Originally posted by Fion

It's only in these modern days that ANYONE counts any part of beta a 'trial' cause if you asked the devs, they'd tell you flat out it's not. It's a serious part of testing, more specifically, it's load testing. You cannot realistically expect a game to be 100% finished 2 months before release just so YOU can try the game out.

in other words - release the game and have a trial and not in that order

there is no stigma or at least there shouldn't be, to having a trial as a game is released - stand alone games have demos well before release

too many people have been burned too many times by paying for the beta

Are there any screen shots of the mammoth and rhino?  Do they actually do anything in a seige battle, if so what are the difference between the two?

No open beta, especially with the memories of AO in my mind (continously rubberbanding back into the forefront of my brain!), is slightly worrying. However, a much better indicator of "issues" with the game will be the NDA. When will they drop the NDA... if they do it like SW:G, 2 days before release, you know its a steaming pile of poo. The sooner they drop the NDA, the less worried about a flop at release I'll be. (I cancelled my 2 SW:G boxes I'd preordered when they announced the launch date AND kept the NDA up heh, talk about your red flags).

WoW went a long LONG time without an NDA, but they knew they had a good game that worked fairly well, so there was nothing to 'hide'. Other games.... they use the NDA to hide the problems.... that sounds reasonable, EXCEPT they hide the problems that they don't intend to fix prior to release as well (if ever). Making sure you don't spout off about a buggy game in early beta is one thing, making sure people don't spout off about a horribly designed game that's still buggy and laggy and will be at release is another.

Originally posted by Fion

There hasn't been any MMOG really that benefited from an open beta, besides the load testing. Even when WoW had it's open beta 'weekends' it got nothing but negative comments about how it wasn't finished, the talents system wasn't in, the game consisted of camping mob spawns (which, in the newbie areas, is totally accurate,) how the quests are generic and stupid. It didn't get good 'player reviews' during these open beta try-outs at all.

 

IMHO I'd rather see them take that last month to polish instead of trying to appease some spoiled open testers, and just offer a free trial out of the gate, or soon after.

Personally I remember lots of good player reviews during open beta, and after NDA lift.

I'll wait for a 7 day - demo or whatever on this one. However, this game I will definitely try.

Originally posted by gatheris

 

Originally posted by Fion

There hasn't been any MMOG really that benefited from an open beta, besides the load testing. Even when WoW had it's open beta 'weekends' it got nothing but negative comments about how it wasn't finished, the talents system wasn't in, the game consisted of camping mob spawns (which, in the newbie areas, is totally accurate,) how the quests are generic and stupid. It didn't get good 'player reviews' during these open beta try-outs at all.

 

IMHO I'd rather see them take that last month to polish instead of trying to appease some spoiled open testers, and just offer a free trial out of the gate, or soon after.

we know and they know that open beta is a trial - so "finish" the game and give us a taste before we buy - pretty simple

 

 

QFT

Originally posted by eric_w66

No open beta, especially with the memories of AO in my mind (continously rubberbanding back into the forefront of my brain!), is slightly worrying. However, a much better indicator of "issues" with the game will be the NDA. When will they drop the NDA... if they do it like SW:G, 2 days before release, you know its a steaming pile of poo. The sooner they drop the NDA, the less worried about a flop at release I'll be. (I cancelled my 2 SW:G boxes I'd preordered when they announced the launch date AND kept the NDA up heh, talk about your red flags).

WoW went a long LONG time without an NDA, but they knew they had a good game that worked fairly well, so there was nothing to 'hide'. Other games.... they use the NDA to hide the problems.... that sounds reasonable, EXCEPT they hide the problems that they don't intend to fix prior to release as well (if ever). Making sure you don't spout off about a buggy game in early beta is one thing, making sure people don't spout off about a horribly designed game that's still buggy and laggy and will be at release is another.

QFT, my thoughts exactly

My sentiments exactly.  The mounted combat really intrigues me.  Visually screenshots are stunning.  Hopefully the final game in motion does justice to the screenshots.

"VENGER: 

Are there any screen shots of the mammoth and rhino?  Do they actually do anything in a seige battle, if so what are the difference between the two?"

Intertia is taken into consideration in mounted combat, as is size.

A horse can run circles around a mammoth, but a mammoth can withstand more damage.  Charging into battle on a mammoth, you better account for the size of the beast and your stopping distance, because the game takes the laws of physics into consideration.  All mounts have different characteristics. 

Very cool.

No open Beta

20 fps in populated areas ?!

Bad feeling

Originally posted by eric_w66

 However, a much better indicator of "issues" with the game will be the NDA. When will they drop the NDA... if they do it like SW:G, 2 days before release, you know its a steaming pile of poo. The sooner they drop the NDA, the less worried about a flop at release I'll be.

WoW went a long LONG time without an NDA, but they knew they had a good game that worked fairly well, so there was nothing to 'hide'. Other games.... they use the NDA to hide the problems.... that sounds reasonable, EXCEPT they hide the problems that they don't intend to fix prior to release as well (if ever).

Excellent point!   Dropping the NDA is a good indicator of a game's quality.

With the release date coming up in a couple of months, we should expect Funcom to drop the NDA very soon and let the beta-testers reveal what they think.   If they have a good game, they'll have nothing to fear and it will add to the hype.

Funcom never dropped a NDA.

These aren't only my words but those of the current AO game director.

No open beta is a good thing, since when did people -test- in there? right never( to the but i did! congrats you're one in a million again proving that open beta is useless and testing should be limited to a small group)

People are so used to being able to play an unfinished game during open beta and call it a trial or demo which is both false, it's time that trend ends and testing becomes testing and demo's are demo's, if they need more members after release they can always give trials atleast then people can get create a finished game experienced rather then a half finished i want to be unique so i must be in earlier and must let the whole world know how special i am opinion. yes i can hear some people cry that they didn't got a beta invite and i couldn't be happier today.

scougre, there's different kinds of beta testing. Bug reports shouldn't have to be filled out in the later stages, most bugs should have been squashed by that point. Later stages of beta testing are to stress the servers and to test the game itself. 5 people playing a MMO aren't going to reflect what the MMO is going to be like with 2000 people playing together. Can't simulate the PvP aspects, the economy aspects, the crowding issues, the lag issues.

Then there's testing the gameplay itself: Is it fun? What could be improved? How long/hard/tedious is the level climb? Too fast? Too slow? Too boring? What kinds of abuses/cheats can people find? 100,000 people testing a game will find that out a lot faster than 500 (if funcom has 15,000 testers, I'd bet they get concurrency numbers around that mark at max pop, PotBS did).

If I'm invited to a beta early in the process, I submit my bug reports  (so I'm one in a million? heh don't think so), if I'm invited to a stress test or open beta, I'm there to test the game itself and stress the servers. I shouldn't HAVE to submit bug reports. Construvtive feedback responses, perhaps, if I find something I think could be improved or something that should be removed to increase fun.

And those testings can only happen during open beta?

Yes they were that selective with beta invites due to them only wanting to have people to fill in bug complaints and not give feedback. OPEN BETA does NOT aid the game at all it is MARKETING tool nothing more. From my range of experiences all good feedback gets lost when? during 'open beta', ridculous to suggest that closed beta is only for bugs. The best combination is to throw in people you know for sure of what they are throw in some griefers, gankers, carebears, explorers, PvPers, PvPers, achievers and harvest in the feedback don't not big numbers for that.

'Stimulate economy?' my friend the only good game economy that is player run is EVE and that's because they took the time to hire someone with a high degree in economics to do so, it's pen and paper work mixed with some real life economy knowledge and gaming experience that truelly is a 5 man job of all things.

100.000 people in beta to be honest is one big mess, why? majority is there to game(play not test) and due to the big mess on the forums you'll rarely see any developer or coder or content designer clarify themself, also more feedback to go thru which of 90% is rehashed a previous persons opinion, also more players means higher workload on GM's means longer queues means real bad bugs with priority are ignored more often as noone wants to wait several hours on support.

Servers are intended to have 6 to 8k people 15K to stress test zones, instances, servers not enough for you?

Knowing that those servers are split up by region so they will rarely reach their maximum peak of 8k.

Your logic looks nice on paper but reality is one differnt story.

scougre,  you're saying that open beta doesn't help the games at all? That's bizarre thinking. I'm sure PotBS got good feedback from its open beta regarding things like Avatar Combat, the newbie mission setup, etc. They wouldn't have gotten this information without it.

Heck, in my own software development, with far few clients (300ish) to work with, we still have 'beta's. Any place (town/city/county government usually) that wants to (and is willing to take the risk) is welcome to test our betas. Betas aren't just about marketing, though that is a factor. WoW had an extremely long open beta and it helped that game through marketing AND making the game better. Other games like TB had a beta that went too big too early, and turned a lot of people off to it prematurely.

Eve's economy isn't good because they hired an economist (they added that guy only recently). Other games, heck, even single player games, have had "good economies" built into them (Railroad tycoon type games spring to mind). But in an MMO, you need thousands of players trying everything under the sun to see how the economy works out. PotBS had a problem with having a tiny beta population for a long time, and the economy worked "okay" for that small of number, but when they started adding beta testers, the problems with the economy became more apparent.

I've been in many closed beta's, and the developers had no idea of what type of player I was. Its the same as open beta for the most part. Just fewer people. The key part for the developer is alpha, get the game working right, mostly bug free, and then start inviting people outside of the core group of known testers.

I know you have to invite people who do weird things and do unusual things even in my business apps. When we deliver up a new app to our support/QC staff who aren't very tech savvy, they find issues that the programmers would never have thought to check for. And even then, we send the app out to the users in a beta so THEY can find the stuff that the support staff couldn't think of.

PotBS had 10,000+ people in the beta towards the end of its closed beta (prior to adding the fileplanet peeps or the stress test 2 peeps). Do you know how many people played the beta any given night? Max pops were about 150 brits, 150 pirates, 80 french, 80 spanish. Out of 10,000+.  So if AOC has 15,000, you can bet they're getting 500ish playing. That's not stressing the servers. PotBS had 2 seperate stress tests to get more people to play and to try to crash the servers (both times successfully). Sure people play Open Beta to play. That's what you hope they'd be doing. If they were busy submitting bug reports, you opened your beta too soon.

Server stress I guess would be just like it was with LotRO, certain days each month on going, except by invite only.

PotBS had that kinda stuff too, but it wasn't anywhere near "real" population levels (hence the two fileplanet stress tests).

While I'm sure PotBS learned from their in-beta stress tests, they only discovered several (many) server problems/crashes when they turned on the faucet of outside testers. It comes down to statistics really, 15,000 sounds like a lot of people, except its no where near that many playing at any one time, even if you do schedule events to try to clump them up. Look at Eve, 200K accounts, and they hit 30Kish max pop. 15% or so, and that's a live game people are paying to play. Many of those 15,000 don't even play, and then there's a large chunk that barely play, etc... Its kinda like mass marketing, for every hundred ads you put out, you get 2-3 responses.

No open beta?  Only time will tell if they are not having an open beta because the game is like Vanguard or it is so good already that they don't need one.  Open beta is really a free trial.  If the word is that the game sucks I feel not many will buy the game just to try it.

Originally posted by U-Turn

No open beta?  Only time will tell if they are not having an open beta because the game is like Vanguard or it is so good already that they don't need one.  Open beta is really a free trial.  If the word is that the game sucks I feel not many will buy the game just to try it.

There isn't a need to be so skeptical or cynical in my opinion.

Tens of thousands of people will actually play/ test the game before release.

Originally posted by U-Turn

No open beta?  Only time will tell if they are not having an open beta because the game is like Vanguard or it is so good already that they don't need one.  Open beta is really a free trial.  If the word is that the game sucks I feel not many will buy the game just to try it.

Why should it have a open beta ? , wait till the game gets released and then wait for a 7 / 14 / buddy pass trial thing if your not willing to buy it and absolutely have to "touch" everything before buying something.

5 of my friends won't have to worry about not be able to try before buy if I can get my hands on Collector's Edition, which features 5 buddy keys