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something needs to be done about ppl breaking the NDA...
PrinceVegeta
Member Posts: 94
I cant believe since i left this site has so many immature people who dont take nda's seriously... Im not saying all you ppl r but alot of these people give this site a bad name. These people who blab about autoassault who got it are breaking the nda. The game isnt final and i bet some of these ppl will start bashing it because there are "bugs"... this did not happen until this wave of invites...
Mmorpg.com staff should not tolerate the actions of breaking the nda. I come back one day and i see this. Its unbelieveable.
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Once a gamer... Always a gamer
Comments
I completely agree. Most people on here apply for beta tests to get a taste of the game, not to help it through development. The biggest underlying problem here is that companies really aren't cracking down (in general) on those who break NDAs for betas. If it was inside the company, they'd fire the person, but generally speaking, unless the idiot posted an account on ebay, there's very little recourse for the company. The company I work for is going back to internal testing, and HIRING play testers to beta test our title that's in very, very, very early development stages. While opening betas to the public increases exposure, and usually ends up getting you more customers, most of the bug hunting ends up being done internally anyways.
My proposal to NCSoft, SOE, Blizzard, etc., and mmorpg.com is for the companies to browse through the forums here once or twice a day, just to read any posts that could be a violation of an NDA, then to contact mmorpg.com and ask for the IP address. From there, mmorpg.com to relinquish the information to the companies, and allow them to start making examples of people. Maybe filing a lawsuit or a few dozen, or at the least cancelling their accounts.
"From there, mmorpg.com to relinquish the information to the companies, and allow them to start making examples of people. Maybe filing a lawsuit or a few dozen, or at the least cancelling their accounts."
Nearly exactly what Dave said when he was requesting information to sue those "slanderers". Wanted to file suit to make examples of somethingawful and mmorpg members making fun of mourning. Without a court warrant, mmorpg.com will not turn over information. Possible to sue, mabye, has it or will it happen, Never.
I don't think your dave, but you share his philosophy of suing and flaming.
The Rules of Conduct for MMORPG.com forums does not state that it is wrong for a poster to break the NDA...meaning I don't think they'll do anything about it.
It's just so odd to see a MMO forum that doesn't respect the NDA's of beta games...guess I'm still used to my Stratics Mod days...
"Your proposal to NC Soft and Blizzard" ??
Have you told them about it ?
I bet they never thought of that
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"Far away across the field, the tolling of the iron bell, calls the faithful to their knees. To hear the softly spoken magic spell" Pink Floyd-Dark Side of the Moon
Maybe the problem is more on how they choose the beta testers then on this site.
If you do a lottery for beta, you are expecting to see the NDA been broken. If you select persons, then you are expecting those persons to respect the NDA, since you refuse all candidates that are not worthy of respecting a NDA agreement.
- "If I understand you well, you are telling me until next time. " - Ren
Breaking NDA is not same as breaking the law. It is just an agreement between 2 parties with some (possible) consequences if agreement is brokes, nothing more. Too harsh NDAs cannot be even uphold in court of law in some countries.
You can report these individuals to company responsible for AutoAssault and it is their problem to uphold their NDAs. But then, what you tell more than "handle x" on internet forum acts against AutoAssault NDA supposing that he has agreed on it first place.
I blame companies that give access to Beta to anyone.
Beta should be awarded only to people that follow the game with passion, not to everyone.
But companies nowadays prefer to make everyone happy hoping that they will have a wider player base to count on.
Little they know that if the game is incomplete or buggy, their strategy will backfire spectacularly and will have a lot of dissatisfied people that didn't "enjoied the game...........erhh sorry..........the Beta.
I agree with the beta choosing thing. Somehow it should be something special to be allowed to beta test a game. It saddens me when I see a review of a game in beta (like a DnL review awhile ago) and the "reviewer" talks about how the game is buggy and sucks because of that. Or when people post on the forums after playing a beta of a game and describing how it sucks because it has too many bugs. Well duh you morons!!!! Thats what beta is for, to report bugs. Although it may seem like a free ride to play a game, your there to help the dev's make the game better. Stop being asses and actually help the dev's do what they need to do.
I think we're too nice to all these companies. How many other games that are single player have you heard of a bunch of people being able to come in and test? They're getting a TON OF FREE HELP at the cost of a few people posting crap about the game or only joining the bandwagon... BUT STILL, most companies have to PAY testers because it is a JOB!! Yet mmorpg's get the most FREE testers anywhere in the industry!!
They also produce the most buggy games, why? Because they're not getting professionals to find th ebugs for them, just a bunch of players... that and not all the players understand programming and game design like the developers or the professional testers... it's a gamble really, they choose to let their game get slandered so that they can get some free help, but it is free and so they shouldn't expect top notch quality.
The funny thing is MMORPG's are more buggy than majority of single player games I play, yet they cost more... I don't get it.
BTW: I didn't hear too many people talk crap about GW during the beta and I don't even think they had an NDA< perhaps some developers are just smarter and further up on the food chain than others? The only people I heard bash GW's was people who just didn't like the style of game, not that the game was "A BUGGY PIECE OF CRAP!
Are you kidding me? How hard is it to test out a crafting system? or a combat system? The only thing you need lots of people for is finding all the places that you might get stuck, exploitable area's, various bugs that wouldn't have been found unless with large populations and possibly things to do with grouping. The rest could easily be done by some very qualified testers given game master abilities so that they can create certain instances of the game freely without spending hours trying to set up a situation to test it. So there's really no excuse for a game to go open beta and still play like crap.
One extremely experience tester is worth 100 or more freelance testers, and with a business contract then you could easily give him things that would make it easier for him, and allow testing to go more quickly.
BTW: Taking lawsuit action against people who were invited under no pay conditions to help you would be the lamest thing in the world... They would lose so much respect from gamers...
Dave I dont think you understand that there is alot more content that goes into an MMO than into a single player game. Besides the massive amounts of content, there are server-side issues that take a while to iron out. I also dont think you understand that unlike a single-player game that gets maybe a patch or two after its released, MMO's are constantly getting patches which change code around, hence the bugs.
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Oh I completely understand. You are also forgetting that MMO's are a huge money maker, look at WoW.
1,000 subscribers = 10,000 dollars monthly. That's not even considering the initial purchase of the game, and then other business deals you can make to strike up a bargain. With wow 2 mil subscribers = 30 million a MONTH. 30 million a month is a TON OF MONEY. I think that easily covers the development costs, and the need to increase your worker base. One year without expansions =
(2 mil * 50) + (30mil * 12) = 460 million dollars. I'd like to see ANY SINGLE player game compare to that income, especially considering the fact that hte game will probably keep this consistancy especially since the MMORPG industry is new and still growing.
So I think the huge amount of extra money generated should easily counter balance the difference in content, and server issues. It's just that because so many people have dreams of making MMORPG's, and there are a lot of small teams making MMORPG's... since it still is a relatively untapped area, all the pioneers are getting away with a lot due to the genre not being so defined.
Even if you were a small team and didn't have any financial backing and suposibly "Worked your butt off for 5 years to make the game, if you got 5,000 subscribers consistantly at 10 dollars a month for a year that would pay more than any job I can see myself getting with a college degree.
Then if you look at inovating titles like Eve Online and their subscriber base... you can't have pity for these people. It's just like every other business, you succeed or fail but to expect free testers to do the job of specialists is rediculous.
If you whine about the fact that these people were given a tough time for their mistakes... well HELLO!! They made a decision to make a game without doing the proper research, and understanding that is required to compete with the big boys, it's not a pity party jeez!
If a company makes an MMORPG right, they can possibly reach a billion dollars a year... all they've got to do is blow out the rest of the competition and make expansions regularly! I don't think NCSOFT would be running SO MANY MMORPG's and MAKING TWO MORE (Tabula rasa and auto assault) if the freaking things weren't HUGE MONEY MAKERS.
Oh and another thing... content? WHAT CONTENT! Half the mmo's out there are single player games STRETCHED OUT with long leveling times and such. Ok they do have more content, but I think compaired to some games it's not that big of a difference. Diablo 2 I thought had a ton of content just because they created a system that would randomize dungeons and create random magical items, which made the replayability massive.
I think you'll be seeing a lot more of games that create replayability by functionality more often now... take a loot at Spore the game developed by the guy that made the sims. It's amazing!
I think NDA's are a joke.
SWG released the game before it was ready even with the outcry of so many beta testers on their own private beta forums were telling no do not do it your game simply is not ready. SWG Deserved to be trashed. It does not matter if its the Devs fault of the higher up telling the Devs you must release on this date ready or not.
Ultima Online deserved to have its NDA broken on their UO: Kingdoms(ala the secret project they have been hinting about since before november of last year) They have trouble showing real creative vision and handling of their game, their Developer communication is spotty on their own terms, how can you respect a company that farms out their own forums to a fansite, not even a genunine fansite a scam site like Stratics! HELL! They wont' even admit it was cancelled..thesecret project. Yet they told us and hinted to us numerous times it was being worked on.
WoW *shrugs* their game was ready to go, I am not a good enough beta tester to say if their game was not ready but by the time I got in (before the public(stress) testing), they had so many playing I only felt like I was a stress tester to begin with.
I understand why you have an NDA, but frankly with the way so many MMORPG Game Developers handle their fans, why should we the players respect them. Even the game itself is treated badly with respect to the ideals of the game. Show us that your making a damn good game in all respects and I will start to respect you more.
You just said it yourself why they need such a huge amount of testers. And that is just a tip of the iceberg. Most of these games created today are so vast, they cant possibly hit every bug in beta. They should however come very close.
And you act like me or you are doing them a favor by testing theyre game. For some games this may be the case. But some of the more looked at titles, people would love to get in and get a chance to play before it goes live. Damn, companies are even going so far as to basically make people pay to play in beta ,lol. If people are willing to pay, they are definately willing to play for free.
Most of the things you have stated thus far lead me to believe, you have no earthly idea what the hell your talking about. Id reply to your next message, but im tired of reading this garbage. Seriously you have no idea what it even takes to test those types of games....youve proven that in your own statements.
You just said it yourself why they need such a huge amount of testers. And that is just a tip of the iceberg. Most of these games created today are so vast, they cant possibly hit every bug in beta. They should however come very close.
And you act like me or you are doing them a favor by testing theyre game. For some games this may be the case. But some of the more looked at titles, people would love to get in and get a chance to play before it goes live. Damn, companies are even going so far as to basically make people pay to play in beta ,lol. If people are willing to pay, they are definately willing to play for free.
Most of the things you have stated thus far lead me to believe, you have no earthly idea what the hell your talking about. Id reply to your next message, but im tired of reading this garbage. Seriously you have no idea what it even takes to test those types of games....youve proven that in your own statements.
It's nice that you think you're right, but you're not backing it up with any sort of info, just your opinion. So, I'm going to believe my own opinions since they may not have anymore substance then your arguement, you don't seem to know what you're talking about either. SO vast? Guild wars is going to be producing 3-6 month expansions, and no amount of content can compair to the complexity of making 100's of skills and balancing them so that no one skill is better than any other in pvp! Try making a strategy game and you'll understand that balancing a complex game like guild wars is way more hard then just adding more hills and more landscape. If Guild wars can pull it off without relying on free testers then I see no reason not to expect this from the rest of these games that require monthly subscriptions.
MMORPG's are in a whole new bracket, and with that requires more attention for sure to make AAA games. But it's not so more immensely hard to make then say half life 2, or any of these other games that have complex systems that require years to make and intensive testing from professionals. Look at the costs to make half life two and then you can talk. Valve doesn't even get monthly fee's!!