I think that podcast is running a little late, they are referring to 1.3 in a future tense suggesting they meant to release it before 1.3 went to test, or at least while it was still there. We do need more players on test, but I'm not sure F2P would work, I'm on test right now preparing for 1.4 (or whenever HK is coming and we need one 50 and one 'mid level' other faction) and there are a total of 5 players on, that's not the fleet, that's 5 in total (2 other republic, 2 other imperial and myself swapping between the two).

Allison, given this was reported on PTS back on 13 June (I still have the ticket with the CS response) is it possible you could test the fix on PTS before it is pushed live? Just in case.

To be clear the bonuses are not shown separately. You just get a higher amount in the mission reward window. You do not get any extra for kills in the mission. To prove it to yourself you would need another alt where you can do a before and after test.

Not entirely accurate. Those of us on test with augmented gear from before 1.3 saw the issue reported here. We suggested this issue might be why copied characters were having their slots removed. I still have the bugged items on my test character where I reported it on the 14th.

The xp boosts do work, but the 5xp reward is a cap applied if you are too high a level, that cap comes after the xp boost so you only get 5xp still. Do a mission at your level and you can see the now higher reward.

There are two titles - Strike Team Specialist was for completing either 4 LFG missions in one day or 8 within a week. Strike Team Commander was for doing both 4 LFG missions in one day and 8 within a week (or 8 in one day). You had to use the LFG 'default settings' (to make sure people didn't pick the easiest one and allowed the LFG tool to work across groups) but was to encourage more players to test the tool before it went live.

That's the same bug we had on PTS, if you look it doesn't describe the value of the slot (you should have a note in the empty slot to explain which type of MK-x type slot is present). It appears to be an MK-0 slot which is why it is asking for a higher value slot before it fits an augment.

This was reported on PTS so it's in their bug tracker somewhere, the missions are just lost and you now have to be very careful to ensure you haven't already unlocked a mission before you use the discovery item.

It did come up on PTS and I have been posting a few times how the devs needed to fix it and the false positive Trojan (see the customer service forum) but they ignored me I'm sorry to say. Btw I strongly hope anyone who wanted to transfer did it already, the copy process for PTS found those slots to be bad data and removed any fitted augment to the inventory and killed the slot. If the transfer process is similar it could do some damage.

I suspect the price has been skewed by seeing how prices were on PTS, but due to the bug with pre 1.3 augmented kit there was a much higher demand proportionately and prices were inflated accordingly. I would expect prices under 100k on average once enough crafters start producing, which should be within a matter of a day or two. Speaking of which I hope the pre-1.3 augmented gear bug has been fixed, it's still bugged on PTS, and I hope the false positive trojan also gets fixed over the weekend, or there will be an interesting explosion in the customer service forum.

Hard to say. We think it is bugged as currently on test if you have an augmented item it will sit there as it was but the slot is not updated so no new augment can be added. You get an error message saying a higher level slot is required. If your character was copied to test after they added 1.3 then the copy process would remove the augment slot and put the augment in your inventory, but you would need to obtain your own slot kit. Hopefully the devs will be able to get slots working on pre1.3 gear but as of last night they were still broken.

I have some pre 1.3 crafted items with empty augment slots on test. You can't add any augment to them as they have not been assigned an mk number. The augments were only removed from copied characters suggesting it was part of the copy process not the patch process.

Given the current version deployed on PTS still hasn't solved conversion of pre-1.3 augmented gear I'm not sure it's ready for live, hopefully that fix is just working through internal test servers now.

Except, in between test flights the pilot is spending his/her time in the flight simulator preparing for the next flight, and here the flight simulator isn't available. There are fundamentally two approaches which can be used for public testing on an MMO. A temporary style server uses either copied characters, servers or premades and gets shut down between tests. It is best for simple MMO's where the internal QA systems are robust enough to catch any unintended side effects of patches and what you want from players is not "did anything break we didn't think of?" but "is this new feature/content a good idea as we have built it?". A permanent style server (which is how they initially promoted PTS) builds a community who play on the server, we don't need rewards but do it for those who play on live servers. This server is then able to test a wider variety of the game as well as the new content. It can be complemented by character copies who will naturally focus on the new stuff (after all, why would they log onto test to do some dailies when they can't copy the commendations back to live) but works better for complex MMO's where the sheer scale means an internal QA team can't test everything. It needs a big community, and I fully accept TOR's PTS community isn't big enough yet to cover it all (so we need copies to fill the gaps) I know most people don't understand the mindset of folk who play on test, quite rationally you pay to play on live and get what you can from the game. We enjoy trying to help you enjoy your game more by encountering less bugs and our annoyance comes when the devs aren't letting us do that and so therefore are hurting your enjoyment of the game. Now, I play on test, it's my choice and I'm not after a reward for it, I want less bugs live. Since 1.2.0 went live they changed from a permanent style approach towards a temporary style approach. I assume therefore the internal QA are able to check everything and there haven't been too many unforseen side issues and all patch notes have come out as advertised....right?

Allison, the issue we have is we don't know why the test server is down. We expect additional downtime, but for patches, for crashes (yes, we want crashes, that means you can fix them before live gets broke), or for any explained reason (occasionally you need to bounce the server just to check the next maintenance isn't going to do something funky). As you say the server is there to encourage us to test, like Ivi I'm trying to be ready to test, got up to legacy level 30 but still got more to do before I'm ready for 1.3. As far as I can see there are three reasons for the server being down: The server is testing character copy - but that means you'll be taking the live servers down for more than 48 hours to do mergers?? Surely not! The server is being used for internal testing as the other internal servers have been sold off. I can live with that, it means the cash generated from the sales is keeping some of you employed, and the reason Ivi and I want to play on test is to make sure the game succeeds and you lot keep your jobs! The devs didn't realise they have a test community who want the game to be better and are playing on test so they are in position to report bugs when new patches come down. Without a server to get ready you risk those players deciding it isn't worth it to help. Ivi and I and others want this game to be better and are prepared to test it for you and report bugs to the best of our ability, but if the server is down without a reason it is demotivating to your volunteer test force.

Don't forget PTS was on 1.2.0 last time it was up (a few days ago). The 240Mb patch is likely just bringing the server from 1.2.0 to 1.2.5

Is there a reason for this change? If PTS is used for all patches I appreciate there is a small cost in rolling out the patch to an additional server before live and a delay while waiting for PTS reports but we've seen a large number of the 1.2.x patches (including the latest) where either a significant bug was introduced or a patch note clearly doesn't work on a full scale server. Using PTS would not guarantee it not happening again but it would reduce the risk of it happening. Also using PTS regularly gives a greater chance of building a community on test which will be more effective for testing when the major patches come along as well as getting more efficient testing for smaller patches. There is a significant free resource available from players who are willing to spend their playtime on test and report bugs they find there, but currently the resource isn't being used.

The PTS is currently largely dead as there is a very annoying bug with melee mobs evading in the middle of a fight and resetting which gates much of the content, that and PTS is currently still running 1.2.0 so is quite behind the live servers. Once 1.3 is deployed to test you will likely see a very large increase in population.

On the launcher in the options screen (bottom left button) select "Enable Public Test Server Access" to Yes. Then a second button should appear beside the options button, select it and change from SWTOR to "Publit Test - Weekly Patches (publictest)" and select Next. The game will need to download PTS, which is an entire second copy of the game so you may want to start it before you go to bed so it can run overnight, but it's definately worth downloading before 1.3 is released or you may lose a day of testing (or more if lots start downloading the same day and slow it down).

I fully expect once PTS actually gets patched beyond 1.2.0 the evade bug will go, PTS is just grumpy it has gone so long without a patch.

I have to be honest the easiest step to improve the process is to use PTS for it's stated purpose. The name of the server in full is "Public Test - Weekly Patches (publictest)" not "Public Test - Monthly Patches (publictest)". I'm not saying PTS is perfect, and in its current state I don't think we are that likely to have caught the matrix bug, but there is a better chance of catching it if we had a chance. I recall back on SWG just one example where a quick patch was prepared, had about 3 lines in the patch notes, the internal QA signed it off, the announcement was made the live servers were going down the next day, everyone expected it to go live. Just as a last check they released it to test (about 12 hours before the live servers). Within 15 minutes they were changing their mind as the patch had an unfortunate bug which deleted the last few months of character development and lowered the levels of every player. The patch, needless to say, was cancelled and the test server had to be rolled back to repair the damage. Those of us who choose to play on test servers do it because we want the live game to be better for everyone else, I don't have the time to play two servers so I've chosen to use PTS and as I come across bugs I can report them to try and reduce bugs going live. I'm currently legacy level 28 with one 50 and three 41s able to test a variety but not complete reach of the game. There are others who similarly spend a lot of their time playing on test. It is ultimately the devs choice when to use PTS, and the SWG devs learned from the (imo) mistake of skipping test when they did it for a few months. I hope BioWare are able to learn from their mistakes with the 1.2.x patches and emergency repatches. There will need to be improvements made to PTS, getting a character copy working is already on the cards, I would suggest having some QA liasions publically monitor the server to discuss issues and ensure there isn't the miscommunication which can happen on some more complex bugs and to ensure patch notes are correctly worded, but that needs time spent by QA and the devs may not agree with that. Character rewards have been implemented to a limited level but other incentives could be discussed if the devs desire. If devs ever want to talk with test they can log in and just use "/cjoin test" and they'll get someone, I'm normally on the republic side as one of the "Sen...'s" Red-Dwarf. Former SWG Test Senator. Incidentally I don't think the current 'evade' bug is an issue for the devs, my guess is the server is getting cranky as it hasn't had a full maintenance and patch cycle for an extended period. Patch the server to 1.2.x and then we would need to look to see if it still occurs.

Just to mention the point being missed...moderate and abundant slicing missions still return a profit on a normal return. The choice is now there to either go for bountiful/rich and hope for a crit or go for moderate/abundant and take a safe but smaller return. You can still fail of course, but you still get mission rewards on a crit, this nerf seems to have been about introducing choice to the slicing profession. It may not have been in patch notes, but it was flagged a few times while PTS was running 1.2 testing.

The only files which are needed are the version files. I had a laptop which didn't get caught by the bug and patched it today up to 1.2 and copied the version files across and the desktop now doesn't need the 11Gb patch.

There are now two types of binding. "Bound" items cannot be mailed as they are bound to the specific character. "Bound to legacy" items can be mailed to other characters on your account.

You'd lose that bet. As others have noted the slicing missions give blue and I can confirm also purple parts. The Green augment recipes use normal scavenging parts for those I've played with so far and the blue/purple materials are used for schematics obtained by RE'ing the green crafted augments. Currently (as with all this anything may change before live) pre-1.2 augments can't be RE'd. Another slicing change you may want to be aware of is a tweak in the returns from lockboxes. Now a moderate/abundant box will normally provide a small profit, while a bountiful/rich box will normally provide a loss (you might get half or less back) but if it gets a critical (blue box) you then get a profit. As such there's a choice between the slow and steady approach which will likely give a reasonable but not spectacular return or focus on the rich/bountiful missions which might leave you poorer for some days but could return a great profit when you are flying Lando's yacht.