Beta Testers.....

I think it'll be closed, because of one of Tiy's Twitter posts. He said something along the lines of 'the people who get to participate in the beta are the people who have been involved in the community the longest, so start now!' and he had a link to the forums in his post. So I think its closed.

 

That's correct; unfortunately that had the side effect of flooding the forums with something I have been referring to as "Betawants" - people who joined the forums specifically for the chance to get into the closed beta and nothing more. Unfortunately some of these people think beta testing is "Getting early access to the game before all my buddies! Can't wait to tell them about all the cool stuff and make them jealous!"
Won't they be suprised to fill out bug reports and sign an NDA.

 

Haha, idk what an NDA is, but you're right, they have no idea how buggy betas are.

 

NDA stands for "Non-Disclosure Agreement", which is a legal contract you have to sign for most betas stating that you will not reveal any information on the game not available to the public. Breaking an NDA is punishable with legal actions.
Betawants would most likely sign on the dotted line and immediately forget, and tell their friends about everything even though they said they would not
Betawants of course specifically used for such people and not ALL the people who signed up after the tweet

Fortunately they are mostly refraining from posting or "post boosting" because Tiy didn't say that was part of the selection, or else the forums would be completely overrun right now
But I wish they were less focused on the Beta and more on the Testing

 

Yup, I sent Tiy an email asking whether there would be a beta, and if there was if i could participate, he said 'Hi Alex
We'll be looking at a beta eventually, but it's a while away yet

Thank you for the kind words!
Regards
Tiy'
So I'm guessing that they're working on deciding who is participating and such, and they probably aren't going to rush into the beta without internally testing it first. Let's just hope those forum-spammers don't get in

 

Yeah, I signed up after the tweet, but only because i never got around to it. Schoolwork first!

 

Oh, I'm sorry! I was not implying that you are such a person
I have just been venting my frustrations with them for a while
I am sure they are all good people really but
I know most of them are just here for the beta
and it gets hard not to get angry about it when I read some of their posts

I'll try to keep it to myself now, sorry about that.

 

Oh i know... I was just stating a fact xD

 

I'm till not to keen on how they are doing the betas, but as long a there is an NDA I see no problem with it.

 

I am sure they talked about it a lot in their office on the surface of the moon and this is the best decision that they could come up with
If it helps I have never heard of a closed beta without an NDA

 

The risks are still the same in a closed beta. Leaks could get out and then the game is pushed to be released, as is what happened with Terraria. There's always a risk factor, though a closed beta would probably be preferable to an open one, otherwise people will get Minecraft syndrome and think the game is already released.

 

I would prefer a closed beta, even with the risk of leaks.
The Beta should only be open to the most trusted forum-members then!

 

The beta should be open to only close real life friends in case of leaks. Open Beta would spoil the game for lots of people. and most of the forum members will play for fun and won't report bugs. So it's better to have really strict closed beta that only real life friends of the dev's could get a beta acess.

 

Possibly. There are only do many devs though, they wouldnt find all the bugs if it was only a handful of people.

 

I personally love betas that are open to people who pre-order, like the new Sins of a Solar Empire or Elemental expansions. I think if someone is passionate enough about a game to pre-order it (investing their money way before its actual release) then they should be awarded for their dedication to the brand.

 

I just love this game so much i cant WAIT FOR A GODDAMN BETA!
oh the awesomeness that will happen in my life!

 

Millions? Maybe a few tens of thousand if it gets the right publicity. A couple of hundred thousand or so at most.

 

Not neccissarily, there's 7 billion people on this planet. By millions, if you mean like 2 milliion, then it's possible. 30 million people play Minecraft, around 1.5 million people play Terraria. 2 million people is barely a fraction of the human population. 'Millions' of people is 0.002857142857143 of the worlds population. Thats reasonable.

 

you havent heard of many closed betas then. i participated in several closed betas, and applied to even more. the one and only game that i ever stumbled across that had an NDA was "black prophecy".

 

While i definatly understand, I feel that I need to point out that the number of minecraft ''copies'' sold is just over 5 million, and there are only 23 million minecraft accounts. Also, people who pirate, don't count.

Guild Wars 2 closed beta also has an NDA.