Beta Testing Shards

Overview

The Beta Testing Shards (once known as the Training Room) are test servers where developers deploy beta versions of City of Heroes before moving the version to the live servers. It is a sandbox where players may test changes to their characters or help beta-test new content before it is pushed out to the general public. Any player can access them.

Reasons to Play

There are two main reasons players may want to play on these shards instead of a live server:

• To test permanent changes to their characters before those changes are actually made. For example, if a player earns a power respecification, they can copy that character to the beta shards, respecify their powers, and try them out. It is also straightforward to increase XP, to grant influence, and to create whatever enhancements are needed for a build being tested.

• To test new content in order to find bugs in it or provide feedback.

How to Play

To gain access to the beta shards, follow the instructions at the Beta Account Centre. This also provides tools to copy your characters across, and a guide to how to grant XP, inf, etc. when testing a build. Ordinarily the beta shards are divided into "beta" and "staging"; the "staging" build is close to release and undergoing final testing, whereas the "beta" build contains more experimental features.

Notes

• Supergroups are server specific, and therefore not copied.
• A player's global chat name may be different from their global chat name on the live servers.
• It is possible for an existing character to immediately obtain new badges due to the copying process because of lowered requirements on existing badges or because of requirements for new badges already being met.