With last weeks Beta Q&A from EA Mythic's General Manager Mark Jacobs, it became evident quite a few members of the War Hammer Online: Age of Reckoning community are more than a little anxious to get in. Is there really a lot to see and is it worth getting excited over? RadarX looks at a number of reasons to not only lower your expectations with a closed Beta, but possibly avoid it altogether.
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Another disadvantage that we've seen in some recent products is radical changes in development, even a month from launch. The Witch Hunter you fell in love with may no longer get (insert ability of your choice), or even have the skill taken away entirely. Do you really want to be the guy in chat channel that says "Back in the Beta we could take out any class with that ability. That was the way it was and we liked it!" Why ruin your first impression of what could be an amazing game with an incomplete preview?
Well written and well said, in my opinion. A lot of people look at beta as free play time but honestly, the average gaming person has no idea how much work and frustration goes into testing a game for it to be successful.
Well, actually...I *do* want to be the guy who says "You know, back in beta, x was great, y sucked, and z was just fun to screw around with."
Misguided, yes, but I want to be that guy.
And I'd like to see the game breathe and live and grow as I watch. I want to see what they started with, what they changed to, and that way I can understand why they changed something, and if it's likely to be changed again.
An excellent article that many people would do well to take to heart. I am not a Beta master but I have Beta'd before. Beta'ing can be so incredibly frustrating sometimes. Bugs, incomplete, instability, balance, etc, etc, etc...
Why are so many people so eager to get in to WAR Beta?
Well, because many people are willing to put up with that pain or, at least, think they are. Also the chance to experience the game evolving and, depending on the developer, influence that evolution are enormous draws. Really want a game to be more like this instead of that? Well get into its Beta and see if you can slowly swing the developers around to seeing things your way. Playing the game after retail and seeing content/feature/mechanic that you were part of convincing them to put in is a major rush.
True the free game aspect is a draw too, but many realize the tradeoffs involved whether they will admit it to themselves or not. Yes there is also the jumpstart aspect where you are among the first non-employees to see it. However, I think the "I was part of making whatchamacallithappen," is the biggest draw for most.
I agree with pretty much everything you guys are saying. I was just amazed at how much outrage and the fact Mark Jacobs had to MAKE a beta Q&A to quell the frustration.
I'm not in beta and I'm in no rush. I'd love to get in, especially maybe the last month or two but we could be talking 6 more months.
I tested beta as well. It is work and when it is all said and done just ends of being a complete different product. Yeah you get to be the first to see the in's and out's but eventually what really have you gained. I chose to WAIT.
I agree with pretty much everything you guys are saying. I was just amazed at how much outrage and the fact Mark Jacobs had to MAKE a beta Q&A to quell the frustration.
This, in my mind, is simply a side effect of WoW's popularity. Literally millions of people are now paying, at least some, attention to what the latest thing in mumorpuging is. Similar to all the hype and interest over the iPhone's incoming days though on a smaller and more intense, if that can be believed, scale. Of course that smaller still involves hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people. That is a lot of attention and makes possible sources of backlash much more important for developers to deal with quickly. Especially on a game which has as much widespread interest as WAR.
AoC has a lot of community interest as well but at least they have the Mature rating going for them. A percentage of their potential customer base wrote off AoC as soon as they discovered that it has topless women and gore in it. Another percentage wrote off AoC when they realized it was going to be very different from WoW. I'm not saying that they won't possibly end up buying and playing the game but it curtailed hype and interest levels to a significant degree. Not to mention that Funcom just doesn't have the immediate name recognition that EA and Activision have.
When you toss on top of all that the fact that AoC's NDA doesn't even allow people to admit that they are in the AoC's Technical or General Beta and it gives Funcom a certain insulation from community backlash, pre-retail, that EA Mythic does not have with WAR.
First of all Beta, *ESPECIALLY* in WAR, isn't at all what the average MMO player (even players with beta experience) think it is.
WAR's focused testing is no secret. EA/Mythic's method has been to schedule closed beta testing in certain windows, where the beta servers are completely closed down and beta testing windows are only open for specific periods of time (usually a few weeks on average) for players to focus on very specific aspects of the game; then after a few weeks or so, the beta servers are shut down completely until they open up the game for the next very narrow, focused area they want to test.
Sure, looks good on paper and okay, I really do believe friends at Mythic who wax poetic regarding how great it focused tests works for them and for the game doing beta testing in this manner.
I'm as patient as the next guy in beta, even when two quests in a row are bugged (at the end, of course) I don't feel I've wasted my time because the Devs will get the bug reports and fix them.
But know what? I don't like this focus testing. I don't like having to re-roll a character every few weeks, start playing at level 1 for this focus test, then roll a level 20 for that test, even having to change classes regularly to "properly" test a game.
My son says "hey, this is beta, it's their beta, we do what they want" ... okay, fine. But I don't get paid for beta testing and there's a fine line between the work we do helping develop the game as a beta tester while having some measure of fun, too.
The fun factor directly relates to the amount of time I put into a game and a game in closed beta is no exception.
One of the issues and draws for people to get into beta IS the delays themselfs. Think of how long people have waited and with the Open Beta so limited really, this isn't exact a small name game ether in the EU. Warhammer is huge here and some people would trade a leg to be part of MMO testing, regardless of the strain and stress. Ive Beta'd a lot and id not say its something you'd WANT to go through. Constant shifting in classes, marking and reporting of errors, constant bugs that can ruin a game for years to come, even after its fixed.
The "I was there to make it great" idea apeals to them that HAVEN'T done it before. For us that have, its more "i WASN'T there when it happened "
First of all Beta, *ESPECIALLY* in WAR, isn't at all what the average MMO player (even players with beta experience) think it is.
WAR's focused testing is no secret. EA/Mythic's method has been to schedule closed beta testing in certain windows, where the beta servers are completely closed down and beta testing windows are only open for specific periods of time (usually a few weeks on average) for players to focus on very specific aspects of the game; then after a few weeks or so, the beta servers are shut down completely until they open up the game for the next very narrow, focused area they want to test.
Sure, looks good on paper and okay, I really do believe friends at Mythic who wax poetic regarding how great it focused tests works for them and for the game doing beta testing in this manner.
I'm as patient as the next guy in beta, even when two quests in a row are bugged (at the end, of course) I don't feel I've wasted my time because the Devs will get the bug reports and fix them.
But know what? I don't like this focus testing. I don't like having to re-roll a character every few weeks, start playing at level 1 for this focus test, then roll a level 20 for that test, even having to change classes regularly to "properly" test a game.
My son says "hey, this is beta, it's their beta, we do what they want" ... okay, fine. But I don't get paid for beta testing and there's a fine line between the work we do helping develop the game as a beta tester while having some measure of fun, too.
The fun factor directly relates to the amount of time I put into a game and a game in closed beta is no exception.
Beta is work though. At times they can be fun but more times than not we need to do work. Remember, those of us who are in beta VOLUNTEERED to do this work, hence the reason we aren't getting paid. Although, a while back Mythic was hiring testers at 10 dollars an hour to test at their offices in Fairfax, Virginia. What would be the point in beta testing if we were only going the parts that were 100% working and fun? The point is to find broken things and things that aren't fun and to write detailed reports on them. If it was fun all day every day we would be in a launched state and not a beta. On the flip side if you are really upset about having to do focus testing instead of 24/7 general testing where you test whatever, whenever, and most testers get burnt out, you can always hand your beta invite back to Mythic and they will give it to the next guy in line ^^.
Why Beta Testing Isn't Important
For us that have, its more "i WASN'T there when it happened 
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