Beta Keys for Shadowlands

Originally Posted by NMX-

they need the feedback to keep coming, which requires keeping concurrency up. not everybody who plays beta keeps playing beta forever.

Yeah - they did that throughout the last couple months by continuing to do targeted invites. If they felt like they needed more feedback or the game still lacked polish - they would continue to do so. Opening it up to be given away by streamers usually happens very close to when pre-patch launches and is intended to get people talking about the expansion. Blizz has most likely shifted focus to addressing issues/concerns that have already been raised and readying for expansion launch.

Originally Posted by avahle

This just means the feedback gathering part of beta is mostly over and they are keeping it open purely for promotional purposes.

^this

It's always funny to see how most people here react to posts like that.
Who should get Keys? 2.6k+ PvP Players? Top 100 Raiding Guilds? Top .5% in Raider.io? Everyone with 30k+ ACM-Points? Or just some randoms that will never see anything besides the new zones?

Welp, if you are looking for me, I'm playing beta

They need to bring back max level char templates to get these end game system properly tested along with class's. I will level 1 or 2 class's on beta and give feedback. But i, and i am sure others would give so much more feedback with max level templates as levelling a tone of toons on beta is not desirable or realistic. I know they were only just removed to test the levelling but i fear they wont bring them back, and if they did it would be PVP templates like in the BFA beta. End game needs to be rigorously tested to avoid another BFA/WoD/Legion Legendary etc etc putting players off.

I don't mind streamers / community's having keys to give out i think its a nice gesture. Gives everyone a way to give something to the community and drum up some hype!

streamer privilege to the max

At this point (meaning the point where most of the information gathering is done) they could've just given access to every account older than 10 years or whatever but nah let's give more rewards to privileged twat streamers.

Everyone knows they don't get enough already.

Originally Posted by Hugh Wattmate

They need to bring back max level char templates to get these end game system properly tested along with class's. I will level 1 or 2 class's on beta and give feedback. But i, and i am sure others would give so much more feedback with max level templates as levelling a tone of toons on beta is not desirable or realistic. I know they were only just removed to test the levelling but i fear they wont bring them back, and if they did it would be PVP templates like in the BFA beta. End game needs to be rigorously tested to avoid another BFA/WoD/Legion Legendary etc etc putting players off.

I don't mind streamers / community's having keys to give out i think its a nice gesture. Gives everyone a way to give something to the community and drum up some hype!

I'm assuming (and everyone knows what that means!) that max level templates and/or some other end game gear systems will open up again later in the beta. I think we're still technically in the leveling testing phase (from lvl 1 to lvl 60 and what happens shortly after that), and while we have raid testing going on there's still so much fundamentally broken with many aspects of SL on the beta. While I'm not making as many bug reports as I did when I initially got beta, it's mostly because I don't want to constantly send in the same bug report over and over. I've been keeping track of the number of bug reports I've sent in this beta, as my friends were curious since I have this knack for finding bugs and/or breaking things. In the past two weeks, I've submitted just shy of 500 unique bug reports, ranging from minor issues to game-breaking and non-functioning aspects of the beta. This doesn't even go into the suggestions I'd have to some of the systems.

How does this tie into beta keys? Well, I'd rather Blizz expand the player base to get more testing, because even my guildies have found bugs that I didn't run into. A lot of this has to do with so many unique issues you can encounter based upon your class, spec, or covenant... and so many systems interact uniquely with each. I wouldn't go the route of beta keys, as I think the entire reason Blizz moved away from beta keys was because that system is easily exploitable. Heck, Blizz said a couple weeks ago that beta keys are a scam as they aren't releasing them, so don't fall for people offering beta keys... and now they suddenly are handing out beta keys? Someone needs a whack across the head in their PA/comms department.

Unfortunately, we're probably at the point where the only people getting into beta probably won't search for issues. We're likely at the point where people will just play the game on the beta. That isn't to say this isn't a good thing to do at some point, as it'll certainly expose major issues in parts of the game everyone will frequent (how many properly submit bug reports, who knows). However, the state of beta is still extremely buggy and full of NYI or scrapped systems that haven't been removed/replaced. There is not a single facet of the game where you will not find bugs or broken things, even in Torghast despite how polished it may seem. Beta needs a few major patches at least before you can start sending in the masses and expect to get decent feedback that's worth anything.

The beta is all marketing? Who would've guessed

least now the streamers can get there friends in who are not in the beta yet.

So far only Torghast is fun, the rest is just a copy paste of old mechanics mixed together (class halls, reputations, azerite gear).
I imagine that the WoW budget has been severly cut but.... man your artists are damn good at making zones.

Originally Posted by avahle

This just means the feedback gathering part of beta is mostly over and they are keeping it open purely for promotional purposes.

Pretty much this. Sadly it means, that Disc priests are going to suck in M+ yet again

Oh great. Beta-Keys for influencers aka. the most useless people on earth.

Originally Posted by SoundOfGuns

Oh great. Beta-Keys for influencers aka. the most useless people on earth.

Hey man! some of them like.. read whats on wowhead out loud and stuff.

Quality content deserves rewards

Originally Posted by lazerbird

Joy now towelliee will be milking keys for the next few months....

Yup, Blizz needs to help those mercenaries over at Twitch make more money. I mean surely it won't be the same as last time where various Twitch streamers sold keys, forced giveaways to subs only and other nonsense. Surely.

Just another terrible idea from Blizzard. This whole method went swimmingly well during the Legion beta where some Wow streamers turned the giveaways into an Auction House of donations. Blizzard isn't even democratic or remotely fair in their methods when giving out beta keys, there are plenty of loyal WOW players and content creators who've been ignored by Blizzard during the entire alpha/ beta.

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Originally Posted by Asaliah

So far only Torghast is fun, the rest is just a copy paste of old mechanics mixed together (class halls, reputations, azerite gear).
I imagine that the WoW budget has been severly cut but.... man your artists are damn good at making zones.

The art dept. had literally carried WOW since WOD. And yes, it's definitely obvious WOW's budget has been cut, once again they're delivering "less" with "less" and will use the patented excuse of not enough resources or time when Shadowlands fails or proves to be mediocre (which is a fairer assessment).

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Originally Posted by La

The beta is all marketing? Who would've guessed

And their marketing is really bad, cause they've left out a lot of content creators.

Yeah.. the thing is most streamers can't even be contacted unless you subscribe to them, which just means you have to pay them to get a chance to participate in whatever scheme they will pull to distribute these keys. Ah well, less burnout for me.

Originally Posted by Guidance

How stupid on the part of Blizzard, since alpha, streaming and 'content creators' has priority, and now they give 'keys' to these content creators again?
It was better to continue with the random form, than to see beta key sweepstakes on Twitch as if it were really content creation, not to mention that at worst they will find a sale to sell it in a legal way.

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next in twitch, "BETA Keys give ways, follow and sub our channel to..."

Beta is finished. Now it's time for the marketing push.

Meh it's couple of months away anyway. This is the period where you play all other games that you didn't finish when exp launch.

so this is just more proof that Blizzard is starting to cater more towards the streamers...just pathetic

I think this means they are mostly done with changes and marketing phase is beginning

Originally Posted by SoundOfGuns

Oh great. Beta-Keys for influencers aka. the most useless people on earth.

You say that angrily but there's obviously a (pre covid) market for it. If it didn't work then there would be no such thing as an influencer. Before you say they don't work on you there are studies that show even people who hate influencers get the message.