, but technical limitations prevent us from doing so at this time.

    Okay, thank you for the response :)
    It would be crazy to ahve both NA and EU on the private server, that would be a lot of fun.
    Edited by Alcast on February 10, 2015 7:09PM
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  • Kragorn
    Kragorn
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    Alcast wrote: »
    Why is it not possible to get acc copies for EU and NA at the same time? I really do not get it lol.

    We're working toward being able to do so, but technical limitations prevent us from doing so at this time.
    So, are you saying the EU server software is different structurally from the NA servers? Since our characters are, presumably, merely rows and columns in a SQL database it beggars belief you can't mix NA and EU characters on the same software platform.
  • Dominoid
    Dominoid
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    Kragorn wrote: »
    Alcast wrote: »
    Why is it not possible to get acc copies for EU and NA at the same time? I really do not get it lol.

    We're working toward being able to do so, but technical limitations prevent us from doing so at this time.
    So, are you saying the EU server software is different structurally from the NA servers? Since our characters are, presumably, merely rows and columns in a SQL database it beggars belief you can't mix NA and EU characters on the same software platform.

    It has to do with key constraints within the database.
  • Enodoc
    Enodoc
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    Dagoth_Rac wrote: »
    Enodoc wrote: »
    I agree with the suggestion that they could only copy accounts specifically registered for PTS, but then you may end up with a situation where someone from NA and someone from EU has the same character name, and you get "The destination already contains a character called Enodoc. Overwrite it? Y/N" To avoid this you then have to add another step where everything is renamed to "Toon Name[EU]" or something.

    The problem is not really character names. It is database keys. [...]

    And you need a significantly larger amount of disk space to handle two megaserver's worth of data on the single PTS.

    It is a lot more complicated process than just renaming "Joe" to "Joe_NA".

    [...]
    Sure, that makes sense. I guess I oversimplified it. Depending on their available database capacity and how their system handles floating-point precision, they could flip the sign of one database so that all EU keys are signed negative, but then you would get an issue if keys cannot be negative.
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  • ZOS_GinaBruno
    ZOS_GinaBruno
    Community Manager
    Hey guys! Just wanted to let you know that the European megaserver characters have been copied as of early this morning, and are currently available to play on the PTS with patch 1.6.3.
    Gina Bruno
    Senior Community Manager
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    Staff Post
  • Grao
    Grao
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    Hey guys! Just wanted to let you know that the European megaserver characters have been copied as of early this morning, and are currently available to play on the PTS with patch 1.6.3.

    Still hidding from having to answer us sorcerer mains @ZOS_GinaBruno?
  • LegacyDM
    LegacyDM
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    I downloaded and installed the pts client and my characters arent there... Is there something I need to do to initiate the transfer? I'm on NA
    Edited by LegacyDM on February 18, 2015 8:18AM
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    ¥ampire Lord of the South
  • xherics
    xherics
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    This week is for EU players, so yesterday the EU characters has been copied. The announcement at the login screen of PTS client is just wrong.
    Guild: HODOR - EU - Ebonheart Pact
    Char: Leliana fxn (Sorc) and Nuria fxn (DK)
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  • elderscrollsonlineub17_ESO8
    xherics wrote: »
    This week is for EU players, so yesterday the EU characters has been copied. The announcement at the login screen of PTS client is just wrong.

    so if you are from the NA servers, it should show no characters on PTS currently?
  • Elsonso
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    OK, today is 2/9 /15. NA characters tomorrow. Next week EU character copy and does 1.6.x go live in two weeks, such as 2/23 /15?

    We are aiming to get Update 6 out on the live megaservers the last week of February, yep. If that changes, we'll let everyone know!

    @ZOS_JessicaFolsom Any changes?

    PC NA/EU: @Elsonso
    XBox EU/NA: @ElsonsoJannus
    X/Twitter: ElsonsoJannus
  • Pendrillion
    Pendrillion
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    xherics wrote: »
    This week is for EU players, so yesterday the EU characters has been copied. The announcement at the login screen of PTS client is just wrong.

    so if you are from the NA servers, it should show no characters on PTS currently?

    You can use one of the V14 templates OR you roll a new character.

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