how do you deserve alpha more over streamer dog x?
alpha/beta should go to people who actually playtest things (aka mythic raider tryhards who spend 10h/day in wow), advertise the game (streamers) or both.
i mean who cares alpha/ebta i rather wait for the finish game and enjoy it while playing first time rather than already done all the things twice =)
Owh.
/10
Yes it was. Followed Caesar 3.
That was my impression from looking at the box in the game store. “Ooh, it’s like Caesar 3! But with crocodiles!” Sadly I was unable to buy it at the time.
Theme Hospital they did.
Had WoW since vanilla and other blizzard titles for years, upon years. Never once have I been invited to a single beta or alpha that was not sent to everybody else as well, like the overwatch one. Not a single WoW alpha or beta. My guess, probably cause I quit their games when they get bad. But hey still bought all the expansions and most of their games, so yea. That is life I guess. There is no sustainability in money grabbing, no ethics nor remorse.
You have to also manually set your account interested on games and titles.
You had to, but if you re-check your account page now, beta settings gone, now you have to sign up on the specific game websites if you want to be a tester, like for this xpac and diablo 4 aswell.
If you dont sign up, you wont get invite.
wheres the problem? i can only see positive things about that
Yup. And I have pondered why I get invited by Blizzard. Is it because of what i used to be, or what I have done. Do they keep track ? I have reported some bugs that have had them actually write me back (I have my very particular bug searching methods, and I am focused on graphics and environmental bugs). In WoD it was quite posh feeling having me here on beta forums trying to get people with certain nvidia cards contact me and/or post. This was fun and exiting - this is why I love bug.testing and beta testing.
I had similar super fun with ESO too. unfortunately unlike Blizzard zenimax ignored all bugs people ever discussed about.
Blizzard, for example, is actually really neat during active testing period.
Also done tryhard-testing with end-game guild back on days.
… so I guess modern days I am invited because of … who-knows. Because I no longer am in “tryhard” level in this game. And I am not even forums doing anything worthy. So I guess I am just in a ‘good guys list’ from old days ?
Providing feedback, even if just a small niche like some graphical issues can be valuable to the devs, so might be why you’ve gotten into the beta/alpha.
Zenimax not listening changed relatively quickly after ESO launch though, unlike what it feels like currently they do listen to feedback now.
But hey, I’m just hoping those who do get Alpha or Beta report the issues so we maybe have a shot at a functioning expac.
This is good to know. Unfortunately doing ESO early testing was my biggest mistake. I just never gave the game fair chance after this.
I do not think normal people should want to attend betas as well. Betas are always broken and fragmented experiences. And full of spoilers. I do not think betas are fun, unless you love the content of the game (i.e. you are fan of Blizzard in this case) and genuinely want to help developer.
My favourite beta story is this.
WoD graphical issue was funny one - it caused game to shut down. Logs etc did not show exactly why and how i got middle of this ? I had the same bug in TBC and only i had it among people I knew. It was a certain graphic texture that never loaded on my card and caused instant shut down.
So from there I run series of test and wrote my hypothesis. And they got back to me to investigate.
And I honestly smiled trough out that period. I am sure they could have discovered this issue on their own (no doubt), and how and what caused it, but I believe I was able to save them some minutes. “Ah Nvidia” - they can see me instant DC, but they cannot replicate … plan B - general chat and people with nvidia cards ! And I think we were able to track it down to certain series of Nvidia cards and I knew Blizzy people said they also figured which texture did it. And last communication was that they have got contact with nvidia and it will be patched.
And I do hope that actual beta testers are like this - go and try to break the game. Or least keep eyes open while exploring and look beyond obvious bugs that developer knows, but look into deeper. Niche ones.
Obvious bugs are probably found by 1st 10 testers. But it is the small things that will roll out and need attention.
Content testing is science of its own - been on beta raid testing too and now that was not fun at all. We had general instance chat open - with teams inside, and developer there and often happened that random ability just 2 shot us, then we waited 30 minutes, for next try. Spent 2 hours to get handful of pulls. Bwah, i like world testing over new expansion raid tests. Those differ greatly from patch and PTR raid tests.
Haven’t been invited to a single beta.
Blibbarb gib me albha.
Disregard my bad post history, I am nice when I want something in return, like alpha access 
I’m always surprised by how so many people on campus know my dog’s name! I’m not sure how he became so popular, but maybe one day he will climb the corporate ladder and counsel our game directors on the big decisions.
He can’t do much worse than what we have now.
i want to get alpha only to logon, fire the killshot a few times, then log off.
I have alrdy made my best bind (1) ready for its return
I actually disagree with this.
Reporting bugs is very important, obviously, but I think alpha is really how early you have to hit in other to give feedback on gameplay features.
The alpha is supposed to be the “finalise the systems” test.
Beta is supposed to be the “find all the remaining bugs” test.
This is common parlance in the software industry. The beta should be feature complete.
If we report fundamental design flaws during the beta test, Blizzard are too invested and they don’t have time to go back and fix it, and that’s what we saw in BfA. Blizzard were still adding features even at the end of the beta, so no feedback on them could possibly be given, and what was actually supposed to be the beta never happened.
BfA actually skipped beta. I know Blizzard called it a beta, but by any objective definition they skipped it, and this expansion is still reeling from the consequences of that decision.
I have had that on since the time you had to upload your computer specs.
There’s reason it is still called Beta for Azeroth. And in my eyes no patch has made it better. Heck Blizz and this game has had better and more refined betas than retail version of current BfA.