Beta vs. No BetaFollow

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.

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.

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.

As Someproteinguy said, you didn't come across as a jerk at all. Your karma would have suffered if that was the case. 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...

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

I like to think I have nice boobies.

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.

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!!!

Since it was Therion, I'm guessing he was talking about mine. I could be wrong though. I doubt it, but it could happen.

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. :)

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?

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.

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.

Assuming that Blizzard listens to community feed back.

/first 3 months of Cataclysm live

There was a very active Tcrafter community on the beta forums for Cata. Their thoughtful input usually got a "all will be well for live" boxed response. Hopefully Blizzard learns from that /shrug.

Bodhi wasn't the only one annoyed by Blizzards lack of attention to the core theorycrafting community during betas. Cata and WotLK were both worked over and given plenty of analysis. Seemingly all of which was ignored. And, in perfect honesty, after my experience wasting hour upon hour writing sims and spreadsheets (and sharing my results) with those betas, I'm not too keen on doing it again =P

So far on this beta I'm not finding much to get too excited about other than a race change to panda for one of my toons mainly for kitch. Monks are somewhat fun initially, but after playing a rogue and (especially) druid, I'm not blown away by them. Just a new flavor of combo points really. The zones so far are still a bit buggy but nothing unusual for this stage of testing (though it still feels like a late alpha rather than an early beta). Once you get past the knuckle-heads at least. The environments are pretty and well art directed, the questing is nothing new.

My next session will be dedicated to testing my druid. Not too happy about the feral split, but until trying it....

Cheers,

Finally got my invite last night, woo hoo! Although, if I start playing now, that will cut into my Dragon Age time. So I might wait another couple weeks or so before I start playing. Maybe that'll give Blizz enough time to work out some more of the serious bugs.

I have a hard enough time just logging into WoW once a month. I can't handle another MMO right now.

GW2 (edit: closed beta) stress test this weekend it seems. Which means we get a new open beta client next week for download as a rational assumption. Full-on open beta for the masses either April 20-23rd, or 27-30th. From what I've seen, release in June is my best guess. Oh, and PT, does "no subscription fee" tickle you or is that my feather flail?

Logged into the MoP beta last night for a few minutes (had dinner plans). Rolled an orc monk just to see the animations. Let's just say, not ready for prime time =) But it was interesting to see the other races with the new class. Just wish I could go goblin!

Edited, Apr 13th 2012 1:37pm by TherionSaysWhat

You need to download the beta client, it will not work with the retail client or PTR. Make sure you check battle.net to see what account name your beta is under (WOW1, WOW2, WOW3, etc) because many people are confused when the beta asks them to select an account to log in as and if you pick the wrong one nothing will happen.

I'm confused as to why there is no starter quest. I was only able to figure out where the starting quests are, because I had made a premade, and they were at least smart enough to start out the premades where the first quest is. I checked Org, and neither the quest board nor Garrosh had any starter quest, and nobody in trade chat would tell me where the quests started.

Yeah, I just think that should have been something they implemented from the start. How else are we supposed to figure out where to go if there isn't some indication in game? If not in game, you'd think there at least would be a sticky in the beta forums. I looked, I didn't see any.

I don't expect the beta to be finished at this point Theo. I don't think it's unreasonable to expect there to be a bread crumb quest for the new 85 content though. For the Cata beta, I got in after about two weeks, and they already had the bread crumb quests for the level 80 zones. Hyjal wasn't even close to being complete, but Vash was pretty well done. The beta for MoP has been out for almost two months now. I would think Blizz would recognize that most people who play the game don't like just randomly killing sh*t, so if they want to test out abilities and balance them, the best way to do this is to make sure people know where to go for the new quests.

Expecting a beta to be exactly like the one before when they have a completely new way of getting people into the beta isn't really that smart.

Sure, they could have put breadcrumb quests in to lead you by the hand to the panda that ports you to the conflict zone. But honestly? I can see why they didn't. The developers are obviously focused on talents and abilities at this point, and they aren't doing the beta for you. The beta is for them. They test, figure out mechanics, etc.

This is really like their early closed betas in the past (which being opted into doesn't get you in, you have to be invited by a Blizzard employee specifically), like the WotLK beta I took part in. It's not like the Cata beta or the later stages of the WotLK beta.

Just for reference, they also didn't have breadcrumb quests in WotLK. They didn't for Cata closed beta either.

TL;DR the devs don't care about your experience at this point. They care about the balance they're trying to achieve, then they'll work on your experience.

Um, yeah I took the portal the panda gives you. It took me to an area with no quests, and a bunch of world pvp going on. How is that in any way asking to have my hand held?

I'm not whining about bugs, or not having quests completely fleshed out, or anything like that. I know what a beta is supposed to be about. If they didn't have the time to put in a breadcrumb quest, fine. At the very least they could have had the panda who ports you, port you to where the first quest is given, or posted a sticky on the forum about where to go. I really don't feel like I'm asking for that much here.

If you choose Pandaria, there's a portal back to Stormwind and you can very easily choose Wayward Landing.

You guys are making it out to be the end of the world that you have to figure things out that aren't being spoon-fed to you.