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Free beta?

VITAMADNESSVITAMADNESS Member Posts: 132
in The Pub at MMORPG.COM

"Free beta" - I love that term and see it all over. It wouldn't be a beta if it wasn't free.

Who would pay to help a company create a product, which you are going to end up paying for anyway? That would be like paying your employer to work for them each day. You are helping a company for free to do something that they have to anyway in order to release a product and would have to pay if they didn't get free help from their future customers. Luckily most people love seeing new products as early as possible and are willing to help out by providing beta service at no charge.

Anyway just a ramble, but makes me laugh when people think these companies are doiing customers a favor by "allowing" them to beta their products when in fact it is the complete opposite. MMORPG creators in particular have to get free help to at least load test their servers.

Beta'd: Neocron, Planetside, ShadowBane, Horizons, City of Heros, Saga of Ryzom, Lineage II, WoW Stress Test

Played: EQ, Shadowbane, DAoC, SWG, Anarchy Online, Asherson's Call 2. Earth and Beyond, City of Heros, EQ

Playing: WAITING FOR WOW and EQ 2

Comments

  • TzaleTzale Member Posts: 143

    I agree with you 100%. So many people feel like the developer's are doing them a favor, when in-fact it's the BETA testers who are doing the favor. I'd never "pay" for a BETA, maybe if I really liked the game I'd pay for a pre-order kit to get into BETA, such as City of Heroes which I might just pay the $10 to see the game in BETA but for most game's I wouldn't do that.

    -Tom

  • feedtherichfeedtherich Member Posts: 105
    I think I remember FFXI wanting to charge me to join beta.
  • WarpHunterWarpHunter Member Posts: 147
    I paid $10 for Planetside Beta... Thats only because Fileplanet was giving away free beta's and I didnt want to be #500 in line to download it so I joined fileplanet for a month and cancelled my service right afterwards... Had lots of fun and since I was a member of fileplanet got to download some other fun stuff without having to wait for those damn free download servers they have...

    Warp

  • TzaleTzale Member Posts: 143

    The free download lines aren't that bad, I can't see why people pay for those things. If you have broadband just select what you want, and wait the time until it starts. But I guess some people really like it, the contests are always nice.

    -Tom

  • AluadanAluadan Member Posts: 118

    The fact is that there are people that would be more then willing to pay to play in a beta. For the people that do not get accepted and really have no other mmorpg that interests them at the time, why not pay. A good example of this would be WoW. If they offered you a beta spot right now for the price of $20 or a $5 monthy fee there would be plenty of people lined up to take the offer.

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