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Trion's openess is refreshing
I have to say one of the biggest draws to me about this game is the way Trion are handling it.
I have never seen a company so open with hands on plays, game info, and vids so early in their development. To be showing pretty deep info on game mechanic details on a pre alpha game actually shows an amazing amount of confidence in their design and implementation imo.
Their community management, communication, and fan site support is pretty amazing as well...
A company that has finally looked at and listened to all the other PR train crashes of recent years and decided to learn and handle up differently?
Comments
You're pretty much right on the money with this. The Sr. Community Manager is Cindy Bowens from EQ who originally inspired, setup, and ran the EQ Fan Faires as a fan before SOE hired her to do the job. She's been a great community manager in everything shes touched. From everything we've read, Trion hasn't skimped on the quality of their staff one bit -- from the community manager to the developers, and even the management team -- all are well known top dogs from games past, and so far at least, it shows. The videos, the amount of information they've passed out, and the quality of the pre-alpha product have been top notch thus far. If you're a fantasy fan, this is certainly a game to keep an eye on, thats for sure.
The transition from HoT to PoT was pretty dodgy, but things are going pretty great right now, and I commend Trion heartily for its efforts. It sure looks pretty darn good for a pre-alpha game. Although I'm a bit disappointed with some of their new design decisions, and thrilled with others, I'm reasonably hopeful Trion will deliver us at least a quality triple-A MMO.
yeah, have to agree.
Take the Rift podcast ( http://www.riftpodcast.com/ )... it's a fan run thing, but Trion (through Abi) have embraced it entirely with their active input, and their very real relationships with other fansites such as Telarpedia ( http://telarapedia.com/wiki/Rift:_Planes_of_Telara_Wiki ) is showing already. It's almost feeling like what Abi tried to do with Vanguard before, though this time they have made the very sensible decision to keep the central official forums as well and seems to be working a thousand times better even at this early stage.
Solid funding, a great dev team, open and honest community building... lol i am waiting for something to go wrong :P
lol I know...
i just wish they would give a better idea on ETA. I don't need exact dates I can pretend to mean to hold them to, but .. Q1 2011, Q4 2011 or does this site need to change the status to 2012?
LFD tools are great for cramming people into content, but quality > quantity.
I am, usually on the sandbox .. more "hardcore" side of things, but I also do just want to have fun. So lighten up already
They have said clearly that they are looking at Q1 2011
I agree with everything you have said except the love for bowens. She has really fractured the community by tying the forums rep sysem to a criteria for beta invites. Misimplemented it from the start and has been silent on the issue all weekend. It has gotten to the point where they are forming Rep Cliques now. I died ROFL when I saw that one
Wow they are doing that, tying forums involvement/rep to beta invites criteria? That is really disappointing to hear. Stupid, stupid thing to do.
If you listen to the podcast she says 3 times you can't give negative rep to anyone. One of my friends got hit with neg rep simply for being married to one of the resident bad boys.
There's no way that Trion decided to tie beta invites to forum rep.... just no way. I haven't been over to the official forums over the weekend, so I don't know what I missed, but that just sounds like a massive failure in community relations. I wonder perhaps if this decision is somehow tied into the recent staff fires over there? Crawls off to riftgame.com to check out the s*storm...
I don't see the problem. They are looking at many factors when selecting the first waves for beta posting quality, total posts, how you treat others on the forum, how you get along with other people and what kind of person you are. Rep is just one of many factors. There is no perfect way of selecting people for beta. But using some criteria and trying to reward long time community members and reward those that are popular in the community is a good thing. Much better than normal companies who select beta participants by random or computer specs. It is not a perfect system but there is no perfect system. I give Cindy and Trion a big thumbs up for doing something nice for its long time members.
I am happy for those that get into beta. If I get in thats great if not well thats fine to but either way I am happy that they will be rewarding some good posters and some long time game followers.
Honestly what do any of those factors have to do with the abilty to test software? bowens has even gone so far as to make the app process a public thread from which SHE will be picking beta entries. The game is going to suffer the same fate as 90% of other releases, broken at launch due to poor testing. Beta for this game has become more about kissing her A** than ability to test. Unprofessional at best game breaking at worst. A party planner picking testers, Yea thats a game I want to play
Okay, having gone to the official forums and checking out the situation, I can say with 100% certainty that I personally will not be participating in this beta selection fiasco. All of the arguments for the humiliating forum ass-kissery was thrown completely out the door when beta invites are also going to people who attend conferences, through site giveaways, and as random prizes. Honestly, what is Trion thinking? It's just sad to read the official thread and the level to which people will stoop to present their "beta resumes".
Why should the average lazy bum get them? Most of those people just want to play to see the game and not test it. LOL but call it a fiasco just because you are not happy.
People need to learn to read and try to understand a situation beofre they rant about it on a forum.
The community beta thread is ONE of MULTIPLE POOLS that testers will be drawn from. It does not represent the sole group of testers in any way.
It is just Trion's way of rewarding the followers of the game up to this point (or in the future) and ensuring they get a shot at helping this game out. Why on earth would they get criticised for that?
Nothing about this process is bad, though I admit (as with anything involving gamers on the net it seems) some people have played it less then honestly, but then they would do that with anyhow in the beta apps with multiple accounts etc. You can't blame Abi for offering the chance though, even if some always look for ways to cheat.
As a side note Force, your phrasing and terminology is extremely over dramatic lol. You do realise you are getting all worked up over 1 thread of community members registering interest in helping the game out?
I invite anyone to head over to the forum for themselves and look. They are actually excellent and very non 'shitstorm' with a lot of threads with value. Tbh, overall, Rift has one of the best development communities I have ever seen...
http://forums.riftgame.com/forumdisplay.php?3-General-Discussion
@What Vesavius said, nothing more to add.
Please explain the value of multiple beta pools in which very poor, even random, candidates are given beta passes, aside from pure marketing. To go on about how careful and selective they are being by implementing a beta resume thread and forum reputation is wholly disingenuous. I don't expect the beta process to be overly effective for Trion with the route they are taking.
As an aside, I am a member of the official forums; the "community" is no better or worse than any other to be honest. In fact, it leans more towards old school EQ, VG, etc. players who have unrealistic expectations on the game Trion is crafting. Most of the posts and threads are pure speculation and theorycrafting, like any other pre-beta site.
You seem to be on somewhat of a mission to find issues here to get into a fight over.
I have explained already that the beta thread there is just one pool they are drawing from, intended to reward those that form the community. There will be other pools. I don't understand what you arnt getting about that.
And I had explained it before you had come into the thread. I don't understand what you aren't getting either.
I don't know how many times you have been a member of gaming forums, but history and experience shows that the way Trion is going about beta selection is very poor and will backfire on them. "Beta Resumes" and "Forum Reputation" always ends ugly. The point is Trion's justification for this is thrown out the window with their other pools. There are other ways to reward the forum community with beta passes.
I actually care about this game, and it's sad to see Trion making these steps, but hey it's their business, they can do whatever they want. I just hope they recognize where the problem came from when it gets ugly.
Not for nothing, but my entire argument is based on the acknowledgement that there are multiple beta pools. I can not possibly see how you keep missing that. So, I'm done. No hard feelings, but we can not continue to debate under the circumstance.
I would like to know where you're getting your information from. I listened to the Podcast and I've read damn near every thread written on the boards and I have yet to see what you have posted stated as facts. The forums have over 4500 members and looking at the beta thread alot of them have been lurking, a good % of the posters in that thread have that as their first post. Currently the thread is on its 43 rd page. Even iff you have 1/4 of resistered users thats over 1k apps that are posted in a thread. A lot of quailty testers are going to be over looked simply due to being lost in the chaff. This is one of the most moronic ideas I have ever seen and I have yet to figure out how a management team could possibly be convinced it is a good idea.
I am just wondeirng how you would you go about selecting these "quality testers"?
Because if Trion used a more traditional method of selecting Beta participants, which would mainly be through system specs and DXDiag submits then how exactly would these quality testers have a better chance at getting in ?
I agree with you that the this popularity contest of a method in choosing their Beta tests is a bit strange and will probebly fracture the community a bit, but it seems to me you are just bitter b/c you probebly have little to no chance in getting into the beta through this method.