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Why only have BWE's?
drel
Member Posts: 918
in Guild Wars 2
Why only have Beta Weekend Events?
Why not have beta as a continual ongoing event?
Comments
Because they already have an ongoing closed beta?
Best MMO experiences : EQ(PvE), DAoC(PvP), WoW(total package) LOTRO (worldfeel) GW2 (Artstyle and animations and worlddesign) SWTOR (Story immersion) TSW (story) ESO (character advancement)
open betas haven't been about testing (except maybe stress testing .. but stress tests never seem to work anyway, so .. ) for years now. they are about marketing. giving you a small taste so you MUST HAVE MOAR!!!
LFD tools are great for cramming people into content, but quality > quantity.
I am, usually on the sandbox .. more "hardcore" side of things, but I also do just want to have fun. So lighten up already
Hype mainly.
Only give the masses a couple days a month to play and they will greatly anticipate those days.
In those 3 days they make sure to do only "fun" stuff to make the most of the very limited time they have.
When the beta weekend is over they anxiously await the next couple days they are allowed to play.
To pass the time between events they flood message boards with comments about how much fun they had during the previous weekend event.
Its all about control, always has been.
wow, is this question for real?
The weird questions are coming out in force tonight! Let the good times roll!
Cheers!
MMO Vet since AOL Neverwinter Nights circa 1992. My MMO beat up your MMO. =S
if you read moe often in the last year since today you would already know why bwe,anet already say long time theres not going to be open beta they dont want us to play the game completely only bwe,open beta means play an complete game game whit all content before release. and not character delection.
That... Isn't what Open Beta means at all. Open Beta, typically, is a public Beta. Open Beta builds are meant, mostly, for stress testing. Open Beta builds are NOT always content-complete. Open Betas are NOT obligated to maintain any of your account data for release, meaning that--more often than not--you don't get to keep anything from Open Beta.
Yes, I'm sure the BWEs are mostly meant as a marketing ploy, and cleverly so, but I'm also certain they do not want an excessive amount of people filing bug reports all the time. Closed Beta is the best scenario for the majority of testing, as the devs won't have their bug trackers inundated by duplicate bug reports but still enjoy a sizable amount of testers providing constant feedback.
BWEs are basically their way of getting an under-control portion of the game out for the general public to see, and not long enough for anyone to notice any major unfixed issues (hopefully). Likely, in part, to quiet any who find themselves unrestful after pre-purchasing the game, and to spread the word that pre-purchasing gives you these tastes of the game on a regular basis. Very clever.
I'm not sure they actually need any of their BWE players for anything other than free social marketting. Even stress testing would need a sizably larger pool of players eventually, rendering the argument that pre-purchasers are at least good for that much.
That said though, you'll often see--in earlier stages of beta testing for most titles--the development run through a short cycle of testing and then a long cycle of development and bug fixing. Then they release a compilation of all new changes and additions, polish what they can, and hand it back to the testers again. That could be what they're doing with these BWEs, but that's less likely to be true since they have an existing pool of Closed Beta testers.
TL;DR? See below:
So, why not have a continual beta? So paying players don't grow fatigued of the game before it even releases. They may not be looking for a subscription, but they still would very much love for you to spend money in their store. That is the likeliest reason you aren't going to be seeing a one or two month long continuous beta test for pre-purchasers or for the public; because Beta testing has very much become an integral part of MMO marketting now.
This^ Is my thoughts exactly. So many people rave about games and play them to death while in Beta, IE SWTOR, but come release it seems that those same people are done with the game and after praising it so highly before start complaining that it's the same ole same ole a few weeks into release. This can happen regardless of whether it's a P2P, B2P or F2P game.
And for the haters of this game, no I'm not saying that Anet is afraid that with enough game time players will realize that GW2 is the same ole same ole with a new wrapper. I'm saying that in my opinion we, the players, enjoy games and then if we "overplay" them (usually in beta) we burn out and start looking for the next thing to wet our appetite.... then we get all excited about that next big thing, overplay it in beta, rinse and repeat.
Would I like to play this game more often than 8 hours a month? Yes, but at the same time I recognize that I easily fit into the category I described above... So I'll wait patiently.