100,000 Annual Pass Invites On Their Way

Originally Posted by thekrik

Translated: Don't expect to get into the beta any time soon...

The fact that they are making a big deal out of sending invites to 10% of the customers in one wave seems to indicate the vast majority won't get it any time soon. I can understand getting excited about 300k or 500k but 100k is measly. This whole ordeal is making me thinking about buying out the rest of my Ap subscription (buy 1 year of subscription in one fell swoop and cancel immediately) and walk away from it altogether.

*sigh* A friend of mine recieved a beta invitation EVEN when he has not even signed up for the AP.

That's quite... ironic.

(At the first wave even)

Friend of mine just got his key (EU - germany), I didn´t yet.
both of us play since Vanilla, but he some months longer, both of us got AP on the second day after it was announced.

hope that they send out the next wave faster!

dam have to go to work and this pops out in front of me oday will be long lol

fuck that, I'm not playing your beta, by now I've already seen all the content of the beta on youtube, i might as well wait until the full expansion comes out, play it for the free 1 month, then quit WoW again.

Originally Posted by Jojones

fuck that, I'm not playing your beta, by now I've already seen all the content of the beta on youtube, i might as well wait until the full expansion comes out, play it for the free 1 month, then quit WoW again.

You don't get a free month with an expansion as far as I remember, so... no, really.

I can understand your feelings on the Beta though. I don't agree, but I understand.

Originally Posted by Jojones

fuck that, I'm not playing your beta, by now I've already seen all the content of the beta on youtube, i might as well wait until the full expansion comes out, play it for the free 1 month, then quit WoW again.

Uhh... considering there's barely a fraction of the full beta available on the beta servers atm, no you haven't. Get a clue.

Originally Posted by YoshiKage

*sigh* A friend of mine recieved a beta invitation EVEN when he has not even signed up for the AP.

That's quite... ironic.

(At the first wave even)

He was pretty lucky, then. It's not like they will not invite people without the annual pass, so at least it will happen to some.

Beta access is given to players for the benefit of the game, not for the benefit of the player. Something pretty much everyone seems to be forgetting or be unaware of. The same everyone who are all excited to get into the beta to "experience the game" beforehand, forget about the actual job and duty of beta testing, and then when the game is released cry on the forums about how buggy and unfinished it is. If you're feeling left out and like you're "missing" something, ask yourself how many actual bug reports would you be sending, really.

Originally Posted by dragothica

Just a stupid question, can I run the Beta client on a PC which doesn't have WoW (live) installed? Is it a stand-alone Beta client?

Just in case I'm not in vain coping this Beta client to another PC via USB Sticks.

Yep, you can. Beta is a stand-alone.

What's going to happen when I get my invite in the 6th wave and I want to go play with guildies who got first wave invites? By that point I imagine their initial servers will be full. Its poor planning. They should have started with however many servers they are going to need eventually. They cant cram all million APs on 4 servers. Being stuck on a different server than the people I play with isn't a big deal for testing monk mechanics, class changes, new zones, and leveling, but it will effect testing for instances and raids.

I knew they wouldnt fail us! BRB pressing F5!

Well, 1/10th of all the annual passers is a good start on the first major wave. They may increase the number each time if they see that their servers can handle it.

Originally Posted by Sydänyö

Beta access is given to players for the benefit of the game, not for the benefit of the player. Something pretty much everyone seems to be forgetting or be unaware of. The same everyone who are all excited to get into the beta to "experience the game" beforehand, forget about the actual job and duty of beta testing, and then when the game is released cry on the forums about how buggy and unfinished it is. If you're feeling left out and like you're "missing" something, ask yourself how many actual bug reports would you be sending, really.

Friend told me that when BC beta came out people who signed on and got it had to actully do reports in order to stay in.
They had to play some time every week and post few reports wich were than read by blizzard and they decided if that person should stay there and if he is helpfull. These days Blizzard dont do that anymore so i rly think is more about people seeing new stuff before hand etc, than actuall bug finding. Mby some of them report but not all of them. I think blizzard has theyre own people who work for that !

Originally Posted by Affectionate

got mine :d :d :d

Damn your lucky, GZ for those who got there invites.

I'm not sure this expansion is good enough to make me come back to WoW, I'll just wait a couple years when the game is free to play.

So how long will it take for all 100k invites to be sent out?

Maybe they should have thought about they human and technical issues before they launches a promotion that waved beta access to the crowd. Although I get it that whining won't help and it's impossible to get everyon in beta now, I still think if you can't hold your deal of the bargain, don't attempt to sway people with false advertising. Crappy move by a company I've payed and loved for over 9 years now, but yeah, that's life

Originally Posted by Mikiti

Friend told me that when BC beta came out people who signed on and got it had to actully do reports in order to stay in.
They had to play some time every week and post few reports wich were than read by blizzard and they decided if that person should stay there and if he is helpfull. These days Blizzard dont do that anymore

There never was such a system. I've been in all five betas, and I've never heard anyone being kicked out of the beta because they didn't report stuff. Whoever told you that was full of it.

Originally Posted by Mikiti

so i rly think is more about people seeing new stuff before hand etc, than actuall bug finding. Mby some of them report but not all of them. I think blizzard has theyre own people who work for that !

Of course companies have their own people who work on the games. First there are the designers who flesh out the game into an alpha, which is then tested by a group of alpha testers. Then it goes through a set amount of closed beta phases. The open beta, which this phase basically is, albeit limited, is meant in large part for stress testing, and seeing how the game handles "normal play". As such, it's perfectly fine for someone to play the beta as they normally would.

What I was criticizing was peoples' attitude towards the beta access; how it's some kind of a lottery win for them, some special golden cookie they get to enjoy, and the attitude that when they run into a bug, they complain about it, but never report anything because "other people will do that". You seem to have exactly that attitude - that the beta is some kind of a reward for you, when in fact you're supposed to be an asset for Blizzard to fine tune their game. Sure, simply by being in the beta you're taking part in the stress testing of the game, but if they didn't want reports made in the open phase of the beta, you wouldn't even be able to report anything.

Fingers crossed!!!!