Reason I'm asking is because there was one particular mmo that I was very excited about as it was being developed which turned out to be a massive let down. Currently, there is another mmo that is being tested which I am interested in and which I have heard mixed messages about.
Whilst understanding it might be naiive to take beta reports at face value, I would like to know is a game screwed if its development trajectory isn't perfect? So as a comparison, I just wanted to find out what wow was like/how much it changed from beta to launch and immediately afterwards as I never played beta. Whatever your feelings are about it now, undeniably it was a great game for everyone who played and enjoyed it at one point or another in the past.
So I'd like to find out such things as:
Was WoW amazing from the get go in beta?
Was it poor/ok and then iterative design improved it exponentially over time?
Were there specific points where it jumped up in terms of quality during beta?
Was it poor/ok at launch ? (I don't think this is true because I remember it getting high reviews)
Did it improve very quickly after it was launched?
If it wasn't good until after launch, when was it that it became good?
And I'm not really interested in things like server wait times and connection issues or anything technical really - just how good was the game design etc. at that stage compared to the high points people remember that came after?