ZONETEST

On Medievia, you the player gets to have the final say in whether or not a
new zone is fun and well-balanced. The process to do this is as follows:

 1. A new zone opens and an announcement that it is in its testing phases is
    released.
 2. You visit the zone, run it, and form opinions about it.
 3. You then e-mail wom@medievia.com with constructive and polite comments
    (you don't have to like it, but there is no reason to be rude). Please
    include your reasoning behind your opinion. Simply saying "blah blah
    sucks"-is not helpful.
 4. If your comments are found useful and acted upon, you will receive the
    zonetester's medal as our thanks, and the zone in question will be
    updated to reflect what you as a player wants.
 5. Please include your Medievia character name. You can remain anonymous
    if you wish, but we'd prefer to know who to thank.

A note to players on our zonetesting policy:

Testing zones is an extremely complex process, much more work than the
average person would think. The difficulty in reviewing a zone's writing,
examining its mobs and objects, checking its procs for bugs, determining if
keys are well placed, deciding if elements such as CPK can be abused,
placing it on the map, setting up all the fine details, ironing out the
kinks, ensuring that the items and xp are just challenging enough without
being too hard, and turning out something players will really want to explore
and enjoy is a massive process. Medievia's high standards result in zones
you won't find anywhere else.

Likewise, the position of WOM (World Object Mobile manager) is incredibly
hard to place people in. This person must not only have a natural talent
and instinct for game balance, but must also have an encyclopedic knowledge
of all the zones in the game and the ability to make decisions that
correspond with Vryce's overall vision for Medievia. As it is a high level
position, WOMs must also have a professionalism and sense of responsibility
that is reflected in their behavior on the game, both as a mortal and a god.

The workload of a WOM is tremendous, and though WOM Assistants diffuse these
tasks, we feel the best way to guard against errors in zone openings is to
allow the players to voice their concerns in a way they will certainly be
heard. Many pairs of eyes are better than one, plus a god's perspective,
even though that god is also a player, is not always congruent with the
playerbase at large. Programmers on Medievia have stated for years that the
best way to test new code is to let a group of players loose in it. A
multitude of individual players will try things we could never dream up,
which allows us to see every aspect and fine tune things accordingly. This
is also true of zones.

We try to test things extensively before they are released, but we want your
seal of approval. Let us know what you think, e-mail wom@medievia.com.

See Also: ZONES WOM POLITICS