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No, nothing NDA breaking here if you were expecting it, sorry.
It's getting close to release. Really close. Regardless of the state of the game, it needs to be stress-tested sufficiently.
Although it was in the media that thousands of people received additional beta invites, it's not enough: it has to be hundreds of thousands akin to the open beta weekends held for AoC and that's at a very, very bare minimum.
Of course AoC had a lot to hide in terms of later game content, although really it wasn't that bad but it had already worn off on most people.
As generic as this post is, historically the games with longer open betas have done better, even ignoring WoW and the like.
If you aren't confident enough for people to not get burned out on your content in a week, it will not bode well for you at release, especially for an IP this big.
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What the game needs is a delay of 8+ month to fix the core mechanics that are either flawed or 2004 standards.
But then, by the time the game SHOULD be released in a proper state, we will instead see "my server is a ghost town", "i'm back to WoW" and "not worth to sub" posts here.
It may need a lengthy open beta but why would Zenimax give it one?The market has spoken and the majority of peopel seem to be wullign to pay to be in "beta" and accept massive bugs and other issues at launch as acceptable and the norm.
It makes no financial sense to do an open beta other than as a short marketing ploy free demo these days because of the above.
I think your assumption that long open betas result in better games is way off base. By the time a game gets into open beta it's way to late for anything except bug fixes and even those are difficult with how tight the developer timelines are. It's not like they can hire a hundred contractors to squash bugs either as the turn up time to get them writing code is much to long even if you could find that many qualified people in a single region which in this labor market you can't.
And on the flip side I think one could make the argument that long open beta's tend to take some of the excitement and energy out of launch day especially if there is no character wipe. Soft launches are more a marketing ploy to sell pre-orders than a valid way to create a better game.
Which is why games that used to do lengthy open bats limited how far you could level and funneled the experience to what they wanted tested.If they wanted to test end game mechanics then they gave people max characters for use in those tests and limited the content seen int hose tests.Open Beta does not mean 100% access to the game.
Can't stand free open betas.
The game should be delayed at least a year. They need to re-design the world with naval exploration in mind. So you can get ships, have fishing boats, and explore. There doesn't need to be sea battles, as it really wasn't a big part of ES. Underwater exploration and underwater dungeons, similar to the DAOC TOA expansion. They also need to design the housing to be integrated with the game world. Small villages for players only littered across the map. Housing in and around cities and capitols. Instanced Inn housing as well as guild hall instanced housing. And do all of that while re-designing the world to be completely seemless.
As it stands, there is no housing, no water exploration and the zones are locked maps similar to the original EQ. Which means you can't run from one end of the world to the other. You can only run from one end of the zone map to the other.
Those are all things you can get from videos and articles by the way, so leave your NDA whining at the door.
I'll reiterate. Delay at least a year, as I'm sure those changes will take some serious time. I'm not even talking about open beta. I'm talking about completely re-designing the game world.
I agree with underwater exploration, adventuring and questing, but that could even be in a future free or paid expansion.
I agree with housing too, could be added post release after the 2 missing guilds.
Ship travelling is not needed, as there isn't in previous TES games.
However game is ready for release date of 4-4-2014, there are bugs but that will be polished before relesae, combat is good, core mechanics are working as intended, the world is enormous and totally to explore, cyrodiil is there ready to host big RvR battles, graphics in release will be with high resolution textures, so why delay the release? there is no real need, there are games in release that are technically worse than TESO in beta so...
Did you exit from the 2 starting/tutorial zones ? Seems not.
Didn't they say there was something like 300k in the last beta?
edited: that was in November
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
I cannot conform nor deny this. But you may be right. I'm a serious fan of playing in a game WORLD though, not a collection of maps. So if it does open up, that is good news.
Peace is a lie, there is only passion.
Through passion, I gain strength.
Through strength, I gain power.
Through power, I gain victory.
Through victory, my chains are broken.
The Force shall free me.
300 k in November beta test:
As some of you know, we’ve been in beta testing for about a year now, leading up to our most recent test in late November where we had over 300,000 people in the game over a 48 hour period.
http://elderscrollsonline.com/en/news/post/2013/12/11/eso-release-plans-announced
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
Feel free to use my referral link for SW:TOR if you want to test out the game. You'll get some special unlocks!
I really doubt they'll do a long open beta, it'd cut into sales too much.
Peoples' attention spans are very short these days, and giving them a few weeks of open beta would result in many of them getting bored and not buying the game when it comes out.
AKA the usual crowd that buys a game, races through it in a few weeks of hardcore 16/24 days and then complains the game has nothing to offer and rage quits on the forums.
My SWTOR referral link for those wanting to give the game a try. (Newbies get a welcome package while returning players get a few account upgrades to help with their preferred status.)
https://www.ashesofcreation.com/ref/Callaron/
Sounds like a cop out to me. You want to play the game without paying a sub.
*Slaps the hand reaching for a handout.*
By that reasoning there should be no beta testing at all only internal testing.
Again some people fail to realize open beta doesn't mean unrestricted access to 100% of the game .In the past open betas have been level and content capped and had focused tests for parts of the game to stress them.
But like I said above there's no financial reason to do such tests anymore.People will pay to be in beta and will accept little to no QA at launch these days so why bother?
Indeed, they could easily do focus test groups, limited access time, beta weekends etc.
But as many games actually ask for your money to beta test them these days, I'm pretty sure it won't happen.
Feel free to use my referral link for SW:TOR if you want to test out the game. You'll get some special unlocks!
Yeah, that's not a NDA bait if I ever seen one.
Well considering what job did their development team I don't think any delay will help just hire motivated modders take down nda and face all armed criticism from beta testers.And try to fix them. This will not happen project delay in related with project risk failure so they will rush it instead to cut a huge slice and on this note every thing will finish.
Can you elaborate on this, I don't understand what your trying to tell us with this?
I think it means more of the same in these type threads - Blah blah blah fail blah blah blah blah fail fail blah blah clone fail blah blah blah fail fail blah blah fail housing fail blah blah blah Not ES game blah blah fail fail fail fail.
They already set a release date, 4-4-2014.
Everquest Next with his cartoony graphics will be no harm for TESO, Landmark is not a MMORPG just a Minecraft clone
Wildstar, I'm in beta from summer, after 10 levels I was bored to death, usual "fed-ex" quest, with fixed classes and all combat based on telegraphs (red/blue areas where skill activates). No harm for TESO