Turbine's latest Lord of the Rings Online Developer Diary examines a particular MMO development function that usually doesn't receive too much publicity; the Quality Assurance team. The new developer diary—aptly titled "QA: We’re Not Just Playing Around!"—features an explanation of this over-looked MMO development role and offers a behind-the-scenes look at what a QA team member's job entails in LOTRO.
Written by Amanda "Brynhildr" Cosmos of Turbine's QA team, Cosmos jokes about the obscurity of quality assurance among the MMO community, acknowledging that the role isn’t the most exciting job to try and explain. "We each tried writing about QA structure and process, to get everyone acquainted with how we do things, but reading it was so incredibly dull that we scrapped it," Cosmos said. "QA doesn’t 'play' LOTRO all day; it’s more like bending the game to our will. We fly around Middle-earth like some kind of techno-Valar, hunting down the bug-servants of Melkor before the player-Children of Iluvatar awaken."
On second thought, Cosmos admits that her team's role does sound like playing LOTRO; "Well, we can’t just do whatever we want; there is proper procedure and documentation to follow," she said. "We usually end up 'playing' with spreadsheets more often than anything else. [Our team] writes up the test plans that the rest of the QA teams use to check all of the new content in the game." Cosmos explains how she and her team work closely in-tandem with the game designers prior every substantial new content release, helping to iron out the wrinkles and ensure game stability. If you're a LOTRO fan or you've ever been curious about all the play-testing that occurs in MMOs post-release, Turbine's latest Developer Diary on Quality Assurance is definitely worth a read.
