There will be no normal closed beta for NA\EU?

[Riku]

Players will always find loop holes in a game to give them an advantage Note: the korean player in aion that made a SIN char and used a 2 handed pole weapon via stigma....the rest of the players noticed that he was way overpowered and started to copy his build or tried to. I don't think the Dev's had this in mind or thought this would happen. Long story short.....OB is a good thing. Real players can break down and find the weirdest things in a game.

[Flagros]

But it's quite useless do launch an Open Beta in EU while the game is already released in Korea imo.

[Endrance]

Was hat denn das eine mit dem anderen zu tun?
It's different versions, running on different servers from totally different locations. Open beta's aren't only for correcting ingame issues, but also part of localization and other possible problems. It's a test run when everything is done, so people won't have to be kicked off crashing servers permanently at launch. You also don't run a printing-press right away without testing it just because it has been tested before elsewhere, which you had nothing to do with. You're supposed to test it yourself, cause if it doesn't run properly, you'll lose alot of money and prestige. No one blames you seriously for crashing servers in a beta, cause that's what a beta is for. If they crash at launch when everyone has already paid for the game, the customers have all rights to blame the publisher. And that's usually never a good thing.

[Ethos]

And like some mentioned before, an MMO OB these days for a P2P game is more of a demo than a real test.

- Funcom's OB = Pay for it to join in (you needed a 3rd party website premium account in order to play) so not a real open beta but paying for a beta test, just like it its now several months after "release".

- Warhammer's OB = Only if you pre-order you get to join the OB so once again, it's not real open. And then again, you already have to pre-order it and puth your faith in the game before you can try it in open beta, and it's just one week.

You see, these are not real Open Beta's eather, they are a free/paying demo version of the game. The developers know this too, they want to have everything covered and finished before open beta and NDA release because gamers would already start breaking down the game telling how bad it is, even if it's "still beta".

Aion on the other hand will have an open beta, in Korea tho, and it doesn't have a strong NDA to hide the bad things for you. They don't aks you to trust them blind, you have lots of information to decide if it's your game or not.

I would rather prefer they could bring an OB to Europe and NA, but lets not spoil our own fun here with stating that everything will fail just because we won't test everything.

[Alafarus]

Still if i have to put 5 bucks down on Warhammer to get into open beta, 5 bucks is considerably less then 50. Some people go off of website critics as to what MMO is good and decide based on that information. I personally like to experience them myself, and see if I like them personally. I put 5 down on Warhammer the other day. and when OB starts, i will give it a try. if I like it, i just have to put another 45 bucks into it and its mine. if i don't, well then, I only spent 5 bucks which is less then some meals at mc donalds... so at best, I buy the full game, at worst. I just bought myself a digital cheeseburger.


later,
Alaf

[Livvy]

And like some mentioned before, an MMO OB these days for a P2P game is more of a demo than a real test.

But that's a wrong approach . There's a huge difference between a demo and a beta-release . One is a sneak preview of a finished game whilst the other is there to find gitches by player-testing ( there's no way developers can cover everything during development cycle and the best way to find "hidden " bugs and exploits is by testing it with a larger pool of testers even if they don't have the expertise to fix the bug - they can make devs aware of the existence of glitches ) .

I'm always surprised when beta-testers start whining about these bugs : if you want to play a game without any bugs you should never apply for beta-testing because you're missing the point of the entire thing . That's probably the reason of NDA's and those new p2 test schemes . But in my opinion it's far better to have a fairly open discussion - due to relations with your possible future subscribers - on forums like this about anything that might crop up from beta testing than to nail it shut and apply all kinds of restrictions on beta testing .

There's also the possibility of test-servers ( all the big MMO's eem to embrace this now ) where patches and additions are going through a test-run before being applied to the "real " server . Again : this only works to perfection when you're communication isn't limited to "we'll look into it " or "we'll think about implementing x in the future " . The quality of your community relations is the most vital component during both the beta stages of games ( or applications ) and during testing of patches on so called test servers . There should always be a cordial atmosphere and a showing of respect between players/testers and the development team during this process.

Example : a while back ,not so long ago , Tabula Rasa was getting into serious trouble and it was caused by players feeling their feedback was being ignored ( the aforementioned "we'll look into it " -thing ) and they felt disrespect from developers . With Tom Potter taking over as led dev we see a 180 degree turn on that : there's constant communication between players/testers and the dev team now ( and the atmosphere is far better as a result ) . They're not just making announcements anymore but are actually listening to players and acting on valued input . If you don't do that right ( AoC ) you'll always get into serious trouble however good your game might be .

Beta testing stage isn't just for testing either, it's also about building that playerbase-devs relation . If you do it right during beta stages you can get away with quite a lot . But if you're not showing respect both ways the atmosphere will always become sour and to fix that you usually need to bring in a new dev team or communications-team . That's more expensive than getting it right - or try to at least - from the start. That's one of the reasons there should be some kind of beta testing for NA/EU Aion.....

[Ethos]

Okay Livvy, there you have some valid points.

I didn't want to quote your entire post but what you say there "Beta testing stage isn't just for testing either, it's also about building that playerbase-devs relation" is true, i just didn't viewed it from that angle before.

[Flagros]

Originally Posted by Endrance

Was hat denn das eine mit dem anderen zu tun?
It's different versions, running on different servers from totally different locations. Open beta's aren't only for correcting ingame issues, but also part of localization and other possible problems. It's a test run when everything is done, so people won't have to be kicked off crashing servers permanently at launch. You also don't run a printing-press right away without testing it just because it has been tested before elsewhere, which you had nothing to do with. You're supposed to test it yourself, cause if it doesn't run properly, you'll lose alot of money and prestige. No one blames you seriously for crashing servers in a beta, cause that's what a beta is for. If they crash at launch when everyone has already paid for the game, the customers have all rights to blame the publisher. And that's usually never a good thing.

Stimmt schon.
I ment that it's like a contradiction to me to launch a Beta while the game is "finished" elsewhere, I didn't thought about the different locations, sorry for that.

[Charlie]

Originally Posted by Livvy

But that's a wrong approach . There's a huge difference between a demo and a beta-release . One is a sneak preview of a finished game whilst the other is there to find gitches by player-testing ( there's no way developers can cover everything during development cycle and the best way to find "hidden " bugs and exploits is by testing it with a larger pool of testers even if they don't have the expertise to fix the bug - they can make devs aware of the existence of glitches ) .

I'm always surprised when beta-testers start whining about these bugs : if you want to play a game without any bugs you should never apply for beta-testing because you're missing the point of the entire thing . That's probably the reason of NDA's and those new p2 test schemes . But in my opinion it's far better to have a fairly open discussion - due to relations with your possible future subscribers - on forums like this about anything that might crop up from beta testing than to nail it shut and apply all kinds of restrictions on beta testing .

There's also the possibility of test-servers ( all the big MMO's eem to embrace this now ) where patches and additions are going through a test-run before being applied to the "real " server . Again : this only works to perfection when you're communication isn't limited to "we'll look into it " or "we'll think about implementing x in the future " . The quality of your community relations is the most vital component during both the beta stages of games ( or applications ) and during testing of patches on so called test servers . There should always be a cordial atmosphere and a showing of respect between players/testers and the development team during this process.

Example : a while back ,not so long ago , Tabula Rasa was getting into serious trouble and it was caused by players feeling their feedback was being ignored ( the aforementioned "we'll look into it " -thing ) and they felt disrespect from developers . With Tom Potter taking over as led dev we see a 180 degree turn on that : there's constant communication between players/testers and the dev team now ( and the atmosphere is far better as a result ) . They're not just making announcements anymore but are actually listening to players and acting on valued input . If you don't do that right ( AoC ) you'll always get into serious trouble however good your game might be .

Beta testing stage isn't just for testing either, it's also about building that playerbase-devs relation . If you do it right during beta stages you can get away with quite a lot . But if you're not showing respect both ways the atmosphere will always become sour and to fix that you usually need to bring in a new dev team or communications-team . That's more expensive than getting it right - or try to at least - from the start. That's one of the reasons there should be some kind of beta testing for NA/EU Aion.....

Stopped reading after that line. Open beta == Demo of mmos. period. Closed beta is the time to find real bugs.. open beta is to give the public a chance to test the game and report for really small bugs and balance issues...the face that games like Age of Crap is using open beta to find big bugs just shows you how bad it is and it shouldn't be that way.. seriously..

[Livvy]

Stopped reading after that line. Open beta == Demo of mmos. period. Closed beta is the time to find real bugs.. open beta is to give the public a chance to test the game and report for really small bugs and balance issues...the face that games like Age of Crap is using open beta to find big bugs just shows you how bad it is and it shouldn't be that way.. seriously..

From what I understand ( and believe me I did quite a few beta tests ) the cycle is thus :
-pre- production stage ( this is where they design a small portion of the title , i.e. : one zone or level - it's also by far the most expensive stage )
- pre alpha, inhouse testing of core components of new title
-alpha , some more folks get hands on title , but it's still a very limited group .This is the stage where bugs which "kill the game " are removed - or at least it's attempted .
- closed beta , first time external testers get hands on the title ,NDA is applied and most notable bugs found by playtesters are removed .
- open beta , large group of testers test title . Bugs with localization, hardware setups , balance of classes ( in case of an MMO ) , bugs regarding server infrastructure ... server strain tests . But this is NOT a demo .Quite often some sort of NDA is applicable .
- game release . At this time one might see a DEMO being released , usually in the form of 7-14 day trial - some companies use the buddy key system for this .

so your assumption an open beta is the same as a demo-release is simply wrong.

[twostep]

come to the east coast ****ers.

[Endrance]

Originally Posted by Charlie

Stopped reading after that line.

Gotta love people who understand "my opinion is ultimate and other people's opinions don't matter in the slightest" under the term "discussion" (exchanging of views).

And Livvy, there was no need to repeat yourself for a counter-productive forum user.

[Calindor]

open beta is for stress testing, its main purpose is to fill the server up with as many people possible to make sure the server holds it fine, and that they can then duplicate that server setup onto the others. Closed beta is for finding bugs.

[Shmak]

I guess I need to say again that MMOs are never "finished" and that there are always bugs. The more people you have to test a game the better it will be, simply from a coding error standpoint regardless of gameplay. Therefore, the larger audience that tests your game, the cleaner it gets. Therefore, beta tests are always for testing for bugs, be they server or client based.