No I just blog about MMOs because I don't play them o_O
Anyways.
Actually some MMO players generally UNDERESTIMATE what hours they play, when and how powerful/weak their PC rigs are. You have to consider the users who stay logged on 24/7 'because they can' or because they run AFK player-run shops or whatever. If the servers stay up 24/7, theres someone out there who will stay online 24/7.
-24/7 loggers are not what make a beta test run. Its the person that plays the game for an hour and analyzes his play providing feedback that is a tester. You are refering to players after launch.
The point of what you quoted was that players will LIE about what hours they play and how their computer performs at the CHANCE they can land in a beta. Hopefully you can see now where the extra man hours and resources are required to weed out such applications. Hence my move for single player type closed testing in the initial beta stages ramping up to a full blown *free for everyone* stress test aka marketing ploy.
Plug data into an Excel worksheet, randomly pick X number out and thats Group 1. Sort the data by 'average time spent playing games' and thats Group 2. Etc, etc, etc. Any programmer who can write a MMO game can write a program that can automate this.
-Again the point of wasted man hours and resources devoted to a project that isn't *essential* (essential in my view) to the overall game development process. As Darniaq points out... the bug reporting function deserves the attention.
Also the fact of bogus data being entered only compounds your spreadsheet answer.
Actually, WoW didn't have a NDA because that wasn't a beta. It was free marketing. And the 'closed beta' prior to it DID have a NDA. Given how poorly the servers did at launch day, the fact that they SERIOUSLY did not take that last 'beta' seriously is clear.
-If I remember correctly (correct me if I'm wrong) the NDA was dropped after the friends and family beta. Most of the beta was without an NDA... hence why sites like Thottbot.com were running full steam well before the game hit stress test.
And on a final note... name any other MMO beta that put 500,000 testers online and still had to shut out thousands more? Name any websites/online services that reach the same concurrent user levels of World of Warcraft and run flawlessly out of the gates?
I linked your post up further there Darniaq and had tried to edit the/. submission to include it since it brings up a great point.
However I am still a firm believer that if you're going to be that strict on picking testers you can put that money and man hours into paying real game testers.
The public community of gamers is best at stress testing... at which point a focused and coordinated bug reporting system is required.
I understand load testing... hence why I pointed out that is what the MMORPG developers need to do. Skip all these baby step "only a few in at a time" elitist testing phases. Drop 1,000 players in a day and keep going until the servers don't work anymore.
The whole process of selecting a few select beta testers only wastes time and resources which could be better placed into the back end bug reporting systems or fixing the actual bugs themselves.
Darniaq pointed out something on his blog that I totally agree with about the actual bug reporting features.
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No I just blog about MMOs because I don't play them o_O
Anyways. Actually some MMO players generally UNDERESTIMATE what hours they play, when and how powerful/weak their PC rigs are. You have to consider the users who stay logged on 24/7 'because they can' or because they run AFK player-run shops or whatever. If the servers stay up 24/7, theres someone out there who will stay online 24/7.
-24/7 loggers are not what make a beta test run. Its the person that plays the game for an hour and analyzes his play providing feedback that is a tester. You are refering to players after launch.
The point of what you quoted was that players will LIE about what hours they play and how their computer performs at the CHANCE they can land in a beta. Hopefully you can see now where the extra man hours and resources are required to weed out such applications. Hence my move for single player type closed testing in the initial beta stages ramping up to a full blown *free for everyone* stress test aka marketing ploy.
Plug data into an Excel worksheet, randomly pick X number out and thats Group 1. Sort the data by 'average time spent playing games' and thats Group 2. Etc, etc, etc. Any programmer who can write a MMO game can write a program that can automate this.
-Again the point of wasted man hours and resources devoted to a project that isn't *essential* (essential in my view) to the overall game development process. As Darniaq points out... the bug reporting function deserves the attention.
Also the fact of bogus data being entered only compounds your spreadsheet answer.
Actually, WoW didn't have a NDA because that wasn't a beta. It was free marketing. And the 'closed beta' prior to it DID have a NDA. Given how poorly the servers did at launch day, the fact that they SERIOUSLY did not take that last 'beta' seriously is clear.
-If I remember correctly (correct me if I'm wrong) the NDA was dropped after the friends and family beta. Most of the beta was without an NDA... hence why sites like Thottbot.com were running full steam well before the game hit stress test.
And on a final note... name any other MMO beta that put 500,000 testers online and still had to shut out thousands more? Name any websites/online services that reach the same concurrent user levels of World of Warcraft and run flawlessly out of the gates?
I linked your post up further there Darniaq and had tried to edit the /. submission to include it since it brings up a great point.
However I am still a firm believer that if you're going to be that strict on picking testers you can put that money and man hours into paying real game testers.
The public community of gamers is best at stress testing... at which point a focused and coordinated bug reporting system is required.
I understand load testing... hence why I pointed out that is what the MMORPG developers need to do. Skip all these baby step "only a few in at a time" elitist testing phases. Drop 1,000 players in a day and keep going until the servers don't work anymore. The whole process of selecting a few select beta testers only wastes time and resources which could be better placed into the back end bug reporting systems or fixing the actual bugs themselves. Darniaq pointed out something on his blog that I totally agree with about the actual bug reporting features.