08:05:43
Early today, on the LOTRO official forums, some total cretin started this thread.
Now, anyone that knows me knows that I've done a ton of beta testing. And that through my involvement with testing I've contributed to a few Strat Guides for different games: DAoC, Asheron's Call:Dark Majesty, Asheron's Call 2 are examples. I've written magazine articles about MMO's. For a year, I volunteered to help players as both an Advocate and a Sentinel in AC, as well as an MS Gaming Zone Chancellor. At some point or another I've beta tested just about every major or minor MMO that's come along since Sierra's "The Realm," including a few non-starters like Mythica and Wish. Specifically for Turbine, I first beta tested Asheron's Call, then alpha & beta tested AC:DM, AC2, Lotro, Lotro:MoM. I don't apply to Turbine test programs anymore, haven't had to since the AC:DM alpha. Of course that also means that I've been under NDA to Turbine almost constantly for the last 10 years. Since most of those NDA's cover material for the next 5 years there are still things I can't talk about. But at this very moment I don't have an active NDA.
That means I can answer the cretin. And since people ragging on the job done by beta and alpha testers, as well as the staff QA people is a hot button issue of mine, that I have *not* been able to respond to for the last 10 years, its likely to get a little dicey.
My immediate response was poste to the forums in reply to the troll. I knew when I hit "submit" that it was over the line and I'd probably end up with my first warning in any of Turbine's forums, but, like I said...hot button issue.
The post was deleted, but interestingly still appears in the thread because the person that reported it also kindly quoted the entire text. I've reposted it below, though. Hit "read more."
Just because you're a) too lazy to apply to test of b) too useless to be accepted, doesn't mean that those of us that spent the last 2 or 3 months alpha and beta testing the game - on *our* time, as Volunteers, didn't "do our jobs."
Nothing is more rewarding for a group that spent month going over the same content, over and over, then some utter jerk telling us what a bad job we did.
Do you have *any* concept at all of what's involved in a game beta? Do you have *any* clue why there's a patch on Monday? I'll tell you - it's to address the problems that *WE* worthless tester found in the current build that didn't make the rollout. You do realize that game disks don't magically spawn on the trucks the day of release, right? The game you're playing now was code-frozen nearly a month before the 18th, because at some point you have to stop making changes and send the thing to manufacturing. Otherwise all the whinging little creeps won't have the game in their hands on release day.
I've spent nearly the last 10 years testing games and patches for Turbine, on *MY* time. In that time the quality and dedication of those people that spend their time trying to help make this game better for all the other players has never been higher then this last group. And the code itself has never been cleaner.
To the OP: Do me a favour? Before you open your cakehole again, you might want to dig up some statistics for how many bug reports were submitted. But I'm sure that a *junior* member of this forum with all of NINE posts just knows *everything* about the game, right?
That's the self-censored version that I posted on the forums. I'm serious, I censored it. :-P It just drives me mad when people that have never experienced a beta feel free to mouth off like that. I suppose the correct thing to do would have been to report his post as being offensive to an entire class of players, but I'm in a rare position - I'm free to talk about this beta, so I can answer. As mentioned, I've been in a lot of beta tests. Blizzard betas are the worst run "tests" I've ever seen. There's no organization, no communication, and 90% of the "testers" are only there for freebies. Mythic betas are quite structured and organized, more so then Turbine's, but the odds of feedback being listened to, and acted on, are slim to none. Funcom betas are more chaotic then their product launches, a total joke. Turbine, on the other hand, has a dedicated core of players that show up in almost every alpah or beta. Testers who actually care about the game, and are *not* there to see how it can benefit themselves. This core is expanded and fleshed out with random invitations in the latter stages when the bug reports aren't quite as crucial as getting new eyes for fresh input, and more bodies for stress tests. Their communication with the testers is unparallelled and their willingness to accept feedback and implement tester suggestions is something I've seen with no other company.
Yes, sometimes things get missed, or are low enough on the priority list that they don't make it into the launched version. There are tons of reasons this happens, all of them completely legitimate. None of them are 'because Turbine doesn't care.'
I really suggest that anyone that thinks this cretin has any leg to stand on should really sign up for the next test program, and see how well they fare. Or how they feel when the next generation cretin posts crap like his.
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