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Your opinion on pay to play (pre-order) open betas

When WOW was preparing for release, they held an open beta that got well over a million players in Azeroth before launch.  Just a little bit before that, they had an open stress test beta.  Now, I must clarify as "open" is not as open as you may like to think.  In order to play, you had to have an account at one of the primary download sites, for example File Planet (I admit my memory is hazy so it could have just been file planet and not others).

 

So technically speaking, their open beta was not "free", however the service you had to purchase to participate in the beta had definative value to gamers and was in general quite cheap (around $6 bucks at that time for one month).

 

Let's look at the present.  When is the last time you saw an open beta that is similar?  Note that I am specifically talking about true AAA rated P2P mmos that have gone through a thorough development cycle, not your F2P wanna-be of the week.  Sure, there are some that offered some "open beta" spots through raffles and small allotments of keys (STO on mmorpg.com comes to mind), but in general you have to order the pre-order in today's environment to play an open beta.

 

So with that in mind, what do you think is better as far as marketing goes?  I argue that WOW created true competitive advantage through their open beta process by providing a polished preview of the game, which in turn created a form of viral marketing.  Those who tried it told their friends, and even shared their open beta accounts, thus providing a massive free pre-view, and creating high demand for the product.  Most surely it's wow's attention to detail that truly sealed the deal after the free month, but I firmly believe that open beta was one of the most important key's to wow's success.

 

So what's your thoughts?  Does a huge open beta like wow's provide competitive advantage over a game you have to pre-order to play in beta?  Why is this model no longer used?  Are the current mmo competitors unwilling to open their doors out of the fear that their game will not be well received?  Discuss.

 

Comments

  • aleosaleos Member UncommonPosts: 1,942

    a p2p "open beta" clearly states that the game will be a huge pile of shit.

  • MehveMehve Member Posts: 487

    The meaning of "Open Beta" has been pretty severely diluted over the years.

    It can be a way for a company to put their money where their mouth is - to say "It's not finished or polished yet, but we're still confident you'll get good vibes from playing it". Or it can be a way for a company to release their finished piece of crap, and explain away the problems by saying that they'll get around to fixing them at some point in the future. Or, it can be a way to generate of a cash-infusion for a company working on a much-hyped game, by getting people to pay for it earlier. Kind of like a company selling stock shares, except without the small amount of future accountability that goes with it.

    But in regards to the OP, WoW's case probably resembles the first case - if it was a polished product, Blizzard was putting their money where their mouth was. And it paid off.

    A Modest Proposal for MMORPGs:
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  • ScalperOneScalperOne Member Posts: 281

    Now a days it seems early access has replaced open beta. Gamers are willing to shell out cash to try out a game before release. The companies entice with giving early access to pre-orders or charge for said early-access. In that way they bind their customers before the release.

    People tend to be less critical when they feel they invested their money into something. They do not want to be seen as dump having payed for crap.

  • Garvon3Garvon3 Member CommonPosts: 2,898

    We all know betas haven't been open for a long time now. 

     

    Open beta is almost = to pay to play pre order preview. 

     

    It's no longer for testing.

  • TorikTorik Member UncommonPosts: 2,342

    Originally posted by zaxxon23

    When WOW was preparing for release, they held an open beta that got well over a million players in Azeroth before launch.  Just a little bit before that, they had an open stress test beta.  Now, I must clarify as "open" is not as open as you may like to think.  In order to play, you had to have an account at one of the primary download sites, for example File Planet (I admit my memory is hazy so it could have just been file planet and not others).

     

    So technically speaking, their open beta was not "free", however the service you had to purchase to participate in the beta had definative value to gamers and was in general quite cheap (around $6 bucks at that time for one month).

     

    That is actually false.  I was in the WoW open beta and you did not need to have a FilePlanet account to participate.  I do not remember where exactly I downloaded the beta client (it's been 5 years after all) but I never paid for it or needed a paid subscription to any site to get into the beta.

  • drbaltazardrbaltazar Member UncommonPosts: 7,856

    as far as marketing goesthe op say!

    NO MORE THEN 100 SPOT AVAIL FOR THE BETA.SINCE NOT MANY CAN GO IN EVERYBODY WANTS TO BE IN (IF THE GAME IS GOOD TO BEGIN WITH OF CAURSE!

  • ReklawReklaw Member UncommonPosts: 6,495

    Almost every MMORPG of the so called A-Tittles had open beta's, not sure why you didn't spot them. And all of them gave acces without the pre-order. But sure some of them also guaranteed a beta spot (often a closed beta spot) when pre-ordering them.

  • HitechLolifeHitechLolife Member Posts: 210

    The last game that I played that had an unrestricted open beta? STO which was like 4 months ago..  am I missing something here?

    Currently Playing: The Game

  • shaeshae Member Posts: 2,509

    I think the idea of the open has certainly changed but I still think it carries a certain amount of value for the dev group.

    That being said, I do also think that the "open beta" as know it now is much more tuned towards a marketing effort than the hardcore testing rounds we've seen of days past.

    It provides a glimpse of what's the come for potential players and gives the devs an opportunity to say: "This is broken right now but it will look like this" or something along those lines.

    I'm not a huge fan of charging for this though; I fondly remember MxO's open beta having been in the closed beta I found that the infusion of new testers rally brought out the best in the dev group and the community. Shame that went to hell so quickly :).

  • uquipuuquipu Member Posts: 1,516

    It would be better to call these 'free trials' rather than open betas.

    Paying for open beta is a mistake I made once and won't make again.

    Well shave my back and call me an elf! -- Oghren

  • lornphoenixlornphoenix Member Posts: 993

    If you are going buy the game anyway why not? Talking pre-orders from like Gamestop, not that pay Fileplanet crap, I don't like.

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  • scuubeedooscuubeedoo Member Posts: 458

    Err, was it against the license to distribute that WoW client you are talking about? Also, wasn't there an option to download it at a slower speed? Usually these sites offer free services, it's just limited to bandwidth.

    I am not sure about p2p open betas, but what you wrote is not that. It's money for a file upload service which no i wouldn't pay. If you want to distribute your game without wasting a ton of bandwidth, create a torrent, post it and offer a link on the game's page. This is virus free safe and everything as none can alter either your torrent, or the contents without breaking the checksum.

    "Traditionally, massively multiplier online games have been about three basic gameplay pillars – combat, exploration and character progression. In Alganon, in addition to these we've added the fourth pillar to the equation: Copy & Paste."

  • HardcodedHardcoded Member UncommonPosts: 97

    It's simple, if I have to pay to join an OPEN beta, then I wont be playing the game. Open beta's used to be for final testing and trying to stress test the servers, somewhere along the way it became a way for companies to milk the playerbase for crap games. Well thats my 2 cents atleast.

  • Miner-2049erMiner-2049er Member Posts: 435

    Originally posted by Torik

    Originally posted by zaxxon23

    When WOW was preparing for release, they held an open beta that got well over a million players in Azeroth before launch.  Just a little bit before that, they had an open stress test beta.  Now, I must clarify as "open" is not as open as you may like to think.  In order to play, you had to have an account at one of the primary download sites, for example File Planet (I admit my memory is hazy so it could have just been file planet and not others).

     

    So technically speaking, their open beta was not "free", however the service you had to purchase to participate in the beta had definative value to gamers and was in general quite cheap (around $6 bucks at that time for one month).

     

    That is actually false.  I was in the WoW open beta and you did not need to have a FilePlanet account to participate.  I do not remember where exactly I downloaded the beta client (it's been 5 years after all) but I never paid for it or needed a paid subscription to any site to get into the beta.

    Torik is correct, I was also in the open Beta and never subscribed to fileplanet

  • Jairoe03Jairoe03 Member Posts: 732

    Open beta is a huge marketing ploy and no, it should be Open like the name implies. No requiring to pay anything or pre-order another thing. That's just poor marketing by Cryptic. Marketing is supposed to be subtle and they totally just tarnished the term and many people's trust at the same time.

    I really don't see the point in Open Betas unless it is for stress testing. Outside of that, I don't think the player base within the Open Beta-only group are interested in reporting bugs, finding ways to replicate problems or provide better suggestions. They're more in it for themselves rather than the company.

  • MardyMardy Member Posts: 2,213

    I echo what someone said above.  If a company wants to charge you to do open beta, it's a good indication that they know the game won't sell well so they're cutting their losses by taking in any pennies they can get before the launch.

     

    Seriously, if a game is good, then the company would want as many people poking their heads into their game as possible so they would spread the word.  They would have nothing to hide.  But when companies make you pay money to do open beta, they're pretty much telling you they don't believe in their own product, that it isn't ready for release, and that they want to get as much money out of people as they can before launch.

     

    It's not always the case, but really, we've seen too many like this in the past 5 years. 

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