Beta Testers

Saryk

If you owned your MMO company and was going to release your game in a year. Would you or wouldn’t you allow beta testers?

Reklaw

close or open beta testers?

Also depence on how big the QA team is.

 

Raiizen

and no  NDA since i always break the nda anyways since its so pointless and funny to get those angry fanbois mad

Saryk

My main beef with beta testers is this and I am just as guilty.

We play to get a heads up; if it is good or if it sucks (I do submit bugs, however). If it is good we want to know where the sweet spots are way before anyone else, or at least tricks of the trade. Some have more nefarious reasons. If it sucks we will scream about it sucking, then others come to the defense of the game, with the usual, it’s in beta.

But really is it necessary?

 

Gestankfaust

Originally posted by Gkarn




My main beef with beta testers is this and I am just as guilty.
We play to get a heads up; if it is good or if it sucks (I do submit bugs, however). If it is good we want to know where the sweet spots are way before anyone else, or at least tricks of the trade. Some have more nefarious reasons. If it sucks we will scream about it sucking, then others come to the defense of the game, with the usual, it’s in beta.


But really is it necessary?

 

 

I think it is...and see no reason to beta test any other way. Unless you work for the devs and are getting paid to debug.....then there is no reason not to "play" the game. As long as you participate in the end outcome...as in relay testing info.

 

I think of it as the game maker's getting free labor....even if it fun for us too.

 

Illius

There's a difference between beta test and free trial.  I'm a firm believer that beta testing should be closed with employees only so that the overly vocal twats can't influence the creators and turn the game into something it was never intenede to be.

If you want to play for free and test the game to see if it meets your "lofty" standards then by all means wait till there is a free trial.  Or just find someone who bought it and go over and play it for a bit.

Ilvaldyr

I've beta'd a few games in the past, and it's always funny to read beta forums where people are complaining about finding bugs as though they were sub-paying players who were being personally inconvenienced by them.

In my experience, a lot of people see "beta tester" as "advance free preview" and do very little to contribute to the bug-finding process. Still, if nothing else, they're useful as stress-testers I suppose.

Arndur

Yes and the NDA would be like WARs in that you could say you were in the beta just no info. There would also be a no whiny policy. They are there to find bugs, if they whine about something that is broken and act like they are paying $15 its one time warning 2nd time ban.