If he got half of the brain I got then he should know that not many ppl are going to play a mmorpg called Tabula Rasa. its his own fault he gave up on Ultima title.
If he had "half the brain you got," this game wouldn't exist.
Please educate yourself and get a clue before making comments like this. The title Tabula Rasa is in no way indicative to anything regarding its success. His name was slapped on the box. Anyone who played Ultima knows who Richard Garriott is.
Why would they call this game Ultima? It has NOTHING to do with the Ultima series.
he says, " “Marketing can definitely get you on the shelf, and in the first few weeks, get you off the shelf. In the long run, even with the best marketing, if it’s a bad game, word gets out, and your sales will come to halt."
Had to read it a couple of times, the point he's trying to make is hard to get. Is he saying that sales of RGTR are poor, and beta testers are at fault?
lol, beta testers are at fault for him making a crappy ass game?
Doing the stupid fileplanet open invite before the game was actually at the open beta stage hurt the game.
I mean seriously - you hasve 100,000 people signed up to beta test the game - a lot of those people never got invited, instead they let anyone with a fileplanet account in to try the game when it wasnt ready.
That has to have been the stupidest marketing exercise ever.
On the whole Ultima thing someone was posting - EA own that brand so R.G can never make another ultima game - unless he goes back to EA.
If you put out a quality game, it will sell. If you put out trash... well, this is what happens.
Why is everyone so adamant about this game being "trash"? Has anyone tried it post-launch? I believe in the whole "garbage in garbage out" philosophy, but to call this game trash is very unfair.
And please illustrate what you mean by "this is what happens". Servers are buzzing with people, the starter areas are packed and I never have any trouble finding a group, ever.
I know I am probably feeding the trolls here, but seriously, this game rocks. Either I have down syndrome and am easily impressed, or this game is the best sci-fi action game out right now. I am pretty sure it is the latter, as I am currently getting a master's degree. Then again, George W. Bush has an MBA too.
I'm just going to ignore the blatant haters that seem to spend way too much time on this forum bashing a game they don't like, and point out that RG does have a point, even if he's partially to blame.
Beta testing used to actually be for testing the game. It used to be hard to get into betas. They wanted people who would test and report bugs, not people looking for free play time who would bash the game a quit, even though they were playing an unfinished product.
Now marketing departments have taken over and the see "beta tests" as another tool for hyping the product. This is what usually happens when marketing pushes into what is essentially an engineering function, whether it's in the game industry or any other engineering industry. Marketing needs to understand (and respect) the beta process is a necessary step in engineering a quality product, not a sneak preview.
Unfortunately, I think the trend is going in the wrong direction. Just look at all the "beta key giveaway!!!11!" adds you see on this very site. How many quality beta testers do you think you get when that's how you solicit your help?
FWIW, I think TR is a pretty good game in its current state. Sure it needs more content, but its stable and polished, which is more than I can say for some other recent releases *COUGH*HGL*COUGH*. But that's in spite of the beta fiasco.
MMO history: EQ1 - 65 DE Wizard DAoC - 50 Dwarf Thane, 50 Dwarf Healer EvE - Amarr, Caldari BShip Pilot CoH - 40 Ice/Ice Blaster, 40 Dark/Regen Scrapper WoW - 60 Undead Priest, 60 Tauren Warrior LoTRO - 30 Hobbit Burglar Currently Playing - Tabula Rasa
Gamers need to get over their egocentric attitudes and realize that they are not the center of the universe and not everyone cares about their "expert" reviews, analysis and opinions. If I want to know whether I'd enjoy a game or not, I'll read some reviews at Gamespy, MMORPG and a couple of other sites, but ultimately I usually roll the dice and buy the freakin' thing and try it out for myself; listening to the opinions of some other folks out there is as foolish as playing Russian Roulette.
Interesting article but blaming beta testers for the game's own faults is just really bad. The game needs to go f2p if he wants to see an increase of players.
Hes got a very good point actually. However, I dont think there were really THAT many testers involved like he claims.
I was involved in the early phases of beta and there were not that many people that I recall. However, I cant account for the numbers of people actually invited and just disliked the beta so much that they didnt bother to test or assist.
As for how the game was in beta, its nothing like it is now. I was all set to pick up the game until I got in the beta. I just gave up on it. I picked it up 2 weeks after release, after I saw positive reviews by reputable gaming sites.
the only point really made about the impact the beta testers made on the game was that he felt that they lost some pre-sales and imediate sales on the day of release. Its a very good point considering beta testers chosen were people who followed the game, anticipated it more than most and registered early.
these are the people you hope to pull in on initial sales and by revealing a less than mediocre game did come back to bite them. I can personally attest to that.
he didnt say the beta testers ruined the game, or that they hurt sales. Hes just saying that he lost their initial sales by having them turned off in the early phases of beta.
"If you want a picture of the future, imagine a robot foot stomping on a human face -- forever."
Well let's be realistic here, a lot of folks take beta opportunities to see if its a game they might purchase and I understand that; $50-60 + monthly fee can be a risky investment for someone that has to watch their finances and can't afford to get burnt on a game. Sure, some stick around and test the game, but folks that don't like it just leave... using up that beta key for someone that may have put forth an effort in testing the game.
Again, another reason why I say Garriott is a dinosaur. Betas aren't nearly as closed door as they used to be and his comments just go to show you out of touch he is with today's industry. I enjoy the game so far, I just wish he was never associated with it.
If he got half of the brain I got then he should know that not many ppl are going to play a mmorpg called Tabula Rasa. its his own fault he gave up on Ultima title.
You truly have no clue as to how trademarks work, do you Honeymoon69?
Electronic Arts owns the Intellectual Property called "Ultima", lock stock and barrel after their purchase of Origin Systems. Richard Garriot literally cannot make another Ultima title, even if he wanted to, without a license from Electronic Arts. Which they are not willing to do.
He cannot even come reasonably close to the systems and ways of doing things in another title, as again Electronic Arts can claim infringement. That's the way copyright law works, and this will exist in it's current state for 50 years fromt he time EA purchased Orign Systems and all the IPs it held (25-year main copyright, plus 25 years extension). That's the law., nd EA is very good about suing infringers.
We’ve had to go out and develop free programs to invite those people back for free before they go buy it. So the beta process, which we used to think of as a QA process, is really a marketing process.”
I laughed in real life when i read this sentence, he sounds like a marketing noob ...really, omg cant be haha
They did start even open beta to early and same was with release, too many bugs and performance problems as well missing content...what a shame to blame beta testers and not to say that they just throw the game too early in open beta and release. Here you can really read between the lines when you did play beta and release up to now.
Garroitt was wrong. Tabula didn't have enough beta testers. It did however have thousands of "free play beta jumpers" that were only interested in playing a free game. Many here are proof of that.
Garroitt was wrong. Tabula didn't have enough beta testers. It did however have thousands of "free play beta jumpers" that were only interested in playing a free game. Many here are proof of that.
A lot of people should really cut him some slack on this issue. Most of your are taking what he said wrong. Maybe you might have to read it again to understand it, who knows.
He is only saying releasing the game in a un-finished state, turned alot of beta testers off to buying it, knowing full well it was un-finished. Therefore hurting initial sales of the game, because of the "word of mouth" scenario. You think marketing polishes the game? no. Thats why he did not blame marketing.It was clearly a development issue, not listening to beta tester or taking the time to fine tune there game.
Also, you have to realize he is just a face to a bigger machine here. I mean he might have to publicly speak about the game, and do his interviews. But if any one of us are so narrow minded as to believe HE caused the marketing foul, or every game development issue, is just really far from the truth.
He might not be a marketing genius,he does not need to be.Thats why i gurantee he had a team of developers he was looking back on. Trusting to realease a great game. What comes out in the end, may be his product, but i would assume he was not the single force responsible for it all. I could be wrong though.Just seems like sometimes it is easier for people to blame the front man, rather then look at the team
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Buying an mmo= 35.99 +14.99 a month.
Playing games for years= fun
Playing SWG from your hotel room on a laptop, via business trip for 10c a minute (3day trip)= not priceless! 1900.oo later! Try explaining that to your wife.
Yes i shot myself for letting SOE cost me that much $ hehe.
Too many beta testers didn't hurt Tabula Rasa, the fact that a fortune was spent and lots of promises were made about revolutionary gameplay and innovation in MMORPGS but the product released doesn't have ANY of those things, that's what hurt Tabula Rasa.
If pretty asinine to go around telling everyone that you are going to put out the "end all" of MMORPGs that will be a WoW killer and revolutionize the industry and then end up with a shallow single player console game at the end of the day.
It wasn't us testers that hurt your game, RG, it was too much hype and not enough sweat on your part.
Next time, if you get lucky enough to get a next time, try laying off the pajama parties and other nonsense and just concentrate on making a product that lives up to at least a few of your hyped up claims.
This game doesn't even really fit into the MMO category. They shamelessly exploited the beta for cheap marketing and all it did was show everyone how shallow and over hyped the game was. It didn't take long for the word to get out and even at release the game didn't seem to do very well.
The bottom like is NcSoft paid this garriot douchebag a fortune for him to produce a crap game. Between TR and Vanguard this year has been a major disappointment for MMO's. Hopefully the industry has learned it's lesson not to shell out millions to some moron with name recognition in hopes that lightning will strike twice.
RG is dead wrong on this one. Every patch from early August on made the game LESS fun. Everything after the Divide was pretty much ignored by the dev team in the last 6-8 weeks of the beta. They polished the first 15-20 levels and got them bug free hoping that they would be able to sell people on the concept before they figured out how buggy it was.
They definitely let too many people sample the game too early, though. We were incredulous on the forums when they announced that they were doing the FP subscribers week, when the game was that buggy. But those are NOT the early beta testers. Every patch brought more polish to the UI and the first zone or two while the Mires (25-30ish) were horribly buggy (I could literally count the working quests/quest lines on my fingers). The people who had been playing the game for months were seeing the game change in fundamental ways that made it less fun, while the major bug fixes that were needed were ignored.
It was NOT that too many people played the "buggy" version. It was a beta, we expected bugs. The bugs were not the problem, fundamental changes to how the game plays turned a lot of the people who played it when it WAS still fun off. It was fun in spite of the bugs when the closed beta was happening.
The only way that his statement can be taken even slightly seriously is that the people who played long enough to level quickly knew just how badly bugged the zones after the divide were. We knew that the game was getting released 3 months too soon (at least) and saw that the focus had shifted from listening to the community about the state of the game to aggressive marketing for the game. The devs were talking up key features in interviews, then removing them or drastically reducing their usefulness in the next patch. It was around mid-August that patch day became a day to dread because the game would get its fun factor knocked back, 1-2 new bugs for every bug fixed and the loading screens would like spiffier.
The fix-a-bug-create-a-bug problem was fine when they were still listening to the beta testers, but as it became increasingly more obvious that they were not listening to us and were getting ready to release the game (most of us understood that this was happening, although there were of course the die-hard RG-worshippers who INSISTED that the game would not be released before January at the earliest because RG would NEVER release a game that buggy. Of course, the day they formally announced the release date, all of those people began talking about how the game wasn't that far from being ready and they had a miracle patch that would fix all the bugs before launch).
In summary, it was NOT the bugs, which any real beta tester will expect; it was the game. The things that were most appealing about the game were being removed or nerfed, which made the game less fun. The last few patches also made it quite obvious that getting the first 20 levels relatively bug-free before launch was all they really cared about. As the 1-25 review points out, the game is still getting major bugs worked out in the higher level areas. Perhaps if they had used their testers to test the game instead of simply to report the 10,000 places where it was possible to get stuck in the Concordia Wilderness terrain, the closed beta testers would have picked up the game. Instead the people who came in AFTER they hit the FUN with the nerf bat (and then beat it to make sure it didn't try to get back up) are the ones who find the game enjoyable because they have no idea how much fun the game could have and should have been.
Garriott's is misunderstanding the problem. He would have a point if most of the negative points were a about being buggy, but they weren't. Most people who said they didn't like game found the fundimental gameplay boring after a fairly short amount of time.
The core gameplay was the problem, and that is not going to change a month or two before release. A mission being broken here and getting stuck in the ground there is a very, very different issue than being so bored with the game you can't summon the motivation to log in anymore.
Really everyone knows beta will be buggy and all. But if the core game is bad even beta testers would have a hard time staying in it. More testers you have in a bad game the faster news of how bad it is spreads. Guess he was hoping to rely on initial sales for profit cause I highly doubt the game will keep many people subscribing for long at this point.
I found it highly amusing. I was one of the early testers, and I think it was handled poorly even when there were not alot of testers. We weren't listened to for most everything. I think the shining example was the chaingun. Testers gave dozens of way that would have made it a viable weapon. It was a topic that appeared weekly for months, and alot more once large groups of people started testing. At one point, richard came onto the test server and someone asked what he thought of the chaingun, and how it could be fixed. He quiet simply put it "This is how i envisioned it." And so it stayed the way he wanted, and not the way crowds of hundreds of testers in beta thought it could be of use. Anyone who has used the thing knows what I mean(it was a pile of gunk which filled a potentially useful skill slot where the other skill line got a useful weapon and wasnt forced to continue using rifles/pistols/shotguns as a primary weapon). There were lots of other non listened to issues, but this one, where he literally came out and said "This is how I want it" and so it would be. I think that hurts opinions for beta players a bit. Another thing that I know my friends who later came into beta saw, was this one odd person. My friends and I are pretty big gamers sometimes getting together to play for 10-15 hours and have fun and hang out. Well one day after pre-orders had started this one guy came into the server, and every 45 minutes he would say "I just got my pre-order, I'm so excited and can't wait to get my bonus items and get to start early!" The guy did this 7 times. We thought that was a bit fishy. Just something i remebered and wanted to note under the idea of a "marketting" thread. This thread is in no-way meant to feed to power of the drama Llama, but is of my own and possibly shaded by chaos oppinions.
You are not testers, you are just some guys randomly picked from their computer so they can get a mass of people that ocassionally reports a couple of bugs that their EMPLOYEES REAL TESTERS didn't notice or missed.
You are not testers, you are not getting payed for it. Why for the love of god would they listen to some random guys yelling about nerfing some weapon properties. You are there to report bugs that's all and check their server stability. I repeat, YOU ARE NOT TESTERS.
he says, " “Marketing can definitely get you on the shelf, and in the first few weeks, get you off the shelf. In the long run, even with the best marketing, if it’s a bad game, word gets out, and your sales will come to halt."
Had to read it a couple of times, the point he's trying to make is hard to get. Is he saying that sales of RGTR are poor, and beta testers are at fault?
His point is that Betas are no longer always a QA event but more often a marketing event.
Alphas and closed beta tend to be fairly small and usually consist of people whom you are fairly sure can handle a poor product, offer constructive criticism and advance the product.
The larger a Beta becomes the more it becomes a "release" whether you want to or not.
TR had many people at a point that RG considered the game not so great. Therefore since the Beta had become large this essentially reflected poorly on the game via word of mouth. If the Beta had been smaller and closed and composed of serious testers rather than gaming gadflies then you would not have the bad word of mouth.
Even the smaller ones are still a semi-marketing endeavour as there are a number of people who obsessively try to get into Beta and usually to see what is going on, not because they like testing.
He is saying something I have become 100% convinced of over the last few years. Beta tests, especially for MMOs, are very much a public relations thing no matter how much the developers don't want them to be.
I also agree with him that from a developer stand point what GW did was a very wise course. Don't do open Beta. Do your own in house testing with people you know and trust. Then do a Preview event with disclaimers. Open Beta are no longer Betas. Everyone treats them as previews and will dismantle your game if its in a sad state.
If you go into an Open Beta with the idea of doing much in the way of serious development, like TR did, you will be in for a PR nightmare. Even in the final product is good. Even if you keep using the word "test". Once people see stuff and start talking about it. its out of your hands. So if it in a not so good state at that point you will see a snowball of bad word of mouth.
Relying on people to NOT rush to judgement is pretty much a bad idea.
Eh, people will flame just to flame. Gamers need to get over their egocentric attitudes and realize that they are not the center of the universe and not everyone cares about their "expert" reviews, analysis and opinions. If I want to know whether I'd enjoy a game or not, I'll read some reviews at Gamespy, MMORPG and a couple of other sites, but ultimately I usually roll the dice and buy the freakin' thing and try it out for myself; listening to the opinions of some other folks out there is as foolish as playing Russian Roulette.
I don't agree with you. If you're a careful reader, it's easy to detect trolls from serious posters.
You can save yourself a "lot" of time and money if you know how to read between the lines. I'll give you a trick here: Take 10 random post reviews. Take the most fanboi one and the most flaming one out. Make the average of the 8 others, and that will tell you if you should buy the game or not.
In 10 years, i have "never" been disapointed with this system. And the few times i wanted to be stubborn, i got burned. (Like that pile of junk that is Jericho... I didn't care about the review, and told myself : Clive Barker can't possibly be that bad. And it was even worst then the review actually.)
So trust the community. Usually, when you take precious time to post a comment about a game, it's usually because you want to spare other fellow gamers of making the same mistake, or to guide them toward a product they really must buy as a gamer.
Now, i suggest you do this on websites that ask people to pay a membership in order to be able to submit a review. Otherwise, you will need to read 100 post, and remove the top and bottom 10 in order to have an opinion of the same value.
What deserves to be done, deserves to be "well" done...
Comments
If he had "half the brain you got," this game wouldn't exist.
Please educate yourself and get a clue before making comments like this. The title Tabula Rasa is in no way indicative to anything regarding its success. His name was slapped on the box. Anyone who played Ultima knows who Richard Garriott is.
Why would they call this game Ultima? It has NOTHING to do with the Ultima series.
thanks.
lol, beta testers are at fault for him making a crappy ass game?
Doing the stupid fileplanet open invite before the game was actually at the open beta stage hurt the game.
I mean seriously - you hasve 100,000 people signed up to beta test the game - a lot of those people never got invited, instead they let anyone with a fileplanet account in to try the game when it wasnt ready.
That has to have been the stupidest marketing exercise ever.
On the whole Ultima thing someone was posting - EA own that brand so R.G can never make another ultima game - unless he goes back to EA.
If you put out a quality game, it will sell. If you put out trash... well, this is what happens.
Simple, and to the point.
Why is everyone so adamant about this game being "trash"? Has anyone tried it post-launch? I believe in the whole "garbage in garbage out" philosophy, but to call this game trash is very unfair.
And please illustrate what you mean by "this is what happens". Servers are buzzing with people, the starter areas are packed and I never have any trouble finding a group, ever.
I know I am probably feeding the trolls here, but seriously, this game rocks. Either I have down syndrome and am easily impressed, or this game is the best sci-fi action game out right now. I am pretty sure it is the latter, as I am currently getting a master's degree. Then again, George W. Bush has an MBA too.
I will stop talking now, go Vikes.
I'm just going to ignore the blatant haters that seem to spend way too much time on this forum bashing a game they don't like, and point out that RG does have a point, even if he's partially to blame.
Beta testing used to actually be for testing the game. It used to be hard to get into betas. They wanted people who would test and report bugs, not people looking for free play time who would bash the game a quit, even though they were playing an unfinished product.
Now marketing departments have taken over and the see "beta tests" as another tool for hyping the product. This is what usually happens when marketing pushes into what is essentially an engineering function, whether it's in the game industry or any other engineering industry. Marketing needs to understand (and respect) the beta process is a necessary step in engineering a quality product, not a sneak preview.
Unfortunately, I think the trend is going in the wrong direction. Just look at all the "beta key giveaway!!!11!" adds you see on this very site. How many quality beta testers do you think you get when that's how you solicit your help?
FWIW, I think TR is a pretty good game in its current state. Sure it needs more content, but its stable and polished, which is more than I can say for some other recent releases *COUGH*HGL*COUGH*. But that's in spite of the beta fiasco.
MMO history:
EQ1 - 65 DE Wizard
DAoC - 50 Dwarf Thane, 50 Dwarf Healer
EvE - Amarr, Caldari BShip Pilot
CoH - 40 Ice/Ice Blaster, 40 Dark/Regen Scrapper
WoW - 60 Undead Priest, 60 Tauren Warrior
LoTRO - 30 Hobbit Burglar
Currently Playing - Tabula Rasa
Eh, people will flame just to flame.
Gamers need to get over their egocentric attitudes and realize that they are not the center of the universe and not everyone cares about their "expert" reviews, analysis and opinions. If I want to know whether I'd enjoy a game or not, I'll read some reviews at Gamespy, MMORPG and a couple of other sites, but ultimately I usually roll the dice and buy the freakin' thing and try it out for myself; listening to the opinions of some other folks out there is as foolish as playing Russian Roulette.
Interesting article but blaming beta testers for the game's own faults is just really bad. The game needs to go f2p if he wants to see an increase of players.
Hes got a very good point actually. However, I dont think there were really THAT many testers involved like he claims.
I was involved in the early phases of beta and there were not that many people that I recall. However, I cant account for the numbers of people actually invited and just disliked the beta so much that they didnt bother to test or assist.
As for how the game was in beta, its nothing like it is now. I was all set to pick up the game until I got in the beta. I just gave up on it. I picked it up 2 weeks after release, after I saw positive reviews by reputable gaming sites.
the only point really made about the impact the beta testers made on the game was that he felt that they lost some pre-sales and imediate sales on the day of release. Its a very good point considering beta testers chosen were people who followed the game, anticipated it more than most and registered early.
these are the people you hope to pull in on initial sales and by revealing a less than mediocre game did come back to bite them. I can personally attest to that.
he didnt say the beta testers ruined the game, or that they hurt sales. Hes just saying that he lost their initial sales by having them turned off in the early phases of beta.
"If you want a picture of the future, imagine a robot foot stomping on a human face -- forever."
Well let's be realistic here, a lot of folks take beta opportunities to see if its a game they might purchase and I understand that; $50-60 + monthly fee can be a risky investment for someone that has to watch their finances and can't afford to get burnt on a game. Sure, some stick around and test the game, but folks that don't like it just leave... using up that beta key for someone that may have put forth an effort in testing the game.
Again, another reason why I say Garriott is a dinosaur. Betas aren't nearly as closed door as they used to be and his comments just go to show you out of touch he is with today's industry. I enjoy the game so far, I just wish he was never associated with it.
You truly have no clue as to how trademarks work, do you Honeymoon69?
Electronic Arts owns the Intellectual Property called "Ultima", lock stock and barrel after their purchase of Origin Systems. Richard Garriot literally cannot make another Ultima title, even if he wanted to, without a license from Electronic Arts. Which they are not willing to do.
He cannot even come reasonably close to the systems and ways of doing things in another title, as again Electronic Arts can claim infringement. That's the way copyright law works, and this will exist in it's current state for 50 years fromt he time EA purchased Orign Systems and all the IPs it held (25-year main copyright, plus 25 years extension). That's the law., nd EA is very good about suing infringers.
We’ve had to go out and develop free programs to invite those people back for free before they go buy it. So the beta process, which we used to think of as a QA process, is really a marketing process.”
I laughed in real life when i read this sentence, he sounds like a marketing noob ...really, omg cant be haha
They did start even open beta to early and same was with release, too many bugs and performance problems as well missing content...what a shame to blame beta testers and not to say that they just throw the game too early in open beta and release. Here you can really read between the lines when you did play beta and release up to now.
Garroitt was wrong. Tabula didn't have enough beta testers. It did however have thousands of "free play beta jumpers" that were only interested in playing a free game. Many here are proof of that.
I just reached lvl 31 ( out of 50 ) and so far I did not have to grind at all, zero, none, no grinding, can I be any clearer ?
I don't understand how anyone can say that TR is all about grinding when you can get to 31/50 by doing quests with zero grind.
Sinister Savant MMORPG Community
A lot of people should really cut him some slack on this issue. Most of your are taking what he said wrong. Maybe you might have to read it again to understand it, who knows.
He is only saying releasing the game in a un-finished state, turned alot of beta testers off to buying it, knowing full well it was un-finished. Therefore hurting initial sales of the game, because of the "word of mouth" scenario. You think marketing polishes the game? no. Thats why he did not blame marketing.It was clearly a development issue, not listening to beta tester or taking the time to fine tune there game.
Also, you have to realize he is just a face to a bigger machine here. I mean he might have to publicly speak about the game, and do his interviews. But if any one of us are so narrow minded as to believe HE caused the marketing foul, or every game development issue, is just really far from the truth.
He might not be a marketing genius,he does not need to be.Thats why i gurantee he had a team of developers he was looking back on. Trusting to realease a great game. What comes out in the end, may be his product, but i would assume he was not the single force responsible for it all. I could be wrong though.Just seems like sometimes it is easier for people to blame the front man, rather then look at the team
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Buying an mmo= 35.99 +14.99 a month.
Playing games for years= fun
Playing SWG from your hotel room on a laptop, via business trip for 10c a minute (3day trip)= not priceless! 1900.oo later! Try explaining that to your wife.
Yes i shot myself for letting SOE cost me that much $ hehe.
RiP- Old SwG.
Too many beta testers didn't hurt Tabula Rasa, the fact that a fortune was spent and lots of promises were made about revolutionary gameplay and innovation in MMORPGS but the product released doesn't have ANY of those things, that's what hurt Tabula Rasa.
If pretty asinine to go around telling everyone that you are going to put out the "end all" of MMORPGs that will be a WoW killer and revolutionize the industry and then end up with a shallow single player console game at the end of the day.
It wasn't us testers that hurt your game, RG, it was too much hype and not enough sweat on your part.
Next time, if you get lucky enough to get a next time, try laying off the pajama parties and other nonsense and just concentrate on making a product that lives up to at least a few of your hyped up claims.
This game doesn't even really fit into the MMO category. They shamelessly exploited the beta for cheap marketing and all it did was show everyone how shallow and over hyped the game was. It didn't take long for the word to get out and even at release the game didn't seem to do very well.
The bottom like is NcSoft paid this garriot douchebag a fortune for him to produce a crap game. Between TR and Vanguard this year has been a major disappointment for MMO's. Hopefully the industry has learned it's lesson not to shell out millions to some moron with name recognition in hopes that lightning will strike twice.
RG is dead wrong on this one. Every patch from early August on made the game LESS fun. Everything after the Divide was pretty much ignored by the dev team in the last 6-8 weeks of the beta. They polished the first 15-20 levels and got them bug free hoping that they would be able to sell people on the concept before they figured out how buggy it was.
They definitely let too many people sample the game too early, though. We were incredulous on the forums when they announced that they were doing the FP subscribers week, when the game was that buggy. But those are NOT the early beta testers. Every patch brought more polish to the UI and the first zone or two while the Mires (25-30ish) were horribly buggy (I could literally count the working quests/quest lines on my fingers). The people who had been playing the game for months were seeing the game change in fundamental ways that made it less fun, while the major bug fixes that were needed were ignored.
It was NOT that too many people played the "buggy" version. It was a beta, we expected bugs. The bugs were not the problem, fundamental changes to how the game plays turned a lot of the people who played it when it WAS still fun off. It was fun in spite of the bugs when the closed beta was happening.
The only way that his statement can be taken even slightly seriously is that the people who played long enough to level quickly knew just how badly bugged the zones after the divide were. We knew that the game was getting released 3 months too soon (at least) and saw that the focus had shifted from listening to the community about the state of the game to aggressive marketing for the game. The devs were talking up key features in interviews, then removing them or drastically reducing their usefulness in the next patch. It was around mid-August that patch day became a day to dread because the game would get its fun factor knocked back, 1-2 new bugs for every bug fixed and the loading screens would like spiffier.
The fix-a-bug-create-a-bug problem was fine when they were still listening to the beta testers, but as it became increasingly more obvious that they were not listening to us and were getting ready to release the game (most of us understood that this was happening, although there were of course the die-hard RG-worshippers who INSISTED that the game would not be released before January at the earliest because RG would NEVER release a game that buggy. Of course, the day they formally announced the release date, all of those people began talking about how the game wasn't that far from being ready and they had a miracle patch that would fix all the bugs before launch).
In summary, it was NOT the bugs, which any real beta tester will expect; it was the game. The things that were most appealing about the game were being removed or nerfed, which made the game less fun. The last few patches also made it quite obvious that getting the first 20 levels relatively bug-free before launch was all they really cared about. As the 1-25 review points out, the game is still getting major bugs worked out in the higher level areas. Perhaps if they had used their testers to test the game instead of simply to report the 10,000 places where it was possible to get stuck in the Concordia Wilderness terrain, the closed beta testers would have picked up the game. Instead the people who came in AFTER they hit the FUN with the nerf bat (and then beat it to make sure it didn't try to get back up) are the ones who find the game enjoyable because they have no idea how much fun the game could have and should have been.
I agree with him 100%
Playing: Everthing
Played: DAoC,AC2,EvE,SWG,WAR,MXO,CoX,EQ2,L2,LOTRO,SB,UO,WoW.
I have played every MMO that has ever come out.
Garriott's is misunderstanding the problem. He would have a point if most of the negative points were a about being buggy, but they weren't. Most people who said they didn't like game found the fundimental gameplay boring after a fairly short amount of time.
The core gameplay was the problem, and that is not going to change a month or two before release. A mission being broken here and getting stuck in the ground there is a very, very different issue than being so bored with the game you can't summon the motivation to log in anymore.
Really everyone knows beta will be buggy and all. But if the core game is bad even beta testers would have a hard time staying in it. More testers you have in a bad game the faster news of how bad it is spreads. Guess he was hoping to rely on initial sales for profit cause I highly doubt the game will keep many people subscribing for long at this point.
You are not testers, you are not getting payed for it. Why for the love of god would they listen to some random guys yelling about nerfing some weapon properties. You are there to report bugs that's all and check their server stability. I repeat, YOU ARE NOT TESTERS.
REALITY CHECK
Alphas and closed beta tend to be fairly small and usually consist of people whom you are fairly sure can handle a poor product, offer constructive criticism and advance the product.
The larger a Beta becomes the more it becomes a "release" whether you want to or not.
TR had many people at a point that RG considered the game not so great. Therefore since the Beta had become large this essentially reflected poorly on the game via word of mouth. If the Beta had been smaller and closed and composed of serious testers rather than gaming gadflies then you would not have the bad word of mouth.
Even the smaller ones are still a semi-marketing endeavour as there are a number of people who obsessively try to get into Beta and usually to see what is going on, not because they like testing.
He is saying something I have become 100% convinced of over the last few years. Beta tests, especially for MMOs, are very much a public relations thing no matter how much the developers don't want them to be.
I also agree with him that from a developer stand point what GW did was a very wise course. Don't do open Beta. Do your own in house testing with people you know and trust. Then do a Preview event with disclaimers. Open Beta are no longer Betas. Everyone treats them as previews and will dismantle your game if its in a sad state.
If you go into an Open Beta with the idea of doing much in the way of serious development, like TR did, you will be in for a PR nightmare. Even in the final product is good. Even if you keep using the word "test". Once people see stuff and start talking about it. its out of your hands. So if it in a not so good state at that point you will see a snowball of bad word of mouth.
Relying on people to NOT rush to judgement is pretty much a bad idea.
I don't agree with you. If you're a careful reader, it's easy to detect trolls from serious posters.
You can save yourself a "lot" of time and money if you know how to read between the lines. I'll give you a trick here: Take 10 random post reviews. Take the most fanboi one and the most flaming one out. Make the average of the 8 others, and that will tell you if you should buy the game or not.
In 10 years, i have "never" been disapointed with this system. And the few times i wanted to be stubborn, i got burned. (Like that pile of junk that is Jericho... I didn't care about the review, and told myself : Clive Barker can't possibly be that bad. And it was even worst then the review actually.)
So trust the community. Usually, when you take precious time to post a comment about a game, it's usually because you want to spare other fellow gamers of making the same mistake, or to guide them toward a product they really must buy as a gamer.
Now, i suggest you do this on websites that ask people to pay a membership in order to be able to submit a review. Otherwise, you will need to read 100 post, and remove the top and bottom 10 in order to have an opinion of the same value.
What deserves to be done, deserves to be "well" done...