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Star Wars: The Old Republic News - Game Testing vs. Beta Testing
Posted by Michael Bitton on Sep 30, 2009 | 32 comments in our forums
Did we (meaning our site and all the many other outlets) make a mistake in our reporting that "Beta" sign ups had begun yesterday for Star Wars: The Old Republic?
)
I'm not so sure; but it appears BioWare's Star Wars: The Old Republic Community Manager, Sean "Ashen Temper" Dahlberg, is making a distinction between Game Testing and Beta Testing in a post on the game's official forums, pointing out that BioWare has not announced anything on "beta testing" yet:
I would like to point out that we are doing Game Testing sign-ups; we have not done any announcements about "beta" testing. As specified in the original article, the Game testing for Star Wars: The Old Republic will be rolled out in several phases over an extended period of time. These test phases will begin with smaller, tightly focused test groups, and later tests will expand.
It looks like there is a distinction between beta and game testing. Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!
The original post can be viewed here.
oh men i love you guys
some player will pissed to have left aion for a chance to beta this game
just to read it was just a incompany testing lol
you just made my day guys
I think they are just trying to emphasize the fact that a big open 'beta test' is still a loooong way off.
They are allowing us to sign up for testing now, but they want people to know that there won't be any testing right away for the vast majority of us.
I remember back in the day when beta testing involved players actually testing the game and reporting bugs. There didn't need to be a distinction between people who were there to test and find bugs and people who wanted to play around with the game to see if it was something they wanted to buy. It used to be that closed beta was for testing and open beta was to see if people could crash the servers.
My guess is that everyone who's signed up in the past 24-hours though is following the more "current" definition of beta testing, which is people come to play more and test less.
Edit: I want to point out though that this trend is not completely the fault of the community either. In the past few years, I've only rarely seen an in-game system that allowed you to quickly report a bug and send it off without having to switch to a forum or send an email in. There needs to be an easy, in-game way to report things to make testing smooth for everyone involved.
Game testing, maybe alpha tests for specific classes/locations.
Beta testing is later on. Where there is a more rounded product available for testing. Testing chat/combat/landscape, etc.
A more thorough test of specifics. I can imagine they will choose a certain group with say Windows Vista with Geforce graphics card and say "test this area for us" with 2x anti aliasing option and resolution min. 1024x768.
I dunno, I am not from Bioware but I can see that as a worthy test.
Yea, I think they are simply making the distinction that is going to be very focused. Like they will probably have every one test one class one session, and another class another session. They may also consider the game pre-beta still so this would be more like alpha testing, which some games do do drafting for. I am still excited about this and either way I am going to try and do the best thing I can.
Way to confuse everyone.
yep, very focused. I can't see this type of testing lasting longer than 6 months though.
No. Just you.
/owned
It almost makes me think there isn't going to be a standard, run of the mill beta.
Just game testing of features and such.
Interesting.
This is a good thing as this will really help balance the game before it goes to the beta phase and then on to general release. Beta testing nowadays shapes up coming patches, rather than any impact on a games release, simply down to time and money.
I wasnt really stirring up with excitement about this yet but as the days go past, I am starting to twitch. I know it wont be anything like Star Wars Galaxies was at launch but so long as the game ticks all the boxes for fun, content and of course, that all important star wars feel, I will be happy
Hell yes you did. Was in middle of posting on the official forums when everything crashed. From chatting on IM Chat it appears that server crashed due to extreme high volume brought on by the reports from MMORPG dot com. You folks should be more careful when you report things, matter of fact do not speculate, wait until Bioware makes an official announcement before going off half-cocked...
There is no beta testing, never will be any sort of beta testing. I remember quite awhile ago the main reasons that Bioware did not want beta testing was to prevent cheaters, exploiters and hackers from getting thier source code....
I dare say the actions of the OP will have negative consequences for the foreseeable future.
Hell yes you did. Was in middle of posting on the official forums when everything crashed. From chatting on IM Chat it appears that server crashed due to extreme high volume brought on by the reports from MMORPG dot com. You folks should be more careful when you report things, matter of fact do not speculate, wait until Bioware makes an official announcement before going off half-cocked...
There is no beta testing, never will be any sort of beta testing. I remember quite awhile ago the main reasons that Bioware did not want beta testing was to prevent cheaters, exploiters and hackers from getting thier source code....
I dare say the actions of the OP will have negative consequences for the foreseeable future.
Yeah, it's all their fault BioWare's site crashed.
Give me a break. That's the most asinine thing I've read on these forums, and I've seen a lot of asinine things here.
And know your facts before you run your mouth as well. www.tentonhammer.com/node/67008
It doesn't matter what kind of "testing" they are going to let people apply to do.
This game was going to get a huge response to sign ups of ANY kind.. so some of the responses (or at least one of them) are a bit odd.
Tho if someone gets to do some of the tests I've done in the past... I think they would probably respond with WTF when they saw what it was. (like watching triangles bounce around in a square for a period of time... more or less).
LOL!
This is sarcasm, right? Tell me its sarcasm. Cause man, that's funny. Nah. That's not funny. It's funneh. You are seriously freakin' funneh.
I have done all types of game testing in the past and the way I look at it is that I am helping out the SW: TOR team in some way.
Being part of testing would be fantastic, not because you get to see the game before it's finished (I mean really, it won't be all that if it's still in this phase), but because you get to help make one hell of a potentially great game. Yeah, people who aren't interested in finding the bugs and glitches, exploring areas just to see if you can, or talking to NPCs to make sure the dialog choices function properly are probably going to be allowed to be testers, but the way I see it, the phases will weed those people out. If you're really there to help, I think they'll notice ^_^.
Some years ago did Alpha testing mean internal testing of things like the Ui.
Beta testing meant that some people would test parts of or the whole game for bugs and report them in.
What everyone today call a open beta was just a few free days of gameplay when the game launched and most games had nothing like that whatsoever. They sometimes tried to fill a server for the last week of the beta, as a stress test.
Many companies have watered down those words now and that is most likely why Bioware cleared things up with the statement.
yep iits testing ,not beta testing ,not even alpha testing lol.they just need to test part they re not sure
Sean "Ashen Temper" Dahlberg this is the guy who helped Shadowbane out. Good guy, SB was the best MMO EVER
all it was was a test to see how many people would come rushing to the forums to sign up. so yea it was a game test, to see how many suckers thought they were going to sign up and get to "play" the game when bioware allows it.
what i can see testing being of concepts and systems more than anything making sure that each piece can work how they want. Never expected it to be more than that for now and sadly the idea of beta testing has been so watered down that lost its original meanings (hell look at google who has us all still beta testing their stuff). In past when used to test for EQ and was in 2nd phase of SWG it was much diffrent than it is today where beta testing is just another phase of marketing strategy and not so much for testing systems and designs.
As clear as mud...
I hate all these people testing before the game comes out because it basically means everyones mastered the game before it's even out and it isn't exciting anymore.
Like I said before, this game is a late 2010 or 2011 release at best. Getting excited over testing that is at best many months away is silly. They still are defining classes for this game, so it is not completely fleshed out yet. Bioware is much like Blizzard, you will not see the game from them until it meets their satisfaction. Case in point, the way they handled Dragon Age,
Some years ago did Alpha testing mean internal testing of things like the Ui.
Beta testing meant that some people would test parts of or the whole game for bugs and report them in.
What everyone today call a open beta was just a few free days of gameplay when the game launched and most games had nothing like that whatsoever. They sometimes tried to fill a server for the last week of the beta, as a stress test.
Many companies have watered down those words now and that is most likely why Bioware cleared things up with the statement.
/agreed
Isn't this called Alpha Testing?
DA was a marketing decision from EA so they didn't have to have a second ad campaign to cover the console ports like what happened with the Mass Effect launches, at least to my understanding.
LOL
You have been part of a test and you don't even know it.
Someone please tell me when you have seen a major website crash do to numbers of hits? And before you run your fingers (mouth) think about it first. A simple test to see what your, hype, server loads, and lag are.
Just some food for thought.
Nope
To me it means I'm getting ready to buy a high-end game not a Ford (Fix Or Repaird Daily).
So please test the game for 10 years if thats what it takes.
O and a game is exciting to me when I Mastered it, I don't need to be first.
The fact that this is now being differentiated really bothers me. Why? Because if people think the results of beta testing are bad now, as in a waste of time because people are using the opportunity to play rather than report bugs and suggestions, I cringe at the thought of these same people being in alpha stages.
BioWare is a smart company. They've probably learned the lesson from Turbine, which showed so well in LoTRO, that a Beta Test is really more of a Marketing tool than a testing tool. Yes testing still happens, but if you've got a defective, boring, unplayable game in the beta test, that word is going to get out to the general community fast -- NDA's be damned.
So what you see here is BioWare controlling the characterization of their process which is smart business.