Anyone else sceptical about guaranteed access to beta weekends when you pre-purchase?

[Naposim1337]

The difference between this and Blizzard's situation is that the GW2 team can use the beta servers for live servers when it comes down to it. Blizzard already has all the live servers it needs, so anything beyond bare minimum test servers is a waste.

merge low pop servers, use those servers to host beta?!?! profit?! its not hard to do something if you want but they obviously dont want to for whaever reasons

[Lucky_]

Except the Annual Pass didn't promise you'd be invited immediately within the first second of the first wave of the Beta like people seemed to believe.

GW2 solution: Server stress tests

That is probably going to be one of the last BWEs, that will invite everyone. That way they have a more or less ready game to "demo" to potential purchasers as well as actual stress test.

I wouldn't expect huge size of actual BWEs. Specifically I don't think that pre-sales will be in the same league as WoW yearly pass.

---------- Post added 2012-03-29 at 11:15 PM ----------

Um... I don't know a preorder option that hasn't cost at least 5 dollars down. I don't disagree that this is a money grab, but I don't really mind it either.

That "5 dollars down" is "0 dollars down to publisher" and "5 dollars to retailer".

[grandpab]

This is a money grab.

and who the hell cares if you're gonna buy the game anyway? I fully paid for my pre-order a month before pre-purchase was even available. I had no idea I'd get bonuses for doing it.

[Fencers]

Um... I don't know a preorder option that hasn't cost at least 5 dollars down. I don't disagree that this is a money grab, but I don't really mind it either.

I paid nothing for the pre-order of Rift or Tera to name two recent examples.

and who the hell cares if you're gonna buy the game anyway? I fully paid for my pre-order a month before pre-purchase was even available. I had no idea I'd get bonuses for doing it.

I care when they incentivize access. When they asked for full payment to play up front for access and other games do not.

[Blznsmri]

I paid nothing for the pre-order of Rift or Tera to name to recent examples.

I paid nothing for the pre-order of Rift or Tera because I never pre-ordered them.

/trollface.

[Fencers]

Scamp. =P

........

[Blznsmri]

Scamp. =P

........

On a serious note though, I can't really argue with the whole pre-order thing because I usually just pay for the game outright when I pre-order.

[sacrypheyes]

that would be a money grab if they end up selling the box for less short time after the actual release.
i agree their prices are more on the high end but who cares if other games may give more for less or whatever?
what you pay for in the first place is the game you'd have bought at release anyway.

they could give more? sure they could, they always can.
as for why they don't, you could tell they're greedy (less money spent for bonus, more for them).
well, they're no humanitarian association after all so i guess they are at least a bit greedy just like a whole damn lot of people.

and then what now?

as long as people will agree to buy it for that much (and i probably will), why would they change anything if they (or ncsoft?) don't want to?

[Squirrelbanes]

I'll happily throw my money at Anet on a pre-purchase in full consideration of what they're offering us.
1) I want to support them. If it helps them maybe get in more staff and can already begin working on xpacs or whatever, I really don't mind. Unlike other developers I trust that they would put a lot of the proceeds back into game development.
2) There's no sub fee. I care less about the expense.
3) I can sleep easier at night knowing that the game is closer to being in my hands.

[Deleted]

If swtor can do it then im sure gw2 will be ok.

[stuck4cash]

I guess they use the live servers to accomplish that. WoW has seperate live game and beta servers and it would be expensive to add much more beta servers for a few months. Since GW2 is not out yet, they can use the live servers for betatesting (and that way have a very good stresstest for that infrastructure, too)

I think you'll find that WoW rotates their servers and put in new hardware just before expansions usually. They'll just buy some new ones and use them and then get rid of old ones after release or use them as additional battle.net servers. Blizzard is constantly buying/getting rid of servers. They would have literally thousands of servers at any one time.

(100 WoW "servers" (which are actually at least 3 servers, likely 4-5) + battle.net which would hold similar numbers + beta/ptr servers + website(s)/forums + internal servers (internal testing servers, internal CMS servers, financial servers, monitoring etc)).

[Gisei]

I pray there is only one BWE.

[sacrypheyes]

I pray there is only one BWE.

well, depends on how well the game runs during that BWE but yeah, the less (BWE with bugs) before the actual release, the better.

[Vulpei]

Like I said in the other thread, you will probably have a 10min window to log into each weekend and all the fanboys will get defensive about it.

[sacrypheyes]

is it just me who doesn't get what is the point you're trying to make?

[Deyadissa]

I paid nothing for the pre-order of Rift or Tera to name two recent examples.

I care when they incentivize access. When they asked for full payment to play up front for access and other games do not.

Per purchase is optional, beta keys will still be given out without having to buy the game.

(common marketing, giving free beta keys adds more revenue)

If you have a problem with the marketing, don't buy it and hope for a free beta key.

[Deleted]

You have to think of Arenanet like Blizzard. [...] Blizzard that would do anything to please their customers.

Gods, I hope ANet doesn't do that!

A game starts to fall apart when the community decides what happens.

[Midnight Man]

That is by logic, not remotely the same. Pre-ordering which costs no money down with robust access options v. pre-purchase w/ fewer access options.

Arena net are offering pay to purchase limited beta access & headstart for higher price than comparable MMOs. This is a money grab.

How is this a money grab?

If you wish to pre-order the game, you are given a one day head start, and no beta weekends.

If you pre purchase the game, you are given a three day head start, and access to the beta weekends.

From the developers point of view: If you make a committment you can back out of, we will give you a small benefit. If you make a committment you cannot back out of, we have the economic justification to provision the capacity you will consume on our infrastructure. IMO - a completely fair and balanced approach from any business.

From the players point of view: If I make a committment I can later break, I get a small level of benefits. If I make a committment and put my money where my mouth is, I get better benefits. IMO - still a completely fair and balanced result.

Looking at it another way - would you really expect to get the same benefits if pre ordering (which can be cancelled) as compared to pre purchasing? I would hope not!

If - by "cash grab" you meant all of the above, then consider please that those who will pre purchase are not paying any more than they otherwise would for the game - they have simply chosen to bring that spending forward in time to April 10th. For those pre-ordering, they have decided to pay an advance "down payment" on the game, which will be fully deducted from the amount they would otherwise pay at some future date.

The head start and BWE benefits that apply to these groups can be considered as a gratuity from ArenaNet on the basis of you choosing to bring that spending forward, and give them some or all of the funds you'd otherwise expect to spend, just at an earlier time.

[Hockeyhacker]

I'm a little worried we're going to see another Annual Pass situation here.

If over 1 million pre-purchase the game (like over 1 million signed up for closed beta), how are they going to get all of them into beta weekends?

No doubt this has already been brought up, if so please be so kindest to link the thread and I'll get this one deleted ^^

A) I love how people are still complaning about WoW annual pass because when they read "Will get access to beta" as "Will get access to beta day 1 beta goes live", just assuming that access to beta meant 100% of it, no where did Blizz promise day one beta, just beta access eventually. So even if there are people not in it yet as long as they get into beta atleast 5 hours before beta servers get taken down Blizzard still gave them exactly what they said of "free copy of the highly anticipated Diablo III, access to the beta test for the next World of Warcraft expansion"

B) 1 million closed beta signups != 1 million people signing up, many (not all but many) people signed up on 2,3,8,10 email accounts.

C) WoW has been out about 7 years they do not feel the need to stress test servers since they already know what their servers can handle.

Either way first "everyone who pre purchased" event will probably be a fair amount of servers but not a ton to slightly stress test the servers and if that goes well the next test would probably be either less servers or more "non pre purchase people" to stress them more, and if that goes well then probably one last really harsh stress test before release and if they feel comfortable with how the servers handle then they release, if not then they make changes to help it out... all these beta events will pretty much just be "how many people can we cram into a few zones with the game still being playable where it is still fun".

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If stress tests go well and the game is for the most part playable with minor hiccups then you can probably expect a release in the nearer future (early June to early July), if the events are buggy as hell and they need to fix issues caused by stress that reduces the fun of the game you can expect a few more beta events and for it to come out slightly later in the year (August-Sept), but don't expect less then two tests which means early June at the earliest.
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Might they still need some polish on the 30-80 zones? sure, but the main reason the beta tests so far have been locked to 3 races and 1-30 zones, and thats to test how things handle with large groups in small areas, same reason why the ToR beta events where short 2-3 day things, so that everyone is clustered more for better testing. If it was a fully open beta with all zones the testing would not get the data that they want to gather and that is "week one stability of the servers" where people are more clustered together in any MMO then even a month after release (or expansion release).

[Notus3485]

Not worried a bit.