Everyone seems to be missing the point of this. They are not giving streamers keys to giveaway to have serious bug finding testers. They are doing it for 2 reasons.
Key giveaways create more hype over the launch which is a good thing
It called business economics. These streamers have, in some cases, large amounts of fans and followers and they bring alot of publicity and attraction to blizzard and to WoW. This is something that blizzard can do in return for content creators. Many who are not fans or followers will join streams for a chance at a key giveaway. And perhaps some of them will like what they see and start following a few more streamers. This benefits the streamers obviously. And thatâs a good thing for blizzard. More people streaming their content means more exposure.
Keep in mind, that Blizzard and the WoW team have been doing this for almost 2 decades now. You donât last that long in a rapidly changing gaming industry without knowing how to play to the fans.
Is there a reason you guys donât do forum key giveaways? Not everyone has interest in going to places like Twitch. Yet, you arenât giving any chance for people to be rewarded for using the site you actually run?
Iâm in beta, so it doesnât concern me, and I donât care if I donât get into a beta, as although I love sending in feedback, thereâs others who tend to give the same feedback I do. But I know a lot of people are sad when they donât get in.
As an example, why are you not giving keys to active forum posters to host forum giveaways for? Thereâs been a few great people like Grimoire who have hosted mount giveaways:
So forum giveaways do work, and doing them this way can encourage people to share positive things like their best memory of wow, the thing theyâre looking forward to most in dragonflight, etc. And as an added bonus, it would help stifle the complaints about having to go off-site to get a chance at winning.
Yes, they would be prone to the same type of favoritism, but thereâs also a lot of people who genuinely just assign everyone a number and use a random number generator, as a way for things to be fair. (Before anyone comments on me winning a mount from Grimoire, that was before I was on the CC, so it definitely wasnât favoritism, I didnât know them before it.)
It might be too late into Dragonflight beta to do something like this, but something to keep in mind for the next beta?
By the time Blizzard starts key giveaways like this, Beta is âfinalizedâ - any major changes are done. They are fine tuning, stress testing servers, etc. which isnât really testing by this point. Blizzard literally told us right around when they started giveaways that all major changes are done on classes and now theyâre sticking to minor adjustments and tuning.
Yes, youâre still testing, but the giveaways happen at a time where stress tests are the more important part, and seeing how quests work with a lot of people doing them - which is still testing, but it, for all intents and purpose, does in fact act like pre-release, just with no progress saved to live.
Like when we were in alpha, I saw maybe two people out in the world my entire time on alpha. (Not counting the dungeons I queued into, but dungeons had 4+ hour queue times cause finding 5 people was that hard lol) Thatâs not a way to test things like âCan this quest mob supply support a retail live player amountâ - thatâs when things like key giveaways come in handy.
Theyâre not âpickingâ these channels like itâs a popularity contest nor are they focusing exclusively on streamers but rather creators of all kinds - artists, podcasters, machinima artists, singers, musicians, traditional streamers, etc.
Lawrencium is a well known machinima artist on YT and AFAIK doesnât stream live on YT, so he likely gave his twitch channel. No reason to see when he last streamed and determine that factor as the reason why he shouldnât be on a list???
That and in the recent months, Blizzard has been promoting the content of ALL creators - not just the âbig famous onesâ.
Whoâs âweâ? Do you label âcreatorsâ as someone on an official list by Blizzard, regardless of their craft? Does that mean you are not fond of artists, musicians, singers, animators, craftsman and all sorts of other creators Blizzard has promoted?
Yeah sureeeâŚ. I have BETA access and I am no YouTuber or twitch streamer. Blizzard gave me access even though I didnât opt in but hey I appreciate for the free access.
I thought pre-purchasing DF gave me a chance to get an invite to the beta. Apparently not. Has anyone got an invite from Blizzard for just buying the DF expansion?
YesâŚLetâs force players to watch horrible twitch streamers trying to be something to get into beta. All garbageâŚpending removal of this âoffensive postâ
Same hereâŚ
And Iâve worked on wow emulation for years before playing on retail servers. I know how to report and how to find problems. They miss the opportunityâŚ
god again this really is so scummy. just let people who want to play the beta, play the damn beta already. its 2022 this closed beta garbage is scummy, elitist, out dated and unnecessary. the company makes more than enough monthly revenue to handle the extra players and be more open and heck its not like blizz even listens to feedback on beta outside of their own internal test groups anyway so who cares if there is a large amount of extra players as thatâs still more promotion which lets face it, is the only real reason why blizzard even has a beta these days, solely to promote and hype up the game through streamers and other junk.
