i really hope this is an actual beta test and not a god damn sneak peak. i am so tired of companies using beta tests as "Previews" to their game instead of beta TESTING. :|

This one is closed and will require an NDA, so my assumption is this is for actual testing and not a 'preview' or a wave of stress testers

ive been down that road before, and it just ends up being a sneak preview. either that or, like when i was in FF14's beta, they just blatantly, bold faced IGNORED the beta testers

Well sounds like you know a lot more than I do, I haven't been in many betas.

Well a lot of people who play it probably only want a free preview of gameplay anyway.. not necessarily to be helpful.

and i hate tehat <_< i always have after i got an email from the warhammer beta saying they wanted people that had never played MMOs to get a chance to get into the beta before someone with my experience. at the time i was gathering testing experience so id have a sort of 'history' that i could use if i ever got into a game related job

There are very good reasons for wanting to test on users with no experience. I also doubt that they have very high expectations for anyone in a beta test as they likely rely on their in-house testers to find the core concerns and functionality/balance problems. Public beta testing might as well just be "testing across computer specs and with more users while also promoting the game" rather than "finding the bugs".

the perfect counter to this is FF14. a game so terrible that during its beta test they, LITERALLY ( i am not exadurating) could not keep the servers up longer than 2 days out of each week. they only had 2 areas open, one starting city, and one zone where tyhey jammed a bunch of randomly levleed monsters in. none of the tradeskills work and on monster internet with a high end gaming rig you were lucky to get yellow latency and 10 FPS. The game was an absolute fucking mess. it wasnt even acceptable for an late alpha. The entire feedback forum (The only place that we could give feedback) was exploding witH "This doesnt work" "This needs to be fixed" "we cant even play the game"

what did they do?

release it anyway

and it became a game that was s oabsolutely terrible the lead production executive had to quit his job or get fired, adn they let everyone who bought it play for free for like, a year with promises of major overhauls that have never come about.



MAJOR bugs, usually can be gotten rid of in alpha. but smaller bugs are what the beta test is for. This graphical glitch here, or that numerical problem there. smaller stuff that the anal retentive gamer masses that ARENT braindead moron zombies will catch a thousand times over. thats why i fucking love RIFT so much. they listened to every single peice of feedback i gave, and changed or fixed it. even totally pointless visual stuff like "This spells animation is kinda bland and boring" then, 2 beta patches later WHABAM new animation.


Beta tests are about way more than just stress testing :| but theyre jsut seen as sneak peaks these days

The example you gave sounds to me more like the developers screwing up in general and making bad decisions. I still stand by what I said. There may be exceptions in some cases, but there are good reasons for wanting users with little to no experience. In fact I'm almost tempted to say that someone with NO gaming experience can provide amazing feedback that a veteran would never pick out.

i honestly dont think that, at all. a person brand new to games would have no idea at all about game balance, so would have no way to genuinely notice if something is too strong or too weak.

These are not the only aspects of a game.

Sorry, I've read your spiel and I don't agree. I find it amazing that you're advertising yourself as better than the other experienced players they probably invited. Just a heads up, the following numbers are "examples" and not concrete, I have no idea what they were discussing internally. You can increase them and my point still stands. They probably had 1000 beta slots open and they decided 700 will be experienced players, and 300 will be new players. Out of the 70,000 experienced MMO'ers you weren't picked and therefore that is why it turned out so horribly? I'm surprised they told you the reason you weren't picked too, actually.

I'm also curious what your idea of a "preview" is. If it's "They only let us test one zone and one dungeon, and 3 out of 10 classes." Then let me explain how the process works. That's not a "Preview," that's what is called "Focused testing" in the industry. Designers don't need you to play through ALL of the content to find all the problems, they can get a good picture of how the audience will play their game with just a few places given. And that's what they're looking for in these tests. They want to know what you think of the game, and how it plays, your experience. Where you think it has problems and what you prefer over other things. Then they evaluate that and make adjustments where they the professional designers see fit.

And again, more reason to have new players too! New players give designers oodles of information that experienced players do not give. The "New Player Experience" is extremely important at bringing in more revenue. I'm not downplaying the experienced player though, as they too give great amounts of information too. Catching all those horrendous bugs? That's QA's job.

Open beta is a marketing ploy. That's when they're trying to just get people into the game so they can sell it to their friends. Though, it also serves as another test... Which is "How well their servers can handle the load." Sounds like Final Fantasy was already in the dumps, maybe they just didn't have the time to fix it or the money. Who knows.

Anyhow, there's a lot of reasons for games to fall on their face on launch day. I don't think it's because of a "beta" though. You'd need to be inside the company to figure out why they fell on their face. Also, realize, games are on a budget. The more months they push back on a project, the more expensive it gets. It would be awesome if games could always "Push back" until they are done! But, there's a lot of things you need to make that work successfully, which you'll only see in a few companies these days.

I agree very much. If anything, the test at the very least helps to test out various demographics of users, and having anyone in at all can help tremendously. Even if these people don't fill out bug reports, the game clients usually have crash-logging and other logging functions to get that valuable, tasty data.

Considering the influx of GW2 beta gameplay videos I've seen on Youtube, I'd say it's a legit beta.

I signed up this morning!

Already signed

I signed up, but given they scanned my C drive of only 28 gigs with 4 free, and not my 380/500/1tb they'll probobly not invite me, but still it's a beta, i'd prefer the propper game hehe

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

I hope everyone gets in, unrealistic as that is :D

Thanks for the heads up Morca, been somewhat interested in this game since I heard about it a few months back

Thanks for letting us know =)

I gotta admit, I normally skip all journal entries. But thanks for this. :D

Thanks! My mate and I will be playing this hardcore when it comes out :D So I signed up right away. Want to play when it comes out? :>

I tried earlier but got an error message after the computer scan was done :<

Gl!! I signed up too the moment I got home from school XD I went to there website in last block to see some stuff and saw that and was like (Shits a brick) "MUST SIGN UP FOR THIS!" >.> Then I I had three friends giving me strange looks. XD

plenty of space free almost a terra byte so i sighned up and downloaded/bought 1

Thanks, sigh up and waiting.

This has gusta written ALL OVER IT . 3.

or y'know
coded all up in it or something...

thanks!

i am so goddamn excited for this game. in fact, i haven't felt this way about a game in.... forever. i..... i think i am in love!

Fanks, I would have missed this. B:

Finallyyyyyyyyyyy. Something to go on instead of grinding for freakin titles in GWEN

Yeah I signed up too, here's hoping. This is the only mmo I would play.

I have been waiting for this game for almost five years. I am more excited about this than any other game, book, or movie. Anywhere.

Already signed up, good sir! =)

Been waiting for this. I hope to get a chance to put it through it paces to see if it lives up to my hopes

NERD

WOW

Was planning on it, but my hype died for it. Guildwars was my first early teen childhood, but i'm feeling more for TERA than I am for it. Thanks though, might as well give it a shot.

Did so at about 1130 this morning, had no issue cept for a 505 error when I first tried it, waited 20 minutes and went though the whole scanning and then info submit page, just waiting for the email hopefully.

Signed up yesterday. The game actualy looks really good.

Yeah another wow killer and i hope it can kill it...

Stoped wow for 2 years then tried swtor wit great hopes but it failed so bad. İ returned to wow again but as casual player rathr then a hardcore one.

As most ppl say i play wow becouse there is no better one out there to play.

Hey, thanks for the link. I've been waiting for GW2 to open up it's beta for people. ^_^

Stop spreading the word >.>

ikr X3
Makes it less likely we will get in!

Considering I've cloekd 10k hours on GW1, i feel I deserve my spot xD

clocked*!

hehehehe XD I don't know how much time I spent on Gw1 o-o
but a lot

As if my small contribution of informing people would actually make a difference x)

I have high hopes

Definitely looking forward to seeing this! My friends are in the Tera beta though and they just demoed it at the office for us. Holy... Cow... Do want to play that! So, in my eyes, GW2 has a competent challenger! I'll probably play both anyway though =P

Honestly I have not seen much publicity at all about Tera. I only knew about it from word of mouth. I have no opinions on it as of yet :p

Yup! Totally understandable! I only heard about it from people who've played it, and then they showed it to me. So... amazing... I dunno. It's a good thing guild wars isn't subscription! I'll be trying both =)