Every two years as a WoW expansion draws nearer, it seems I have to write the same article questioning the validity of Blizzard’s beta selection process. Despite pointing out many flaws in Blizzard’s methodology and offering suggestions to reward customer loyalty, it seems nothing has changed.
My main gripe is that the insular and impervious culture at Blizzard seemingly cares little about the concept of rewarding customer loyalty. The reason may be simple: they are still the top dog in the MMO business which means they don’t have to care. My problem with this is that this kind of attitude is short-sighted. The day will eventually come when a light bulb will turn on above a Blizzard executive — probably after they see declining subscriptions – and suddenly they’ll understand that customer loyalty makes sense.
Am I Loyal Enough?
Here’s my current situation as a loyal WoW subscriber: I’ve been playing since the Friends & Family Alpha back in 2004 — I used to know a friend of a Blizzard employee and I was fortunate to get an alpha invite many years ago. During the alpha, I provided the devs with countless hours of written feedback which I believe benefited the MMO.
When WoW went live in 2004, I purchased the Collector’s Edition and I have dutifully purchased a Collector’s Edition ever since then. There was a point where I’ve had 2 WoW accounts as well. I’ve purchased the live PPV event last year to watch BlizzCon 2009. I have even put money down this year on a 2010 Cataclysm Collector’s Edition.
Also during that time I’ve run a big WoW guild, managed WoW forums, spent countless hours literally teaching many newbies how to play WoW, submitted hundreds of petitions reporting chat harassment and TOS violations in an effort to make the WoW community on my local server better, and last but not least published scores of articles on how to make WoW better here on this website.
The result for all those years of continued loyalty to Blizzard and WoW and probably a couple of thousands of dollars in purchases later? Not one single beta invite.
It’s About Time…
At least Blizzard offered people who pre-ordered the Starcraft 2: Collector’s Edition a beta slot for Starcraft 2 as an incentive. Why would they not offer a beta slot to someone who has pre-ordered the Cataclysm Collector’s Edition?
It stands to reason that loyal subscribers who have demonstrated years of dedication as a player know the game pretty well and would most likely be better beta testers than players who have just started playing or play sporadically.
How to Get a Cataclysm Beta Slot: Cancel Your WoW Account
What adds injury to insult is that Gordon at We Fly Spitfires recently reported that many WoW players who recently canceled their subscriptions have suddenly and inexplicably got beta invites.
That’s right, two weeks before his account was due to expire Blizzard decide to invite my brother to partake in the Cataclysm beta. Lo and behold, a few rabid schoolboy emails to me later and he was logging into the world of Azeroth once again, this time as a Worgen Rogue (even though he swore he’d had enough of WoW for a good long time). Furthermore, seeing as one needs an active account to take part in the beta, he’s now contemplating re-subscribing solely to keep playing it.
When I heard this, I immediately canceled my WoW account. Money, it seems is the only language that Blizzard understands.
Therefore I urge everyone who would like to get a Cataclysm beta slot to cancel their account.
MMO Press: Fair and Balanced?
Too often the practice in the video game industry has been to give beta slots to paid corporate bloggers at various popular websites — you all know the names of these sites — so these writers can continually pound a positive promotional drumbeat for the company. (You’ll notice that these websites largely consist of a steady drip of cheerful, uncritical, puff pieces on WoW). Using the concept of reciprocity, they know that by giving out beta slots and paid press junkets they can influence the chances that their products will get favorable reviews.
These corporate websites in turn get all kinds of content and exclusives that keep their readers coming back for more. This is precisely why you can not completely trust the establishment gaming websites to give you objective, impartial and unbiased reporting.
Even as far back as the early 2000’s I was one of the only people to question these kinds of practices during the days of EverQuest and SOE’s Fanfaires. Needless to say, being a MMO whistle-blower and exposing these kinds of shenanigans didn’t make me very popular with a certain EQ druid forum.
To test this theory, about 2 weeks ago I emailed the Blizzard PR department and requested a Cataclysm “press” beta slot. I laid all my cards on the table and explained that in the past I have been very critical of Blizzard and World of Warcraft and I was willing to give Cataclysm an honest, no-holds barred appraisal on this blog. To date, I have not heard back from them. Not even the courtesy of a flat out “no” to my request.
I’d like to close this article with some humor. Here’s a video that makes fun of the current Blizzard beta selection process for Cataclysm. Enjoy!
-Wolfshead
I do not often disagree on this blog. But here I do. Developers not only want feedback of “good beta testers”, they also want representative data. Therefore they need to get all kinds of players into their beta.
Customer Loyality might be something they do in the future when the numbers drop, yeah. But it is good for the game that they use a beta to make the game better now, not to reward loyal customers.
Now, I also think that critical people, like you, should be in the beta. But Customer Loyality shouldn’t be a reason.
Beta testing isn’t actually about beta testing. It is a marketing tool.
The devs don’t listen to beta testers, and they sure as heck don’t have a method of choosing them that makes any sense. The whole point behind betas is to build buzz and possibly gather some information via data mining. That’s pretty much it.
This is why I don’t bother even trying to participate in any betas. It is just a waste of my time. If I ever get a random invite, I treat it like a demo, not a beta. That’s the way the devs treat me, so why should I behave any differently?
I agree with you Muckbeast but does Blizzard have to be so obvious about this sham? Can’t they at least give the impression that a beta test has some semblance of “testing” such as submitting bug reports, giving feedback, etc.
Should they be less obvious that they actively hold contempt for their customers?
They mock them openly and publicly, refused to reinvest even a paltry percentage of their income in actual new content (still no housing??? really?), and have an achievement system that is practically designed to destroy your family life.
I was interested to read they have been giving beta invites to people who cancel, mainly because it is so typical of them. Sadly, it is nowhere near their worst offense.
Blizzard/WoW has become the AOL of MMOs.
I’m with Nils here. Even though I suspect that Muckbeast is right. Betas should be about actually testing with a representative sample of the audience. Not about rewarding old players or about marketing the game. However I can understand your frustration, since Blizzard certainly isn’t sending those signals by their actions. They arrange contests for beta keys and they send them as bribes to players who have closed down their accounts. And if this shows the attitude they have – well then they could certainly offer veteran players a “treat” in the form of a beta key.
I agree that it’s a little disheartening to see how few selected media that Blizzard consider worthy to communicate with. And how spineless and unworthy a professiona journalist those chosen media act. I suppose they’re in a win-win symbioses with Blizzard, not wanting to bite the hand that feeds them.
Thanks god for the independent voices that still are around. Like yours. You may be grumpy, and I disgree with you a lot considering I still like you so much. But even so, you seem to have a fair amount integrity, which is quite rare these days. Probably it’s just for the good that you’re not on their friends list tbh. At least for your credibility.
First you point out how you spent as much money as possible on buying WoW and that you’re a loyal customer as evidence that you should be a beta tester, then you say that Blizzard only cares about money. If Bliz only cared about money they’d give you, who is clearly a loyal customer beyond reason (considering how much you complain), an invite.
Of course there’s no reason to trust an “exclusive” preview by any bigger site or magazine for any game. I’ve been saying this for a few years. Previews are always positive. They have no journalistic integrity. They’re just feed for fanboys. They’re nothing more than a sales pitch.
Here are my recent arguments again in a nutshell and I have posted other arguments as well in the past:
1. Customers who are loyal know more about a product than customers who aren’t loyal. Therefore, loyal customers make better beta testers than non-loyal customers given their in-depth knowledge of the game.
2. It’s the loss of money (subscription revenue) that motivates Blizzard more than providing incentives for players to spend more — even though Blizzard provided an incentive for purchasing Starcraft 2 CE. (Studies show that humans will take action based on perceived loss far more than they will on perceived gain.)
Concur with Larisa.
If Blizzard did more than just tie system specs and a check box noting interest in beta testing Starcraft, Diablo or WoW in their B.Net account sites, I’d probably have been picked a long time ago.
🙂
I don’t think canceling your account works that easy. I’ve been paying Blizzard since day 1 and I cancelled my account a month and 1/2 ago. I haven’t heard a peep from them. I was even in Starcraft 2 beta. I think it is just random luck at this point
It is kind of funny that everyone and their dog offers beta access with pre-orders these days, including Blizzard. But they didn’t do it for Cataclysm.
I played in the Allods beta, and poked around and tried to break stuff. Working in the industry as I do, that seemed to be the right thing to do, even though it seemed most players were off to do other things.
I think I’m atypical.
Public betas (or “invite-only” ones, whatever) are more about stress testing, I think, with a nice side order of buzz. It’s hard for me to care about them these days, except as a way to see something I’d not see otherwise because I refuse to subscribe to see it “live”.
I’m a weird duck in that I’d actually like to get in and tinker with an unfinished product and try to iron things out. Occupational hazard, I guess. Even so, I’d rather have control to fix things. Many’s the time I’ve seen a geometry or animation glitch and wished for ten minutes of access to the game assets where I could just fix the silly thing. Since I don’t have that power, and bug reporting is usually oddly inefficient… we’re back to “demo” status again.
*shrug*
I’d have to guess Muckbeast is unfortunately correct here. I wished it wasn’t this way and more the way Wolf’s vision is. But, that is probably the last thing Publishers/Developers care about. Though looking at the beta FFXIV is going that plan might have backfired on that occasion.
Hype the game, give nice happy reviews and load test our server = beta.
Even if we concede that Blizzard is incapable of reciprocating to loyal customers, at least they should be thinking of ways to make money from it. Offering a free beta slot costs Blizzard NOTHING. So why are they so downright stingy?
They could use beta slots to sweeten the pot for so many things. Not only could they do this for folks purchasing the Cataclysm Collector’s Edition, the could do the same people who purchase the BlizzCon 2010 Pay Per view event being broadcast by RayV.
Sure they are offering a free in-game pet for those that subscribe but could you imagine how many more people would subscribe to this event if they threw in a beta slot for Cataclysm?
Here are just a few ideas. Get a free Cataclysm beta slot if you:
-Subscribe to WoW for 1 year
-Buy a mount at the Blizzard store
-Add a 2nd account
-Recruit a friend
-Purchase a Jay Mohr DVD 🙂
Wolfshead .. that is just not the idea of a beta. I am happy they do not try to make money with a beta. It were ridiculous!
Sure, many many beta are demos nowadays. That certainly applied to StarCraft 2.
But it does not really apply to Cataclysm: Blizzard knows that Cataclym will be a deciding point in WoW’s history. It is well possible that this will be the last expansion for more than 10mio.
GW2 looks quite promising for some kind of player!
It is when all have given up hope for a a WoW killer that it it will come. My guess right now is some 2-3 subs for GW2, and I am not a fan boy. Read my blog.
Blizzard started the beta many many months before release. They knew that they did not have the luxuary they had with SC2. This is not a demo. they need the players help! This expansion has to become better than WotLK and it is not going to be easy to alter course!
“Purchase a Jay Mohr DVD”
That made me lol, I’m adding nothing to the topic but… haha
I agree completely with you, Nils.
Nextopia marketing trick the whole Beta. ’nuff said.
C out
I just read an article Tobold wrote and due to the fact that his blog system requires that you have certain accounts I am unable to post there. I’d like to comment on what he said.
Here’s what he said:
http://tobolds.blogspot.com/2010/09/comforting-larisa.html
We go a long way back don’t we Tobold? Yet, I expected a bit more intelligence and professionalism from you Tobold. Your mischaracterization about how I feel about WoW such as dismissing my article as a “rant” is really beneath you and a cheap shot. If you don’t like what I have to say then please learn to articulate your concerns into something more productive.
Beta tests should be also open to people like myself who are unafraid to be critical and can express themselves thoughtfully and cogently. The best advice in the form of bug reports, feedback, suggestions usually comes from people who are critical — not slobbering fanboys eager to get a free preview of a MMO. Telling Blizzard that they are “awesome” does them no good and wastes their time. Even worse, it does nothing to make WoW a better MMO. If you had any actual experience working in the video game industry you would know this.
MMOs fascinate me in many capacities. As a game designer, MMO commentator and a MMO player it is only natural that I an interested in being a part of a beta test of a major MMO. So when I see a beta selection process that is arbitrary and flawed I write about it.
Part of being a serious writer and reviewer is that you’re are going to have to analyze, read, and view films/books/restaurants/games that you don’t like. Ask any serious critic. But perhaps you know better Tobold.