The Heroes' Ascent Testing Weekend was a public beta testing event that gave players the opportunity to try out proposed changes to Heroes' Ascent and comment on them in fansite forums.
Schedule and Delay[]
The event was scheduled to take place between 12:00 PM PST on January 19, 2007 and 11:59 PM PST on January 21, 2007. The start of the event was delayed, however, and it did not actually begin until 2:21 PM PST (22:21 GMT) on January 19. GuildWarsGuru.com posted the following message from Martin Kerstein, NCSoft's German Community Coordinator regarding the delay:
Hello.
Unfortunately there is a delay. The staff is still working on the patch and completing the final adjustments in order to ensure that everything will run smoothly - it seems that some developers were unable to work during the last days due to being stuck as Seattle was hit by snowstorms this entire week. The update will be released, but I am unable to specify the exact time at this point. I will keep you updated regardless and post the patch notes in the forum as soon as we are ready.
Thanks for your understanding!
Martin Kerstein
NCsoft German Community Coordinator
Nature of the Changes[]
The changes introduced in this update included temporary mechanical changes to the Heroes' Ascent maps, temporary game-wide skill balances, permanent and temporary game-wide mechanical changes, and permanent bug fixes. A full list can be found at the corresponding game update article.