Good to see so many people interested in the MP testing!
@trapper
I agree with you on the idea of the server available 24/7 as long as Artak agrees, won't do much harm - don't think that the efficienty is high though. Don't know if Artak wants to support us in that though, have to hear from him about that. Allowing people to join in at any time would make it possible for them to join up and test mission. But, we can only hope that they actually post their comments on the mission.
That's the advantage of the current method, there are comments which make it to the author. With the server open 24/7, there won't be less reports, so it's never a wrong-wrong situation. However, I don't agree with you that authors should put in and intro/outro point out that this is a mission which is undergoing beta testing or a review. Right now, most authors have their e-mail address somewhere in the briefing, but frankly I think no-one actually uses them.
And I'd rather have good missions without bugs, than authors spending time on an intro / outro which includes a text "please test this mission and give feedback to..".
Locking the server is a no-no for me if the server can support more people. More people having fun is better. It's a different situation when 10 people want to participate (replied or PMed) and the server can't support more. I'd like to lock the server in that case.
About only allowing missions in beta test to be played, it can work. But deleting ALL other missions doesn't sound good to me. For example, after playing all three missions for quite a while 2.5 - 3 hours we did a DeathMatch game with other players joining later. Sadly, there were only two maps for DM, one for 20 and the other for even more players. So the map was a bit too large to support 6 or 7 players.
Thanks for your feedback trapper. Hopefully more usefull ideas are added to this thread. More information about the next test will appear soon, including a newspost.