World of Warcraft at Ten Ton Hammer

After doing a bit of research, the focus of testing – and the focus of MMO players – had changed between the years the two games were released. While some gamers still existed that actually wanted to test his game in 2006, many players had grown more concerned with being able to take a “trial run” through unreleased MMOs. With those gamers in mind, the beta testing period of many other MMOs had turned into something more akin to an advertising campaign than a true testing period. 

When asked a question about whether the MMO testing phases have changed in the past 5-10 years, the Ten Ton Hammer premium members suggested that beta tests are now almost solely about marketing and are populated with testers that ignore the “/bug” option and simply use the beta to demo the game. Even when the gamers do discuss the problems they see in the game, some MMO companies don't know how to handle the input these gamers provide.

“[Beta] seems to be more about marketing the game and hyping it up,” RawGutts said.

“Honestly I feel that nowadays the developers get confused and can not find a happy medium between listening to every single testers opinion and listening to nobody,” Arkane suggested. “In some beta tests I have felt the community was highly ignored while in other tests I have felt that the developers tried to cater to every single tester. Both are and were recipes for failure.”

“Beta tests now are glorified demos for the games,” Condar answered. “It used to be so much different. I really hate what's been done to them, and the only way to be a ‘real’ tester now is to get into the alpha's or in some rare cases early closed betas.”

Besides the imminent dissolution of his company and inevitable heartbreak after the launch of his game, it’s safe to say that the environment surrounding MMOs changed drastically between the launch of Brad McQuaid's EverQuest and the release of Vanguard. With EverQuest, players hardly knew what to expect. Even those individuals that had played earlier graphical MMOs like Ultima Online and The Realm hadn’t jumped into a game like EverQuest before. It was a three dimensional experience based on late era MUDs and AD&D. Users hadn’t ever encountered each other in 3D spaces before, and thus the novelty of the game helped to overshadow the flaws and high barrier of entry into EQ. Gamers wanted that visual, visceral feeling of actually *seeing* a game of D&D come to life in front of them.

In an almost complete reversal of fortune, Vanguard launched into one of the most hostile markets ever seen in the MMO genre. Unlike the EverQuest beta, those individuals that were jumping into Vanguard were much more likely to have experienced any number of later day MMOs, including the massively popular World of Warcraft. While McQuaid constantly berated WoW, it was an inappropriate decision to simply ignore the success and advancements that WoW made to the genre. The gamers that arrived in the Vanguard beta needed an experience that at least had the look of potential surrounding it. From various accounts, the early Vanguard beta lacked so much content that trying to deduce any sort of “future” from the game was almost impossible.

But the hostility didn’t start (or end) with Vanguard. From the release of Anarchy Online to the Star Wars Galaxies CU-NGE, gamers have often been disappointed by the development teams that they want to succeed. Their anger and frustration began to circulate when it appeared that the development teams were ignoring their pleas for “more time” or “don’t change this” or “why?” Unfortunately, it’s often not the fault of the development teams making the MMOs, it’s the fact that MMOs require absurd amounts of cash to run and when outside publishers come into the picture, the gamers are often the individuals that feel the pain.