(Source) With relatively little of the game included in the upcoming beta, Risingred of the official Battle.net board raised a series of questions, trying to get at the heart of the real function of beta testing for Diablo III. While you may be just itching to start your crusade into the twisted heart of the Burning Hells, if you haven't been following beta news lately, you may be disappointed. This article aims to set expectations straight and reveal what Blizzard intends beta testers to, well, test.
As far as the content included in the beta, which was vaguely mentioned in our press event coverage, Bashiok posted that the team "want(s) the spoilers to (be at) a minimum," with the beta cutting off shortly after conquering the Skeleton King. The story that is revealed may act as a mind-boggling cliffhanger to run our salivating mouths. Nothing like a little more hype, right?
But the true purpose of the beta lies at the structural level. Bashiok elaborates:
Official Blizzard Quote:
We're testing client and server stability. We want to make sure the game is running, and running well, on a wide range of systems, and the server infrastructure that runs Diablo III is completely new, so we need testing on that front as well. Quite right, we're not necessarily looking for gameplay related testing, although we do hope to see feedback on the various systems and see what people like/don't like from the first few hours of play time.
The reason for the testing is also due to the platform which Diablo III will be using to bring players together. Battle.net 2, while a far-reaching online social gaming platform, is not so uniform that games can simply be "popped" in and support magically works. The Battle.net Diablo III experience has been and is being hand-crafted to fit the look and feel of the game, as well as its unique game mechanics and systems. This means that the online experience has never seen the light of day, in spite of Battle.net 2 being featured with Starcraft II. Bashiok noted that the system "is completely untested, which is the top reason for the beta, followed closely by personal system testing, patching systems (also new), and gameplay feedback."
Regardless, the beta still promises to be tons of fun, and Bashiok promises that "nothing is cut out. Some systems and skills won't unlock because you simply won't hit those points or levels, but it's very much the game from the start to the Skeleton King."
Furthermore, the beta might not be that far away, if the launch of the official Beta FAQ/Overview page on Blizzard's official site means anything. In addition, yesterday's conference call confirmed a two-month window for the beta, and Zarhym's call to update our beta profiles may be not-so-subtle hinting. Here's to hoping!
[dfans]
Thanks Magistrate for these news!
I'm not going to say it's impossible, but I doubt it. They usually save major announcements for their own event (Blizzcon), for major interviews, or for their own news feed on their site/through Twitter/forums, which instantly is picked up by hundreds of fansites across the web.
It would certainly fit the time bill, though, I'll give you that.
The beta isn't a major thing.
Quite the opposite, it is a major thing. It's their chance to test out their hardware and software infrastructure to make sure when the game goes live that millions of players aren't going to be without a game. As for it being announced at Gamescom, it's certainly possible and fits into the Q3 time frame they established for the beta. For a major announcement like the release date I'd expect that to be at Blizzcon.
No need to announce beta loudly because most of the people won't be getting in it'll be a waste of time on Blizzards part.
1000 beta keys being sent out @ last years blizzcon which is 1000 loyal Blizzard followers, that's alot of testers already.
1000 people is more than you'll see in your daily life, think about it.
I would imagine they are also expecting a million or more players at release, so testing their servers with only 1000 or even 5000 players wouldn't be a very good test for them.
As a point of reference, Starcraft II sold just shy of 2 million copies in it's first month out. While Diablo 3 may not reach the same mark, it wouldn't be in their best interest to plan for a tiny amount of people to be on the severs and just assume everything will work fine.
Also, if you live in a city you'll definitely see more than 1000 people. Just saying.
This his how almost all online games work for their betas. They will add more users in waves and then right before the beta closes they will have a stress test where they invite a very large number of people compared to past waves. (At least that's the general model.)
So closed beta is 15th august to 15th septmber , server stress test " open beta " 16th september to 22nd september.
Late september to late october crunch numbers and statistics from beta tests and anounce release date for Diablo 3 " at blizzcon " im guessing december 4th for some reason ".
Late october through november polish final product and ship to retailers.
Finish patch for release day problems and the usual bugs that pop up at release.
Here's hoping
In the FAQ it says they will start of by testing hardware in North America and that others might experience some lag in the beginning. But I get the impression that they will test hardware in other regions in the beta as well, which basically means more servers. I'm not saying there will be a whole lot, but at least more than one
www.blizzard.com doesn't load on my thin client at work so I can't check that now, but feel free to do so and check if I missinterpretet it.