They are taking preorders before we’ve seen any alpha/beta gameplay. Is that not bad taste or concerning for anyone else?
Maybe it’s more concerning since the overall quality of the last two expansions have been pretty bad.
Remember when they said in one of the interviews before DF announcement that it was important that they get changes into the hands of players well in advance to help refine and polish before releasing? How do they plan on doing that with a launch that we haven’t seen any gameplay for just yet? and then to take preorders on top of that…
Personally, I don’t want an open beta or anything. I wanna be completely surprised by the expansion upon release. I’m excited that there is SO MUCH hidden.
Business wise it makes sense: Releasing it during the holiday season is guaranteed to make a lot more money than right after it. This is also when a good number of possible players will be on some form of Winter Break, and what better way to spend it than getting some hot cocoa, booting up the PC and playing WoW with your pals?
By the way! If you need a marketing Gnome, hire me! I’m available!
While some use betas for this purpose, the ultimate point is to make sure the game…works. Since a beta is a near-finished version of a product, it’s a final check to make sure all systems are green before opening the flood gates.
In this regard, I’m feeling six months isn’t long enough? Especially since we haven’t seen anything but a demonstration of the new class and Dragonriding. I’m not counting the Talent mock up because who knows how close that is to the official product.
Plenty of games don’t need that, though. FFXIV doesn’t have open beta tests, and frankly they haven’t really been used for anything but bribing streamers to give them free marketing for a while.
They have said that they plan to play stuff closer to the chest from now on with PTRs and encryption, so if this is them keeping DF mysterious I’m all for it.
No, I don’t see an issue. Pre-orders have been like this as long as I remember. Maybe you should go with your gut and do what’s best for you. That’s what I did.
If the preorder let’s you make your dragon toon before the game officially launches… they used this tactic with Demon Slayers before Legion launched to boost sales after a dismal WoD.
What Blizzard should do is release dragon toons now if you preorder so you can do the starting area and level them up. But wait! You can only have one dragon per server! Every server has 2 to 4 other servers attached.
Nope… preorder customers will only be able to customize the dragon toons 2 weeks before official launch of the new expansion. In the meantime, we’re stuck in the Maw!!!
Would be way better without a public beta. Let the “world first” have to actually learn the encounters instead of practicing through beta. Let us explore all new stuff without wowhead having everything documented before we get there.
That would mean hiring some internal testers. But at 50-90 bucks a copy I’m guessing they could afford it. Probably get a better game that way too.
Nah, then they’d have to make some backwards-developed talent tree to work with the current system, since Evokers would obviously just be built with the new system from the ground up. Getting Drac’thyr before the pre-patch was never going to happen.
However people who pre-order are almost certainly going to get Drac’thyr with the pre-patch.
I thought that was about the raids but still not a bad take if true. I just don’t see a company notorious for cutting costs to have the ability to properly test anything internally. Looking at the total hotfixes to the anduin fight alone proves the internal testing team kinda dropped the ball.
Youve been able to preorder digimon survive for almost 2 years now, and when it was first announed all we had was a trailer and description with maybe a tiny bit of gameplay.
You can preorder the new pokemon with only minor glimpses of gameplay that dont reveal much.
The point i am trying to make is that we rarely get a full view of the game when preorders go live. Heck some console games you still know almost nothing about even on release.
Its not in bad taste for them to take preorders without a public alpha/beta phase yet. If thats something you need, then wait. Beta/alphas are coming. No pressure to preorder now unless you are gunning for a physical collectors edition or something.
I’m just shocked that new race wasn’t ready for leveling with the preorder . Like they did with BFA and we could level the ARs while we waited for BFA to launch. Woulda been nice to start leveling up my dragon .
