While this is a neat step to get more community involvement in build quality and to more rigorously test patches at a larger scale, have you (and Wildcard by extension) simply considered making a handful of Official Test Servers that players can participate in, should they be interested?

Make a clear disclaimer stating the unstable nature of Test Servers and the likeliness for wipes, data corruption, crashing, etc., and allow those willing to spend time helping to test out new systems and nail down repro steps for bugs the chance to do so without getting lost in the hubbub of most forums/social media.

How would clients connect to a version mismiatched server?

Originally posted by Arctorn:

While this is a neat step to get more community involvement in build quality and to more rigorously test patches at a larger scale, have you (and Wildcard by extension) simply considered making a handful of Official Test Servers that players can participate in, should they be interested?

Make a clear disclaimer stating the unstable nature of Test Servers and the likeliness for wipes, data corruption, crashing, etc., and allow those willing to spend time helping to test out new systems and nail down repro steps for bugs the chance to do so without getting lost in the hubbub of most forums/social media.

+1

I would be interested. I am running a Main player server and a test server for the purpose of testing releases before they hit my players

I'll be more than happy to try it out, I currently run a server with 10-15 active players each day but I can make that over 30 no problem, highly interested :D

I am interested, Here is my server

http://arkservers.net/server/63.143.57.10:26425/

I was waiting for someone to say "I Volunteer as tribute!" - I look forward to seeing some of these servers :) I'll be popping on yours a bit more @Evilwrath if they work yours into the program :p

Ooh, that 30 population requirement narrows the choices a lot. Mike Hunt's server (kek), where I play, averages 20-30ish, I believe, and it's a fairly popular one--I don't see many non-officials above that threshold on the server list, unless I'm missing something.

Hopefully one of the top 15 servers will help out. They're all alpha/beta testers after all.

Or, perhaps you could just set up public official testing servers, and just be liberal with admin spawn commands or item prices (e.g., Singularity in EVE).

I'm interested, our server only sees about 10 people right now tho it's only been around about a week.

Would be better to just set up official test servers. You'd get better data that way and you want to know how they'll perform when they're congested like the majority of official servers. This seems kind of odd to only open it to private servers.

i'm interested, i currently have about 10-15 active players that don't play anything but ark, and most are dedicated to bug searching

Yeah I figured like a specific "Beta Server" batch might make more sense than private servers. I would gladly opt in if my server had more popularity.

Quite willing to test this on my personal server.
System specs:
ASRock Z97 Extreme6
Intel i7 3790K
16GB Corsair Vengeance Pro RAM
R9 290X Tri-X OC Edition
4TB HDD
240GB SSD
30Mb/s broadband connection
40 player cap
(other components irrelivant to testing)

Originally posted by Ezikeyal:

How would clients connect to a version mismiatched server?

This is a good question, how are you planning to release this update and still allow players get the updates to connect and test?

Why do you not just set up a few beta test servers of your own and then ask the community for beta testers that can opt in and help test things, including new things and such.

Heck why not offer people the ability to opt into early releases through steam, those wishing can download the updates early and give feed back or report bugs. Will people get the updates early, yes, but they will also know there comes risks with it.

I would be interested in beta testing upcoming updates, but I play on my personal dedicated server, me, myself, and I. We're all friends and we all get along well. ;)
I like to look for bugs or things that don't seem balanced. Or needs more love.

While my server doesn't host the amount of users you are requesting. Our average is roughly 10 users. If you run low or don't get enough offers I will happily host it on my server. Feel free to get in touch.

Linux | Ubuntu Server 1404 64 bit, i3-2130 3.4