When it's ready!

With the window for closed beta and the final profession reveal slowly shrinking, I've noticed that the community has been steadily growing more restless. In fact, I'd say it's bordering on hysteria. And why not? We're all excited to see beta finally come at long last. While we're all sitting here rubbing our hands and licking our lips eagerly however I wanted to point out why all this waiting is a good thing. You see, most would describe alpha as a time of chaos. A period of testing, fiddling, and tinkering just to see if something works or to make sure it doesn't. Many things constantly change and do so very quickly, but that's okay because it's something most would-be customers (us) will never see. During alpha the developers are kings of their world; there won't be any public outrage simply because a class named Lord of Awesome was removed from the design table. We'll often never ever know. That's kind of an important thing to note because it gives developers a peace of mind when molding their game as they please. Whenever they're finally satisfied enough to reveal some bit of information or another, then they can do so. ArenaNet has done a pretty good job of this so far. The trait remake is a wonderful example; the desire to change it was concrete, so they revealed it, but they don't know how exactly it's going to end up so they haven't spoken much about it. Feel free to shudder imagining all the naughty things they're probably doing to it right now simply to see what does and doesn't work. This is also why we don't have the final profession yet...and for today's generation of gamers it's a good practice. I'm reminded of the so called disaster in Age of Conan when nipples were going to be removed from the game as a form of censoring. There was an outrage at the act which eventually forced a compromise on the developer's part. Believe it or not, it actually got pretty out of hand on the forums. If this censoring had been decided in the background before revealing that the game had topside nudity in the first place however you could imagine just how different the outcome might have been. Ignorance is bliss, as they say...and who's to say, for example, that the secretive final profession hasn't gone through enough iterations to make your head spin? Maybe it's better that we don't know the details until it's done baking. Beta is a little different though. Moving from alpha to beta is a huge feat, especially for an MMORPG title. It often signals the final leg of development and in fact often means the game is functionally complete and utterly playable, needing only a bit of refining, polish, and adjusting. It's at this time, before the paint is done drying, that most developers begin their closed beta and open the doors to a wider range of criticism. That means getting some good 'ol beta testers. For us this becomes a time of hope, a season of spamming the poor F5 key whilst we stare ever so intently at our inbox, growling in rage each time the new message notifier pops up only to reveal damnable spam mail. For the developers on the other hand it's a very frightening and frustrating time because one lesson many MMORPG developers have learned the hard way is that gamers make for some pretty terrible testers. Bad enough that these days they're forced to bludgeon us with feedback boxes each time we accomplish even the simplest of tasks only to have most folks impatiently close out of them, but when they finally do get someone willing to offer some feedback...well, it isn't usually pretty. The vast majority will mindlessly click the highest rating, maybe even grace the developers with a thoughtful comment like “u guz rck!” or “iz fu nn”, or maybe they'll flip around to the other side of the rainbow with a fancy zero rating and delightful commentary such as “wwow is beter.” Yikes. Expecting gamers to play their game professionally and offer well thought out and constructive criticism is like letting a bunch of kids loose in a new amusement park and expecting the same. Not going to happen. Worse, the developers have to deal with all the misinformation that gets leaked out because with the NDA in place there's often no official information source so you'll usually see a lot of really crazy bits swimming around (I saw that a lot with FFXIV). These leaks also do more than just misinform. How many times have you seen jolly fellows judge an MMORPG entirely based on a leaked beta video they saw, creating all sorts of oh-so-wrong expectations? This is why the NDA is up to begin with, a vain attempt at controlling exposure to the game so that they can tidy up all the loose ends and clean up the place before the guests arrive. You know, kind of what the beta testers were brought on board for in the first place. Of course, most developers already realize all of this. That's why the beta is coming late and why it might not even allow public applications. ArenaNet has said that they wanted to deliver a product that meets our expectations from the very get go, only showing what they feel is at that level, and so we usually only get to see the completed bits of the product (with some exceptions, like the sylvari remake and ranger pets). That means most of us won't really get a chance to sink our teeth into the game until open beta at the earliest and that's the way it should be. After all, I still don't know why the open beta process hasn't yet been renamed to "free thirty day prerelease trial." So keep your pants on, sit tight, and wait it out. I know you really want to play the game, but ArenaNet's way of doing things is ultimately for the best and is probably going to become a trend sometime in the future, so it's best to get used to it now. And if you are lucky enough to get selected for the Guild Wars 2 closed beta, do try to keep in mind that the rest of us are counting on you to have Tyria sparkling like diamonds by the time open beta rolls around! (comments)

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We're looking to start a Guild Wars 2 Guru community column focusing on Guild Wars 2 related topics. There's so much great written content generated here on the forum, there must be a few of you wanting to put your thoughts in article form! We plan on featuring select articles on the homepage and letting the community discuss your ideas as well. If you have any topics you would like to write about please contact Roun Lyriel. We look forward to sharing your thoughts and commentary with the community.

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