Poll: Betas as marketing tools

Cacolaco

Since Champions Online is currently running their open beta, I just became curious about how an open beta affects the future success of the game... This is just curiosity, and the questions could be better, but hey - this is game related, so we're here for fun, right?

Nightbringe1

I am willing to bet that a sizeable portion of their initial playerbase has preordered. As such, the word of mouth from the open beta will greatly influence how many copies are sold.

As stands, quite a few people are already canceling due to the issues they are having trying to keep the patcher running.

On the plus side. It looks like cryptic has managed to fix the issue with the patcher. More people are reporting it running smoothly now.

 

A troubled open beta = a troubled game.

If they can't fix their issues in the next two weeks the game will fail and no amount of post release fixes has allowed an MMO to recover in several years now.

Blurr

I think you forgot the poll part of your poll, haha.

That being said, I do think betas are being used too much nowadays as marketing tools, but frankly that's our own fault. When people started trying to get into betas just to use it as a free trial, that's when companies started realizing their beta could be used as marketing.

4Renziks

WoW had a bad open beta, it turned out ok. But ya no one can deny the fact that open beta is as much of a marketing tool as is an actual beta.  Lets just hope the game is good so the people that are quiting because of today will have to come back..Word of mouth is the best marketing there is.  

brenth

hard to tell since fileplanet is charginf for the open beta,, tells me  it sucks  nothing more than  a franchise cut and paste to fleece the drones.

I played the table top game  but I hear  that CO game play is way simpler and dumber  just a blast and bash game,  am I wrong?

no way to tell unless you pay the fee.

NovaKayne

Originally posted by Blurr


I think you forgot the poll part of your poll, haha.
That being said, I do think betas are being used too much nowadays as marketing tools, but frankly that's our own fault. When people started trying to get into betas just to use it as a free trial, that's when companies started realizing their beta could be used as marketing.

 

QFT!

 

Also, I find it hard to believe people are cancelling thier pre-orders because of patching issues.

vmoped

Originally posted by Nightbringe1
As stands, quite a few people are already canceling due to the issues they are having trying to keep the patcher running.

 

Correction, they are stating that they will be canceling. How many are we may never know.

Cheers!

Cacolaco

Sorry bout that... Previewed and it deleted the poll. It's on there now though, so have fun!

vmoped

Originally posted by brenth


hard to tell since fileplanet is charginf for the open beta,, tells me  it sucks  nothing more than  a franchise cut and paste to fleece the drones.
I played the table top game  but I hear  that CO game play is way simpler and dumber  just a blast and bash game,  am I wrong?
no way to tell unless you pay the fee.

 

You can preorder from quite a few places and get in, then cancel you preorder. Plenty of people do it. Fileplanet is not the only source for OB. Plenty of sites gave away closed beta keys which are also allowed into OB. I had no issue getting a total of 4 closed bet keys for my mates and I from four different sources and times.

Cheers!

Cacolaco

Sad though it may be, I personally believe that the first day is more critical than any other. Although it isn't fair, first impressions are the most important.

Games really stand to lose a lot of potential subsribers if things go really wrong (not being able to get into the game at all for hours on right from the start qualifies, I think. This is especially true when you are pulling a bunch of your subscribers from Fileplanet...

A better approach would be to make everything available ahead of time, start the game two servers or more servers on a Friday night, and let people in for the first evening with no patch. On Saturday, they could run a patch and force everyone onto one server for a few hours to stress the servers...

I don't know... I' m not expert, and I won't give up on a game because of a poor start, but I think they need to seriously take precautions to make things as smooth as is practical, while still accomplishing their goals, because I think a bad beta can turn into a marketing nightmare.

Jammaslam

I preordered and am still working on the download, cannot get in yet, but would not cancel my preorder nor am upset in anyway.  Its the first day of open beta, maybe I will be to finish downloading tommorrow and get it running, or the next day.     Now if I cannot get in to play at all during open beta then uh-oh hotdog time.

Cacolaco

Well, I think that the Fileplanet access people who were taking part to see if they were interested are the ones who are most likely to walk away from the experience with no intentions of buying the game, based solely on this experience. I could be wrong though... sometimes people surprise me.