Live Producer Craig Turner talks about what to expect in the upcoming stress test for WildStar

Carbine's had that "Sign up for Beta!" link on the WildStar front page for quite some time now. We've mentioned it in more than a few of these posts and I'm guessing most of you reading this have long since signed up and are wondering, "When can I play?!" Well, this week's WildStar Wednesday is here to give you some good news... sort of.

The good news? Carbine's planning on bringing in lots of people who've signed up for the WildStar beta on the site for their first Beta Stress Test. The bad news? Note that "Stress" part of Beta Stress Test. Here's what Live Producer Craig Turner has to say about the upcoming test:

Now before you get too excited about this, there was a reason Community wanted me to tell our fans about this test. As much as I want everyone to have a great time playing WildStar, this stress test is the one exception to the rule. This Stress Test is likely going to be rough. Going back to the clown car example; if a car usually seats 4 adults comfortably, I’m going to see if that thing can still drive with people hanging out of the windows and their faces pushed up against the glass.

Here’s the truth of why our first Stress Test may be rough: we don’t have a login queue yet. There are going to be more people that want to play our beta this weekend (ZAM Note: he means the Stress Test weekend, not this upcoming weekend - no dates have been given yet for when this will take place) than our servers will be able to handle, and I’m going to be in my Live Operations Command Post (I really should request this, it sounds way cooler than ‘my office’) watching every statistic and data point, answering all of the phones, and figuring out HOW to make it playable for all of you. Through all that there is just going to come to a point that the server is going to buckle under the weight of everyone.

That’s what we want. I need to know what number we break at – so I can do everything in my power to avoid it in the future, including more/better hardware, adding login queues and population caps, etc.

So you'll have the option to play during the Stress Test, but there's the possibility that the current setup may not be able to support every WildStar fan trying to log in at the same time. This probably isn't what most of you were hoping to hear when the word Beta came up in today's blog post, but don't write off trying to play that weekend just yet! There's a bit more good news in Craig's post:

There is a silver lining here though. If Community is going to make me give you the bad news, I’m going to spoil their good news. Everyone that gets an invite into the Stress Test and makes a good faith attempt to log into the game during the test will be guaranteed an invite into a future (much more stable) Closed Beta test as a thank you. I need your help in breaking the server, and we want to invite you back to play when I’m not trying to do mean things to the hardware. So help us break everything as many times as possible this weekend, and we'll make it up to you with a real beta invite in the future.

If you'd like to know more about the upcoming WildStar Beta Stress Test and all that's involved in trying to break an MMO's servers, head over to the WildStar blog and read the rest of Craig's post. While you're there, if you've somehow missed signing up for the beta, don't forget to do so - they may be trying to break the servers by inviting everyone, but they have to know who you are to let you in on the fun.

Michael "Ragar" Branham