There is a good reason, from a technical standpoint too. Old players are going to know the meta, know what skills, items, etc to go for. People that never played or have limited experience are not going to be held by that knowledge, which gives more statistics in the long run to the developers. I assume most old people rolled a sorc first, newer people may have played a weaker class out of the gate. Glad they limited the classes too that can be played for this.
I think I heard it best from SenpaiSomething, “complaining about streamers getting early access [to a video game] is like complaining about celebrities getting [early access to] Fiji water”.
Of course streamers of all kinds get it first. This is marketing 101 in the current age. They get free advertising to a huge variety of gamers.
Viewership on twitch was almost 400k at one point. Millions of eyes will get to experience the game played by their favorite personalities.
Someone already made a great point here too. Sometimes the best testers are those who have no idea how the mechanics work. They will find unique bugs that most people wouldn’t experience playing the meta.
while this is true, they also wont know what is a bug.
certain things are obvious for sure like major graphical issues, but
i have already seen a few bugs,
luckily the streamer i was watching also noticed them and reported them but, a person who had never played the gamer would have never noticed them.
They will end up reporting things we all know are “how the game works”. That is ok though. QA and the Devs know the difference. And there is a high chance they stumble on something the very experienced players never think to even try.
Much like kids amaze you with what they end up doing that you never expected. Every warning label on something is usually because someone…did it, no matter how silly.
lol you remind me of MTGO, becuase i make my own janky homebrew decks with obscure cards no one ever uses… and i ended up crashing client or bugging the game so many times its hysterical. and of course they never fix it…
i have a BR deck that i think has seven different ways to crash the game.
What does it matter if someone has played the game before or not? Jesus, gamers are such cry babies, it’s sick!
Blizzard is a company trying to sell a game
Blizzard wants to obtain marketing to increase awareness of the game and get people interested
Streamers want viewers to make money
Streamers will play a new game for free, if it is going to help them get viewers
Therefore,
Using Alpha/Beta testing to provide streamers with access provides free marketing.
Marketing increases the playerbase
A bigger playerbase is a healthier game with longivity
Means good news for Diablo as a franchise
Us normies having to wait for actual release is fine
But I would actually test it?
All the D2 streamers like MrLlama will probably find 90% of the unknown bugs
Alpha/Beta is less about testing as it is about seeing how the community responds to the game
Example: D3 might have been very different on launch if they had seen how badly the end-game played out.
Please continue complaining about no Alpha/Beta and how you deserve it and Blizz hates their fans etc. <3
Agree. I’m just hoping we don’t get dramatic player-activism attempts to fundamentally change the game, like people asking for personal loot et al.
Im hoping that Blizzard continue to support the MOD community as i’d be very happy to play with a small % of the population on the authentic old servers than for changes to come through which are unavoidable.
I had the same feeling. I just started streaming a couple months ago so I’m still small (10-20 people a stream), so I don’t expect to be worth a damn to Blizzard. It was really nice to see Esfand actually spend time playing the game and enjoy it as a new guy, I hope the remaster brings in a lot of new people and revives the community. If I can even get a month where the community feels like the good ole days when 1.10 first came out… I’ll be happy.
I also understand why Blizzard wants to get D2R in front of Asmon and Esfand’s viewership. If they’re D2 Noobs who enjoy the game, a lot of their viewers probably will be too.
Well played by PoE dropping their PoE2 hype on the same day the big streamers would be on D2R, they definitely sniped a ton of D2R viewers for a big chunk of the time that Blizzard would have liked to use for their own marketing.
Personally I’m trying not to be bitter about the early alpha drop today, I would have loved the opportunity to stream my alltime favorite game and up my viewership at the same time. Hoping that Blizzard will see my 4 individual cd-keys and the fact that I actively promote their product on my website (iqgaming…org) as well as stream D2 often (twitch…tv/roosterhollywood).
Game looks incredible, though, I was glued to twitch all day.
Ugh. That’s Disgusting.
It’s marketing man. All of these things that they’re doing to make a buck off the game are necessary and what drives development of a slick new remaster that you’ll get to enjoy.
It’s like condemning someone for posting their P anni on d2jsp instead of just making a game lobby. Can’t blame the player for trying to get the best profit possible on their product.
Welcome to the current era.
They have to hype the game.
Streamers hype the game to zoomers.
Zoomers buy game.
Blizzard makes monnnnneyyyy.
They want money.
All gaming companies do this. I play Ubisoft Anno series games. They did the same thing. Everybody that played Settlers was the ones that most of the Anno beta. I told another guy that plays Diablo 3 that they would do this.
Considering it’s supposed to be a faithful remaster, there is going to be a lot more value getting veteran players in, who know what the original game was supposed to be like.
Yes, there is value in diversity, but generally speaking you’re going to get the most useful information from veterans. New players have no context, and will complain about things that are already widely known, like inferno is a bad skill, or why isn’t there a D3 skill hotbar? etc.
I think anyone who can show their original 3 CD Case +LOD should automatically get the Alpha, Beta, ect.
Another issue I’ve seen is comments from some Hearthstone streamers, “ahhh yeah I got sent an alpha key for D2:R but I have no interest in it, so I’m not going to even bother playing”
I would have no issues with Streamers getting them IF the streamer had indicated that they were actually interested in playing the game and had requested a key. That at least makes sense.
But just sending them out to Streamers with a big following, for that person to say “na, not interested” really doesn’t sit well.
This is exactly how I felt a little yesterday while watching some streams. I mainly spent my time with Rhyyker because of his playstyle and side by side comparison switches. I don’t wanna sound like some super salty person because just getting to see a game I wished this happened to coming true is a miracle enough. I understand from the business side of what they did and their reasoning behind the streamers cause it does garner them attention, but like others said it really is super frustrating as an actual Diablo fan to watch some of these people be given extra early access just for them to resort back to what they’re known for playing an hour-two into streams of D2R or just saying they have no care to play it when there’s literally x amount of people begging for a chance. Also I wanna know what’s the justification of being one of these big streamers that got it a day early yesterday cause at night I was browsing some streams of people with like 3-5 viewers. No offense but I could have more people watching me in my house in the same room then those numbers. But in the end we can’t all win so fingers crossed to everyone still hoping as more waves are happening throughout the day and also there’s still a 2nd phase to possibly get in for so who knows!
I’m downloading at this time on my other account BigRed. I have 3 accounts so far just the BigRed got in Lucky Me!!!
My father, who played Diablo 2 for 3 months at the time, has alpha access.
I who played 20 years and the last ladder have no …
That’s the way it is, maybe next time. Don’t be like that 
Honestly, I’m not even sure I want access to the Alpha…
It’ll take my limited game time away… time I normally spend playing D2. I’d rather be on the hunt for GFG rares