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Quote from blizter

To be honest, and let's face it, a beta starting requires more than 2 invites to be a beta.

Anyone saying beta has started is delusional.
Anyone saying that Blizzard released the Beta announcement early, _on purpose_, is delusional.

Well, I guess people who've been around a while are fatigued by Blizzard's half-speak. We don't actually know what they mean when they say anything.

A little direct communication goes a long way. They know emotions are high. It would not have caused any harm (it actually would have done a lot of good) to let us know up front how the beta launch (when announced on the website) was going to look. As in, tell us that press invites were the first round and that opt-ins would come later. Seriously, can anyone give me one good reason for not telling people that?

Yeah, their refusal to share actually ramps up expectations to extremely high levels. They've delivered so far and they'll probably deliver again with D3. But it places them in a needlessly precarious PR position. They could just talk to their fans and online community honestly and it would make things so much better. I honestly think they should just not have official forums. I think they do more harm than good and Bashiok and the other CMs are obviously so hamstrung that they can't possibly hope to do their jobs well.

I wouldn't expect to see Diablo 3 before March now since they can use the fun phrase "First Quarter of 2012." I was really hoping it wouldn't come to this since my wife and I are expecting our second child in March. I was just hoping to be able to get some game time in before the baby got here since for about 3 months after that I won't really have any free time at all. Oh, well.

I agree with those who think Blizzard makes amazing games but doesn't like them as a company. I guess that's just the way it is. There is no good reason for them to withhold so much from their fans. Plenty of the things they're not being forthcoming about (beta invite details, for instance) they could and should be and it would make things better, not worse. I don't know why they're so reticent when it comes to forthright honesty.

What is it about the D3 community where they read every criticism as being "butthurt" or what have you? It's possible to have a problem with the way a company does its business without actually feeling emotional about it.

So, I'm thinking they weren't planning on starting the closed beta yet but they realized after this weekend they weren't going to be able to keep the press out of it. They decided to at least do right by the guys doing what they asked and open up the beta for press members. However, they still weren't ready to start the actual closed beta yet.

/tinfoilhat

Why they elected not to tell everyone the truth or to simply announce press invitations had been sent is beyond me. Something like:

"Hey guys, we know we said press would gain access along with the start of the closed beta, but we're just not ready for that yet. We're going to let press start playing and posting. As soon as we work out a few lingering kinks we'll begin sending opt in invitations. Thanks for your understanding and patience. I know we're all excited about this game!"

I think that would have gone over quite well with the players. Anyway, Zarhym, in traditional Blizzard style, told us practically nothing. He posted a whole bunch of words but the meaning was all pretty shallow. Literally the only solid thing we got is a daily time frame for checking on invites. 9-6, M-F, PST. Even then, he made sure to qualify it with "typically."

Preemptive defense incoming: I know people think they're keeping the peace and being mature by blindly defending Blizzard and the CMs, but it's not "immature" or "entitled" to call a spade a spade. Community management doesn't have to be as hard as they make it. My frustration isn't with how long Blizzard is taking or about how unlikely it is for me to get into the beta. I'm a Blizzard fanboi and have been since Diablo 1. I know the ropes by now. My frustration is with how they've made communicating with their fans overcomplicated and ineffective.

Good luck guys. Hell, good luck logging in to battle.net, too.

I'll be happy if we really do have it by the end of the year. I think November is unlikely.

I'm guessing because press are guaranteed beta keys so they're getting into the beta with the opt-ins, but they're not getting opt-in invites. It might have been figured out at the press event back in August.

My point isn't that they owe us anything necessarily. I was just commenting on the fact that IF they were talking about the FnF beta only when they said "in Q3" then they probably should have just said so. I just get really tired of watching Blizzard be so uninformative and coy. I don't think it'd hurt them to be a little more forthcoming and, to an extent, more specific.

You guys very well might be right that Blizz had FnF in mind when they announced the beta would come out in Q3, but if so it was a little disingenuous of them not to say so.

At this point, I'm thinking September 30th is when the closed beta starts.

Yeah, that quote is like the biggest "no shit" thing I can think of. It's not going to be hard to tell when it DOES start, but it's unnecessarily hard to tell when it WILL start. I don't understand why the gaming industry - and Blizzard especially - is so hellbent on keeping their fans in the dark.

Considering the massive difference between the numbers on healing abilities and damaging ones, I'm guessing that healing abilities either don't currently or won't ever scale with gear. They only scale with leveling. Of course, this is 100% speculation, so take it for the guess it is.