Beta Test Phase 4 Patch Notes

[Obsidian]

i dont know how anyone would suggest allowing people to play the game on the same server without offering a plausible solution to do so without coming to the same problems they already face.

it really isn't that you can't.. but rather that people are just impatient.

MMOs (hell any online-based game) on day 1 and launch weekend are going to be terrible because of congestion. (it makes me wonder whether he still remembers Diablo 3).

Error 3102 was inexcusable tho.. can't say I was affected cos I played on a JP server and had absolutely no problems short of disconnecting once or twice. Sure it is beta, but the downtime was a significant % of the beta period. If the beta phase was a week then it'd not be an issue at all.
Hopefully Yoshi P will come up with an explanation or resolve it by retail.

Since you're obviously a programmer and a server architect, please explain to me why something breaking during a free beta test is unacceptable and should be filed away under anything other than "shit happens." Get over yourself.

[Spira]

look, I'm not saying this because i couldn't play or was affected. I had no login problems at all and played as and when i liked.

its inexcusable because one of the purposes of the beta p4 was for people to try the game out. and if tens of thousands of people were denied the opportunity to play for the majority of the duration of the beta because of the downtime, then the beta would not have achieved its purpose. it's akin to saying 'you can borrow my car to test-drive for a whole 24 hours before buying it, but it's gonna be in the workshop for 12hrs, and i don't care if you're sleeping during the other 12'. whether you choose to use those 24 hours is your own problem, but the other party has essentially not held up entirely on their offer.

sure, it's a beta.. but there are different kinds of betas. there are betas whose purpose is to snuff out critical bugs and hardware issues and betas for stress-testing. p4 was not one of those. the game retails in a week and the open beta lasted all of 3 days. as far as "hardware" is concerned, ARR is a finished product. the focus of testing in p4 was class balance issues, pvp and whatnot. in other words developers were most likely not expecting critical bugs of this nature.

Shit happens, but when you run a business that deals with operations it makes a huge difference when the shit is expected to happen, and when it isn't. Here, it wasn't.
Stuff breaking in the test run is never actually good. It's ok if you can fix it in time, and bad if you can't. But never good. It's just bad for business.

[shidobu]

there are betas whose purpose is to snuff out critical bugs and hardware issues and betas for stress-testing. p4 was not one of those.

but..but it was..

Better for it to happen in Open beta than early release/release. If it happens next weekend sure you can come back here and bitch all you want. But they have 5 days to get it fixed, i wouldn't be surprised if they open the servers up randomly through the week to make sure its not happening still for people.

or

Spoiler: show

we get wiped trolololololololololol

[miokomioko]

Until the client doesn't say "β version," its purpose is for testing regardless of whether or not we feel entitled to a bug-free product that we have yet to pay for.

[Tokitoki]

but..but it was..

This. Open Beta is almost entirely a stress test and en masse bug finder. More people = more data on server load and higher probability of finding missed bugs.

[Reve]

They also broke the record for most concurrent players in an open beta 150,000.

[Hyan]

I dont see how its better it happened now than in EA. This was SE's chance to let everyone play the game for free, EA/release is only for those who have bought the game. People that were on the fence got shit on with an error and you can be certain that these people don't care about the beta label. They stop giving a fuck and SE loses a customer. Nobody is expendable due to a stupid mistake like this for a game that already failed once. At least in EA the players have paid for the service and are less likely to stop caring about the game over this kind of thing.

[Day]

I dont see how its better it happened now than in EA. This was SE's chance to let everyone play the game for free, EA/release is only for those who have bought the game. People that were on the fence got shit on with an error and you can be certain that these people don't care about the beta label. They stop giving a fuck and SE loses a customer. Nobody is expendable due to a stupid mistake like this for a game that already failed once. At least in EA the players have paid for the service and are less likely to stop caring about the game over this kind of thing.

I truly hope everyone that is so upset about errors in beta do not buy the game.

[shidobu]

I truly hope everyone that is so upset about errors in beta do not buy the game.

i said the same thing in the offical forums lol

[Obsidian]

Shit happens, but when you run a business that deals with operations it makes a huge difference when the shit is expected to happen, and when it isn't. Here, it wasn't.
Stuff breaking in the test run is never actually good. It's ok if you can fix it in time, and bad if you can't. But never good. It's just bad for business.

If you don't expect things to break during a Beta test I have no idea what to say to you. That is precisely when things [i]should]/i] be breaking. You think this would have been better during Early Access, after people have already paid for the game and are expecting services to be rendered? Is that a joke?

Stuff breaking during a test is not ideal, but that's exactly what software engineers run tests for. Things are expected to break during tests (especially stress tests, where the entire point is to find out maximum capacity). So that said things don't explode when it matters. And it most certainly matters less during the test than it does at release. They fixed that shit on a weekend. Folks affected should be glad they even acknowledged that there was a problem to begin with instead of just tweeting a deal-with-it gif. They even extended the test specifically for NA/EU players.

[miokomioko]

Ever since someone mentioned took Yoshi's comment out of context regarding Phase 4 being "pretty much a demo," people just got it in their heads that the purpose of this phase of the beta TEST was to show the game to the public.

[Fawkes]

You think this would have been better during Early Access, after people have already paid for the game and are expecting services to be rendered?

Why do people keep implying anyone ever said anything like this? I have yet to see anyone make the argument that they shouldn't have had an open beta at all. If anything, they're saying the exact opposite, that open beta should have been longer so that people could have had time to try the game out instead of being plagued by errors for the entire test.

[Hyan]

Ever since someone mentioned took Yoshi's comment out of context regarding Phase 4 being "pretty much a demo," people just got it in their heads that the purpose of this phase of the beta TEST was to show the game to the public.

Open Betas have been free demos since forever now. Just because you or Yoshi-P try to claim it isn't doesn't make it so.

It really doesn't fucking matter what the original meaning of an "OB" was. It's a free demo now, and the only ones "wrong" are those trying to deny it.

[Obsidian]

Why do people keep implying anyone ever said anything like this?

Because this fella did three posts above mine:

I dont see how its better it happened now than in EA.

[miokomioko]

Open Betas have been free demos since forever now.

No... That's how entitled adolescents just want to see it, the rest are somewhat aware of what to expect from something with "beta" written in the title... which is an unfinished product. At some point, they have to be confident enough in a product that their servers wouldn't crumble under the weight of release-day traffic and the game doesn't come apart at the seams from the stress. There's no real way to do that without... you know... testing it? They are also getting a real opportunity to gauge the success of their marketing. Now they have an idea of what to expect and prepare for come release.

[LD]

I think you're both right. Open betas should be about making sure the game is fit for launch, but I don't think devs are so naive as to think open betas aren't an advertising opportunity.

[Alkar]

I dont see how its better it happened now than in EA. This was SE's chance to let everyone play the game for free, EA/release is only for those who have bought the game. People that were on the fence got shit on with an error and you can be certain that these people don't care about the beta label. They stop giving a fuck and SE loses a customer. Nobody is expendable due to a stupid mistake like this for a game that already failed once. At least in EA the players have paid for the service and are less likely to stop caring about the game over this kind of thing.

Wasn't WoW unplayable at launch, full of issues with servers and stuff like that? That didn't seem to drive costumers away. You could play the game if you really wanted to, you just had to create a character on a different server.
I had 0 issues on Ragnarok and the Japanese servers had no issues either, create a character there if you really want to try the game out? Sure, your progress wouldn't carry over if you wanted to start on a different server with your friends but this is still a Beta and there's still a chance all our progress gets wiped.

[Carth]

Wasn't WoW unplayable at launch, full of issues with servers and stuff like that? That didn't seem to drive costumers away. You could play the game if you really wanted to, you just had to create a character on a different server.
I had 0 issues on Ragnarok and the Japanese servers had no issues either, create a character there if you really want to try the game out? Sure, your progress wouldn't carry over if you wanted to start on a different server with your friends but this is still a Beta and there's still a chance all our progress gets wiped.

To quote a friend: "Guys, remember when [shitty Korean f2p MMO] or [game that launched well over 5 years ago] had a rocky start? This is completely relevant."

WoW came out in 2004, this is 2013 and we have an well-saturated MMO market with a lot of competition, and aiming for a much larger demographic with considerably less tolerance than any forum-goer, let alone a regular on BG. People will quit giving a shit about this game if they're constantly locked out of it.

And I severely doubt there'll be a rollback at this point.

[Black]

so site for codes are up but you always get...

There was a problem. Please try again later

[Hyan]

Wasn't WoW unplayable at launch, full of issues with servers and stuff like that? That didn't seem to drive costumers away. You could play the game if you really wanted to, you just had to create a character on a different server.
I had 0 issues on Ragnarok and the Japanese servers had no issues either, create a character there if you really want to try the game out? Sure, your progress wouldn't carry over if you wanted to start on a different server with your friends but this is still a Beta and there's still a chance all our progress gets wiped.

Expectations have changed. Its been 8 years since WoW came to the scene and competition is fiercer than ever.

You and mioko can belittle this kind of thinking all you want, the fact is people don't have time nor desire to deal with incompetency. They simply stop caring. At least when people bitch, it means they still care. Apathy is much, much worse. The fact is with the failure of 1.0 hanging over this game, people are more likely to forget about the game (again).

Edit: Carth was faster...