So, I’ve been thinking about some things lately.
What in particular?
Betas and Quality Assurance / Control.
What’s been making me think about these?
Simply the fact that I just recently filled out my own personal LinkedIn “Resume”, of sorts, and it dawned on me..
I’ve played these MMOs (in alphabetical order for ease of reading!):
Aion, Auto Assault, Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures, Anarchy Online, Asheron’s Call, Asheron’s Call 2, Champions Online, Chronicles of Spellborn, City of Heroes, City of Villains, Dark Age of Camelot, Dofus, Dragonica, Dungeons & Dragons Online, Dungeon Runners, Eve Online, EverQuest, EverQuest II, Final Fantasy XI, Free Realms, Guild Wars, LEGO: Universe, Lineage, Lineage II, The Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar, Tabula Rasa, MapleStory, The Matrix Online, Priston Tale, RF Online, RuneScape, Star Wars Galaxies, Ultima Online, Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning, World of Warcraft and it’s two expansions (and soon to be third).
Of the listed games above I have beta tested:
Aion, Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures, Champions Online, Chronicles of Spellborn, City of Heroes, City of Villains, Dungeon Runners, LEGO: Universe, The Matrix Online, Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, and World of Warcraft: Burning Crusade.
Each of these games I have played to at least level 25, and have spent more than three weeks in game. Some of these aforementioned (World of Warcraft in particular) I have been playing or played for years. I have been playing World of Warcraft for five years.
Have I really done this ? Have I put so much effort in to games that really, don’t… go on past the “beta” stage?
Sadly yes.
I’m going to ask some hard questions here.. and I want each of my readers to think about them very hard before they answer them in comments.
What’s the point of doing a beta / Quality Control when most of the issues that go reported, don’t get solved?
What’s the point of having a beta or Quality Control session that is open to the public where you control how much your players can discuss / talk amongst themselves in the game?
At what point in a beta or Quality Control session does it become the actual players responsibility to report problems or errors in the game?
If you’re going to have an open beta or qc session why ignore severe issues and let them slip through to the “final” product?
I’ve been playing games for so many years I can tell you that open betas / quality control sessions aren’t what they seem, they’re actually “finished” games, but they’re just allowing people to find minor things.
Quality Control Specialists sit and do things like sit in a room and jump in corners for hours just to see if anything will happen. By anything I mean: Clipping, Hall of Mirrors (where you can see hundreds of walls at the same time), falling through the world, etc.
When a company does an “open” beta for a game like an MMO, for example, Aion, or a bigger better example, World of Warcraft; it’s to stress test the entire world under the stress of having hundreds, if not thousands of players in the game at once.
This will expose every single flaw that the world itself has.
Some companies are smart.. I’ll point out two that come to mind right away:
Valve and Cryptic.
When they do a beta, AFTER the game releases, they actually keep a bug report tool in the game itself. What’s this mean? It means they know their games are flawed and bug ridden, and encourage people to click the little report button and file away a report. Without this, the feedback is invaluable.
But, again, I ask..
When things like this are in the beta, and are reported numerous times, and they still slip through to final game (and to my knowledge, still exist in game.. I haven’t done the Mr. Zombie quest in a while, but I do know it wasn’t mentioned in any patch notes as “fixed”)… what’s the point?
Or there are other games..
Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, for example.
While Brad McQuaid’s “Vanguard Saga of Heroes” may look .. “beautiful”, it was hailed by Gamespy as the “Biggest Disappointment” award for 2007. Vanguard also won the awards in the categories for “Least Fun”, “Most Desolate” and “Lamest Launch” in the MMORPG.com MMOWTF Awards for the worst games of 2007.
There also have been numerous criticisms of the game by the game press and the fan base.
Content was low for high-level players, and spotty even in some lower-level areas, and if you even got to the “high level content” much planned high level content was not included at launch.
Large numbers of bugs and performance issues, which make gameplay difficult, and on some systems rendering the game virtually unplayable.
At release, performance was poor on many systems, including some high-end configurations. For example there was no anti-aliasing, and anisotropic filtering support was buggy.
What caused this?
I’m not kidding you when I tell you the game was released BEFORE it was ready.
So.. what happened to the “fan base”‘s precious V:SoH?
Sony Online Entertainment (Hereafter known as SoE), decided to make it the test bed for everything they wanted in massively online multiplayer games.
Reread that again. SoE decided to turn Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, if you’ll pardon the expression, into it’s bitch.
I remember playing the beta and having numerous issues where you’d fall through the world, only having to reconnect to find your place miles back from where you were. At one point in the beta, I leveled 5 times, and the server disconnected (ok.. that’s fine.. it’s a beta.. server disconnects are excusable.. but what happens next isn’t) only to log myself back on after the server came back up to find my character: sex changed and level one and gearless. Now mind you.. My character was level 25 before. V:SoH was like the original EQ in terms of hardness. You could grind for a period of 4 days and not hit 15. I felt like I’d been robbed, and at that point I said “screw it”, and never came back.
I still have friends who play the game who say the game is still “plagued by issues”, yet, its “better.”
Which raises another interesting point..
At which point do you stop playing a game even if it’s bad..?
I gave up on Vanguard because it just .. wasn’t working. The bug reports weren’t being responded to, SoE simply refused to give into the players requests, and things just .. died. I’m surprised the game is still alive at this point. SoE, if you read this.. you need to realize, your player base is what makes you who and what you are.. the game may still have it’s loyal people, but if you don’t listen, and stop making the game a test bed, the game will die.. and you’ll have no one to try anything IN the game. No one will care.
I’ll continue this some more probably tomorrow, but.. I think I’ve raised some thoughts in your head readers, so .. I’ll let you reply when you can.
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