Internet mob expectations ... I personally have never seen a game beta where vocal part of the communiy are happy.
I get the internet rages ... that includes us all ... but, after having done a few MMOs and a few betas, I've learned to play in more moderation. Do the errors suck? Sure. Is it the end of the world? Nope.
The only smooth launches that I've ever seen were WoW:TBC and Rift. Every other game and expansion has been a mess of issues rangin in time from anywhere from 1 month - 8 months after launch. Now, hopefully, Arenanet launches more like Rift, but my expectations are that the game will evolve over time. I can't say what everyone else's level of tolerance should be for issues, but I'm will to give a subscription game a month or two to get things ironed out. With a Box + micro model ... we'll see. I've never tried that type of model before.
This is what happens when you offer beta access via prepurchase or preorder. Nothing new here and I have no sympathy for companies being taken to task over it. Matter of fact I'm rather sick of people always laying the blame at the feet of the players and giving these companies a free pass. It's getting really old. You reap what you fucking sow. They want to market beta and use it to increase sales? This is what happens when some pay for the product and can't play or have serious issues. Beta or no.
Let 'em rage. They paid for the product. Like I'm supposed to have sympathy for Anet when they essentially had the majority pay to get access to their beta. Give me a break.
Couldn't have said it any bettrer.
I pre-PURCHASED the game, on day one I was staring at a 100% full login screen whilst hearing lovely environmental noises in the background, but didn't actually once get into the game proper.
On Sunday morning around 4am (and no, before you say it, I didn;t stay up staring at a login screen until that time, I just happened to be up ) I was able to play in the starter zones for about 20 mins twice before getting kicked.
On Saturday and Sunday daytime I get into overflow only to be kicked by the 7:11:3 error after about 10 seconds.
So that was the beta experience I actually paid for.
Had this been a free beta I would not have any complaints whatsoever, but if I'm paying to test a product for a company (d'oh) and then actuall can't even get the promised access - THIS SUCKS
The main crutch of the problem was that people had to pay to play the beta.
You may expect to find bugs whilst playing but most fundamentaly, especially after having paid, you at least expect to be able to login.
I think that's were most of the rage came from.
That's an outsiders view because I haven't pre-bought the game myself. I was stung by SWTOR and swore never to go down that route again.
Was the prec-purchase really the problem? I mean some people would pay for a DOTA 2, (Diablo 3,) CS GO, The Secret World, Firefall Beta Key. IMO people love to complain. It doesn't matter which game they always find something.
Just my take on the situation.
There are always those who will complain.
Personally, I feel there was some justification with regards to the login issues.
Basically people payed for access and some didn't get it. It's nothing to do with expecting bugs or not. These people were promised access for payment and couldn't login.
You have to expect some flak over that.
i am fine with that but some people use the opportunity for exaggerations. Their Threads and Posts are a mass of pure hatred (and fear of losing their player base/social network?!?). It's not like they never experienced issues in the past. E.G. Someone played a Beta of his favored mmorpg and wrote a comment in their forum which was most likely very polite and positive.
"Even though i experienced issues the Beta Event was fun. The combat, graphics/art style, etc. are awesome... . Best experience i've ever had. Thank you for an awesome Event!"
The same person played a beta of a different mmorpg and experienced same issues. In an instant he found himself looking for a community network to start his crusade against the game.
"The worst experience, combat, etc. ever. The graphics are outdated, The questdesign, dialogue sequences, custom support, etc. is/are awful and a waste of money. Compared to my beloved mmorpg this game is a huge dissapointment and couldn't live up to the hype."
I really enjoyed this BETA, it's a shame that Tera players are so worry about GW2 so they spam every forum they can to protect their favored game. I don't see why you guys spend more time with bashing on GW2 than actually playing TERA, if i could play GW2 right now i wouldn't spam the TERA forums with my very loud opinion over these games. Everyone should play and enjoy the game they like, ofcourse you can share your view on certain things it's completely fine until it's not a smear campaign AGAINST something, you guys really think this is a war that you have to fight against Guild Wars 2? Look into yourselves and think about why you not playing your beloved game when you reply to this post and flame GW2 and it's fans.
I really enjoyed this BETA, it's a shame that Tera players are so worry about GW2 so they spam every forum they can to protect their favored game. I don't see why you guys spend more time with bashing on GW2 than actually playing TERA, if i could play GW2 right now i wouldn't spam the TERA forums with my very loud opinion over these games. Everyone should play and enjoy the game they like, ofcourse you can share your view on certain things it's completely fine until it's not a smear campaign AGAINST something, you guys really think this is a war that you have to fight against Guild Wars 2? Look into yourselves and think about why you not playing your beloved game when you reply to this post and flame GW2 and it's fans.
Whose spamming what? this is an editorial peice, did you even read it?
----- The person who is certain, and who claims divine warrant for his certainty, belongs now to the infancy of our species.
I ran mainly solo in GW 2 beta event this weekend. I was blown away at the size, scope and beauty of the layout. The game was a little confusing in the beginning, but isn’t that the excitement of trying something new?? I am glad I struggled with crafting at first, trying to learn combat systems, and trying to learn the idiosyncrasies of the game. I was pleasantly surprised at groups of people forming here and there to join in combat and common quests.. What I do not understand is people losing the fact that this was beta, and the game for the most part looks nearly finished. Slight improvements to combat, and foe targeting would be nice, but these are minor issues compared to a great overall experience. I was crushed at 12:04 am Sunday when I was booted, and am dying to play in the next BETA!!!
I am sorry but this strikes me as a red herring. Sure people were mad at the time when they couldn't log in. Everybody is excited to play and not playing sucks so yeah there will be a lot of rage. It is not really justified but it is also not unexpected. But this is not the real issue. I am not seeing many if any posts on the GW2 beta forums continuing to belly ache about down time.
The real issue has to do with combat. How to do it. Is it too hard. Is it not tuned right. Are melee classes hopelessly gimped. This is a much more significant topic of ongoing debate.
For me, combat didn't click. I had trouble getting into any of the classes because of it. I think I just didn't understand what I needed to be adjusting for exactly. I didn't know how to time my dodges and other skills effectively. I am inclined to think that a good, detailed tutorial focused on combat would probably fix it for me. So I don't think it is going to be a problem in the long term. I am looking forward to the next BWE to see if I can figure this out.
This is a load of horsecrap. With all due respect.
If you buy a game because it gives you beta access you also buy the probablity it does not work from the word go and possibility that it does not work at all. Because when you buy something beta that is what it is.
No. When you buy something, you expect it to work. When you buy something that'll be done in the future, it's called a pre-order. You reserve your copy, pay and get the copy on launch date. When you charge up front, you invent something new called a prepurchase. You're asking me for my money without giving me any product. In return, you give me beta access. The *only* reason for anyone to toss out $60 right now is for the beta access. Not the game itself as it isn't out yet.
They're promoting prepurchases madly and are trying to get cash up front. If you choose to do this, you're dealing with people that have already purchased a product. At that point, the "It's beta!" comment doesn't fly anymore. The fuck you mean it's beta, you have my money! I understand why companies use it in defense, but I'm on the side of the ragers this time. They give you money, you give them a product. If you're not giving them the product you promised, then don't ask for their money.
I'm gonna do something lame that's all the rage these days and compare it with a bollocks real-world comparison. Ferrari is releasing a new car for $40.000 sometime in the future. If you want, you can pay the entire amount right now. You don't know how it drives, how it feels or what it's going to be like. To incentivize you to give up cash for something you don't have yet, they'll give you testrides in it on select weekends, You ponder a bit and pay up. The first test drive weekend, the car takes 6 hours to even start up, then stalls at every traffuc light, runs out of gas in just 2 miles and has the tendency of flipping over on the highway. You think they're going to get away with saying "well it's a prototype"? No. This is unacceptable in *any* medium, and should not be different in video games. The second you charge money, you either deliver what you promise or face the wrath of your consumers.
If it's Ferrari you won't even get a testdrive with a prototype. Even if you'll know what to expect during a test weekend. But the people's mindset changed in the videogame industry. Many of them think a Beta in 2012 is a demo. They weren't expecting issues during the first of many beta weekends.
On the other hand you had to buy an Annual Pass to get a guaranteed acess to the beta for mists of pandaria. Even this Addon had a lot of issues and no one were complaining about the paid beta. They were expecting it. Even though no one is looking for a community network like mmoprg.com to complain.
They want to market beta and use it to increase sales?
your dilusional- this game dosent need all the hype it has already gotten. they dont need to sell a beta to increase any sales- as a matter of fact they are probably doin it for internal performance issues, and as some posts have already stated -dont play beta if you dislike disruptions -wait for offical release.
Great point orbitxo. Being an Information Security Engineer... all of the following aspects of a system, or in this case a game, must be tested before going to production/live.
User Load Balancing ---> over flow servers. Without this you would sit in a queue indefinitely or get disconnected
Database Load Balancing on their clusters as everything you do in-game gets synchronized, logged, saved, etc.
Hardware stability and redundancy across the cloud. This is an amazing challenge that they've already tackled by letting us be able to connect (guest or chat) to players on any of their other servers... wherever they are physically located on the planet.
Programming / code functionality, reviewing thousands of lines of debug logs.
Memory Leaks ---> if not tested, all data is at risk of being lost or corrupted.
Exploits --> Stop hackers, or players taking advantage of loopholes in-game.
Customer Service Desk ---> New platform for their phone support, lots of unknowns that they will need to create processes and procedures for.
In-Game Bugs [Most likely categorized as same priority level as the above issues]
The list goes on...
So please understand there are MANY behind the scene working parts in this (or any) MMORPG game. In my 10+ years of managing computer systems for enterprise companies... no matter how much testing is involved... there is ALWAYS unforeseen issues that pop-up. I feel arenanet's developers and support tech did an amazing job tackling these challenges.
Good job & looking forward to our next opportunity to play again.
Doesn't mean its justified though. I've been playing Guild Wars for a little over SEVEN YEARS. The A-Net team has ALWAYS been extremely detail oriented and they've always worked with the community and they consistently try to better their games.
Now, for this being the FIRST OPEN BETA, I'm extremely surprised by the fact alone that they even let hundreds of thousands of people in. In my experience, this is the largest first beta let alone beta I've ever seen.
And on a more personal note, log in issues were fixed for me after a few hours, so my experience wasn't that bad.
I had more issues with Team Chat in WvWvW, at points I was able to see the chat of the enemy teams, but get this, they fixed that too by the end of the weekend event.
On Friday night I was playing Guild Wars 2 and hanging out on the suggestion part of the beta forums, I had been since the beta started that day. Now, I shit you not, there were literally suggestions in there that they added THAT NIGHT. I was MIND BLOWN. They said "GW2 will be down for 30 min", you get back on, and they had new things added already.
Pretty damn good if you ask me.
Not only that, you've got to remember what they see this game as becoming. Huge. So having a giant first beta was sort of the point, they wanted to see the issues they'd encounter so they could spend the next month fine tuning them. I can almost guarantee the next event will be awesome.
This team never ceases to amaze me with the amount of attention they pay to detail and how much they work with the community.
I've never actually ever talked to a Dev. from any of the betas I've EVER participated in, mind you, that's quite a few. I was able to get responses on the forums and everything, twas crazy.
Not something you see a lot. The beta weekend ends and over 25 pages of Thank You's pop up on the forums saying how awesome the game already is.
Now, all of you who have MMO beta experience, know this is 99.9999999% of the time not the case in a beta. Usually there's a shit ton of nasty bugs and everyone is just constantly complaining.
I had a genuinely FUN time with the first beta event and it seems to me so did a lot of others.
Cool column. Unfortunately your asking ragers to not rage will cause them to enrage about beta rage.
Also they seem to thrive on raging about this so called paid beta access. Makes me chuckle cos I see it as buying a new car with a years free insurance and saying you only bought it for the insurance. Ragers gonna rage about anything nowadays. >.<
All in all I enjoyed the beta weekend. I had many an issue with the overflow system though where the group that my boyfriend and I had formed was continuously separated into different versions. Friday was rather laggy but I was able to connect and play most of the evening although my boyfriend had a crash to desktop and was never able to reconnect again. Saturday we spent most of the day getting error messages and being unable to log in until rather later in the evening but Sunday worked pretty okay. On the Sunday I crashed a few times and still had issues with the overflow system but we at least got to play for most of the day and the lag was mostly gone too except in some of the most crowded areas.
I'm looking forward to playing at release and enjoyed the systems, I just hope that they sort of the overflow system so it can't separate parties or allow you to switch instances to match the party leader or something instead. It makes no sense otherwise and it highly inconvenient unless you play entirely solo.
The only problems I experienced were trying to shift servers, and trying to play with my brother and being unable due to overflow.
Other than the bugs and many things not working, the game was quite enjoyable.
MMO's played: Ragnarok Online (For years), WoW (for a few weeks only), Guild Wars, Lineage 2, Eve, Allods, Shattered Galaxy, 9 Dragons, City of Heroes, City of Villains, Star Trek Online (Got someone ELSE to pay for it), Champions Online (Someone else paid), Dofus, Dragonica, LOTRO, DDO and more... A LOT more. I've played good AND bad. The bad didn't last long. :P
I was very impressed with the progress ANet made over the course of the beta weekend.
The only real issue I experienced was login problems, and after they put out a patch that seemed to go away.
When having the login issues I woudl enter my details then wait about 10-15 seconds, sometimes more for it to spew an error message at me. I could always tell if the game was going to let me log in because just before it did, the pretty background image on the login screen stuttered.....then it let me in, but it still took about 15 seconds after I entered my details.
After the patch, the stuttering thing went away, and I was either logged in immediately or given an error message immediately.
Seems like they had some lag or other network issues with their authentication servers, which they managed to fix in record time!
Cluck Cluck, Gibber Gibber, My Old Mans A Mushroom
This is what happens when you offer beta access via prepurchase or preorder. Nothing new here and I have no sympathy for companies being taken to task over it. Matter of fact I'm rather sick of people always laying the blame at the feet of the players and giving these companies a free pass. It's getting really old. You reap what you fucking sow. They want to market beta and use it to increase sales? This is what happens when some pay for the product and can't play or have serious issues. Beta or no.
Let 'em rage. They paid for the product. Like I'm supposed to have sympathy for Anet when they essentially had the majority pay to get access to their beta. Give me a break.
This is what I have been saying since around 2000 when this really became a fad. I used to pride myself for getting into a beta based on my knowledge, and experience. Actually having to fill out an application to get into a beta test.
Now days, you just have to pre-order the game. These "Beta testers" create more problems, and most of them could not even find the event viewer on their computer to properly report a bug. The majority of the people I know that get excited about beta testing these days, would freak out if you handed them one of the old school bug report forms we used to have to fill out.
I enjoyed the beta... and no, I didn't prepurchase for the beta. I did it so I could put it out of my mind and wouldn't have to buy it later Beta event was just a perk
This is what happens when you offer beta access via prepurchase or preorder. Nothing new here and I have no sympathy for companies being taken to task over it. Matter of fact I'm rather sick of people always laying the blame at the feet of the players and giving these companies a free pass. It's getting really old. You reap what you fucking sow. They want to market beta and use it to increase sales? This is what happens when some pay for the product and can't play or have serious issues. Beta or no.
Let 'em rage. They paid for the product. Like I'm supposed to have sympathy for Anet when they essentially had the majority pay to get access to their beta. Give me a break.
I have to agree here.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
How is it the beta a selling tool if you already bought the game? What they did was called "packaging" in economics. If you "pre-purchased" and are mad that the beta was hectic, and you feel you have been betrayed, cancel your pre-purchase. A-Net are not liars, they stated if you bought this you will get beta access. Well, you got it. That is how it turned out. That is where the statement "it is beta" (which seems to make people mad for some reason) comes in. It is beta, it is not the finalized game, and it is what you were promised. They never said you would enjoy a finalized game last weekend, they said you would participate in a beta. A very good point that was mae by the above article is when he said even if you couldn't log on, you still participated becuase they fixed several issues (which is why we have betas), and helped to make the game better for the future release. You paid for beta and the game. When the game is released is when you will get the final game.
I loved beta weekend. The game is the best MMORPG I have played in 10 years. I have played them all and none left me this impressed after the 1st week I played. Most I hate after i try beta, this game was refreshing in every way. Awesome combat, great graphics and sound, a huge beautiful world, intersting story and quest/event system.
I have a 4 year old PC and played on high with no lag or FPS issues. I was not able to login the 1st day for a few hours but that is to be expected, if you rage over that you should not be trying a beta.
If you had a 330M graphics card liek a guy I saw complaining in game, you should read spec before playing. You need at least a decent graphics card to play the most beautiful MMORPG out there(yes I think it looks better than even TERA that i also beta tested).
Overall, why make thisa article? 80% of the people I see on forums ort know that tried this game loved it. make more positive articles, why write this kind of useless thing?
Comments
Internet mob expectations ... I personally have never seen a game beta where vocal part of the communiy are happy.
I get the internet rages ... that includes us all ... but, after having done a few MMOs and a few betas, I've learned to play in more moderation. Do the errors suck? Sure. Is it the end of the world? Nope.
The only smooth launches that I've ever seen were WoW:TBC and Rift. Every other game and expansion has been a mess of issues rangin in time from anywhere from 1 month - 8 months after launch. Now, hopefully, Arenanet launches more like Rift, but my expectations are that the game will evolve over time. I can't say what everyone else's level of tolerance should be for issues, but I'm will to give a subscription game a month or two to get things ironed out. With a Box + micro model ... we'll see. I've never tried that type of model before.
If you don't worry about it, it's not a problem.
Couldn't have said it any bettrer.
I pre-PURCHASED the game, on day one I was staring at a 100% full login screen whilst hearing lovely environmental noises in the background, but didn't actually once get into the game proper.
On Sunday morning around 4am (and no, before you say it, I didn;t stay up staring at a login screen until that time, I just happened to be up ) I was able to play in the starter zones for about 20 mins twice before getting kicked.
On Saturday and Sunday daytime I get into overflow only to be kicked by the 7:11:3 error after about 10 seconds.
So that was the beta experience I actually paid for.
Had this been a free beta I would not have any complaints whatsoever, but if I'm paying to test a product for a company (d'oh) and then actuall can't even get the promised access - THIS SUCKS
i am fine with that but some people use the opportunity for exaggerations. Their Threads and Posts are a mass of pure hatred (and fear of losing their player base/social network?!?). It's not like they never experienced issues in the past. E.G. Someone played a Beta of his favored mmorpg and wrote a comment in their forum which was most likely very polite and positive.
"Even though i experienced issues the Beta Event was fun. The combat, graphics/art style, etc. are awesome... . Best experience i've ever had. Thank you for an awesome Event!"
The same person played a beta of a different mmorpg and experienced same issues. In an instant he found himself looking for a community network to start his crusade against the game.
"The worst experience, combat, etc. ever. The graphics are outdated, The questdesign, dialogue sequences, custom support, etc. is/are awful and a waste of money. Compared to my beloved mmorpg this game is a huge dissapointment and couldn't live up to the hype."
I really enjoyed this BETA, it's a shame that Tera players are so worry about GW2 so they spam every forum they can to protect their favored game. I don't see why you guys spend more time with bashing on GW2 than actually playing TERA, if i could play GW2 right now i wouldn't spam the TERA forums with my very loud opinion over these games. Everyone should play and enjoy the game they like, ofcourse you can share your view on certain things it's completely fine until it's not a smear campaign AGAINST something, you guys really think this is a war that you have to fight against Guild Wars 2? Look into yourselves and think about why you not playing your beloved game when you reply to this post and flame GW2 and it's fans.
Play as your fav retro characters: cnd-online.net. My site: www.lysle.net. Blog: creatingaworld.blogspot.com.
Whose spamming what? this is an editorial peice, did you even read it?
-----
The person who is certain, and who claims divine warrant for his certainty, belongs now to the infancy of our species.
I ran mainly solo in GW 2 beta event this weekend. I was blown away at the size, scope and beauty of the layout. The game was a little confusing in the beginning, but isn’t that the excitement of trying something new?? I am glad I struggled with crafting at first, trying to learn combat systems, and trying to learn the idiosyncrasies of the game. I was pleasantly surprised at groups of people forming here and there to join in combat and common quests.. What I do not understand is people losing the fact that this was beta, and the game for the most part looks nearly finished. Slight improvements to combat, and foe targeting would be nice, but these are minor issues compared to a great overall experience. I was crushed at 12:04 am Sunday when I was booted, and am dying to play in the next BETA!!!
I am sorry but this strikes me as a red herring. Sure people were mad at the time when they couldn't log in. Everybody is excited to play and not playing sucks so yeah there will be a lot of rage. It is not really justified but it is also not unexpected. But this is not the real issue. I am not seeing many if any posts on the GW2 beta forums continuing to belly ache about down time.
The real issue has to do with combat. How to do it. Is it too hard. Is it not tuned right. Are melee classes hopelessly gimped. This is a much more significant topic of ongoing debate.
For me, combat didn't click. I had trouble getting into any of the classes because of it. I think I just didn't understand what I needed to be adjusting for exactly. I didn't know how to time my dodges and other skills effectively. I am inclined to think that a good, detailed tutorial focused on combat would probably fix it for me. So I don't think it is going to be a problem in the long term. I am looking forward to the next BWE to see if I can figure this out.
All die, so die well.
No. When you buy something, you expect it to work. When you buy something that'll be done in the future, it's called a pre-order. You reserve your copy, pay and get the copy on launch date. When you charge up front, you invent something new called a prepurchase. You're asking me for my money without giving me any product. In return, you give me beta access. The *only* reason for anyone to toss out $60 right now is for the beta access. Not the game itself as it isn't out yet.
They're promoting prepurchases madly and are trying to get cash up front. If you choose to do this, you're dealing with people that have already purchased a product. At that point, the "It's beta!" comment doesn't fly anymore. The fuck you mean it's beta, you have my money! I understand why companies use it in defense, but I'm on the side of the ragers this time. They give you money, you give them a product. If you're not giving them the product you promised, then don't ask for their money.
I'm gonna do something lame that's all the rage these days and compare it with a bollocks real-world comparison. Ferrari is releasing a new car for $40.000 sometime in the future. If you want, you can pay the entire amount right now. You don't know how it drives, how it feels or what it's going to be like. To incentivize you to give up cash for something you don't have yet, they'll give you testrides in it on select weekends, You ponder a bit and pay up. The first test drive weekend, the car takes 6 hours to even start up, then stalls at every traffuc light, runs out of gas in just 2 miles and has the tendency of flipping over on the highway. You think they're going to get away with saying "well it's a prototype"? No. This is unacceptable in *any* medium, and should not be different in video games. The second you charge money, you either deliver what you promise or face the wrath of your consumers.
@Isometrix
If it's Ferrari you won't even get a testdrive with a prototype. Even if you'll know what to expect during a test weekend. But the people's mindset changed in the videogame industry. Many of them think a Beta in 2012 is a demo. They weren't expecting issues during the first of many beta weekends.
On the other hand you had to buy an Annual Pass to get a guaranteed acess to the beta for mists of pandaria. Even this Addon had a lot of issues and no one were complaining about the paid beta. They were expecting it. Even though no one is looking for a community network like mmoprg.com to complain.
Great point orbitxo. Being an Information Security Engineer... all of the following aspects of a system, or in this case a game, must be tested before going to production/live.
User Load Balancing ---> over flow servers. Without this you would sit in a queue indefinitely or get disconnected
Database Load Balancing on their clusters as everything you do in-game gets synchronized, logged, saved, etc.
Hardware stability and redundancy across the cloud. This is an amazing challenge that they've already tackled by letting us be able to connect (guest or chat) to players on any of their other servers... wherever they are physically located on the planet.
Programming / code functionality, reviewing thousands of lines of debug logs.
Memory Leaks ---> if not tested, all data is at risk of being lost or corrupted.
Exploits --> Stop hackers, or players taking advantage of loopholes in-game.
Customer Service Desk ---> New platform for their phone support, lots of unknowns that they will need to create processes and procedures for.
In-Game Bugs [Most likely categorized as same priority level as the above issues]
The list goes on...
So please understand there are MANY behind the scene working parts in this (or any) MMORPG game. In my 10+ years of managing computer systems for enterprise companies... no matter how much testing is involved... there is ALWAYS unforeseen issues that pop-up. I feel arenanet's developers and support tech did an amazing job tackling these challenges.
Good job & looking forward to our next opportunity to play again.
Of course the players have a right to be angry.
Doesn't mean its justified though. I've been playing Guild Wars for a little over SEVEN YEARS. The A-Net team has ALWAYS been extremely detail oriented and they've always worked with the community and they consistently try to better their games.
Now, for this being the FIRST OPEN BETA, I'm extremely surprised by the fact alone that they even let hundreds of thousands of people in. In my experience, this is the largest first beta let alone beta I've ever seen.
And on a more personal note, log in issues were fixed for me after a few hours, so my experience wasn't that bad.
I had more issues with Team Chat in WvWvW, at points I was able to see the chat of the enemy teams, but get this, they fixed that too by the end of the weekend event.
On Friday night I was playing Guild Wars 2 and hanging out on the suggestion part of the beta forums, I had been since the beta started that day. Now, I shit you not, there were literally suggestions in there that they added THAT NIGHT. I was MIND BLOWN. They said "GW2 will be down for 30 min", you get back on, and they had new things added already.
Pretty damn good if you ask me.
Not only that, you've got to remember what they see this game as becoming. Huge. So having a giant first beta was sort of the point, they wanted to see the issues they'd encounter so they could spend the next month fine tuning them. I can almost guarantee the next event will be awesome.
This team never ceases to amaze me with the amount of attention they pay to detail and how much they work with the community.
I've never actually ever talked to a Dev. from any of the betas I've EVER participated in, mind you, that's quite a few. I was able to get responses on the forums and everything, twas crazy.
Not something you see a lot. The beta weekend ends and over 25 pages of Thank You's pop up on the forums saying how awesome the game already is.
Now, all of you who have MMO beta experience, know this is 99.9999999% of the time not the case in a beta. Usually there's a shit ton of nasty bugs and everyone is just constantly complaining.
I had a genuinely FUN time with the first beta event and it seems to me so did a lot of others.
Also they seem to thrive on raging about this so called paid beta access. Makes me chuckle cos I see it as buying a new car with a years free insurance and saying you only bought it for the insurance. Ragers gonna rage about anything nowadays. >.<
All in all I enjoyed the beta weekend. I had many an issue with the overflow system though where the group that my boyfriend and I had formed was continuously separated into different versions. Friday was rather laggy but I was able to connect and play most of the evening although my boyfriend had a crash to desktop and was never able to reconnect again. Saturday we spent most of the day getting error messages and being unable to log in until rather later in the evening but Sunday worked pretty okay. On the Sunday I crashed a few times and still had issues with the overflow system but we at least got to play for most of the day and the lag was mostly gone too except in some of the most crowded areas.
I'm looking forward to playing at release and enjoyed the systems, I just hope that they sort of the overflow system so it can't separate parties or allow you to switch instances to match the party leader or something instead. It makes no sense otherwise and it highly inconvenient unless you play entirely solo.
Freedom of choice is one important philosophical idea of human kind.
You have freedom of choice.
You have the freedom to not preorder a game in order to participate in the beta.
It is easy like that!
Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need.
The only problems I experienced were trying to shift servers, and trying to play with my brother and being unable due to overflow.
Other than the bugs and many things not working, the game was quite enjoyable.
MMO's played: Ragnarok Online (For years), WoW (for a few weeks only), Guild Wars, Lineage 2, Eve, Allods, Shattered Galaxy, 9 Dragons, City of Heroes, City of Villains, Star Trek Online (Got someone ELSE to pay for it), Champions Online (Someone else paid), Dofus, Dragonica, LOTRO, DDO and more... A LOT more. I've played good AND bad. The bad didn't last long. :P
I was very impressed with the progress ANet made over the course of the beta weekend.
The only real issue I experienced was login problems, and after they put out a patch that seemed to go away.
When having the login issues I woudl enter my details then wait about 10-15 seconds, sometimes more for it to spew an error message at me. I could always tell if the game was going to let me log in because just before it did, the pretty background image on the login screen stuttered.....then it let me in, but it still took about 15 seconds after I entered my details.
After the patch, the stuttering thing went away, and I was either logged in immediately or given an error message immediately.
Seems like they had some lag or other network issues with their authentication servers, which they managed to fix in record time!
Cluck Cluck, Gibber Gibber, My Old Mans A Mushroom
This is what I have been saying since around 2000 when this really became a fad. I used to pride myself for getting into a beta based on my knowledge, and experience. Actually having to fill out an application to get into a beta test.
Now days, you just have to pre-order the game. These "Beta testers" create more problems, and most of them could not even find the event viewer on their computer to properly report a bug. The majority of the people I know that get excited about beta testing these days, would freak out if you handed them one of the old school bug report forms we used to have to fill out.
Not so nice guy!
I have to agree here.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/innovation
What a horrible article!
I loved beta weekend. The game is the best MMORPG I have played in 10 years. I have played them all and none left me this impressed after the 1st week I played. Most I hate after i try beta, this game was refreshing in every way. Awesome combat, great graphics and sound, a huge beautiful world, intersting story and quest/event system.
I have a 4 year old PC and played on high with no lag or FPS issues. I was not able to login the 1st day for a few hours but that is to be expected, if you rage over that you should not be trying a beta.
If you had a 330M graphics card liek a guy I saw complaining in game, you should read spec before playing. You need at least a decent graphics card to play the most beautiful MMORPG out there(yes I think it looks better than even TERA that i also beta tested).
Overall, why make thisa article? 80% of the people I see on forums ort know that tried this game loved it. make more positive articles, why write this kind of useless thing?
GAME TIL YOU DIE!!!!
Asking the general "Gaming Community" to conduct Beta Testing is like trying to train a bunch of chimpanzees to change an auto-transmission.
You'll get an awful lot of noise and commotion and tool bashing sure to ding up the paint and body while the transmission remains a mystery.
I'm sure there are some diamonds in the rough in the middle of all that, but otherwise . . . meh.
Wherever you go, there you are.