Star Wars the Old Republic

Aardvark wrote:No game ever gets Sentinel right. And I hope this doesn't mean no Consular class.

Aardvark wrote:They've had 7 years, I'll rush them if I want.

Article fromhttp://torwars.com/2011/03/27/a-30-step-guide-to-playing-an-open-beta/ wrote:So, why do I dislike open betas? Because they don’t give a real experience. I don’t mean that they’re buggy; I’ve played plenty of bits of preview code, with debug errors constantly popping up and special effects replaced by rotating white 2D cubes that make me feel like I’m in an MC Escher painting, and I can live with that. But open betas almost uniformly give me a bad experience with a game and, if it’s a game I’m looking forward to, that rather sours the whole thing.

So, I present to you Tim McDonald’s 30-Step Guide to Playing an Open Beta:


This person is alone. They are clearly not playing in an open beta.
1 ) I discover that there’s an open beta available, and get excited at the opportunity to have a taste of something I’ve been waiting to play for months.

2 ) I notice that the open beta starts shortly and is only open for 48 hours. Oh well – that just means I’m going to have to be quick, right?

3 ) I follow the link to download the open beta client, only to discover that approximately 400 billion other people have had the same idea and the server it’s hosted on has crashed.

4 ) I spend two hours trying to find a mirror that lets me download the 15GB client at a speed greater than 20k/s.

5 ) I give up, and just leave it downloading at 20k/s overnight.

6 ) I go to bed, sulking.

7 ) I find myself unable to sleep due to sulking, so I get up to check if the download rate has improved. It hasn’t.

8 ) Repeat steps 6 and 7 until dawn.

9 ) The client finishes downloading after what seems like weeks, despite having only been about 10 hours. I install it.

10 ) I run the game and discover that I need a 4GB patch. Which is downloading at 20k/s.

11 ) Repeat steps 6 and 7 again, only without the attempts at sleeping.

12 ) I finally log on, only to discover that the servers are completely full and I can’t get on.

13 ) I attempt to log onto the servers for the next two hours.

14 ) I finally log on to a server, and set about the business of choosing my character class (never an easy decision) and tweaking the model until it looks just how I want it to.

15 ) The server crashes as I approach the end of character creation.


Another common occurance.
16 ) I log on to the server again when it comes back online half an hour later.

17 ) Entirely pissed off, I pick the same character class as before and hit the Randomise button until I get a character that doesn’t look like it was dropped from a tree at birth. This takes longer than tweaking the model did in the first place.

18 ) I finally start playing!

19 ) I spend five minutes in the menus turning off the tutorials teaching me how to walk forwards.

20 ) I spend ten minutes in the menus turning off the local chat channels which are full of idiots asking how to walk forwards and self-important trolls proclaiming that the game is a complete WoW ripoff and it sucks.

21 ) The server crashes out of sheer embarrassment.

22 ) I log back on and finally get around to doing some questing.

23 ) I spend half an hour hitting level 2 because there are 4,000 other people in the tutorial zone doing the same quest I am. I am reminded of why I didn’t play Cataclysm on launch day.

24 ) I realise that having 4,000 other recruits wandering around the tutorial area isn’t doing much for the game’s lore and that nothing I’m doing can actually be particularly important.

25 ) I spend the next few hours questing and gradually becoming more and more bored and frustrated, both because the early levels of MMO tend to be long before you get any cool powers and (far moreso) because the entire zone is rammed full of people who keep killing my mobs.

26 ) The server crashes because it hates me.

27 ) I log back on and continue playing.

28 ) After a few more hours, the game finally gets its hooks into me. I get some decent powers, and the zones I’ve now entered actually have a bit of breathing space. Things start coming together.

29 ) The server crashes.

30 ) The open beta ends. I realise I’m going to have to go through all of that content again when the games launches. I ponder switching hobby from playing MMOs to fishing.


APB didn't have a particularly sparkling beta period at any point. Sadly, the devs never got around to fixing a lot of the issues found.
Alright, I admit that there are some exaggerations in there. For starters, crashes and bugs don’t really bother me that much unless I’m already annoyed at other things (like too many players), which is why I much prefer closed betas. However: I suspect most of you who’ve played in open betas nodded knowingly at something in there.

Equally obviously, this “guide” doesn’t apply to every open beta. There have been some which have been fun. There have been some which have gone on for a fair while, and which have given me a half-decent taste of the game.

I still don’t want one for SWTOR.

I know that a lot of the problems, like the chat channels and the packed opening zones, are going to happen on launch anyway. But then, at least, I’ll have my character. Even if I give up in disgust, I can come back a few days later and continue on when things have settled down a little. I won’t feel pressured to get as far as I can, as fast as possible, so that I can see everything before the beta ends. I (hopefully) won’t have to put up with crashes, because there won’t be the excuse of “it’s just a beta” anymore.

Open betas combine the absolute worst aspects of playing an MMO on launch day with a series of further technical issues. I still play the damn things because I’m a glutton for punishment, but odds are I’ll come away with bad impressions. I don’t think I’m alone in that open betas sour my experience; I admit that I’m grumpy and cynical and I look for reasons to complain, but I suspect that there are people who’ve logged onto open betas, had a hideous experience, and then decided to just go back to WoW instead of buying the game when it hits.


I know I'm grumpy, but let's end on an upbeat note. Isn't this pretty?
Which is a problem, because it’s been a recent trend to use open betas as marketing tools, either as limited-time demos or as pushes for other products (“Buy Crackdown and get into the Halo 3 beta!”) and that always sets off my cynicism alarm. Again: I don’t think I’m alone in this.

If betas have a purpose, then fair enough. Closed betas do: they get people playing and testing the game, they give the developers feedback, and they lets the devs test things out. Open betas can do, particularly with regards to stress-testing servers. The problem is that for many players it’s not a chance to help test a rough-and-ready build of the game – it’s a chance to play the game early, and no amount of disclaimers can convince some people that they should expect bugs and crashes.

So yeah, open betas are a danger to developers as much as they’re a danger to my mood. And for the record, I adore closed betas because a whole lot of these issues don’t exist. Crashes and bugs are more common, but there are less people and you get a much better feel for the game itself. That, and you actually feel like you’re helping.

I’m happy to see pre-launch access for pre-orders as this at least divides up the starting population, so I’ll only be competing for mobs with 2,000 people. But open betas? I really wish I had the willpower to avoid them. I honestly don’t want to see one for SWTOR because I know I’ll play it, and the chances I’ll enjoy it are pretty slim.