MMO's

Winter Beta Ends March 16th!

WWBrooklyn
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Hi friends!

With a bittersweet sigh, I'm here to declare that Winter Beta will be ending on March 16th at 11:59pm PDT (which is probably good since Winter's almost over too). On the upside, though, the Pre-Order Beta will immediately follow this phase, and ANYONE is welcome to join us for it!

Here's the FULL explanation of what's actually going on starting on March 16th.

  • After March 16th, everyone is being removed from the Closed Beta. No exceptions.
  • On March 19th, if you pre-order the game your account will be reactivated to give you access to the four Beta Weekends we have coming up in March and April.
  • Beta will no longer be on a 24/6 schedule. Instead, we'll be running 4 beta weekend events between now and open beta. The first weekend begins March 21st and runs through the 23rd. The full schedule's up on the pre-order site (but is subject to change, of course).
  • "Permanent" Winter Beta testers who have a level 32 or higher character on their account will also have their account reactivated so that we can continue to test high-level content between now and launch. You'll still need to pre-order if you want to receive all those goodies, though!
  • Stress Testers and Weekend Testers are ineligible for this opportunity, but are welcome to pre-order to continue playing their existing characters!

We're really excited to be moving into the next phase of beta, and we hope you'll join us as this Hype Train speeds towards the June 3rd launch of WildStar! Thanks so much for your help and support these past few months, and we'll see you again soon!

 

 

 
WWBrooklyn
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Okay, here's the deal. We're always talking about how we fully support transparency at Carbine, so I'm going to dive into the details behind the reasoning so everyone understands a little better how we came to the program we're at today.

We know how much you guys want to play and help test, and we're sorry we can't give you any additional time to do so before launch. The reasons why are due to the four primary parties this decision had ramifications for:
  • The executives - These guys hold the money and have the most experience knowing what's healthiest for a game's success.
  • The Sales/Marketing teams - These guys' core purpose is to make sure the sales of our game are as high as possible. This is crucial because without sales… we as a company can no longer exist and you guys don't get to play WildStar.
  • The Live and Operations teams - These guys need to make sure the servers are launch-ready.
  • The Dev team - These guys want to get as much feedback as possible before launch.
All four sat down and met and debated the possible programs we could go with for weeks… I was in some of those meetings, people like Cougar were in other meetings. In the end, we knew we'd have to come to a compromise between all parties, because any single path we took would likely screw up another team's plans and needs. The needs everyone had were pretty straightforward, though conflicting:
  • Dev's priority was ensuring we still got high-level testing, since that's the content that's had the least amount of exposure in beta so far.
  • Sales and Marketing didn't want too many people playing the game before launch so that we could make sure people weren't getting a "free ride" through the game's content and then canceling their pre-orders.
  • Execs didn't want players burning out through beta and thus being uninterested in playing post-launch. Burnout generally happens because people don't want to commit to characters that are going to get wiped and don't generally "play" the exact way they'd play their actual characters. Burnout's extremely common and quantifiable… it's usually about 4 weeks in MMO betas and that's been holding true for WildStar as well, so the higher-ups want to make sure we don't lose players before they even get a chance to play the "final" game.
  • Live and Operations were focused on continuing to work on their processes and procedures, and need all types of testing and deployments to occur. The more we go up and down, the more problems we resolve, the more stability we achieve, the more prepared the Live and Operations Teams becomes for launch.
So the compromise you see today is what we ended up with:
  • Beta goes from 24/6 to weekend testing to support Sales' needs.
  • Pre-order players are limited to level 17 to support the Exec's needs.
  • Current beta testers will be allowed to play beyond level 17 if they pre-order, or level 32+ players can continue playing without a pre-order, in order to facilitate high-level testing, to support Dev's needs.
  • Live gets tons of people playing in a condensed amount of time to drive server concurrency up and push the servers to their limits.
As the saying goes, you only have a good compromise if no one leaves the table satisfied. I'll admit we're not completely happy with how this program ended up, but it's the best we could make out of the restrictions we were given.

This post is now way too long, so I'm just going to wrap up by saying: The most important thing you can do to help WildStar at the moment is help us get the word out. Tell your friends, tell your family, tell anyone who will listen about us. We're a studio that's just barely on the radar of the non-enthusiast gamers, and we're up against the titans of industry this year. If you really believe in the product and the direction we're taking it, help us get this game out the door and be a massive success so we can do everything we've ever dreamed of with it.

-David 
 
WWBrooklyn
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In between pre-order going live and launch, there will be four beta partner weekends. While everyone else will be required to obtain a key to participate in the beta weekend, you will have immediate access to each event. The currently scheduled weekends are:

  • Friday, March 21st, 7:00AM PDT through Sunday, March 23rd, 11:59PM PDT
  • Friday, April 4th, 7:00AM PDT through Sunday, April 6th, 11:59PM PDT
  • Friday, April 18th, 7:00AM PDT through Sunday, April 20th, 11:59PM PDT
  • Friday, May 2nd, 7:00AM PDT through Sunday, May 4th, 11:59PM PDT

All dates and times are subject to change, so please keep an eye on the WildStar website, Facebook, and Twitter for updates.

 
Panuby
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Are there any beta keys left out there? Not sure if they are done giving them out. Jay (liquidbronze) would like to try the game if we have any left. Thanks

 
WWBrooklyn
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If I had to guess, I would say there will be more giveaways closer to the next beta weekend (April 4th-6th)


I will keep an eye out!

 
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About the Weary Warriors

The Weary Warriors Gaming Guild has the single purpose to forge and strengthen camaraderie between a group of mature game hobbyists. The company of good people becomes the best part of all of the games we play. While we strive to excel in the games we play with or against each other, excellence of character will always be more important than gaming skill.

 

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