If I knew I’d get a beta invite, I’d start a sub today. If I got a beta invite today, I’d be subbed by tonight. Doesn’t make a lot of sense to restrict it when a large part of the target audience (maybe even a majority of it) isn’t subbed. Good opportunity to get a few more months of sub money from a lot folks. Just my 2 cents.
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Welcome to the forum 4 weeks ago. Thanks for stopping by see you in August.
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Yep, didn’t read 1000 threads to see it had been covered. I apologize.
I believe they did. You just weren’t one of the people adding to their coffers.
It’s just how it works this time. Whether you understand it or not is irrelevant.
I find that I’m getting more salty over this as time passes.
It doesn’t take 1000 threads, it takes maybe 12 threads to realize that IN THOSE 12 threads, the issue has been covered 16 times.
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Schrodinger’s Beta?
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Why waste your time replying then?
I am not in agreement with your point of view that a closed beta needs to conform to your needs. This is about what our over-worked, under appreciated development team needs to make this project successful.
A game you pay monthly for to play wants you to get or keep your sub for a chance to test their new product? Like why is this a crazy thing, are we all surprised a major corporation is trying to make money?
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Edit to fix formatting.
Corporate greed maybe?.
Or maybe they wanted to give that chance to participate to active accounts that are subbed (because this is not a normal beta), but then saw that humans can’t control their urges and ended with a bunch of non-retail players angry because they didn’t get automatic beta invite.
Fixed that for you 
Having been reading the forums since beta access went live, there seems to be two schools of thought on the subject.
Possibility A
Blizzard has intentionally decided to deploy their beta program in a divisive manner, intentionally neglecting long-time committed players from 2004 and attempting to leverage beta hype for monetization out of corporate greed.
Likely, the Blizzard executives are cackling in a typical evil manner, browsing the forums and feeding on the salt of the community like a cornucopia of the gods. This is all a master-minded intentional and premeditated publicity stunt via public drama. Only streamers matter.
In fact, they probably personally hate you – and your dog. The only feasible option at this point is to make a rage thread about how you are more qualified and/or more deserving than <x> people who got in. Not only that, but you’re moments away from meeting with the Geneva Convention for the war crime of your $15 being a barrier to mere consideration for beta.
If you don’t get beta access, the world is about to end.
Possibility B
The beta program’s primary focus is on providing useful information, feedback, and bug reports to the development team. The development team, after all, has been charged with producing a bug-free product that Blizzard can leverage for years to come as a profitable subscription fee game.
The reason for requiring subscriptions is most likely because it is a simple and effective method of limiting abuse (by requiring active/valid billing details), and their primary focus simply isn’t on providing everyone with access “for funsies”. Their primary focus is on doing their jobs and meeting their deliverables/deadlines.
The time and effort to attempt to build a specific beta access list that includes the “most useful” players while also curbing abusive from free/inactive accounts is time prohibitive and would eat into valuable time that could be spent working on the product. Some high-profile streamers did get priority, as it is honestly a smart marketing decision that required virtually no leg work to implement that increases the visibility of their soon-to-launch product.
In short, they’re a business with a development team that is being given the best resources that time permits without re-inventing the beta program process. While it sucks for those of us didn’t get in, the beta is for the development team, not for the players. The release on August 26th/27th is actually what’s for the players.
Assessment
It’s a real tough call on what seems most plausible, so I’ll leave it up to you.
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Probably because 99.99999999% of unsubbed players have absolutely 0 interest in playing WoW or testing a 15 year old version of their game
When I first starting reading, I had high hopes. Some real though put into multiple possibilities.
That’s a lot of effort for what ends up being a strawman (A) vs one reasonable possibility (B).
No they are not cackling but streamers are a free way to advertise for them. They likely have analytics that tell them this is the best way to go about it.
Again, all I’m doing here is stating my opinion on how I’d like to see it go and expressing my excitement about playing the game at the same time. I also think I’d be a good tester as I played 3 toons to 60 in vanilla.
Like you said, the entire post is sort of a half tongue-in-cheek jab at what I view to be the unreasonable group (A) by using excessive hyperbole. But the core arguments within genuinely do seem to be the views of that group.
They feel they’re more deserving. They feel the sole reason for the $15 sub fee requirement is corporate greed. They feel that they have a right to participate over another group/individual and have been wronged. It basically boils down to how they seem to be unable to grasp how Project Development is the primary driving force behind the way the beta is going.
12 threads, buried among 1000 other threads about layering, streamers, what class will you play, why can’t I have Murky, unarmored mounts, mere whining about needing to sub, rather than a consideration of motivating players to sub, which is what this guy posted.
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I hate to throw more crap into this thread, but…
There have been, what, probably 20-30m wow accounts worldwide and maybe 2-3m are still active. So how are they supposed to pull your account as being a great potential tester over the others? At least by limiting it to current subs they are reducing the pool of people they can pull from, and they also know the hardware specs of those people.
Needing a sub is less about “corporate greed” and more about targeting eligible people.
If populations scans from within beta is a reasonable estimate, there are only about 4k people in beta anyway. If you exclude the streamers (what, maybe 100?) then even if they opened it up to all past accounts you would have a stupidly low chance of getting in.
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On the contrary, sir, no crap, but an actual, informed response. Hats off to you!