Beta Testing Shards

The Training Room (aka Test Server) is a test server where developers deploy beta versions of City of Heroes before moving the version to the live servers. It is a sandbox where players may test changes to their characters or play new content before it is pushed out to the general public.

Reasons to Play in the Training Room

There are four main reasons players may want to play in the Training Room instead of a live server:

To test permanent changes to their characters before those changes are actually made. For example, if a player earns a powers respecification, he or she can copy that character to the Training Room, respecify his or her powers, and try them out. If the player is dissatisfied, the changes are not reflected on the live servers. If a player wishes to test a different respecification, he or she may delete the character on the Training Room, recopy the character from the live server, and test further changes. You also however, can buy an infinite number of respecs for a single character, reducing the amount of times you'd need to copy a single character.

To play new content. The Training Room receives new content before it is pushed to the live server. If a player wants to play the latest and greatest publicly available content with the knowledge that his or her characters in the Training Room cannot be copied to the live server, the program may be a bit buggy, and the Training Room sometimes gets wiped clean, he or she may play there.

To engage in Arena PvP. There is a thriving Arena scene on test, with both pickup play and scheduled SG vs SG matches. This is really the only place for a Supergroup to battle a Supergroup from another server.

To participate in an event. Many community events, including some official events, take place in the Training Room since players can bring characters from any server to it.

How to Play in the Training Room

IMPORTANT NOTE: If a copy is to be made, then you will need to have sufficient free space before copying.

To play City of Heroes in the Training Room, a different build or copy of the Game Client program will need to be created on your hard drive.

Running this Training Room copy of the program after installation will bring up a similar updater and login screen to the Live client. However, once a player logs in, he or she will see only one entry in the server list: Training Room. Select this server and play as normal.

PC and Windows computers

For PC computers, the simplest method is as follows:

Copy the existing Desktop icon (or shortcut) for the City of Heroes program executable.
In the copy, edit the properties so that the target contains the parameter -test at the end. The command line should appear as:
"(path)\CohUpdater.exe" -test
Run the new shortcut
- City of Heroes will prompt you for a path to install the Training Room client.
  By default, the installation path of the normal City of Heroes game client is C:\Program Files\City of Heroes. When the CohUpdater.exe file is run with the -test parameter, the default installation path for the testing client is C:\Program Files\CoHTest.

Mac OS X computers

For Mac OS X computers, there is a separate .app available for the Training Room

Visit ftp://client.coh.com/Test/US/ and download MAC_CoH_Test_Server_US.dmg
Mount the .dmg and copy City of Heroes Test.app to your preferred Applications folder
Run City of Heroes Test.app

Speed up Installation

Both of the previous methods will start a new installation and download 2.8GB+ worth of files and executables

The test client's installation may be significantly sped up by using the following process:

Follow the previous steps and let the updater start downloading
- The status will start with "Connecting Attempt #1..."
- Once connected, it will change to "Checksumming...", "downloading" or "fixing"
Cancel the updater (click Quit in the lower right hand corner)
Copy the contents of the piggs subdirectory of the normal client's installation folder to the test client's piggs subdirectory
NOTE: The piggs directory is specified to avoid issues with .checksum files in the root coh directory.
- PC
  normal default: C:\Program Files\City of Heroes\piggs\
  
  test default: C:\Program Files\CoHTest\piggs\.
- Mac
  normal default: /Applications/City\ of\ Heroes.app/Contents/Resources/transgaming/c_drive/coh/piggs
  
  test default: /Applications/City\ of\ Heroes\ Test.app/Contents/Resources/transgaming/c_drive/coh/piggs
Run the Training Room application (Cohupdater.exe -test or City of Heroes Test.app).
The updater then 'fixes' the files in the \piggs\ folder with any modifications currently being tested, which is significantly faster than downloading a new version of every file.

Copying a Character to the Training Room

In addition to simply creating new characters in the Training Room, a player may opt to copy an existing character to the Training Room. This process is a one-way copy only; characters cannot be copied from the Training Room to any live server.

To copy a character, log in to the CoH Character Transfer page and follow the instructions. After a few minutes, your character will show up in the Training Room.

One may copy a character to the Training Room server multiple times, and a unique copy will be created each time. If the character name already exists on the Training Room server, a sequential number will be appended to the characters name. Note that even if a character is copied only once, his or her name may still have a number because characters with duplicate names may be copied from other servers to the Training Room.

Notes

As of February 2, 2006, characters will retain their influence/infamy when copied from a live server to the Training Room.
A player's global chat name in the Training Room may be different from his or her global chat name on the live servers. By default, it will be the same as the first character that a player uses in the Training Room. If that character's name has a number appended to it because of the above note, so will the player's global chat handle. Just as on the live servers, a player's global chat handle may be changed one time only in the Training Room. No chat may take place between live servers and the Training Room.
It is possible for an existing character to immediately obtain new badges due to the copying process because of lowered requirements on existing badges or because of requirements for new badges already being met.

External Links

CoH Character Transfer page
FAQ article about copying characters to the Training Room