Paying for beta.

besjonok · August 2004

Hi all.

What do you think about it? Is it fair to ask gamers to pay money for playing beta, full of bugs?

PimsCup · August 2004

I think that would be an indication that the game company is struggling for money. If it's an MMO that is doing this, then its probably an MMO that will never finish development.

hercules · August 2004

Originally posted by besjonok

Hi all.
What do you think about it? Is it fair to ask gamers to pay money for playing beta, full of bugs?

I assume you are talking about games coming out bugged and you having to pay.

Honestly i don't think they should but hey the solution is easy don't buy it.

I see so many mmorpg with people ranting how the game is bugged and such.Strange that you come back in a year's time this same folks are STILL paying for the game.

If you can't tolerate the bugs then quit.I did for anarchy online dspite following it for close to 2 years.Once my month was over i decided the bugs were too much for me to bear and left it.

If the bugs are of the limit i feel i can tolerate it i pay.If not its bye bye

Annekynn · August 2004

rentantilus is correct. Quite a few companies do or have released mmrpgs that are still incomplete/beta into the retail channel. "Release now and fix later" is their motto. So people end up paying for unfinished products. Luckily im not seeing that lately with the latest generation of north american mmrpgs (WoW, DnL, Wish etc) as "When its done" is a motto that gamers MUCH more prefer, even if the game ends up being delayed significantly.

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Played: AC1, DAoC, E&B, SWG
Tested: AC1, AC2, DAoC, Eve, Lineage 2, RYL
Uninstalled ASAP: MU Online, Knight Online, Rubies of Eventide

besjonok · August 2004

Rentantilus, nice answer

You just exposed my thoughts. And this game (I know at least one, because I have played about half a year) was "released" almost 1 year ago, but still looks like beta in early stage. Developers just don't pay any attention to bugfixing and comments of gamers about bugs and disballance. Almost all posts on game forum with negative replies and bug description are hardly moderated and erased. And developers do some strange things like working on new features and implementing new items in game, saying that they are really hardly working on them, while all users almost praying to remove some nasty bugs that were well-knows more than half a year ago. Meantime characters and items got bugged due to server crashes and bugs and some players just lose everything they got for months of play. They write to support and ask for rollback, but got no answer. I could continue this list...

So, I just was curious about such kind of games. As I know some other companies ask players to pay for playing beta. Is it just only game of a kind or other games also are offering so many bugs and almost no support? Are they hope to earn lots of money and complete game later or it's just a matter of fact that such projects are not successfull from the beginning?

Roin · August 2004

Originally posted by rentantilus

Actually, I was starting to think that SOE had copyrighted the "pay for beta" system. Remember Planetside? That piece of crap didn't even LOAD on a significant portion of peoples' computers that bought the game in the first few months. Now, I'm used to reading message boards that say "I'm having trouble with this feature," or "This weapon is overpowered," or even "I can't get this one screen to load." But for the entire game client to fail on like 10% of all the computers it's run on?
Let's compare goods and services of two different, but similarly priced arenas: restaurants and MMORPGs. A month of an MMORPG costs about as much as a meal at an average restaurant, something like Friday's or Olive Garden. Now, how would you react if 1 out of 10 meals you ate at one of those places gave you food poisoning? What if the waiter told you, "Our chef hadn't quite finished cooking your steak before I served it to you; expect another one in half an hour. By the way, that'll be $14.95 for the undercooked steak, plus another $14.95 for the second one, please." You'd blow a gasget and walk out of the place, right? So why are some of you STILL paying to beta test these undercooked games?

__________
When you see a new MMORPG, honestly think to yourself: "Is this game designed to EARN my $15 per month subscription with content, originality, and long-term value, or is it just designed to SCAM me out of $50 when I buy the box at the store with flashy advertising, biased reviews, and empty promises?"

One of the best post ever.

CIM_LW · August 2004

Blizzard is making ppl. pay for a stess test (7 day)!

Umbrood · August 2004

What blizzard is doing is not uncommon, and they actually make fileplanet pay to have exclusive delivery right to the stress test, they in turn charge you. Many companies have done the same recently.

Allthough the restuarant analogy has been used over and over in reference to this it is still a correct one and I am to baffled why people put up with it. The onl reason I see is this:

If you use the same example as Rent did but add a few facts, all restuarants behave this way, and these restuarants are the only supply of food, or at least of any food you even reluctantly liked. People would be pissed but they would still go to the restuarant.

And herein lies the problem, there have not been until recently any real competition in ths area, there have been a few mmorpgs out, most of them so far into release many of the game stopping bugs have been sorted, (allthough new ones have been introduced). For a few years back we have had little choice, if we wanted to play mmorpgs then we had little to choose from and if we wanted it badly enough we would whine and grime but we would still pay.

This will hopefully change, seeing as competition will be fierce, a whole lot of clones will be released that wont differ much in content to what we have we have an unique opportunity to walletvote and pay the ones that are good in quality, (technical quality, not content wise as most will be pretty much the same). I so very very much hope people will take this opportunity and show the developers that we are not a herd of idiots that will throw money at them regardless if they deliver anything to us or not. If i had the power to do i would set like a 6 month strike during wich time no one would play or pay. Then to break this strike we would all need a one month free trial and THEN decide what to pay. It would be soooo nice to kick their greedy little asses and tell them who is the boss, (we the customers if anyone is wondering).

besjonok · August 2004

Sure, no competition and variety in MMO yet like in other games. There are other factors too, like language knowledge, internet problems (like only in-country free or cheap internet) etc. So people just play the game they like and hope it to be better some day and pay money.

Shownder · August 2004

Thats acually not a very good comparison.

Restraunt: Your Goal: To eat a meal and be satisfied.

If you recieved a undercooked meal that would cause some sickness, that acually has a dangerous physical effect on you. There is no way around it, you either eat it and get sick or send it back for another or walk out completly. No way to reach your goal.

Beta Test: Your Goal: To play advance in a game and report bugs.

If you run into a bug, its just a video game. You ain't gunna have physical discomfort from it (IE get sick), and 9 times out of 10 there is always a way around said bug. You will have other options to continue to your goal.

And really, it comes down to this little fact:

You don't like paying to try beta? Then don't ::::28::

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Tested: SWG, Sims, EVE, CoH, RO, Darkages, Neocron, AO, Lineage 2, ATITD 2, AC 2

Played: All Above + Shadowbane, FFXI, ATITD, AC, EQ, Misc. Korean Games

Playing: CoH, Gunbound

Waiting for: WoW, MO, EQ2

digitydarkman · August 2004

i payed for condition zero just to play CS:S ::::01::

Gnarled · August 2004

Ummm. . . except he was referring to games that have gone retail in a beta state. A lot of people (I would say most actually) don't beta to test bugs, they beta to play. Now when a game is in retail and you have paid for it, NO-ONE wants to test bugs.

Me. . .I like beta's, I like finding bugs and knowing the game is better for it, I'd pay to beta WoW or EQ2. But I'm weird. . .

"I can tell you with no ego, this is my finest sword. If, on your journey, you should encounter God. . .
. . . God will be cut."
- Quentin Tarantino, Kill Bill

Annekynn · August 2004

Originally posted by CIM_LW
Blizzard is making ppl. pay for a stess test (7 day)!

Yep, file planet is trying to sucker people into paying $15.95 so they can play WoW beta for 7 days. Ofcourse you can buy a 1 month subscription but thats not what they are trying to sell. $15.95 to play a beta for 7 days? Scam Scam Scam. I left FP some feedback regarding this...

--------------------------------------
Played: AC1, DAoC, E&B, SWG
Tested: AC1, AC2, DAoC, Eve, Lineage 2, RYL
Uninstalled ASAP: MU Online, Knight Online, Rubies of Eventide, Priston Tales, Star Sonata

Xzaro · August 2004

Originally posted by digitydarkman
i payed for condition zero just to play CS:S

You fell for their cold, sick marketing trick! ::::06::

_______________________________________________

You could play as an indian or human

Righty · August 2004

If you guys actually read into it alittle bit, it says you don't have to subscribe to file planet. Your name would just go into a draw like always and your chances would be horrible, subscribers just get an automatic spot if they want it.

Annekynn · August 2004

Originally posted by Righty
If you guys actually read into it alittle bit, it says you don't have to subscribe to file planet. Your name would just go into a draw like always and your chances would be horrible, subscribers just get an automatic spot if they want it.

Where does it say you can sign up without paying? At the very bottom in small letters. Everywhere else its SUBSCRIBE NOW! JUST $15.95 FOR 3 MONTHS! And if $15.95 isnt a good enough deal, upgrade for $44 MORE!!

Want to play a beta for 7 days? SUBSCRIBE NOW!

Scam Scam Scam.

--------------------------------------
Played: AC1, DAoC, E&B, SWG
Tested: AC1, AC2, DAoC, Eve, Lineage 2, RYL
Uninstalled ASAP: MU Online, Knight Online, Rubies of Eventide, Priston Tales, Star Sonata

Sir-Sven · August 2004

Hell no. Beta is beta. Beta is free because it sucks and people are getting to know the game. There can be closed beta which is free for selected persons. Then there is open beta which is free for all. Then the game can begin. Then can they start charging for game play.

It would have to be one kick ass game to make me pay for beta.

LightSlayer · August 2004

I have never ever seen a beta that makes you pay, if there is, it should burrrrrrrrrnnnnnn, unless it is a good title, then I seen beta that makes you pay

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Ragnarok Knights Supreme Leader

lordthrawn · August 2004

So if you're already a fileplanet subscriber is it free or do you have to pay even if you already subscribe?

Sketch · August 2004

Originally posted by Umbrood

What blizzard is doing is not uncommon, and they actually make fileplanet pay to have exclusive delivery right to the stress test, they in turn charge you. Many companies have done the same recently.
Allthough the restuarant analogy has been used over and over in reference to this it is still a correct one and I am to baffled why people put up with it. The onl reason I see is this:
If you use the same example as Rent did but add a few facts, all restuarants behave this way, and these restuarants are the only supply of food, or at least of any food you even reluctantly liked. People would be pissed but they would still go to the restuarant.
And herein lies the problem, there have not been until recently any real competition in ths area, there have been a few mmorpgs out, most of them so far into release many of the game stopping bugs have been sorted, (allthough new ones have been introduced). For a few years back we have had little choice, if we wanted to play mmorpgs then we had little to choose from and if we wanted it badly enough we would whine and grime but we would still pay.
This will hopefully change, seeing as competition will be fierce, a whole lot of clones will be released that wont differ much in content to what we have we have an unique opportunity to walletvote and pay the ones that are good in quality, (technical quality, not content wise as most will be pretty much the same). I so very very much hope people will take this opportunity and show the developers that we are not a herd of idiots that will throw money at them regardless if they deliver anything to us or not. If i had the power to do i would set like a 6 month strike during wich time no one would play or pay. Then to break this strike we would all need a one month free trial and THEN decide what to pay. It would be soooo nice to kick their greedy little asses and tell them who is the boss, (we the customers if anyone is wondering).

it's not even that, if you are a paying fileplanet member you are garunteed a spot in the stress test, if not you wait a couple days then sign up free and if your lucky you get in. No biggie though they just decided to fileplanet as a perk for memebrs. Sucks for those of us who don't want to pay for fileplanet but oh well c'est la vie.

I won;t sign up for FP anyways just cause I'm pretty certain that even though they say "paying" gets rid of pop ups, I'm guessing you still get spam

But as to paying to play a beta? Thats a horrible idea, since a beta is essential bug testing to help complete the game, paying to play a beta would be like paying to play an incomplete product. Thats the dogs ass.

IMCamper · August 2004

Sure. If you can make money from stupid people, why not do it? SOE does this all the time. Works for me. If people are stupid enough to pay for it, I'll take it.

Annekynn · August 2004

Originally posted by IMCamper
Sure. If you can make money from stupid people, why not do it? SOE does this all the time. Works for me. If people are stupid enough to pay for it, I'll take it.

Yeah but some of us were hoping blizzard wouldnt stoop to SOEs level. Boy was I wrong

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Played: Asheron's Call 1, Dark Age of Camelot, Earth & Beyond, Star Wars Galaxies
Tested: Asheron's Call 1, Asheron's Call 2, Dark Age of Camelot, Eve Online, Lineage 2, Risk Your Life
Uninstalled ASAP: MU Online, Knight Online, Rubies of Eventide, Priston Tales, Star Sonata

jimruk · August 2004

The game company should be paying you to beta test their product. Anyone that reports a bug without getting a monetary reward is being exploited by the game company. Do you realize how much money the beta testers are saving the company?

Say 3000 people get an invite to beta. 3000 x $5.00 an hour pay(low but you are playing a game) for 8 hours a day. That's 120K a day and the beta lasts 6-12 months.

If it wasn't for the free beta testers the company could never put out the game it would cost to much to test it. The long term beta testers should get something from the company. Do they?

Can someone explain to me the appeal of playing a half completed bug ridden game. If you want to play a bug ridden game just get a free trail of SWG.

Just my thoughts.

Hawkeye32 · August 2004

Sigh

This exact same question is bieng asked on damn near every message board I read and I keep thinking to myself man whats with these people.

OK first of all I assume this post came about because of the 7 day stress test for WoW on fileplanet. Ok heres the deal Blizzard needed a way to distribute 100k copies of the game in short order fileplanet acomplishes this nicely. Yes you can choose to pay to garuntee a slot in this 7 day stress test but it would be a sad person indeed who did so for only this reason.

Because they are using fileplanet to distribute this beta they had to make a small compromise in that subscribes to fileplanet be allowed a garunteed slot, the rest of the public on the other hand has to wait a few days for it to open up and allow them to sign up that is all.

You don't buy a subscription to fileplanet to get into the beta, you buy a subscription to get the perks of first picks in all the beta's fileplanet gets accepted into and believe me they get alot, Planetside, AC2, WoW, Tribes: Vengeance etc etc which is great but there are huge amounts of other files to download from fileplanet that you can get with no wait by subscribing. And the servers are fast Ive yet to hit any server that I couldn't get 350KB speeds from.

Sorry if this sounds like an ad for fileplanet but thats just the way it is. If your not a subscriber well wait a little while and sign up later, if you are then go grab yourself a key and start downloading and install the game and wait for the exact same amount of time as everyone else until they open the servers.

Oh and as an aside you can bet fileplanet will push this to the front to get more subscribers its what they do, they are in the buisness of file hosting. Blizzard does NOT get any profit out of partnering with fileplanet they do however get access to a system of delivering the beta to 100s of thousands of testers with a well developed system. This saves them time and money. Fileplanet gets something juicy to draw in new customers and Blizzard gets the tools to perform a stress test the likes of which most servers wouldn't dare attempt. Can you imagine 100,000 people trying to enter only a few servers and the chaos this will bring to the network code. This will very likely not be FUN nor will it be particularly stable I imagine. However, it will prepare Blizzard for a rush like they have never experienced given their previous game history.

One last thing I forgot to mention the closed beta is still going on, on seperate servers and the real open beta is to come sometime later on so anyone who doesn't want to help on this stress test still has a chance to help out later on.

Ive only paid for one beta and that was the shipping cost of the cd's $5.00.

If you don't enjoy leisure, are you really living?

Sketch · August 2004

Originally posted by Annekynn

Yeah but some of us were hoping blizzard wouldnt stoop to SOEs level. Boy was I wrong

It's not really like that, it's more of a greasy palms effect. File PLanet offers a bigger push on WoW in echange for the exclusive on the stress test, Bliz says sure, the FP tries to up it's paying customers by offering it forst t paying customers. (This is just my guess and not actually based on anything other then my own speculations).

bhug · August 2004

04.08.28
I remember when ragnarok banned ALL western (NON-asian, especially US IPs) because the US beta testers complained in the beta bbs about the huge # of problems and about the same on-going problems not geting fixed nor responded to from the Devs. After a couple months they decided to allow US testers back in beta if they agreed to pay in advance to continue beta testing and detailed HARSH banning rules for any more 'rude' (as determined by them) comments.
SWG added a pay in advance S&H ("shipping and handling" for the defective beta CD.) Later SOE removed the EQ2 dev bosses and replaced them with SWG guys (after huge #s of problems with SWG in retail,) even promoting a SWG guy to boss of all the SOE games (after EQ2 beta got pushed back another year from aug '03.) Now they plan to charge for the EQ2 beta CD (S&H of cource...)
It is suprising that after spending 10s of $millions companies decide to make the beta testers pony up $5 to $10 for "S&H" (of which $3 to $7 is profit,) and then usually force the testers to patch update 70 to +300MB anyway.
Part of development cost is recovered in the initial $50ish retail cost. And the $15ish monthly subscription fee is what keeps the profits rolling in...
Players are only a revenue stream. Really nothing more. And with tomorrow's games min req beter than 3GHz cpu, 128MB gpu, Wxp and broadband, kinda rich renenue stream at that.

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