Good one.

Have been looking forward to Swtor for quite a while now and damn glad I didn't succumb to having a go at testing.

Mostly because I subscribe to your "masses to debug this shit now" idea of current beta testing (along with word of mouth marketing purposes) and hence I am humble and lazy: I'm not so special that my input would be more desirable above that of others. Also I have faith in Bioware to deliver us a good game and I get to experience everything for the first time on a character which doesn't get deleted. Also; I was going to buy the game anyhow.

WIN!

Nice article, worth a few chuckles as I saw few of my thoughts mirrored (only I do play the beta ;)

).

Anyway, it's sad to see how beta feedback changed SWTOR. Current (final release build ) still has more bugs than 2 releases ago, and same bugs as previous release. Best PvP gear was made random and from daily/weekly quests.

Was fun listening to guildmaster rage yesterday while he was reading the patch notes and we subsequently named the final build of SWTOR "the challenge" since game challenges you with so many bugs.

So idk what kind of feedback they got from the droves of mindless drones but it seems it's focused on making the game easy as piss and baby/senior citizens friendly. Hell, they even added an arrow in warzones ->your team...for teh mentally challenged \o/

I beta tested SW:TOR over the Thanksgiving weekend and I have beta-tested many a game in the free and subscription realms and I completely enjoyed the experience. To me, the game was pretty well finished. I noted some problems with the graphics (visual tearing/artifact with AMD cards that was noted in FAQ) a very infrequent crash that ended up being an issue with Microsoft Security Essentials blocking the program. Also, some difficulty balance issues, where some "easy quest" was super hard, and some hard quest was really easy. In fact, I really did not consider buying the game until I played it that weekend. In some way, I think it was a test weekend to increase the buzz. Increase the amount of pre-orders, which is already doing pretty well. I got my key through an mmorpg site I belong to or may be from origin itself due to buying digital copies of games /\ o.o /\

wjwatkins

Originally posted by headphones

Originally posted by Inktomi

Not that I'm bitter either but I didn't get into the SWTOR beta, or the Secret World beta for that matter. Pfft, just means that I'm going to wait until its released and listen to what certain parts of the community says. Then and only then will I plunk down some cash for the game.

When a company holds a beta and requires people to pre-order or even order the game client before they get to play it, I have a problem with that. That was a dirty trick that Trion used and NCSoft used with Aion. Played both and cancelled both pre-orders. I do regret not following through with Aion though, it actually turned out to be a halfway decent game.

 

i got offered the beta, but didn't accept. more because of the timing and being unable to download the large files at that time of the month. my isp would've cut my speeds down to 56k for reaching the limit (australian isps have some odd ideas of what "unlimited downloads" means). i'm not annoyed about missing out. it's looking like what i expect it to be: a time filler until gw2.

not sure why you tacked on that last part about companies requiring you to pre-order, because i didn't pre-order swtor to get into the beta. australians can't actually pre-order it there anyway. just signed up months ago as a volunteer is all.

I'll explain: That last part had nothing to do with SWTOR, it had mainly to do with the two companies I mentioned. Just another way that publishers are using beta as an excuse to get players to pay money for something that used to be free. Coyote, the original article writer detailed some differences between his experience in past betas and I was merely pointing out some other new tactics that some devs are adopting that annoy me. 

It was a new paragraph, new topic, unrelated to the SWTOR point. Hope that cleared things up.

Originally posted by Inktomi

Not that I'm bitter either but I didn't get into the SWTOR beta, or the Secret World beta for that matter. Pfft, just means that I'm going to wait until its released and listen to what certain parts of the community says. Then and only then will I plunk down some cash for the game.

When a company holds a beta and requires people to pre-order or even order the game client before they get to play it, I have a problem with that. That was a dirty trick that Trion used and NCSoft used with Aion. Played both and cancelled both pre-orders. I do regret not following through with Aion though, it actually turned out to be a halfway decent game.

 

 

I'd agree if that were true but I preordered aions ago and the only access I ever got was the beta weekend that anyone and his dog could join. My boyfriend however has been invited more than once despite the fact that I am the one paying for my copy of the game and his copy of the game. So I am getting rather irritated right about now. I'm expecting that he will get into early access earlier too because he got to redeem his code slightly before me because I was at work.

Originally posted by CharSol

Originally posted by Inktomi

Not that I'm bitter either but I didn't get into the SWTOR beta, or the Secret World beta for that matter. Pfft, just means that I'm going to wait until its released and listen to what certain parts of the community says. Then and only then will I plunk down some cash for the game.

When a company holds a beta and requires people to pre-order or even order the game client before they get to play it, I have a problem with that. That was a dirty trick that Trion used and NCSoft used with Aion. Played both and cancelled both pre-orders. I do regret not following through with Aion though, it actually turned out to be a halfway decent game.

 

 

 

I'd agree if that were true but I preordered aions ago and the only access I ever got was the beta weekend that anyone and his dog could join. My boyfriend however has been invited more than once despite the fact that I am the one paying for my copy of the game and his copy of the game. So I am getting rather irritated right about now. I'm expecting that he will get into early access earlier too because he got to redeem his code slightly before me because I was at work.

I wouldn't say something here if it wasn't true. You might have been talking about the last stages of Aion's open beta stage. I was there for that all the way back to CBT Weekend 1 because I pre-ordered it at my local gamestop. By the time you were playing with everyone and his brother, I had pulled my pre-order.

Maybe your situation was different than mine, doesn't make mine untrue, just makes it different.

Last game I tested was LOTRO. I refused to participate any longer, because its obvious they don't care what a beta tester thinks. They just want a horde of yes men that tell them cloning WoW is the way to do it. Then what do these companies get? F2P hybrid model!!

I empathise with the OP, having had the same Honor of beta testing in the early days myself.

However, things have changed in many levels, not only on what Beta Testers are being called in, but also on the very same fabric that constitutes a Beta.

Now days it is a marketing Campaign, SW:TOR, I have come to the conclusion, has been doing these "Beta testing Weekends", only to be able to expose as many people as possible to the game. Yes getting Stress Test data from their automated background systems at the same time but any actual player feedback I really beleive was not important and since concurently to these tests there was a group of Closed beta tests from whom to get feed back from anyways.

The tools for Testing games have changed over the years.

In addition, the mentality of Devellopment teams has changed too, feedback from players is sumarilly dismissed only acknowledged again for marketing reasons and to upkeep the "hype", since what the game will be and how it will be is something that has been pre-established already, at least in big devellopment teams and companies, it is more personaliseed in smaller independent games.

But ya pretty much that.

MAN !! Dontcha just love getting into a car and it still has that newly homeless person's skin car seat smell :)

1. Not missing much from the game other that is a Star Wars themed MMO game.

2. These days, beta testing is just for hype.

3. And yeah, that's what she said!

i got my invite for the 11/29 test event and enjoyed the game very much.  naturally, that was the first weekend in months that i actually had to work both days so was only to progress to level 16+ before the beta closed.   yes, i too was dissappointed i didn't get another invite for this weekend but looking back, it's probably a good thing.

back in 05, i was able to get in on the beta of DDO:Eberon.  i digitally signed the NDA and spent about a full month testing/stress testing that game.  i even pre-ordered the game (as i've done with SWTOR)  but...  with all the beta in DDO and a complete wipe of toons between sessions, i was so burnt out on having to go back into the same areas over and over again that when the game launched, i only played it for a month before cancelling my account and heading off to another game. 

unfortunately, the same will prolly happen here with SWTOR mainly because it's going to be a subscription game.  there are WAY too many free to play games (DDO now being one of them) that i'm not going to keep paying while waiting around for them to come up with a new expansion pak once the current release has been maxed.  mind you,  i don't mind grinding, but at some point you just gotta say, 'WTF? '

for all those who swear by WoW...  when i first played it, i wasn't impressed.  i did the starter pak a couple of months ago and it has definitely come a long way from where it started but here's something to think on...

IF that game is SO good.... why did Blizzard/WoW go from a Buy to a Neutral rating on it's stock shares?  too many people cancelling their subscriptions, that's why.   WoW/Netflix...  there is a lesson in there somewhere and i'm glad i'm just an old  gamer and not a CEO of either one of those companies.

I know what you mean.  Playing in the TOR beta the last two weekends and when a server restart happens the chat log goes crazy with people complaining.

 How dare they restart and try to fix this game that I am not yet paying for!  I demand satisfaction, or at least Lea in slave bikini uniform giving me an apology!

I actually do try to be helpful in betas, and not just test drive.  Except for Star Trek.  They really should have paid me for that one.

I think most gamer don't understand the fact that first most games if not all are tested by a pro team. They need players just to test a greater scheme of the game which lead to the stress test. And that's the whole problem here, gamers aren't testing the game that much, but more like the hardware and the overall quality of coding in fact, not what is coded, but how it is coded. This create a very frustrating situation because gamers are never listened when they point problems (ye gamer don't give a fuck about the how, they don't even understand it, what interest them is the what). So the dev team just ignore them all together, they don't give a crap because they are not supposed to point design flaws, in fact they don't really even need their opinions. They do it because a small team can never corner all the small bugs as well as a mass of fan boys, but that's just a good side effect. And its frustrating for the dev team because they have their game bashed even before it launch, and they can't really do anything, because it's already too late. So gamer testing is like a double slap that really don't give anything to either side, but its still a must, well because having huge testing team wouldn't do it either. And that's exactly why it turned into a happy advertising fest with time, now its like a sweet facepalm for both party, its nice and pleasant, well somewhat. Gamer try it for free, and the company got his code optimized and his hardware running smoothly.

'Preview weekends' and 'Stress testing' is not really 'beta testing'. Previews, open betas, call them what you will are kind of common nowadays but 'real' betas still go on despite these.

So the small percentage of elitist gaming geeks should decide for the rest of us gaming masses what kind of game they should play? The title of this post is quite appropriate I must say.

I did enjoy the humor of the article but disagree with the OP - I think the more people involved with beta testing in games the better since feedback will be from a wider range of player.

I was selected for SWTOR beta and enjoyed it immensely and I'm not a gaming expert - just an avid MMO player who has been playing MMO's for about 10 years now. I was happy to be involved and to offer my opinion and suggestions to the mix.

Games are for EVERYONE and not just for the Coyote's of the world :)

As that punk once told Harry Callahan in the elevator: "Better luck next time fool" :)

Originally posted by echolynfan

So the small percentage of elitist gaming geeks should decide for the rest of us gaming masses what kind of game they should play? The title of this post is quite appropriate I must say.

I did enjoy the humor of the article but disagree with the OP - I think the more people involved with beta testing in games the better since feedback will be from a wider range of player.

I was selected for SWTOR beta and enjoyed it immensely and I'm not a gaming expert - just an avid MMO player who has been playing MMO's for about 10 years now. I was happy to be involved and to offer my opinion and suggestions to the mix.

Games are for EVERYONE and not just for the Coyote's of the world :)

As that punk once told Harry Callahan in the elevator: "Better luck next time fool" :)

 

So games are for everyone, but you are not supposed to give your opinion? So how are you doing that? seam a bit contradicting isn't it.

Or maybe you don't share the same opinion so prefer other to shut up?

Originally posted by Inktomi

Originally posted by headphones

Originally posted by Inktomi

Not that I'm bitter either but I didn't get into the SWTOR beta, or the Secret World beta for that matter. Pfft, just means that I'm going to wait until its released and listen to what certain parts of the community says. Then and only then will I plunk down some cash for the game.

When a company holds a beta and requires people to pre-order or even order the game client before they get to play it, I have a problem with that. That was a dirty trick that Trion used and NCSoft used with Aion. Played both and cancelled both pre-orders. I do regret not following through with Aion though, it actually turned out to be a halfway decent game.

 

i got offered the beta, but didn't accept. more because of the timing and being unable to download the large files at that time of the month. my isp would've cut my speeds down to 56k for reaching the limit (australian isps have some odd ideas of what "unlimited downloads" means). i'm not annoyed about missing out. it's looking like what i expect it to be: a time filler until gw2.

not sure why you tacked on that last part about companies requiring you to pre-order, because i didn't pre-order swtor to get into the beta. australians can't actually pre-order it there anyway. just signed up months ago as a volunteer is all.

I'll explain: That last part had nothing to do with SWTOR, it had mainly to do with the two companies I mentioned. Just another way that publishers are using beta as an excuse to get players to pay money for something that used to be free. Coyote, the original article writer detailed some differences between his experience in past betas and I was merely pointing out some other new tactics that some devs are adopting that annoy me. 

It was a new paragraph, new topic, unrelated to the SWTOR point. Hope that cleared things up.

ah, k. must've been too big a leap in a new direction for me. but i'm not known for my reading skills. apologies.

Originally posted by Requiamer

Originally posted by echolynfan

So the small percentage of elitist gaming geeks should decide for the rest of us gaming masses what kind of game they should play? The title of this post is quite appropriate I must say.

I did enjoy the humor of the article but disagree with the OP - I think the more people involved with beta testing in games the better since feedback will be from a wider range of player.

I was selected for SWTOR beta and enjoyed it immensely and I'm not a gaming expert - just an avid MMO player who has been playing MMO's for about 10 years now. I was happy to be involved and to offer my opinion and suggestions to the mix.

Games are for EVERYONE and not just for the Coyote's of the world :)

As that punk once told Harry Callahan in the elevator: "Better luck next time fool" :)

 

So games are for everyone, but you are not supposed to give your opinion? So how are you doing that? seam a bit contradicting isn't it.

Or maybe you don't share the same opinion so prefer other to shut up?

Uh duh - that's what I was saying with my post - please read :)

I was saying Beta testing should NOT be just for the 1% elititst gaming experts but rather for a wide range of player.

"You see, back in the early days of online gaming, being selected to take part in a beta was a pretty big deal. You had to fill out applications, list your past experiences, and if and when you were finally selected? It was like getting a puppy on your birthday, winning the lottery or stumbling across a picture of an uncovered breast in an old copy of National Geographic Magazine."

lol Thank you for giving me a good laugh this morning when I read this (I mean this in an entirely positive way).

Back in the day of 1986 I got into the Habitat beta simply because I found it and applied.    I suppose the relative small number of people on Quantum Link followed by the even smaller amount that noticed the article about it... helped.

Back in the day getting into the Ultima Online beta.. meant that you filled something out and sent $1 to cover shipping the disc...

Everquest was a bit harder to get into and I honestly only got in before "phase 4" because I knew someone that knew someone.

Past experiences?   how many MMO betas had there been ... back in the day.

Personally I took the article as more of a humor thing.. maybe it was supposed to be serious but I found it enjoyable to  read and funny.

Back in my day when I used to beta test we walked uphill both ways just to get the disk for the game! And they made us test it blindfolded so we really knew what we were doing!

Seriously, I understand being bitter about not being able to test, but beta testing hasn't changed at all. I've been MMO'ing for over 10 years now, as well as beta testing several of these games, the only thing that has changed is the player base- namely the size and demographic. You can't have a beta of 1000 people when there are close to 2 million people who want to test it, and the larger the pool the more lemons you find.

10 years ago the MMO crowd was 90% basement geeks who took serious pride in their gaming, I know from experience. As the genre expanded more mainstream players came in who may not have held so sacred those original nerd oaths uttered in EQ or UO or AC or whatever pre-WoW MMO might have held your fancy.

The fact is, those players are still there, they are just now the minority to a more loud, gimme-now, free-loot generation of gamers. I tested TOR for a year and found several other dedicated testers who considered it an honor to play the game and help out in any way they could. I also found several idiots who knew what was best for the game, how to fix every bug, needed a uber-lightsaber as a beta testing reward, and swore every other class than their own was overpowered. The fact is, these days ya get a little of both crowds from MMO's.