How Useful are Betas?

[Morreion]

MMORPG.com - Richard Aihoshi's Free Zone: How Helpful Are Betas?

What I'm getting at here is that I really don't have a good sense as to how or how much the public beta stages we're all used to benefit me as a potential player. Is it truly meaningful that I get to try a title a few weeks or a couple of months before its commercial release, when it's essentially the same, just maybe a bit buggier and without some last bits of polish? It may seem like an obvious advantage that I get to satisfy my curiosity a bit sooner. But is it?

Frankly, I'm not so sure.

I'm not a big beta fan. I'd rather not burn out on a game before release, it happens often enough weeks after release

[Rakul]

Ditto. I mega beta'd up until SW:G. It was the last game I think I beta'd. Burnt out like a dog, and decided it was a bad thing.

[Regolyth]

Betas are okay, as long as they're done right. But IMO, the gaming industry doesn't perform the betas properly. Betas are a near finished product, and are supposed to be for minor testing, and mostly things like server stability. They should not be in a released state for months on end and for balancing classes or fixing bugs.

The majority of bug fixes should be handled by the time a game goes to alpha. At that point, the alpha fixes the rest of the bugs and balances classes and gameplay by sampling users dedicated to breaking the game (not just anyone who preorders the game or gets lucky with a random drawing). The beta is where the random users come in, and they're there for two or three weeks at most, testing the server and polishing off any glaring issues that may have been overlooked.

However, gaming companies (MMOs in particular, since they're a indefinitely long game) tend to release games that are technically still in the alpha stages. I know this isn't completely a gamer developers fault; a lot of it is being pushed by the publisher. But developers need to step up and get their affairs in order, before jaded people quit buying MMOs upon release and just wait six months for things to stable out.

Quality > Quantity

^ Blizzard knows this. Look at how long they take to develop a game, regardless of how many times they have to push back release dates. Diablo II was pushed back over six times. It was, in the end, delayed over a year and a half from it's original release date.

[Morreion]

More on the topic of betas:

Massively - Developer round table: MMO betas