First, the Team Leaders are players, NOT Mythic employees. They are volunteers who have chosen to spend some of their free time helping to make the game better for everyone, often at the expense of being able to play the game for fun. So be aware that they are players, not employees, and don't always wear the Team Leader hat when in game - please respect their choice if they ask you to post your feelings, observations, or concerns to some message board because they are playing and not testing at the moment. Also, Team Leaders are not customer service representatives. Many of them have their /advisor flag set to "on" when they play, but they cannot make changes in game, unstick characters, or perform other CSR functions, so please don't ask them to do that.

The testing teams were introduced to help the individual developers stay on top of important issues that might otherwise be missed. These teams are to delve into the strengths and weaknesses of each area in depth, and note bugs, issues, concerns, and areas where there is imbalance. Each class has a testing team, a tradeskill team, and a large encounter team (for things like the dragons and other high-end multi-group encounters). These testing teams include players on the live servers as well as on the Pendragon test server.

The primary role of the Team Leaders is ensuring that the realms are balanced against each other, and bringing bugs and other concerns to the developer's attention. Their secondary role is to act as a class advocate; making suggestions to keep the class fun to play while not being overpowered or underpowered within the limits of the vision for each class. Team Leaders and team members are encouraged to dabble with other classes to get a feel for their balance and a fresh perspective on their own class. Please note that their highest responsibility is to help create a balanced game, not looking out for a particular class or realm although they are advocates for their area. Many Team Leaders have called for strengthening their class when its weak, and called for weakening their class when it's too strong - that is their role. However, they are not the last word on class balance. They provide feedback and suggestions, and then the developers make their own decisions internally.

The duties of the Team Leader include reading the closed Team Leader boards, reading and moderating their area forums on the closed Pendragon test-server boards, and maintaining contact with the player base beyond that as they see fit. Their presence on any board other than the Pendragon test-server board is not mandatory.

They must test any changes that affect their area as they are implemented on Pendragon, keeping in mind the overall balance and vision. It is then their responsibility to collate the opinions, observations, and data pertaining to their area and present that information in an unbiased fashion to the developers. This usually happens the second weekend after a live-server version patch with a Team Leader Report that they may choose to share on public boards if they wish, though they are not required to. The Team Leaders are not involved with developer discussions about their reports and posts on the Team Leader board once they have been made, nor are they part of prioritizing changes, new content, and new features. They are not informed of changes being made before the patch notes are put on the Herald and the Pendragon test-server boards.  Here is how the process works:

1. We gather the feelings of the community and data to back up those feelings with the help of our testing teams. We present those issues/ideas to the TL Coordinator and any other dev who cares to read the TL Reports. She makes short summaries of the issues in each report and consolidates them into one document for consumption by the developers not reading the reports. Several other developers specifically read the reports as well looking for items in their bailiwick.
    
2. Several other devs specifically gave us their emails when there is an issue in their bailiwick.  That leads to an email conversation usually.
    
3. We participate in discussions about issues on the TL Only board, which any dev who can spare the time joins in on. Typically we see the TL Coordinator, the Producer, and several CSRs and developers who have some spare time to keep tabs on what we are doing.  Other developers make appearances when the TL Coordinator calls their attention to a thread in their purview. These discussions are often passionate, and give the developers a chance to see pros and cons of situations from different class/realm perspectives.
   
   NOTE: The developers mentioned above are not the only developers we see, they are the ones we see most frequently. When an issue is in a certain developer's area, they get the information they need. Sometimes it just gets fed to them from us or the bug teams, sometimes they need to come back to us for clarification. Sometimes they work with our suggested solutions, sometimes the developers have come up with a different solution to try... our suggestions are just that - brainstorm starting points.
    
4. So far, you will notice that all of the information is basically flowing into Mythic from us, with opportunities for clarification to make sure the issues are understood and pinpointed.  As I understand it, the issues are then brought to a general meeting if they are new, prioritized, and handed off to the dev in charge of that area. Other issues that have been waiting a while will also be brought up at the meetings before work begins on them to make sure that a better solution might not have presented itself with the revisions to the game since it was first brought up. If they require collaborative effort to make the dev-chosen fix take place, that adds a wrinkle as the involved developers all need time to work on it together among their other projects.
    
5. The item is coded and tested on the dev-only test server. It is then evaluated and the results brought back to a dev meeting to see if anyone has issues with the way it appears to work in that small environment.
    
6. Passing that, it is added to the next Pendragon patch. Sometimes Team Leaders get a heads up about what is going in before the patch notes come out, for the majority of the changes in a patch we find out the specifics when the notes go up on the Herald. The Pendragon community then beats on the changes for a while looking for issues that might appear in the larger test community. Again, discussion and issues are reported back to the devs about the current Pendragon patch via class boards like these, the tradeskill boards over at DAoC Tradeskills, and any other boards that a TL may look at like the various Vault Communities; my two chosen boards are listed above. These issues are time sensitive so they receive priority when reported.
    
7. Once the devs decide the patch has been beat on enough, it is sent live. Issues may still crop up, and depending on their severity may receive top priority or may be added to the general to do list with some lesser priority for future revision.

What avenues do normal players have for bringing an issue to the developer's attention then?

1. They can do a bug report /appeal that will be passed directly to the bug testing team for verification. When verified it will be passed to the developers.
2. They can raise an issue where they know a TL will take a look at it. We generally test it ourselves to verify it, sometimes with the help of the testing team we have assembled, and then it gets reported on the TL Only board or emailed to the appropriate dev. It also will usually end up in a TL Report somewhere, for addition to that process.
3. They can email Sanya with the issue. If its a bug, she'll pass it on to the bug people that would have seen it if you did an /appeal, so that just wastes her time. She's better suited for dealing with the balance issues and answer questions about how the mechanics of the game work behind the pixels.