Greetings, Adventurers! The PTR is crucial for finalizing releases, but some upcoming content remains secret. Should we surprise players in exchange for less bug tests? The answer can vary, but QA always makes the final call on if a release is ready to go live. Check out the video below to learn more about the challenges behind quality assurance and then read on for an in-depth look at the journey of a patch note. [previewyoutube=RD8_ioPQpkM;full][/previewyoutube] [h2]THE JOURNEY OF A PATCH NOTE[/h2] QA Manager Michael Corpora went on to walk us through the path of a bug: “On December 6, 2022, we pushed the Winter Festival update to live servers. The Winter Convergence world event was core to this release. This was also the first world event to repeat since the New World launch. As such, we already documented and updated a test plan to account for any changes. For example, additional quests were added to engage new and returning players. When finalizing the content, we verified changes with characters that had participated in the original event along with new characters. Defects were identified and resolved, and then those fixes were verified in builds leading up to the release.“ [img]https://images.ctfassets.net/j95d1p8hsuun/7jMUejr7RMIcAg2GTMpGRm/bd272d46d3e3c6a90bc4769cf3dc45ce/NW_WinterVillage_D_Winterconvergence22_1920x1080_Final_CT-001151.jpg[/img] “However, following the release we received player reports that the first 3 Winter Convergence quests were not accessible for some players. After looking through all of the reports, our investigation found that quest completion data for unrelated main story quests had been reused in the update for these new quests. This particular scenario was outside of the test coverage for the Winter Convergence update.” “Once identified, we created characters with this quest completion data to verify that they were not offered the new quests. The next step was to implement a fix and create test scenarios to verify that both the Winter Convergence quests and the main story quests functioned correctly for all characters, including those who had already participated in the live event. This fix was then merged into a patch.” [img]https://images.ctfassets.net/j95d1p8hsuun/1iCegSW0VhghPzxTEbcdnc/7a8e62c4cbef46be3df2de9f7e4cce19/NW_Brimstone_Settelment_A_Winterconvergence22_1920x1080_Final_CT-001151__1_.jpg[/img] “We ran all test scenarios again to verify the fix in the actual build before it went live. Once approved, the patch was released to players on December 8, 2022.“ What’s something that you can’t wait to see on the PTR? Let us know on Discord, Reddit, or the YouTube comments section. Thanks for your support! We’ll see you in Aeternum.