At this point it feels like the unofficial launch. First we have people being able to buy their way in to test things. Then now we have a launch trailer right before its release. It’s also just being so hyped up as if it’s the actual launch.
I feel this not only takes the experience from those who are testing, but now with the sheer volume of people buying the epic edition to play this will ruin what is normally a magical time for any mmo player - the launch.
Likely putting a tinfoil hat here but expectations of people knowing everything before launch will now go even further. Sure, that won’t affect me as I spend tons of time at the start doing my own thing (like maxing fishing before hitting lvl 61) but people who want to get into group content from the start might have a bad experience which I dare say would ruin the magical time of a launch for more folks than before.
I’m not sure I’m happy with where the ship’s headed.
I’m a BFA newbie. I’ve heard of this recently, but they’ve since stopped doing it, not sure if anything was said about it when they stopped doing it, though also, the community has changed since
It was a different deal where you subscribed for a year:-
I personally have a problem with either deal. It being part of the Epic TWW or it being a sub deal like back in Cataclysm. I didn’t take up the Cata deal because it’s pretty much the expansion I took a break as I wasn’t enjoying the gameplay.
Neither system stops regular beta sign ups. Having guaranteed access to test doesn’t magically make people want to be beta testers either. People buy the epic for the maximum perks. Not everyone wants to spoil their levelling. You only get that new shiny feeling once. Some will come on play about to see talents etc and then leave it.
I don’t think you have to worry about what others do when it comes to testing. It’s their choice. It’s got very hard to avoid spoilers unless you stay offline a lot or away from the forums, twitter, mmoc, icy veins, reddit, wowhead etc.
Can’t say I agree. I’m not worried in the slightest.
But then again; launch time is usually more of an obstacle for me personally than anything else. With everyone doing the same content, stuff gets overcrowded and that’s usually at the expense of my experience and immersion.
Of course I want to see people around in general, but times like that are overkill imo.
Well, I just don’t like seeing what I see. People are already burnt out on the expansion just as I’m starting to enjoy it. That spoils their experience, but in a way it does spoil mine too. The community feel is a big part of an mmo.
Avoiding spoilers is pretty hard if you’re on social media, yes. So far I’ve been fine but that’s also partly thanks to avoiding wowhead as much as possible as well. The only news I’m getting right now are things that people wanted me to see like the two things recently in the frown thread.
Also - the 12 month deal with diablo seems like they were desperate to get people playing it due to a very bad launch. It’s like “hey, I get a free game and cosmetics just by paying my sub, what a deal!”. They’d inevitably get many people from both games playing the other that way. But it’s also pretty bad, I imagine it wasn’t well received if it hadn’t been done since.
Hmm, you can try war mode. I know how it sounds but depending on your server you might have no trouble there. Argent Dawn has alliance players almost exclusively. Tarren Mill/Dentarg alongside like azjol-nerub have quite the horde heavy war mode. You’ll barely see alliance.
The war mode shards are normally pretty dead, due to the faction balance there you’d also likely never fight anyone. I’ll probably try it myself a few days into launch like I did with dragonflight. Most gamebreaking bugs were gone, the servers were stable and zones playable
I don’t think beta has any impact on people playing the game.
It will be interesting to see how the three day EA affects spreading the load. I’ve done it with other game launches and it’s never stopped it being busy.
Log in depending on the day could take 2+ hours. For many that was their whole evening. There were also disconnection issues, including during the queue. I was once first in queue after 3 hours only to be disconnected (:
You’d be surprised. i was convinced to play BFA, played it for about a day until i got to vol’dun. When bfa launched i got to lv 113 before quitting the game 10 months.
I don’t like having everything spoiled on wowhead before the expansion even releases (as I’ve said many times before, I’m all for having a buggy but unspoiled lore rather than a fully tested but spoiled lore - besides, it’s dungeons and raids that need the most testing, not world stuff) and for as much as I try to avoid spoilers, some of them always make their way to me one way or another, be it a YouTube video title or whatever.
I also hope people won’t expect me to know dungeons and raids already, as I like to discover them when the game releases, rather than STUDYING them BEFORE by watching beta videos. It happened me a few times before, I did leave the groups, but it made me quite angry.
Gear drops aren’t really going to help an amazing amount. We all have a limit on how high a gear we can obtain first week. It doesn’t really matter if you hit that cap on day 1 on or the day before reset when raids are released.
DF didn’t have any early access, but yes professions/gathering are one of the few things you can do. Not really any advantage though. Your character doesn’t gain power from it.
I think betas should be for their original purpose - people who are willing to test things over and over again for something that’s not quite right or doesn’t quite work. I think that ‘buying into’ the beta was one of the worst ideas Blizzard have had. There will be a few with that access who will actually test stuff but also a lot who will want to rush through everything available and then, when the actual game is launched, will rush through again and complain there’s nothing to do.
I have done alphas/betas way back (not with Blizzard) and back then they were really for for finding the problems. Now they’re not.
It’s also time to try to avoid all and any spoilers yet again. Sigh …
