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Originally Posted by Smed I think it's going to be game-by-game. Blizzard's beta was great.. it helped them polish the game and it also helped them on the technical side (remember this was their first MMO). For us 9 months is probably too long.. I think the ideal # is closer to 3 months of closed beta and 3 months of open beta. We would likely go longer on a Playstation 3 MMO (if such a beast was in fact in development  )
It can really help to build awareness of a game and get polish ready. One thing I will say about Blizzard's beta is that they got WoW very well balanced day one which is something I really respect them for. I think we managed that with EQ2 as well.
Smed |
Thanks for answering that. I humbly disagree on EQ2's polish, but I suppose we disagree on that - however, from everything my friends tell me, EQ2 improved hugely since it released.
The thing that is particularly important, is that the new players that blizzard managed to attract in large part because of their game brand, who were previously not in the typical 'mmorpg demographic' would have not put up with the type of bug that a veteran MMORPG player is likely to just shrug off, so while holding off on releasing might have allowed you to release EQ2 earlier, getting the game 100% polished as opposed to 90% polisehd allowed them to retain some of the players that everyone dismissed in a saturated market.
More interesting though, the company execs, that before would have been screaming to GET THE GAME OUT BY XMAS OR THANKSGIVING - are they more willing to instead wait for developers to give the OK now, or are the deadlines the same as always?
