For those who want a beta, how

WoW Classic WoW Classic General Discussion
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I was thinking about the whole beta or no beta thing, since it came up in another thread. For those who want it, how do you see it happening? How do you think Blizzard would pick beta testers? (Randomly? Streamers and other media get priority? Lottery system? By request?) How would you feel if, in the selection of beta testers, Blizzard didn’t pick you?

One person in that thread even suggested that Blizzard listened to none of the feedback for BfA (an obvious exaggeration). Some of that feedback was glitched quests that weren’t fixed, which made it obvious not everything was done. However, I suspect there was a lot of data obtained during the beta that was internal - not player posted reports, but devs / QA able to watch players actually do things and see where a sequence might not work.

When we talk about a bet for WOW Classic, though, do you think it would be about finding bugged quests/gear/skills? Or do you think it would be to fine-tooth comb differences between retail and vanilla to maximize the authenticity of the result? Or perhaps it would be about using it as a way to highlight that “see, players do want X because they didn’t Y in the beta”?

See, I work in software testing and one of the things I do is run the beta program. It can be incredibly annoying because of the number of customers who ask to be part of our beta, not to test and provide feedback, but to gain early access.

I could probably count on one hand the customers I sincerely rely on as beta testers, who use it and provide feedback and stay involved and accessible without complaining when things aren’t fixed immediately or functions aren’t changed to work exactly the way they asked for because a broader application needed more flexibility.

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Put a preorder subscription and whomever ‘preorders’ Classic, gets to play the demo and gets a day head start. Put a Collectors Edition preorder that also gives a day head start as well as a the original three pets from the collectors edition. This also helps with the realms staying stable upon release and hopefully enough for blizzard to not put in sharding for the starting zones.

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I think they should give all of us with Day 0 and Day 1 account registrations invites first of all. I don’t know how many of us there are, but that + streamers (Let’s be real, streamers are getting in because its free advertising for Blizzard) would be cool. But Im biased of course. I just think it would be a nice nod to those of us that were there day 1.

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Well what about the people who’ve supported blizzard by spending a small fortune on micro transactions and who’ve stayed subbed instead of sooking the minute the games changed?

Arbitrary reasons for a beta invite are arbitrary.

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I mean, you are free to wish that is the threshold. No need to get antsy, I don’t work for Blizzard, we are having fun here. The connection to relevance in my example is that its Vanilla WoW relaunching and inviting those who were literally there day 1 all those years ago.

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I would do actual testing and report if needed. I see no reason to ‘progress’ when your data will be wiped anyway. I’m kinda dreading the leveling so doing it twice; once to get ‘early access’ and the second time when it releases…already feels draining lol.

I wouldn’t explore the world so much as a beta tester. I’d just pick a race and stay within that races story zone cluster (Elwynn, Westfall, Redridge etc) and report faults.

But like you say, will Blizzard take onboard feedback? One would hope so. I think Classic is their ‘hail Mary’ to be honest.

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Semi-random beta selections based on hardware needs.

I think the most important thing that a beta can do for Blizzard is to test for bugs, and that necessarily means including a large variety of different hardware to make sure that there are no hardware-specific bugs. (Yes, in theory, they already have Retail doing this, but as the old saying goes, in theory there is no difference between theory and practice.)

Of course all bug reports are valuable, and I’d like to see them fixing as many bugs as possible. I’d be perfectly fine if I weren’t selected (I don’t really have the free time to be a really great tester right now anyway).

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I am for a closed beta testing by in house.

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Randomly for anyone that already have in anytime a battle.net acc

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I’m not married to the idea, frankly. But Blizzard has a system in place already for picking beta testers for their games, and I assume they’d use it for Classic, too. You simply go to your account preferences and opt in for the games you’re interested in testing. WoW is there, and presumably that includes all versions of WoW.

Me personally? I’d be like, “Them’s the breaks” and move on with life, but I know from past beta cycles that a lot of other people get really bent out of shape if they’re not selected as if it’s personal.

You raise good questions, IMO. Like if I am being 100% honest, I don’t think I’d be a good Classic beta tester simply because I did not play vanilla, I am not an expert on vanilla stats, and it might even be tough for me to spot tiny details in the client. And the second question, I interpret as a #changer vs. #nochanger thing, which I can totally see coming up and becoming a heated debate.

And IMO, Blizzard long ago stopped using their “betas” as real testing environments and more for hype.
In betas for large expansions, they send out betas in waves, with members of world-class guilds, world-class PVP’rs, and a few very well-known streamers getting in first. Those guys’ feedback gets listened to, sometimes. As the beta wears on, more and more people are invited in waves and it becomes less about testing and more about marketing the product.

I’ve been in three WoW betas and I diligently sent in reports on bugs and feedback on things, but I realize that my invites were probably too late to make a difference.

I believe that if Classic gets any kind of player-invite beta, it will be small and closed-- nothing like the huge affairs of a normal WoW expansion beta. Reading that recent German article where Omar described investigating the bug reports from people about demon summons being incorrect, and how they went and checked the actual 1.12 code and saw that it was the people’s memories that were wrong-- this made me think that relying on players to report “bugs” based on memories and private server experiences could actually slow things down rather than being helpful.

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I would be one of the incredibly annoying customers who mostly seek early access. I would, depending on how easy they made it, probably report the more obvious bugs I encountered, but would be there simply to experience the product.

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They open the beta and depending and what they think needs tested, they will invite however many people they think they need to get a good test for it.

They invite some streamers no matter what because it is free advertisements for their game, but I think they also reinvite people who they have invited before and maybe sometimes it’s random? Idk I have been invited to every beta except for TBC.

They 100% find loads of bugs in betas from player driven reports. Every beta for WoW I have been in has been a wreck in the first build and very polished in the last. People who say betas are for nothing but hype don’t know anything about betas.

I think it will be just like any other beta with buggy quests and such. Probably with less terrain bugs like flying through mountains on flgithpaths but still bugs.

Oh trust me, for the first couple builds in a beta, you have to go out of your way to not provide feedback, sometimes the beta is literally unplayable anymore and you can’t progress because of something like quest chain stopping or a quest just not spawning a guy and most people will write a ticket down and complain. Obviously not everyone submits tickets but I think blizzard has a system… idk I beta test and I write tickets down every chance I get and I always get invites maybe that has something to do with it?

Eh in the beta if something is glitched there is a community there who actually wants to fix it. You always see in general chat /1 Hey is “Blah blah blah glitched?” and its a constant swarm of “Yeah report it”.

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I’ve said this before, but I really don’t want an open beta. Beta internal to Blizzard, of course.

Who’s going to tell them what the 1.12 feel is? Or even more, the “Vanilla feel”? 1.12 wasn’t around long enough for people to figure out the “experience”. And there are few people around to know what Vanilla “felt” like from the beginning.

Ion knows. He knows more than 99% of people waiting for Classic. I’d take him and his decisions over anything the community has to say. This includes the fact that he’s corporate. If top level execs tell him to do X, do you think us yelling and screaming will do anything - especially if he can’t do anything?

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The way I see it happening is that blizzard invites its usual testers, they thoroughly test and report all sorts of issues and bugs. Then blizzard promptly deletes all that feedback after reading only a little because it brought up how OP the devs’ favorite class is and how gimp the dirty hybrids are.

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I just want to see a beta to know they are making progress on the game, I know blizzard doesn’t really owe us anything but man I’m going stir crazy waiting for any sort of news.

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well the alpha is still going, so i doubt it will be too soon, my guess is march 14, but i dont know

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How about an open beta? It can last for some arbitrary amount of time, let’s say three weeks for arguments sake.

The reason I would suggest an open beta is that it’ll allow Blizzard to really see if sharding will be beneficial for the launch of the game. I’d suggest they do not use sharding in this beta. If as many people can hop in as possible and people are (or are not) able to complete quests then they have their answer.

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I’d prefer a closed beta with dedicated internal beta testers, but we all know that won’t happen in Blizzard 2019.

It’ll be a ‘closed’ alpha handed out to the media and streamers, and a open beta bout 2 months before launch before any actual testing gets done.

I hope they prove me wrong

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closed alpha is going on right now, i know that for 100% sure

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Most things that a traditional beta test would be testing are already done. The testing needed is the interaction from the old data and the new engine.