Hi all,
 
I’m Mod Stacey, the RuneScape QA Team Leader. I just wanted to shed some light on the current situation with the QA team and our future plans to become more involved in the community.
 
This new direction has been in discussion for a while now, but truth be told, this last week has highlighted just how necessary it is for us to make changes moving forward.
 
As a QA team, one of the most important aspects of our role is to make your content updates as bug free and as enjoyable as possible. However, we do make mistakes and have truly dropped the ball on several occasions, which is something that each of you will have likely experienced during your time playing RuneScape. I know a large portion of you guys have mentioned that you feel like you are the QA team and I completely understand how aggravated you have felt with the quality of some updates. Unfortunately, mistakes can and will happen and when those impactful screw ups happen, we really do learn from them. We learn from each other’s mistakes as well.
 
We haven’t been great at staying in contact with you guys when an update is turned upside down. What you’ve become accustomed to seeing is well, absolutely nothing. A serious live bug launches, you raise awareness of this and you receive no response from us directly. This really isn’t acceptable and we should be keeping you informed, ensuring you all that we’re aware of serious issues and that we’re working on them. Generally, just keeping you in the loop of what’s going on. We may not be able to turn back time to catch that bug when the project was in development, but we can sure as hell get it fixed as soon as humanly possible, whilst keeping you informed along the way.

Transparency hasn’t ever been a strength of the QA team. Over the years, we’ve remained in the shadows and haven’t directly engaged as much as we should with the community.
 
It’s not to say this is the case because we don’t care about your opinions, about the health of the game or the quality of the content we deliver; because we really do. Anyone that hasn’t held a genuine interest and passion in these areas, simply hasn’t lasted long in the QA role.
 
There is very little insight given as to what goes on behind the scenes with our QA process and how we are intertwined into the development cycle, and I’m quite passionate about rectifying this.
 
We’re keen on making drastic changes, to help show the passion we have for the game and for our community. Over the coming months, individuals within the QA team are taking it upon themselves to become more actively engaged within the community and will be creating initiatives to lift the veil and shed some light into what goes on behind the scenes.
 
The role of a QA analyst will be delved into, highlighting what it is we really do, especially on a day to day basis. As well as how involved we are with project development, aspects of how we test content, more clarification on who we actually are and much more.
 
We’re considering different methods in which to portray this, from forum blogs, Reddit AMA’s, or even a mini documentary (think ‘a day in the life of a QA analyst’). We’ll even touch on what really happens in the office when those horrific bugs end up in the live game.
 
We really want these initiatives to feel engaging, to be insightful and informative for anyone that is highly interested in pursuing a career within the Game Development industry, or those of you that are just generally interested in what goes on behind the scenes of the game you play. If you have any requests or suggestions with the methods in which we can expand further, do feel free to speak up.
 
So, with all this said, I feel it’s the prime time to go into what our current initiatives are for improving the quality of our updates. These are some of the changes we have recently started doing or working on achieving over the next few months;
 
Increased QA headcount
The eagle eye’d of you may have already seen that we are recruiting fresh blood for the QA team. It’s not an easy task or one I take lightly. I only want those that are passionate about the game and the craft of QA.
 
Open BETA on large projects
Many of you have been calling out for BETA worlds. Unfortunately, it’s just not feasible for us to run these regularly or for most projects due to time constraints and development processes. However, we will absolutely be doing this for projects like Mining and Smithing and the Bank Rework.
 
Increased internal project playtests
We currently have 11 analysts within the RuneScape QA team that are actively working on RuneScape. As a team, we don’t all work on projects together as we’re embedded in scrum teams, but we will be increasing the amount of all QA playtests to ensure that the team are coming together more frequently to test each project and to ensure more eyes are looking over each project.

Improved internal QA processes

• More analysis and investigations will be happening with any bug that manages to slip through to the live game, enabling us to tweak processes further to ensure that we are doing everything we can to prevent this from happening again in the future
• Regular skillset reviews of each analyst, and ensuring that they’re working on projects best suited to them (our pro PvMers working on combat/bosses, etc)
• Increased mentoring from our more seasoned QA for our newer members, which covers best practises for effective testing
• Lengthy team rotations of all new comers, where they will have greater opportunity to learn from our most talented Developers and QA
• We have more QA that have become part of the Balancing Council
• We have begun investigating the possibilities of automated testing, and where and when these can be applied. I say investigating, but this has very recently started with the Mining and Smithing project, so it’s probably more trialling it!

To wrap this all up, we will be kicking off these initiatives next week. Where Mod Cuppa will be giving you more insight into the Post Release Review of the recent Hallowe’en holiday event; Ghost Stories of Gielinor, which we hope you will find interesting!
 
Cheers guys, Mod Stacey and the RuneScape QA team.

I read this as

The old team was rubbish and we will talk to you now, just like the OSRS team, will tings change?  NEVER

Well hopefully they do become more involved. Also interested to see how this bank rework is because my current bank is kinda getting disorganized lol.