Our next release, DP3 is almost ready! As this is a fairly large release we have decided to run a few public tests. We want you to help by participating in a mass test to determine how the sync and stability of DP3 holds up, as these are obviously critical areas for players. This public testing will be done with the "light" version of the client, which does not include the server, server module SDK, or the map editor.

For our initial test, we will ONLY test general gameplay, using a gamemode called "fmjdm". This gamemode was chosen for 3 reasons:
1) It has the same city-wide style of the most popular servers
2) It is the only gamemode of this style that is currently DP3 compatiable, due to scripting changes
3) Gamemodes of this type brought out some of the worst bugs in DP2.

The timeframe of this testing is not set in stone. The start and length of the testing depends on how quickly people show up and how well the testing goes.

The testing will be run on IRC at #mta-pubtest. See our section about IRC for information on how to use IRC.

Additionally, we have a mailing list to let you know when we are about to begin releasing files for testing on IRC. To join this list, sign up here: beta.mtasa.com . However, it will be required that you join #mta-pubtest during testing if you wish to participate.

If you use twitter you can also receieve updates on new beta tests, releases and witty insightful comments from our QA team by following our twitter page .

Edit by jhxp: The first test has ended! It's astonishing how fast our test channel started filling just after a few minutes since the publishing of this news post. We appreciate your willing to help us with testing, as we've managed to reproduce some issues which could occur on the server with bigger number of players only. While there were some other issues which we've had to deal with while the test, the opinions on this build were generally positive.

Edit 2 by Ransom: The second test has ended. This test occurred yesterday around the same time of the first test. The second test was identical to the first test explained above. We also tried out a few other scripts and gamemodes afterward just for fun. The response to this test was even greater than the first. We had around 75 players in the server at one point and around 115 people in IRC. We saw some nice progress since the last test with fixed crashes and other issues. Only a few major issues during general play arose again. Overall it was very acceptable game play - a massive sync improvement over DP2. There will be more test(s) to come. It is likely that one of these mass tests will be a precursor to the actual release. Thanks again for testing.

Note: When we are not testing, the IRC channel #mta-pubtest is closed with a join password activated. We will reopen it when we are ready for the next test. Once we are, we will announce it through the information channels mentioned above.