Whiny Gamers

[AdminAssistant]

There have been several threads about the whole Diablo III thing...the DRM, the crashing servers, and so on.

Well, as you may know, Guild Wars II is in beta testing right now. (It's a MMO, but rather...different....than WoW or SW:TOR or Tera. Looks amazing.) They had one beta test weekend last month and then a one-day stress test a few weeks ago. People were expecting the next beta weekend would be this weekend, but ArenaNet decided, "Hey, our employees are working their asses off, how about we let them celebrate the holiday and we get the game into much better shape first?" Cue NERD OUTRAGE. How DARE they not give us a monthly beta test? How DARE they try to get the game into the best shape possible before the next test? WHY CAN'T I SPEND MEMORIAL DAY WEEKEND PLAYING BETA RHALKSDJIEJLSJIE

Seriously guys? They have two entire races/starting zones (Asura and...the plant people) to add. The game isn't coming out for a while.* Relax, play Diablo III, play the Mists of Pandaria beta, hell, play freakin' Peggle and realize that they are trying to make sure that they release the best game possible.

*I imagine ArenaNet and Blizzard are also playing MMO chicken to see who releases their game first and when. Not that I think MoP is a big competitor for GW2, I've played the Beta a bit and....it's nothing world-changing. The story's nice, the pandas (excuse me, pandaren) are cute, and they seem to have done a nice job streamlining talents and combat and such. But, it's still WoW, I still had to dodge Horde griefer nonsense, and I still had to run around grinding. "Our camp is under attack by the Horde and also monkeys! Can you gather some porcupine steaks?"

[Andara Bledin]

Oh, gods, the nerd-rage entitlement is maddening.

Nobody has a right to play video games, especially not for free. But joystick block some gamer junkie and suddenly it's open season on the devs, the publishers, and anybody who thinks that, hey, maybe people should give them a break is labeled a fanboy or apologist and dismissed out of hand.

Sometimes I'm embarrassed to share a fandom with people.

^-.-^

[Nekojin]

Dev teams being given a weekend off during "crunch time" is unheard of. Kudos to ArenaNet for looking to their staff's well-being and morale. =^_^=

[AdminAssistant]

Well, I don't think they announced that they were giving their dev team the weekend off, but Fiance and I thought that was probably the case...at least that Monday or something. Like I said, the game is still months away from release, might as well give your employees some slack time for the sake of morale/energy and so forth. And what's the point of doing a beta test if the game is ready for testing?

During the last beta test, Fiance said that someone on his old WoW guild got to level 30. In a weekend. How are you even enjoying the game at that point?

[Andara Bledin]

During the last beta test, Fiance said that someone on his old WoW guild got to level 30. In a weekend. How are you even enjoying the game at that point?

Well, if you're being serious about beta testing, then you're not trying to enjoy the game, you're trying your best to break it.

Unfortunately, a lot of gamers view beta as a time of free play rather than actual testing.

The time I spent in D3 during beta, the only things I discovered had to do with my video card being too wimpy to really play the game, which was pretty much a known issue for that particular architecture.

^-.-^

[Jaden]

Yeah, beta tests aren't time to play the game for free, they're times to stress test the servers and try and work out bugs and compatibility issues.

Sometimes I agree with gamer outcry (Mass Effect 3 ending), and other times I think they're just being entitled. This time, they're clearly being whiny - it's a beta test, guys, get over it.

[AdminAssistant]

Ooops! I just realized that I said Fiance up there and he isn't Fiance anymore.

[Gravekeeper]

Beta tests have oddly gotten to the point where people expect them as free play previews. Especially for mmos. But conversely, mmos have gotten to the point where the week after release is the beta test.

[SongsOfDragons]

I've heard that the larger a fandom gets, the worse the extreme fringes become.

[Andara Bledin]

But conversely, mmos have gotten to the point where the week after release is the beta test.

There's not much to be done about that, particularly considering that most beta testers don't actually do any testing. When the player base can, in one day, get more playtime in that more than a year of testing, there's no way to catch all the ways they'll find to break the game.

Plus, the fact that the beta is never quite the same as the live game, and you've got added headaches. I suspect that the D3 shield lockout issue was one of those. Due to the differences in the way the beta was structured versus the live game, it wasn't an issue in the test, but the live code had something that wasn't part of the beta that introduced a terrible bug.

^-.-^

[Nekojin]

I've heard that the larger a fandom gets, the worse the extreme fringes become.

That's not a bad way of putting it. There's no question that some of the fandoms that I'm in have gotten particularly bad reputations because of the actions of a tiny, tiny minority.