Honestly it feels like a short demo, and a teaser just to keep the rabid dogs at bay. IF those were its purposes, then I would say "yes, it has backfired." After ten years time, a few measly hours and a magical level 13 hard cap with a CONGRATS YOU ROCKZORZ, BETA DEFEATED! Flashing on my screen after I down the first mini-boss... it's just not enough. I know the Blizzard employees are smart enough to know that it's not enough, but on the other hand, they never promised anything more.
That's the thing, when you work so hard as a company to be continuously cryptic and never get straight answers about ANYTHING until the absolute last possible minute, things like this will always happen. I've never had less than complete faith that Blizzard will make great games (And often awful patches), but they have never, ever learned the lesson of what a time table is, deadlines, etc. It's only because of their virtually endless resources that they can get away with this. Diablo III just proved to be a little bit of a different animal for them, because they have literally put off its release for over a decade. I don't know of any other game that transcends that sort of time frame.
Honestly, the delay is almost certainly not technically based, but about some aspect of their business as a whole. Fans have a right to be, and should be pissed about that, especially considering how ultimately unfulfilling the beta is. But as always, being treated like children by Blizzard, are only real option is to be pissed off and wait, or be pissed off and not buy the game. Just realize that they don't care either way.
The problem is that you misinterprated the purpose of the beta, which was cleary stated by Blizzard on any number of occasions before it even began.
They never advertised it or even hyped it as you described. If anything, the advent of beta was downplayed by Blizzard (although through fansites, such as DiabloFans, it is obviously our responsibility to hype it.) Remember all the fiscal meeting let-downs? Remember all those opportunities they had to talk beta and didn't? They didn't hype the beta. They didn't want to.
Seeing responses from fans everywhere, they didn't even have to. We created our own hype, our own unreachable goals for a two-hour session that was not maximized for enjoyment. I hesitate to even call it a demo, because calling it a demo would imply that they were hyping it as a demo. They weren't. It's a beta.
I could quote any number of direct Blizzard representative sources stating that the beta is a beta. No, it's not a demo. It's a beta. To test for bugs. To test infrastructure. It's not supposed to be a demo. Not a demo. Not. A. Demo.
This is why I think that article is pretty much pointless. I could see a reason for controversy if Blizzard had given us mixed messages, but they didn't. Anyone that's disappointed has only one person to blame: his or herself.
So, when you say that they're purposefully being cryptic, perish the thought. They clearly stated what beta would be long beforehand. They clearly stated that they can't give us a release date because they didn't know when it would be, but they did their best to give us a range because they felt an obligation to their fanbase. Would we have them lie? No, I think not, because then we'd have even more bullshit hitting the fan.
To answer the original question, yes Blizzard has messed up with the beta. You aren't "stressing" the servers by only inviting a couple people.
But no, the hype is not dead for the game, just the beta. A lot of people were expecting to get in, and about .1% of them did.
1.) As Bashiok fucking directly stated: You don't invite 1MILLION people when you don't even know if your infrastructure can handle 100. You slowly ramp up so that you can learn the threshold that the server can handle before it bonks. You really don't understand that they are using a completely new archictecture do you?
2.) Anyone that actually assumed they would get in other than press... and then get angry about not getting in can fuck themselves. Diablo 3 isn't BF3... this isn't a pre-release... this is a literal fucking beta. We are lucky that they aren't keeping this a completely closed beta anyways.
Seeing responses from fans everywhere, they didn't even have to. We created our own hype, our own unreachable goals for a two-hour session that was not maximized for enjoyment. I hesitate to even call it a demo, because calling it a demo would imply that they were hyping it as a demo. They weren't. It's a beta.
Thoughtful post overall, Mag. I wanted to highlight this idea though. Yes, Blizzard didn't need to hype the beta. As you mentioned, we created our own hype. But how did that work out? Well, it resulted in our excitable community setting expectations too high.
Putting my marketing/PR hat on, this in itself is a dangerous situation for Blizzard. Blizzard needs to be the one controlling expectations. Just throwing up a blog post as a press release, using some pretty opaque language (if I may say so) is perhaps not effective enough.
They should utilize more modern technology, imo. Whenever there's big news, they should make a quick video and post it on youtube, twitter, facebook, battle net, etc etc.. They should tailor press releases to major news outlets. They should "leak" stuff intentionally. All this should generate excitement bounded by realistic scope, so that our collective imaginations don't turn a tiny news morsel into an un-bounded gravitational singularity, sucking in all forms of matter and spitting out bliss-covered gamma rays of joy.
Now I'll stop short of saying "Well, if we're mad, it's blizzard's fault." People are going to whine and fidget, and a bit of that is actually a healthy sign of high demand. But it can reach a tipping point, resulting in negative backlash that will only be amplified by our sensationalist gaming news media.
Overall, Blizzard handles their voracious customer base pretty well. But there's always room for improvement, and it's up to us to give Bliz constructive feedback as to how they can better satisfy us, their loyal fan-base.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions."
-Thomas Jefferson
To answer the original question, yes Blizzard has messed up with the beta. You aren't "stressing" the servers by only inviting a couple people.
But no, the hype is not dead for the game, just the beta. A lot of people were expecting to get in, and about .1% of them did.
When testing the stability of new servers and a new infrastructure, you don't start by putting 10,000 users on it. You start with a handful, and fix the major issues that come up. Then you add a few more users, and again fix the issues that come up. You repeat this process until the system is rock solid with the desired load of users. Rest assured, at some point before launch, Blizzard will want to do heavy load stress testing, but we're going to have to be patient.
Seeing responses from fans everywhere, they didn't even have to. We created our own hype, our own unreachable goals for a two-hour session that was not maximized for enjoyment. I hesitate to even call it a demo, because calling it a demo would imply that they were hyping it as a demo. They weren't. It's a beta.
Thoughtful post overall, Mag. I wanted to highlight this idea though. Yes, Blizzard didn't need to hype the beta. As you mentioned, we created our own hype. But how did that work out? Well, it resulted in our excitable community setting expectations too high.
Putting my marketing/PR hat on, this in itself is a dangerous situation for Blizzard. Blizzard needs to be the one controlling expectations. Just throwing up a blog post as a press release, using some pretty opaque language (if I may say so) is perhaps not effective enough.
They should utilize more modern technology, imo. Whenever there's big news, they should make a quick video and post it on youtube, twitter, facebook, battle net, etc etc.. They should tailor press releases to major news outlets. They should "leak" stuff intentionally. All this should generate excitement bounded by realistic scope, so that our collective imaginations don't turn a tiny news morsel into an un-bounded gravitational singularity, sucking in all forms of matter and spitting out bliss-covered gamma rays of joy.
Now I'll stop short of saying "Well, if we're mad, it's blizzard's fault." People are going to whine and fidget, and a bit of that is actually a healthy sign of high demand. But it can reach a tipping point, resulting in negative backlash that will only be amplified by our sensationalist gaming news media.
Overall, Blizzard handles their voracious customer base pretty well. But there's always room for improvement, and it's up to us to give Bliz constructive feedback as to how they can better satisfy us, their loyal fan-base.
The beta is not the game, and is certainly not the world. So many diablo fans treated the beta as if it was the games actual release. The reason why beta was intially hyped so drastically was the fact that beta meant that we are closer to actual release.
Diablo 3 isn't like the starcraft beta... it has a storyline and alot of content that could be spoiled. Diablo 3 isn't like BF3.. it isn't designed to be a PVP FPS. Diablo 3 isn't designed to be a presistant world MMO.
If people were allowed to play through the ENTIRE game, then we all lose. The entire game is posted on the internet and completely spoiled. Less people will want to purchase it. Additionally, those that did get into beta already beat the game and essentially got to play it for free... why would they then buy it?
Dunno, I've approached the beta the same way I've done with most of the previous news. Savoring it. I've not watched that many beta streams, because what is to be seen was seen after watching a couple, and watching more would only be boring.
Patience is virtue. But yes, as a marketing tool, the DIII beta hasn't been a big success.
A good choice would be to open the PvP arena up for beta testing, since that'd include more content into the beta.
BLASPHEMY!!!!! They cannot allow PvP in their beta for PvP is not a "real" part of Diablo. It is not one of the fundamentals of gameplay in the series. Oh wait...opening PvP up would be just like looking into the future of Diablo 3 where everyone just levels and gets gear and then PvP's. Or am I looking at the past with Diablo 1 and 2 which did the same?
Anyway, they believe their in house team is the greatest and they don't need us for bugs and only for stressing the server. So in their mind the beta is a success, and there def will not be any nonsense like PvP brought into Jay Wilsons house dammit!
The beta is not the game, and is certainly not the world. So many diablo fans treated the beta as if it was the games actual release. The reason why beta was intially hyped so drastically was the fact that beta meant that we are closer to actual release.
Diablo 3 isn't like the starcraft beta... it has a storyline and alot of content that could be spoiled. Diablo 3 isn't like BF3.. it isn't designed to be a PVP FPS. Diablo 3 isn't designed to be a presistant world MMO.
If people were allowed to play through the ENTIRE game, then we all lose. The entire game is posted on the internet and completely spoiled. Less people will want to purchase it. Additionally, those that did get into beta already beat the game and essentially got to play it for free... why would they then buy it?
I agree with everything you said. The point I'm trying to make is this:
Talking is not communicating.
Just because Blizzard says something, that doesn't mean it's heard or understood by whom they're talking to. I'm an engineer, and I have to interface with PR sometimes. There are many junctions where people of a different mindset have to communicate and be understood..
Customers have to communicate to PR/Marketing what they want our software to do. PR/Marketing has to communicate that to Managers. Managers have to communicate to engineers what our requirements are, and what our outcome should be. We developers have to communicate our progress back to managers. Managers have to communicate our progress to PR/Marketing.. And finally, PR/Marketing has to communicate back with the customers.
Obviously the process is not necessarily this linear, but I use this example to illustrate how difficult it is to create an effective flow of information. Each group exists in a different head space than the other. At each "group boundary" you need someone who can translate..
All I'm really saying is, we customers need to let Blizzard know how to communicate with us. The only reason they have a PR department is to pass us information that will create a positive perception of their company and products. We are making Blizzard's job easier by letting them know how to package the information they want to share with us.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions."
-Thomas Jefferson
Seeing responses from fans everywhere, they didn't even have to. We created our own hype, our own unreachable goals for a two-hour session that was not maximized for enjoyment. I hesitate to even call it a demo, because calling it a demo would imply that they were hyping it as a demo. They weren't. It's a beta.
Thoughtful post overall, Mag. I wanted to highlight this idea though. Yes, Blizzard didn't need to hype the beta. As you mentioned, we created our own hype. But how did that work out? Well, it resulted in our excitable community setting expectations too high.
Putting my marketing/PR hat on, this in itself is a dangerous situation for Blizzard. Blizzard needs to be the one controlling expectations. Just throwing up a blog post as a press release, using some pretty opaque language (if I may say so) is perhaps not effective enough.
They should utilize more modern technology, imo. Whenever there's big news, they should make a quick video and post it on youtube, twitter, facebook, battle net, etc etc.. They should tailor press releases to major news outlets. They should "leak" stuff intentionally. All this should generate excitement bounded by realistic scope, so that our collective imaginations don't turn a tiny news morsel into an un-bounded gravitational singularity, sucking in all forms of matter and spitting out bliss-covered gamma rays of joy.
Now I'll stop short of saying "Well, if we're mad, it's blizzard's fault." People are going to whine and fidget, and a bit of that is actually a healthy sign of high demand. But it can reach a tipping point, resulting in negative backlash that will only be amplified by our sensationalist gaming news media.
Overall, Blizzard handles their voracious customer base pretty well. But there's always room for improvement, and it's up to us to give Bliz constructive feedback as to how they can better satisfy us, their loyal fan-base.
This is a good point. While they did stress very heavily in blue posts what the beta is (and would be), they really didn't make a concerted effort to get this information to press. In fact, they made no real effort of alerting the press about beta at all. Everything we knew leading up to it relied solely on people finding said information in threads on their forums.
So, while it would be obvious to people like us that have been scouring Blizz Trackers, the official boards, the official website, every Diablo fansite you can think of, every Diablo blog, every upstart website that thinks it's the next great fansite, and so on, there are a lot of people that do none of these things, or do them very selectively.
While it is our hope that we're a reputable and complete enough source on the franchise, I can admit that that is not true. It can't logically be true. The best way to get all the information is to follow all of these sites simultaneously. In part, this is a reason for trackers.
Regardless, if information like this was released to the press before hand, expectations probably would have been lower (and more realistic) because the information would be more widely read and known.
But then, would news that the beta isn't going to be that great really be something that IGN or Kotaku or N4G or Gamespot or any of the others would really want to headline? "This just in: the beta of the century is going to be two hours of simplified content!" Probably not.
It's really just a circular problem. When you think you have the end-all answer, there's really many more considerations, but then all of those are linked back on themselves and rely on others all mixed together like some kind of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey ball.
I agree with the comments about including PvP in the beta. If they are really just trying to do a stress test on the servers, including PvP would help because it would address the issue of people only playing for a few weeks and then putting the game down.
...Regardless, if information like this was released to the press before hand, expectations probably would have been lower (and more realistic) because the information would be more widely read and known....
I must disagree , I think people would still be upset no matter how much advanced notice they got. It's not a whole lot of content (to be expected in a beta of a linear game such as Diablo 3) and not a whole lot of people are getting to play (a whole 'nother matter in itself) which is bound to get people a tad bit miffed. What I don't get is how Blizzard didn't see this coming. If they did see it coming, why would they go and do everything the way they have?
Since you elected to be so vague as to why you are confused, I'll assume you were talking to me.
I must disagree , I think people would still be upset no matter how much advanced notice they got. It's not a whole lot of content (to be expected in a beta of a linear game such as Diablo 3) and not a whole lot of people are getting to play (a whole 'nother matter in itself) which is bound to get people a tad bit miffed.
I believe this statement is fairly self-explanatory. I think that no matter how much news/advanced warning/what-have-you people got they would still be unsatisfied with the content the beta provided.
What I don't get is how Blizzard didn't see this coming. If they did see it coming, why would they go and do everything the way they have?
I was a tad vague here i suppose. Blizzard surely saw it coming that people would be unhappy with such a limited beta and few updates. Which leads to the question, why would they not find an alternative way of doing the beta; such as keeping an NDA on it or putting it off until later in the year?
Since you elected to be so vague as to why you are confused, I'll assume you were talking to me.
Sorry, my good gentleman. I thought it was fairly self-explanatory that any post posted directly after another's is assumed to respond to that person, unless stated otherwise. Or at least that's how things have operated around here for years
What I don't get is how Blizzard didn't see this coming. If they did see it coming, why would they go and do everything the way they have?
I was a tad vague here i suppose. Blizzard surely saw it coming that people would be unhappy with such a limited beta and few updates. Which leads to the question, why would they not find an alternative way of doing the beta; such as keeping an NDA on it or putting it off until later in the year?
I'm glad you figured it out. You just said "do everything the way they have" and I couldn't find anything in your post explaining what, exactly, it is that you thought they did. You mention how fans feel, but did not elaborate on any action on Blizzard's part.
This is the end of the year. We've only got two months left. It's the last quarter.
Perhaps they should have put an NDA on it. Perhaps they should have put it off. But if they put an NDA on it, it would have been raped up the ass after a week or two. Look at how the Chinese continually violate NDA's and all kinds of other laws like they're eating candy. And, of course, people would want to turn a traffic profit on it, so it would be all over YouTube in days, all over the rest of the web in a short enough order.
And guess how fans would feel then, knowing that they didn't even get to learn anything about the beta, didn't even get to participate? Think of how silent these weeks would have been without anything having to do with the beta. Just delete, mentally, basically every post we've made on the front page for the last month. All the new content in the wiki. The contests, the beta coverage. Many of Force's videos.
I think they would have felt equally angry, if not moreso.
Perhaps this is more about what they didn't do than what they did do. (As you mentioned, the lack of updates.)
I'm not getting more and more excited at this point. I'm just getting kind of apathetic toward D3 and I feel myself simply wanting to get over it now. And yes, I'll buy the game when it comes out still. But I'll buy it almost as an afterthought, not as a main priority of any kind.
I just think Blizzard has kind of abused their fans loyalty and jerked people around for too long. It's amusing and all in good fun to a point, but after awhile, their attitude just feels like, "Or aliens, I don't know, fuck you."
Exactly how I feel.
I've been waiting 10 years to get my hands on this game and to have it dangled in my face like a piece of meat makes me feel disgusted. And with someone like Bashiok at the helm of communication doesn't make the lack of access or information any easier to deal. His constant "we're better than you" attitude just makes me feel like punching someone in the face.
As like you have mentioned, I will still buy the game. No longer out of pure anticipation, but rather out of a "I should still at least try it out", kinda thing. Much like I've done with the last COD Black-Ops release. And unless they blow my socks off immediately after release, I don't see my self playing the game for very long.
If you simply play the beta, you will get bored of it within a week. If you test (for blizzard) and document (for fansites) the beta, you will have something to do for the next 6 months.
Put simply, anyone whining about the beta certainly isn't doing any beta testing and just wants to play.
They create their own expectations, schedules and hype despite Blizzard telling us exactly what they are doing and that the expectations fans create ourselves are wrong.
Then Blizzard fails to meet the expectations the fans created (the ones Blizzard said they would never meet in the first place) and then the fans bitch at Blizzard for it (ie this linked article).
Blizzard has been saying for a long time now
Beta is for network and compatibility testing
They have ALWAYS been saying they don't know if it will come out this year
They told us a long ass time ago that the Beta would last about 6 months.
Fans took it upon themselves to disbelieve the above expectations Blizzard has constantly set and then bitch and whine about it.
Quite frankly the Diablo community in general is a whiney, bitchy,self-entitled mass of children.
They create their own expectations, schedules and hype despite Blizzard telling us exactly what they are doing and that the expectations fans create ourselves are wrong.
Then Blizzard fails to meet the expectations the fans created (the ones Blizzard said they would never meet in the first place) and then the fans bitch at Blizzard for it (ie this linked article).
Blizzard has been saying for a long time now
Beta is for network and compatibility testing
They have ALWAYS been saying they don't know if it will come out this year
They told us a long ass time ago that the Beta would last about 6 months.
Fans took it upon themselves to disbelieve the above expectations Blizzard has constantly set and then bitch and whine about it.
Quite frankly the Diablo community in general is a whiney, bitchy,self-entitled mass of children.
Thanks for all the insults, etc, but your trivialization of the topic is flat ignorant.
It's the responsibility of any company to adequately manage the expectations of their customers. The Apple customer base is just as "stupid" as you claim the Diablo fan base is, but Apple is MUCH better at managing expectations.
How is that? Because Apple actually communicates effectively, whereas Blizzard gives moving 3-month windows, meets them only occasionally, can't decide whether it wants to interact with its community or not, when it does want to communicate it never says anything without enough caveats to render the thing said completely useless...
I could keep going, but the point is made. If Blizzard could actually communicate effectively, they could remove the insane amounts of room for optimism and imagination they leave with their say-nothing press releases.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions."
-Thomas Jefferson
The topic *is* trivial. I don't follow Apple so I can't comment on your comparison, but the only real experience I had with Apple was some forced update to my 3G that now makes it run like molasses (And they never communicated THAT to me).
It's not going to matter, the crap all the fans are whining about right now isn't going to affect D3 sales in the slightest, it'll sell millions of copies and everyone will love it. They just don't have it now so they need to complain.
It's not going to matter, the crap all the fans are whining about right now isn't going to affect D3 sales in the slightest, it'll sell millions of copies and everyone will love it. They just don't have it now so they need to complain.
I can try really hard to disagree, but I know you're right.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions."
-Thomas Jefferson
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+1 to you sir.
:: Enkeria [Twitter / Twitch / Website / Tattoos]
But no, the hype is not dead for the game, just the beta. A lot of people were expecting to get in, and about .1% of them did.
1.) As Bashiok fucking directly stated: You don't invite 1MILLION people when you don't even know if your infrastructure can handle 100. You slowly ramp up so that you can learn the threshold that the server can handle before it bonks. You really don't understand that they are using a completely new archictecture do you?
2.) Anyone that actually assumed they would get in other than press... and then get angry about not getting in can fuck themselves. Diablo 3 isn't BF3... this isn't a pre-release... this is a literal fucking beta. We are lucky that they aren't keeping this a completely closed beta anyways.
Thoughtful post overall, Mag. I wanted to highlight this idea though. Yes, Blizzard didn't need to hype the beta. As you mentioned, we created our own hype. But how did that work out? Well, it resulted in our excitable community setting expectations too high.
Putting my marketing/PR hat on, this in itself is a dangerous situation for Blizzard. Blizzard needs to be the one controlling expectations. Just throwing up a blog post as a press release, using some pretty opaque language (if I may say so) is perhaps not effective enough.
They should utilize more modern technology, imo. Whenever there's big news, they should make a quick video and post it on youtube, twitter, facebook, battle net, etc etc.. They should tailor press releases to major news outlets. They should "leak" stuff intentionally. All this should generate excitement bounded by realistic scope, so that our collective imaginations don't turn a tiny news morsel into an un-bounded gravitational singularity, sucking in all forms of matter and spitting out bliss-covered gamma rays of joy.
Now I'll stop short of saying "Well, if we're mad, it's blizzard's fault." People are going to whine and fidget, and a bit of that is actually a healthy sign of high demand. But it can reach a tipping point, resulting in negative backlash that will only be amplified by our sensationalist gaming news media.
Overall, Blizzard handles their voracious customer base pretty well. But there's always room for improvement, and it's up to us to give Bliz constructive feedback as to how they can better satisfy us, their loyal fan-base.
-Thomas Jefferson
When testing the stability of new servers and a new infrastructure, you don't start by putting 10,000 users on it. You start with a handful, and fix the major issues that come up. Then you add a few more users, and again fix the issues that come up. You repeat this process until the system is rock solid with the desired load of users. Rest assured, at some point before launch, Blizzard will want to do heavy load stress testing, but we're going to have to be patient.
The beta is not the game, and is certainly not the world. So many diablo fans treated the beta as if it was the games actual release. The reason why beta was intially hyped so drastically was the fact that beta meant that we are closer to actual release.
Diablo 3 isn't like the starcraft beta... it has a storyline and alot of content that could be spoiled. Diablo 3 isn't like BF3.. it isn't designed to be a PVP FPS. Diablo 3 isn't designed to be a presistant world MMO.
If people were allowed to play through the ENTIRE game, then we all lose. The entire game is posted on the internet and completely spoiled. Less people will want to purchase it. Additionally, those that did get into beta already beat the game and essentially got to play it for free... why would they then buy it?
Anyway, they believe their in house team is the greatest and they don't need us for bugs and only for stressing the server. So in their mind the beta is a success, and there def will not be any nonsense like PvP brought into Jay Wilsons house dammit!
I agree with everything you said. The point I'm trying to make is this:
Talking is not communicating.
Just because Blizzard says something, that doesn't mean it's heard or understood by whom they're talking to. I'm an engineer, and I have to interface with PR sometimes. There are many junctions where people of a different mindset have to communicate and be understood..
Customers have to communicate to PR/Marketing what they want our software to do. PR/Marketing has to communicate that to Managers. Managers have to communicate to engineers what our requirements are, and what our outcome should be. We developers have to communicate our progress back to managers. Managers have to communicate our progress to PR/Marketing.. And finally, PR/Marketing has to communicate back with the customers.
Obviously the process is not necessarily this linear, but I use this example to illustrate how difficult it is to create an effective flow of information. Each group exists in a different head space than the other. At each "group boundary" you need someone who can translate..
All I'm really saying is, we customers need to let Blizzard know how to communicate with us. The only reason they have a PR department is to pass us information that will create a positive perception of their company and products. We are making Blizzard's job easier by letting them know how to package the information they want to share with us.
-Thomas Jefferson
This is a good point. While they did stress very heavily in blue posts what the beta is (and would be), they really didn't make a concerted effort to get this information to press. In fact, they made no real effort of alerting the press about beta at all. Everything we knew leading up to it relied solely on people finding said information in threads on their forums.
So, while it would be obvious to people like us that have been scouring Blizz Trackers, the official boards, the official website, every Diablo fansite you can think of, every Diablo blog, every upstart website that thinks it's the next great fansite, and so on, there are a lot of people that do none of these things, or do them very selectively.
While it is our hope that we're a reputable and complete enough source on the franchise, I can admit that that is not true. It can't logically be true. The best way to get all the information is to follow all of these sites simultaneously. In part, this is a reason for trackers.
Regardless, if information like this was released to the press before hand, expectations probably would have been lower (and more realistic) because the information would be more widely read and known.
But then, would news that the beta isn't going to be that great really be something that IGN or Kotaku or N4G or Gamespot or any of the others would really want to headline? "This just in: the beta of the century is going to be two hours of simplified content!" Probably not.
It's really just a circular problem. When you think you have the end-all answer, there's really many more considerations, but then all of those are linked back on themselves and rely on others all mixed together like some kind of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey ball.
I believe this statement is fairly self-explanatory. I think that no matter how much news/advanced warning/what-have-you people got they would still be unsatisfied with the content the beta provided.
I was a tad vague here i suppose. Blizzard surely saw it coming that people would be unhappy with such a limited beta and few updates. Which leads to the question, why would they not find an alternative way of doing the beta; such as keeping an NDA on it or putting it off until later in the year?
Sorry, my good gentleman. I thought it was fairly self-explanatory that any post posted directly after another's is assumed to respond to that person, unless stated otherwise. Or at least that's how things have operated around here for years
I'm glad you figured it out. You just said "do everything the way they have" and I couldn't find anything in your post explaining what, exactly, it is that you thought they did. You mention how fans feel, but did not elaborate on any action on Blizzard's part.
This is the end of the year. We've only got two months left. It's the last quarter.
Perhaps they should have put an NDA on it. Perhaps they should have put it off. But if they put an NDA on it, it would have been raped up the ass after a week or two. Look at how the Chinese continually violate NDA's and all kinds of other laws like they're eating candy. And, of course, people would want to turn a traffic profit on it, so it would be all over YouTube in days, all over the rest of the web in a short enough order.
And guess how fans would feel then, knowing that they didn't even get to learn anything about the beta, didn't even get to participate? Think of how silent these weeks would have been without anything having to do with the beta. Just delete, mentally, basically every post we've made on the front page for the last month. All the new content in the wiki. The contests, the beta coverage. Many of Force's videos.
I think they would have felt equally angry, if not moreso.
Perhaps this is more about what they didn't do than what they did do. (As you mentioned, the lack of updates.)
Exactly how I feel.
I've been waiting 10 years to get my hands on this game and to have it dangled in my face like a piece of meat makes me feel disgusted. And with someone like Bashiok at the helm of communication doesn't make the lack of access or information any easier to deal. His constant "we're better than you" attitude just makes me feel like punching someone in the face.
As like you have mentioned, I will still buy the game. No longer out of pure anticipation, but rather out of a "I should still at least try it out", kinda thing. Much like I've done with the last COD Black-Ops release. And unless they blow my socks off immediately after release, I don't see my self playing the game for very long.
Put simply, anyone whining about the beta certainly isn't doing any beta testing and just wants to play.
They create their own expectations, schedules and hype despite Blizzard telling us exactly what they are doing and that the expectations fans create ourselves are wrong.
Then Blizzard fails to meet the expectations the fans created (the ones Blizzard said they would never meet in the first place) and then the fans bitch at Blizzard for it (ie this linked article).
Blizzard has been saying for a long time now
Fans took it upon themselves to disbelieve the above expectations Blizzard has constantly set and then bitch and whine about it.
Quite frankly the Diablo community in general is a whiney, bitchy,self-entitled mass of children.
Thanks for all the insults, etc, but your trivialization of the topic is flat ignorant.
It's the responsibility of any company to adequately manage the expectations of their customers. The Apple customer base is just as "stupid" as you claim the Diablo fan base is, but Apple is MUCH better at managing expectations.
How is that? Because Apple actually communicates effectively, whereas Blizzard gives moving 3-month windows, meets them only occasionally, can't decide whether it wants to interact with its community or not, when it does want to communicate it never says anything without enough caveats to render the thing said completely useless...
I could keep going, but the point is made. If Blizzard could actually communicate effectively, they could remove the insane amounts of room for optimism and imagination they leave with their say-nothing press releases.
-Thomas Jefferson
It's not going to matter, the crap all the fans are whining about right now isn't going to affect D3 sales in the slightest, it'll sell millions of copies and everyone will love it. They just don't have it now so they need to complain.
I can try really hard to disagree, but I know you're right.
-Thomas Jefferson