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Beta vs. No BetaFollow

#1 Apr 05 2012 at 5:57 AM Rating: Excellent
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I've debated this for a while, yet now the dilemma is coming to fruition.

I must admit that I have no true desire to level a new panda (I have 5 level 85s and three more on their way there) and yet I know I will. However, if/when I get my beta invite (AP holder) do I actually use it?

I wouldn't mind toying around in the Beta, but it seems like it is all a waste of time. Do I not lose everything I accomplish, in game, that I do in the beta?

Anywho, just wondering what some of you think. While being in the beta will allow me to "help" Blizz it just seems like I will be doing all of this to simply do it again if I level a panda (or I will be doing it 8 times once the game comes out).

TL;DR: Is playing in the beta worth it?
#2 Apr 05 2012 at 6:18 AM Rating: Excellent
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If you like to have a hand in improving the game then yes. If you are looking for a free demo then no. Everything in the beta will be erased once the beta is over. So at the end of the day it is up to you if you want to play it or not. Personally I enjoyed playing the Cata beta. I got to report a lot of bugs and I feel as though I helped a bit with solving some issues. Whether I did help or not is a different story but I like to think I did. Smiley: tongue
#3 Apr 05 2012 at 10:37 AM Rating: Excellent
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Got my Beta invite this morning, and will probably dl it tonite. I'll be glad to check out the new zones and give monk a try, and if I spot any issues, that'll be my return on their investment.
When MoP does release, I'll probably hold off on any new characters because of the insanity that follows new content, but at least I'll have had an advance look.
#4 Apr 05 2012 at 11:06 AM Rating: Good
To answer your question, all of your current characters and in game stuff will not be affected if you choose to participate in Beta. Beta mainly mirrors your account to allow you to test out the new stuff.

In my opinion, if you feel like you'd rather not level or play a panda to help Blizz out with finding glitches, what you think would make the race or monk class better, etc, and then play it again when the expac comes out, then you probably just shouldn't participate.
#5 Apr 05 2012 at 11:14 AM Rating: Excellent
Criminy wrote:
If you like to have a hand in improving the game then yes. If you are looking for a free demo then no. Everything in the beta will be erased once the beta is over. So at the end of the day it is up to you if you want to play it or not. Personally I enjoyed playing the Cata beta. I got to report a lot of bugs and I feel as though I helped a bit with solving some issues. Whether I did help or not is a different story but I like to think I did. Smiley: tongue


This.

You're looking at the beta experience all wrong, OP. It's not about getting a sneak peak at the new content, it's about testing the new content and helping Blizzard ensure that the product is solid. Your responsibilities include making posts on the beta forums when you notice a bug or if you feel like a particular class mechanic isn't functioning like it should. What you test is really up to you. When I was in the Cata beta, I leveled up a new goblin priest from 1 to about 55 or so. Then, because I really didn't feel up to leveling through all of BC and Northrend content, I created a premade priest to start testing out the new 80+ content. With every zone I did, there was a thread on the beta forums asking specific information. What level you were when you started and finished, if there were any specific bugs you noticed, what you thought of the quests/general experience, etc. I don't think I posted feedback for every zone I did, but I posted feedback for a lot of them. If you want a good chance at being invited for another beta later, make sure to hold up your end and either post feedback in the forums, or do it in game.

One thing that annoyed the crap out of me last time, was the amount of people who would go to the beta forums and whine about how the zone they just did wasn't finished and how they didn't get any quest rewards, and blah blah blah. They were entitled jerks, and viewed the beta as their own personal advanced preview. That's not what a beta is about.
#6 Apr 05 2012 at 11:43 AM Rating: Excellent
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I apologize if I am coming off as entitled or as a jerk, that is not my intention.

I am just debating it within my own mind and wanted others feedback.

Honestly, there are people out there who know SO much more about this game than I do. I would simply be in it putzing around. (Of course that can help the process.)

I'm just wondering, seeing as how I doubt I'll roll a panda or monk, if I should clog up the works and do anything.

Sorry if I came off any other way. And thank you all for your input so far.
#7 Apr 05 2012 at 12:26 PM Rating: Excellent
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zestra wrote:
I apologize if I am coming off as entitled or as a jerk, that is not my intention.


You didn't, not to me at least.

But yeah, it's what others have said I think, do you have the time and want to mess around in an open beta in an attempt to improve the final thingy.

I'm debating myself. As much as I'd like to give it a go I have a couple of misgivings. Firstly, I don't have a whole lot of time, so I don't know how much I'd really see and do. Also, I kind of would like to save my excitement for when it is actually released.
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#8 Apr 05 2012 at 12:34 PM Rating: Excellent
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As Someproteinguy said, you didn't come across as a jerk at all. Your karma would have suffered if that was the case. Smiley: tongue People have a bad habit of treating beta's as pre-release of a game. Blizzard actually uses a beta as just that, a beta. Same goes for certain other games.

It should also be noted that you don't need to be an expert of the game or your class to contribute. You just have to be willing to bring to light any issues you may come across. Excluding obvious things like "X item looks like stuff I got at lv 10", "wtf Blizz my class is no longer OP, nerf shamans!", "why can't I level past 86?!?! WTF BLIZZARD?!??1111!", etc...
#9 Apr 05 2012 at 1:56 PM Rating: Excellent
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Honestly having participated in betas for WoW a couple of different times (most notably in WotLK), the most rewarding thing for me was to disseminate information here and figure things out via theorycrafting and testing on beta so that people could see what changes were really coming to our class in a real way.

It did kind of burn me out on WotLK, but I think that was because I was playing beta most of the time and then playing hardcore arena on live (that was during S3 or S4 IIRC).

It's worth a shot if you have the invite, otherwise give your invite to me so I can do testing and post my experiences on the forum. Smiley: grin
#10 Apr 05 2012 at 4:27 PM Rating: Good
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Quote:
and figure things out via theorycrafting

That and bug reporting are why I beta anything. But the current iteration of WoW (and the beta) don't need as much math work as previous versions did. It's just a lot easier to "hit the number" than before.

But otherwise OP I'd just echo what Pigtails said. She is wise. People should listen to her more and mock her only behind her back.

In other news... nice rack. =)

Edited, Apr 5th 2012 3:28pm by TherionSaysWhat
#11 Apr 05 2012 at 4:45 PM Rating: Excellent
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I got my beta invite this morning. I need to decide if I want to take time away from levelling my zabrak assassin in SW:TOR to test out the beta.

Unfortunately, it's not a code you use to access it, so I can't give the beta invite to somebody else if I decide not to use it.

Edit: And who has a nice rack? You really shouldn't talk about Noc that way, although I'm sure she has a lovely one...

Edited, Apr 5th 2012 5:46pm by Bigdaddyjug
#12 Apr 05 2012 at 5:44 PM Rating: Good
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I like to think I have nice boobies.

Screenshot
#13 Apr 05 2012 at 7:51 PM Rating: Excellent
Bigdaddyjug wrote:
I got my beta invite this morning. I need to decide if I want to take time away from levelling my zabrak assassin in SW:TOR to test out the beta.

Unfortunately, it's not a code you use to access it, so I can't give the beta invite to somebody else if I decide not to use it.

Edit: And who has a nice rack? You really shouldn't talk about Noc that way, although I'm sure she has a lovely one...



I step away for a few hours and you're talking about my rack? What the... I don't even...
#14 Apr 05 2012 at 7:56 PM Rating: Good
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436 posts
Zestra, it's ultimately up to you whether it's worth it or not.

Personally, I would love to get into beta. I level characters into the 40's and beyond all the time and either leave them sit there for months or years, or delete them to start a new one anyway as it is now. I have all 10 classes at 85 now and am familiar with, and at least decent at, two or more specs for each. I have no problem geeking out over minutae and wandering around to check stuff out, taking notes, and reporting back on it all. I realize though, that not everybody is like that. My wife, for example, would probably look at it like a 2nd job almost, and be terribly upset if she worked on a character and then lost or had to redo it, and probably very frustrated at the incomplete & buggy state of things.

As for helping out, I would imagine they are probably in need of people with all experience levels and playstyles so that they know what works and what doesn't. If something is confusing or easily missed/misunderstood by newer or real casual players, that's probably something they want to know.

Keep in mind though, that it's not just "helping Blizz out," it's helping out the entire playerbase and possibly helping (even if in a small way) the direction of how Mists turns out.
#15 Apr 06 2012 at 10:43 AM Rating: Excellent
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Got curious about whether my MoP beta thing came through(convo on guild forums), so I logged into my email at work. Checking my email for the first time in three weeks, apparently I not only got my guaranteed beta for MoP, apparently I also got into the D3 closed beta. I was planning to avoid the MoP, but that other one is kinda really tempting.
#16 Apr 06 2012 at 11:15 AM Rating: Good
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xNocturnalSunx wrote:
Bigdaddyjug wrote:
I got my beta invite this morning. I need to decide if I want to take time away from levelling my zabrak assassin in SW:TOR to test out the beta.

Unfortunately, it's not a code you use to access it, so I can't give the beta invite to somebody else if I decide not to use it.

Edit: And who has a nice rack? You really shouldn't talk about Noc that way, although I'm sure she has a lovely one...



I step away for a few hours and you're talking about my rack? What the... I don't even...


I wasn't talking about your rack, Therion was. Well, he was talking about *somebody's* rack. And it was either yours or Pigtails'. I picked yours.

SUE ME!!!
#17 Apr 06 2012 at 3:07 PM Rating: Good
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It's the internets. Who doesn't have a nice rack?
#18 Apr 06 2012 at 4:38 PM Rating: Good
Since it was Therion, I'm guessing he was talking about mine. I could be wrong though. I doubt it, but it could happen. Smiley: wink2
#19 Apr 06 2012 at 7:23 PM Rating: Good
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TherionSaysWhat wrote:
It's the internets. Who doesn't have a nice rack?


Everyone has a nice rack on the internet.

Especially me.
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#20 Apr 08 2012 at 1:20 PM Rating: Excellent
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I've been poking around on the Beta now for about a week. In previous Betas, there were popups for feedback after every quest but currently they don't have that so it's hard to leave feedback about particular quests since you have to do it on a forum that is just labeled "quests". Most of the threads deal more with the major bugs and bottlenecks so I feel weird about making a thread to say that a particular quest was nice or fun or tedious. There is only one forum to talk about classes instead of one for each class so it seems that it's getting hard to find threads dealing with just my class to contribute to.

I get the feeling that we really are being let into a very early point in Beta. It's a lot less finished than a lot of people seem to have been expecting, judging by the stuff in the Beta forums and that I see in the general chats on Beta. The bugs are still really big and will halt your progress on the quest chains. The level 85 zone isn't as linear so there often are other areas you can quest in when you find you can't continue with the chain you were working on but if you hit a snag in the Panda start zone, you pretty much are stuck until they fix it. Yesterday I got attacked by little checkered cube (bugged npc models) which was rather amusing. There is also currently a bug affecting female Troll animations which makes them do the wrong animations for whatever they are doing and they dance constantly when they are supposed to be idle. It's pretty funny but makes it hard to play one right now.

I consider it a bit of a preview and a chance to see what changes are being made to my class and hopefully be heard if there are major problems with it. I still spend most of my time playing regular WoW though. It's interesting to me to see things in a less polished format as it helps me appreciate just how great the actual finished product is and how much work went into it. :)
#21 Apr 10 2012 at 2:28 PM Rating: Good
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I was invited to beta (early AP holder) a couple of weeks ago.

It's overpopulated by kids who think that it's a retail release, complaining about bugs, overcrowding quest givers yet being unable to target and "use" the NPC with a macro, etc.

Very tedious.

Then, in my desire to try leveling a Monk, at least through the early levels, I rolled a Nelf instead of a Panda to avoid the crazy crowds. Unfortunately, every quest that required you to find something that spawned in the field (I.e. pick up stolen bags) was bugged. Nothing respawned. I reported the bug (like a good beta tester!) and logged off.

To be honest, you have to really want to TEST things right now, because its in very rough shape to try to call it a "preview." Some zones produced large purple boxes blocking off view of large chunks of the world. Some zones don't seem to work at all. Lots of Monk abilities are labeled "NYI" (meaning not yet implemented), etc.

The bad news is that release seems a long way off.

What are we supposed to do for the next couple of months? Aside from Diablo 3, of course. I see now why Blizzard was so eager to lock us into an Annual Pass. I would have surely suspended by sub by now out of boredom.
#22 Apr 10 2012 at 2:50 PM Rating: Good
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Quote:
The bad news is that release seems a long way off.

Seconded. I've been involved in beta testing for a long time and this is the least "beta-y" beta I've seen in recent years. Feels more like a late alpha honestly. My best guess would be fall release at this rate.

But, at least we'll have Diablo 3 and (more importantly) Guild Wars 2 before the pandas are released into the wild.

Anyone else in beta playing a monk get druid/rogue deja vu?
#23 Apr 10 2012 at 3:14 PM Rating: Good
Quote:
It's overpopulated by kids who think that it's a retail release, complaining about bugs, overcrowding quest givers yet being unable to target and "use" the NPC with a macro, etc.


Sounds a lot like the Cata beta to me.
#24 Apr 10 2012 at 3:24 PM Rating: Good
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It is. The NPC piles are easy enough to work around with /tar and by binding "Interact with NPC" to a tilde or other key. But some of the other object-interactive quests are neigh impossible.

Just like every other WoW beta.
#25 Apr 10 2012 at 4:39 PM Rating: Excellent
I was referring mostly to the entitled kids who complain about the beta not being a release ready preview. There was plenty of those in the Cata beta. I imagine with the Annual Pass, it's going to be 10x worse this time around.
#26 Apr 10 2012 at 11:48 PM Rating: Decent
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Most of what I do in beta is test mechanics anyway, I don't really want to spoil the questing experience too much, since I loathe it already. That was the main mistake I made in WotLK beta, I did most of the 70-76 quests 2-3 times so I hated them with a passion on release.

When my beta access comes in, I'm going to be testing mechanics and getting screenshots and then logging back onto live so I can make more money. My goal is 25-50k by release.
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