Age of Conan

Originally posted by Draccan

Originally posted by kparton

Originally posted by celdridge

Originally posted by jplayer01

Originally posted by kparton

Originally posted by Dkevlar

I'm sorry , your assumption is not acceptable. we  beta testers pointed out, many times, the flaws, bugs, inconsistencies and general malfunction of ..well almost everything you people are complaining about.

the fact they preffered to ignore what we reported is not our fault.

And to make things even worse, many og us come here and to other forum and tried to warn people of the problems, but most times we ended up insulted or called liers, or worse by fanbois and teenagers on steroids that couldnt cope with the reality that their hyped product was not as perfect as they wanted it to be.

And now you are pointing the blame at us? We were exactly what you called us beta TESTERS. We didnt had the power to change anything, we could just give feedback that rarelly was considered by either Funcom or the community that now appears to .... blame us?

 

 

 

Don't take it the wrong way, I asked "should we.." not your to blame.

I'm just prompting a discussion on the ethics of testing and how wayward beta testing has become.

 

Ethics of testing? How wayward beta testing has become? What does that even mean? Beta testers can't do anything about it if the developer chooses to actively ignore bug reports. They're nothing but volunteers and so have no real influence on the game or its development. Beta testing as a process is fine if it's actually exploited as the valuable resource it is, but in AoC's/Funcom's case, it was nothing but PR, apparently.

Imo, it would be akin to shooting the messenger.

And looking at the first post, it's obvious you were implying that beta testers should be blamed (especially the last sentence). Beta testers != devs.

 

I could not agree with jplayer more. You did specifically say should we blame them becuase they should have found this crap. If you are going to take aim at a community kparton, especially a community of gamers who obviously enjoy what they are doing and are upset that they were ignored by the devs do not back down from your statements when challenged.

I'm not backing down.
 

I wonder how many beta testers what you speak of bought the game at release?  If every beta tester new the game was crap why buy it at release? I remember reading many posts from fanboy testers that praised the game and recommend it to the masses at release.

 

I'm sure theres a select many of you that are honest beta testers and again I applaud that... unfortunatly i'm asking whether we should blame the not so honest testers.

 

Did it every occur to you that testers had limitied access and that Funcom made a lot of promises and lies?

Sieges were supposed to have been tested by a limited group, not the regular testers. Itemization was promised to be added at launch, though it never came. Etc etc..

Stop supposing things you don't know anything about!

 

well aslong as you all voted with your feet, thats all that matters.  Hope you ALL wern't tarded enough to shel out the box fee.

Like a few others before me allready said. We did report bugs, we warned people this wasn't finished or the innovative thing they thought it would be. Heck I even let friends and guildmembers know, they left WoW. Only to come back in 2 weeks. Kinda funny when the first week they were praising it like hell. Once the novelty wore off and they realised about the "beta" state the game was in they were happy to be back.

For me AoC is once again a thing that had potential and then they screwed it. Seems most mmo's are like that lately. I had one SWG, but I'm fed up with "it will get better" attitude. Let's hope Warhammer will release in a finished way, not that it's my game. But this industry needs more stable releases and concurrents.

Originally posted by DeserttFoxx

As an alpha and beta tester for the game, blaming us would be ridiclous.

 

We can only find the bugs, make the suggestions and hope they are fixed. They werent fixed, we have no control over that, and we never have control over things like that in any beta test. They made the choice, between a finished client and meeting their deadline and they chose their deadline.

 

They fucked up, just like the devs did in vanguard.

What he said.  I was only in Beta, but to put the blame on testers instead of the corporation which has the final say and are well aware of the state of their product, is just 'ignorant'.

Originally posted by kparton

Well, its there job to test everything before release, why wasn't all this crap found, reported and fixed allready?

Too many people wanting to play the game before anyone else instead of actaully testing the bloody thing? me thinks.

I highly doubt the alpha/beta testers are ever to blame for a game's flaws.  Like some of the previous posters stated and just looking at the nature of mmorpgs gamers:  Players ALWAYS point out problems. 

I have a friend that test EA games and was asked face to face from EA representatives what his impressions were of a first person shooter he just played for an hour.  He said point blank "The game needs a lot of work and I would not buy it in this state".  Mmorpg testers are given the luxury of being behind a computer screen and conveying their thoughts more accurately through writing.

AoC is in the state it is most likely because of Funcom. 

Blaming it on testers is ridiculous.

We tested, reported all bugs we encountered. We never saw most of the so called endgame, which includes sieges in beta. We were also constantly told that we are testing an old client, and that the internal QA has a new client where everything is fine and dandy (go figure).

There were lots of testers telling FC all the time that the game is nowhere near ready for release. UI functionality, invisible walls, limited zones, lack of content etc were subjects debated on a daily basis among the testers, but the communication with the developers severely deteriorated especialy in the last couple of months before launch. There were huge threads on the forums full of constructive posts, with either no dev response at all, or a quicky smirky remark from a dev going essentialy less bluntly saying "you dont know crap - we know better, and our internal QA has it all solved" Basicaly the root of dev communication you see now, started in beta - no comunication besides closing threads or giving quick halfass remarks.

I notified my circle of friends that they should be carreful about the game a couple of months before the launch. Where I failed is that I went and bought the game anyway, even though I knew the state of it, but I wanted to see if that internal QA build that was a couple of patches infront of the beta build was really so fine and dandy :P

From my point we did as much as we could in the given situation, so dont blame the beta testers, go blame that lying greedy company that released it inspite of teh fact that they knew the real state of the game and kept and still keep lying about it.

Why can't we just blame teh people who made the game?? Seems pretty obvious, and FunCom tries daily to prove to us all that they can't build or run an MMO to save their life.

As a Beta Tester I haven't bought the game...

They never heard our suggestions and advices, the rest is history!

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Originally posted by celdridge
And if anyone is still thinking of buying this game please just take $50 out of your wallet and wipe your ass with it. You will get the same result as you would have from Funcom.

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A total classic post. This made me lol irl.

I blame the a-holes, who reported NDA-breakers on these forums, and I blame the MMO-staff for deleting their posts.

I read the AOC-forum here the last weeks before release. But most texts praised this game to heaven, mostly written by viral freaks with a huge "Acolytes"-sig.

Open beta payable and broken? Nono, they have 3 betaversions, the other two work fine...