Today in the land of yellow posts came a very important statement from Stephen Reid about the potential for scams in gaining beta testing access to SWTOR, and the truth behind it. I want to highlight this bit of information because I want to make sure all the community is aware of the possible risk involved with such a scam.
Today via Stephen Reid on the official forums and twitter we got an announcement from Bioware that they decided to re-invite the testers of the first and only (so far) September beta testing weekend. Here Stephen gives us a great explanation to the reasoning and the situation behind the change of not inviting weekend testers back for another go.
Do you, like me, have questions surrounding the “weekend beta testing” or just “testing” in general? Well you are in luck today folks because hot off the transmitter waves we got this information from Stephen Reid;
Plus we now have an additional update from @Rockjaw on this info as well!
Read On——->
Well after the news of the EU followers will be at long last getting some testing invites, Stephen Reid dropped the bombshell that there will be no beta for this coming weekend Sept 9 – 11. Also it should be noted that BioWare did not intend to send out beta invites for every weekend which we kind of amused would be the case.
Which is a shame as the 9th will be my 40th birthday, darn I’m getting old. I was in my mid 30’s when I started following TOR :'(
Hello all,
There is no Beta Testing Weekend scheduled for this weekend. There may be further Beta Testing Weekends during September, but we’re not going to guarantee it. The weekend that just finished was really our first dry run of Beta Testing Weekends as a whole, and we have plenty of data to crunch, and decisions to make before we start things up again.
Further to that, as Chris Collins explained in another thread, we are about to roll out a major new build for The Old Republic. That build won’t be ready for this weekend. Just as we did not feel it was a good decision to ask potential EU testers to download our client only to have to download it again, the same applies for this weekend.
That does not mean, however, that as soon as our new build is available we’ll be rolling out a Beta Testing Weekend immediately. As with any new build of the game, we need to get feedback from internal testing and our ongoing Game Testing program before rolling it out to a massive audience. That process takes a while, and that time varies depending on how testing goes.
We rolled out this previous weekend as a relatively small scale event; from now we will do bigger and bigger events, but that doesn’t mean it happens every weekend. When we do resume, we’ll be inviting many more people in.
While many of you are excited and anxious to know what’s happening regarding Testing Weekends, I want to point out that a lot of posts on the subject with a lack of corresponding posts from us does not mean that we’re not listening, or not aware of your interest. It shows your interest in the topic, which is understandably high, but we will not always be able to react instantaneously.
In the past couple of days we’ve been preparing a comprehensive FAQ regarding Game Testing Weekends as a whole, along with some details about the weekend that just happened. We’ll post that tomorrow – in all languages, as we know the subject is of interest to everyone.
So depending on how the real time testing goes with the new build we may or may not have more invites the week after. Fingers crossed everything goes smoothly or it could be a very long wait till TOR finally hits the stores.
Today on the official forums we got this update from Chris Collins,
As promised, we have an update on the batch of Game Testing invites being sent to players in the EU.
After a lengthy discussion here at the BioWare offices, the decision has been made to postpone the proposed Game Testing invites for EU players for a number of reasons.
Firstly, there’s a new build of the game on the horizon. This is a major build, meaning there will be character wipes and a new client to download. As you may be aware, the current client download is around 27GB in size. If we were to invite players en masse today, those players would have to download the entirety of the client to access the game. There’s every chance that later this week, the service will go offline and this new version will be rolled out, meaning everyone currently in Testing will have to not only download the entire client again (another 27GB download), but will also have their characters erased and have to start afresh. This is a relatively large amount to download in such a short space of time and not an experience we want new testers to be exposed to.
Secondly, this new build will bring about the first localised versions of Star Wars: The Old Republic, which means those of you that speak French and German will have the chance to play the game in those languages, for the first time ever. We’re extremely excited to be able to offer this to our players and as such, we’re keen to get a lot of feedback from European testers in particular.
For those of you that may have missed the messages we put out on the subject already, last week saw a number of issues arise with key systems that prevented us from sending out invites to EU players. Had everything gone to plan, we would have been able to offer two weeks of testing time to new users. However, given the issues that arose, this was physically not possible.
So while we understand that this news may not be what a lot of you wanted to hear today, we hope that you’ll understand our position. Given the news of this new build, it’s now more important than ever that we invite European players into the Game Testing environments, so you have my word that this batch of invites will happen, it may just mean you just have to wait a little longer.
It’s also important to remember this is just the beginning. In the future, we’ll be inviting more and more testers to the EU Game Testing environments as well as future Game Testing weekends. So even if you’re not invited to this next round of testing, there will still be plenty of chances to get involved.
As ever, as soon as I get any firm news around the matter, I’ll make sure to update everyone.
After the initial announcement of the start of beta weekends at PAX Prime there were still many unanswered questions that remained. Stephen Reid, Senior community manager, tweeted some of the final answers just now. Here’s a summary of the most important information pertaining to the first SWTOR beta weekend:
I hope this helps answer some of your questions.
Before I get into this anyone who whines about the CE being too expensive and are from the US “SCREW YOU ALL”.
*Rant Set To Maximum*
You already have one, if not the lowest priced CE additions on earth how dare you. You only pay $150, I’m paying £129, which is around $200. And then I’m a lot better off than those poor Australians who have great trouble just getting the game and after import tax and such are looking at over $300. So, stop it, right now.
*End Rant*
Now to address all this bitching.
It’s amazing how a day of two can give you a new view on a given subject. What once was greeted with great anticipation and high hopes falls at the very first hurdle.
I’m thinking about Origin and the new wave of beta invites.
Firstly Origin, EA’s answer to Steam.
I was kind of indifferent to this news when it hit. I don’t have many Steam related games on my account as I tend to play MMO’s and you don’t need a second party platform to enjoy them fully. Also I though having SWTOR exclusive for digital download from Origin made good business sense. After all, doing it yourself gives you a greater income before the more important subs start rolling in.
It seems that the Beta expansion is starting effective immediately. Not long after stating that they “recently transitioned into longer-term and larger-scale testing” it was announced yesterday that a batch of survey emails were sent out to people “across the US, UK and EU”. This survey comes from their external testing partner Magid so don’t get confused. These surveys are part of their marketing research and upon completing them you should get a “real” beta invite email if you are eligible for testing.
Just to make things perfectly clear, the order of steps for this latest beta invite is the following.
Being that these situations are what phishers love the most please check if your email is really from Magid and don’t go giving out your passwords, credit card numbers of firstborn children if asked to.
Also, here’s a list of steps you should take if your inbox is as empty as mine (or if you are Canadian):
Usually when I wake up in a good mood and begin pouring over twitter, facebook, swtor, swtor-life, darth hater, CRR, MER, etc… it only takes about 15-20 minutes of reading before my mood is shot to shit and I develop an urge to commit homicide by tossing swtor forum members into a Sarlacc. Today, I am unusually surprised to find one hell of a gem buried in the pile of rehashed shit and whipped to death horses. This of course got me thinking, and well all know how badly that usually turns out.
The Official SWTOR forum user Revchong posted a GREAT idea and topic. A mobile Pazzak App. Thats right. A WoW inspired idea that doesn’t make me want to pour acid on Jawas until my rage subsides.
There are tons of possibilities that I personally hadn’t thought of.
This would provide BioWare with a micro-transaction or as they like to call it “service” (which I believe is Latin for “gimme all your money dumbass”) option that didn’t make them appear to be greedy money whoring, space bitches. They would be extra services that really add functionality to the game that really only affect people who give a crap about that particular section of BW/SW cannon. The rest of us would never know it was even there. Nor would most of us even care. God knows I wouldn’t. Well maybe the Space Donkey show idea…
Now as much as I hate the idea of micro-transactions and people running around with little flying Jawas or pet Wamprats that do cute little things like OD on death-sticks every 30 seconds or nibble your bum when you stand still, this idea I think is sound. Additional revenue for game funding without impacting a subscription plan and forcing us to endure a glowing button ingame that flashes every time they release a new pet Mini-Wookie [mini-wookie 2011 Flagg – Patent pending] that glitters like a barbie doll after a 3 day crack binge.
We all know BioWare and EA are on this moronic and silly yet persistent “social networking” kick to exploit the huge market of internet stalkers and pedophiles around the world (THANKS FACEBOOK!) because, well, lets face it. The majority of them are idiots and have more money than common sense. I guess in retrospect I would milk them for every penny too. In the immortal words of my hero Forrest Gump: “Stupid is as stupid does”. If they choose to implement something like this, the sheer volume of “tweens” (once again, latin for “to young to have a job but old enough to spend money”) that will bolster the games income could be justified, not to even mention adults that think $50 for pixels of a see through wanna-be pegasus is a sound investment. I have some great beachfront property on Hoth if you are interested…
In conclusion I would like to point out that I am an opinionated bastard with a lot of issues pent up having to do with my uncle forcing micro-transactions on me at a very young age. I think he works for Cryptic now. Anyway….
If I had my way I would go to BioWare and smack a release date out of them, then proceed to hide all the office snacks until I got a beta invite, but as much is in life: It just ain’t like that. So I wait and seethe.
It’s no secret to anyone who knows me, that I despise micro-transactions and simply will not play games based on pay-to-win. So why do I think this is a good idea? Simple. I don’t have to see it, experience it, or deal with it in any way. Out of sight, out of mind. I respect BioWare and their talent and skill, but I remain steadfast in one opinion. Someone should force-pimpslap their PR department. With less than 8 months until the announced window closes, we know exactly enough to cover less than 4 minutes worth of commentary on G4. That’s so sad I think i’m gonna go adopt a kid from one of those Sally Struthers countries. At least that way I can meet Jabba and get a cheap lawn service while I wait.
