Allows you only enough time to see the honeymoon part of the game, keeps you away from the main tester forums and servers so you can't hear or see what the long term testers are saying.

Brilliant, crooked as 'ell but brilliant none the less.

If they had any honestly or integrity at all they would lift the NDA or at the very least allow the weekend testers on to the main tester forums.

What a load of self-entitled BullCrap.

You are not owed a lifting of the NDA.  Stop with what you deserve and what you must have.  Stupid little forum games.

The smart move is to keep the NDA as long as they can.  Keep it until release.

Lifting the NDA over 2 months before release? What games company in their right mind would do that

They gave you a chance to play the game,  they didn't tell you how long or how far you could go.  You had what.. 72 - 94 hours available to you?  Some people could have played 50 or more hours over that weekend,  and if you think thats still a honeymoon phase you're ridiculous.

People need to get over themselves,  they aren't going to lift the NDA 2 months before release.  Nobody does that.  They'll lift it in december, when they are certain that whats in the game, stays in the game, and isn't changed drastically.  They implement fixes and changes all the time,  so it doesn't even matter what you guys ended up playing this weekend,  its going to be somewhat different before the NDA is dropped.

I hope it turns out good for the people preordering before any (critical) revieuw is written.

It smells fishy tough and i wont burn my fingers on fail mmo #4431 this decade :P

I will wait at least a month before buying an mmo, if people blindly preorder mmo's and the developers make a huge profit when its not even worth it then we just support scammers.

It will be worse and worse as more and more fail mmo's will be comming out with a massive hype machine and deliver shit end game contend.

Sure the journey counts also, but if your max level with a week and have nothing to do then i call it a scam :P

Originally posted by Sorrow

Allows you only enough time to see the honeymoon part of the game, keeps you away from the main tester forums and servers so you can't hear or see what the long term testers are saying.

Brilliant, crooked as 'ell but brilliant none the less.

If they had any honestly or integrity at all they would lift the NDA or at the very least allow the weekend testers on to the main tester forums.

Beta events are potentially for two things:

Beta Testing (believe it or not - we can add stress testing for that) and...

Marketing

If you are beta testing then test. Nothing more needs to be done. No more needs to be known. Just test and submit your bugs and feedback.

If you are there for the marketing then the idea of marketing is to sell you the product. In which case they will only show you the best parts.

There is nothing crooked about it.

you as a consumer can come to your own conclusions and can wait for reviews/the lifting of the NDA if you are on the fence.

Originally posted by waynejr2

What a load of self-entitled BullCrap.

You are not owed a lifting of the NDA.  Stop with what you deserve and what you must have.  Stupid little forum games.

The smart move is to keep the NDA as long as they can.  Keep it until release.

Agree! The long term testers have thier own forum for a reason. I beta'd over the weekend and submitted my goods and bads. Thats all I need to do. To request more is being self serving and self entitled.

***Raving Rabbid spends a vacation on Dromand Kass with the lovely Satele Shan and thier 2nd child***

Just an FYI beta isn't supposed to be a free trial. It's supposed to help locate and fix bugs and see how players are playing the game to make the game better. They don't owe you a beta invite, they can lift the NDA whenever they please.

You sound like someone who is pissed you aren't getting a week long "free trial of the game first." Yawn...

I think its a terrible idea. Why hide things about your game? Is there something wrong? Why the seperation of the two testers?

Originally posted by Mothanos

I hope it turns out good for the people preordering before any (critical) revieuw is written.

It smells fishy tough and i wont burn my fingers on fail mmo #4431 this decade :P

 

I will wait at least a month before buying an mmo, if people blindly preorder mmo's and the developers make a huge profit when its not even worth it then we just support scammers.

It will be worse and worse as more and more fail mmo's will be comming out with a massive hype machine and deliver shit end game contend.

 

Sure the journey counts also, but if your max level with a week and have nothing to do then i call it a scam :P

 

... its your choice to be at max level in a week.  That doesn't mean that the game should be played to get to max level in a week.  

Hell if the game launches and some people find a way to max level in a week, they deserve to be "scammed"  as they are simply rushing through to an area of the game it would take a regular population a month to get to.  Even if there is end game content there for them that a group is required for,  they won't be able to play it up at the top by themselves.

No different at all compared to what Rift did with the beta weekends that they ran, they still had a different beta test running in the background with its own forums running a completely different client then the weekend testers played with.Swtor is no different the beta is going with a different client then what the weekend testers get with other focus tests going on that have a different server and different forums so the NDA is still much needed.

Originally posted by drazzah

I think its a terrible idea. Why hide things about your game? Is there something wrong? Why the seperation of the two testers?

They have different testing groups with the game in different states.

For example,  don't you think you'd want a largely stable build for a large scale weekend test,  while your other testers in long term beta focus on new bugs from your most recent build?

Rules of the SWTOR H8R

1. If anyone has anything positive to say about the game, then it's because they didn't play.

2. If someone did play the game and still has something positive to say, then they are on Bioware's payroll.

Originally posted by waynejr2

What a load of self-entitled BullCrap.

You are not owed a lifting of the NDA.  Stop with what you deserve and what you must have.  Stupid little forum games.

The smart move is to keep the NDA as long as they can.  Keep it until release.

I hope they keep it up after release :P

No one talks about the fight c.. uhm swtor :P

Originally posted by Sorrow

Allows you only enough time to see the honeymoon part of the game, keeps you away from the main tester forums and servers so you can't hear or see what the long term testers are saying.

Brilliant, crooked as 'ell but brilliant none the less.

If they had any honestly or integrity at all they would lift the NDA or at the very least allow the weekend testers on to the main tester forums.

Pretty much what i thought.

Originally posted by Creslin321

Rules of the SWTOR H8R

1. If anyone has anything positive to say about the game, then it's because they didn't play.

2. If someone did play the game and still has something positive to say, then they are on Bioware's payroll.

I wish Bioware was paying me, but I will say that the game isn't bad at all for what it is.

Originally posted by Creslin321

Rules of the SWTOR H8R

1. If anyone has anything positive to say about the game, then it's because they didn't play.

2. If someone did play the game and still has something positive to say, then they are on Bioware's payroll.

"Excellent!" I cried.

"Elementary". said he.

Originally posted by Struggs

Just an FYI beta isn't supposed to be a free trial. It's supposed to help locate and fix bugs and see how players are playing the game to make the game better. They don't owe you a beta invite, they can lift the NDA whenever they please.

You sound like someone who is pissed you aren't getting a week long "free trial of the game first." Yawn...

Bull.  It's a marketing tool and a stress test nothing more.  People like you are deluded.  Do you really think a public beta generates usable and concise bug reports?  Assuming you have 10,000 testers and 1000 are actually filing bug reports, how many of those do you think are written in a way that they are usable?  Very very very very few.  The signal to noise ratio is just too high.  Bug reports from players likely get tossed in the trash 9 times out of 10.  They look for trends in gaming metrics, crash reports and general forum concensus not bug reports.  They have an internal testing team that they use for real beta testing.  Some beta's even use a group of trusted players that spend alot of time posting useful posts on the forums.

Your job in the beta is to just play the game, that generates the data they are looking for.  Things players might do that they didn't anticipate etc.  Usable bug reports from a randomly selected playerbase is flat out hilarious.

Beta's nowdays are nothing more than a free marketing tool to generate hype.  You can spot the most obvious ones by whether they have always on servers or beta weekends.  Games like rift etc resort to beta weekends because they were hiding something, the fact that the game lacked content and got old quickly.  NDA's used to drop quite awhile in front of the game's release when they knew they had a good game.  A sign of a bad game with problems is one that the NDA doesn't drop till a week or two before release.

After playing the SWTOR beta this weekend my biggest concern is that this is a Age of conan bait and switch game.  Where the first 20 levels are great due to the great story and cut scenes and after that it's your typical shallow mmorpg grind with no cutscenes or voiceovers.  The time i played was fun, but my concern is if the cutscenes and story continue.  I can't imagine they keep up the pace they do for hte first 10 levels and that's a valid concern and probably the reason they are only having beta weekends for the majority.

removed

Originally posted by vanderghast

Originally posted by Struggs

 

 

Bull.  It's a marketing tool and a stress test nothing more.  People like you are deluded.  Do you really think a public beta generates usable and concise bug reports?  Assuming you have 10,000 testers and 1000 are actually filing bug reports, how many of those do you think are written in a way that they are usable?  Very very very very few.  The signal to noise ratio is just too high.  Bug reports from players likely get tossed in the trash 9 times out of 10.  They look for trends in gaming metrics, crash reports and general forum concensus not bug reports.  They have an internal testing team that they use for real beta testing.  Some beta's even use a group of trusted players that spend alot of time posting useful posts on the forums.

 

Your job in the beta is to just play the game, that generates the data they are looking for.  Things players might do that they didn't anticipate etc.  Usable bug reports from a randomly selected playerbase is flat out hilarious.

 

Beta's nowdays are nothing more than a free marketing tool to generate hype.  You can spot the most obvious ones by whether they have always on servers or beta weekends.  Games like rift etc resort to beta weekends because they were hiding something, the fact that the game lacked content and got old quickly.  NDA's used to drop quite awhile in front of the game's release when they knew they had a good game.  A sign of a bad game with problems is one that the NDA doesn't drop till a week or two before release.

 

 

After playing the SWTOR beta this weekend my biggest concern is that this is a Age of conan bait and switch game.  Where the first 20 levels are great due to the great story and cut scenes and after that it's your typical shallow mmorpg grind with no cutscenes or voiceovers.  The time i played was fun, but my concern is if the cutscenes and story continue.  I can't imagine they keep up the pace they do for hte first 10 levels and that's a valid concern and probably the reason they are only having beta weekends for the majority.

I agree with some of what you mention here,  such as the use of metrics on large scale testing.  The weekend tests aren't the closed betas,  its meant to be large scale.   As for the AoC bait and switch,  keep in mind there are 3 stories for every character.  After you finish with the first,  that story will carry on over to the next you embark on,  and your choices will show there too.

Consider it like,  ME 1, 2 and 3.  What you do in one game, when you port your character over, those choices stay with you,  except,  SWTOR is a much bigger game, arching across 3 different story arcs per character with different views, sides, and decisions.

Also, as I said before,  they don't tell you how much you can or can't play on the weekend tests,  if you were inclined to rush to end game,  you could try and focus on just getting to 50,  but is that worth it just so you can see that SWTOR isn't a "scam" of some sort?