Talk about doing a beta the right way...

E_T · March 7, 2002, 05:25

The people at blizzard are doing the beta testing of warcraft III the RIGHT way! Check this out:
http://www.blizzard.com/war3/beta/betafaq.shtml

The beta games are useless after full release, MP from the git-go, 500 testers......too bad the beta sign-on window has closed.

They have been working on this for close to 3 years, one before the "big" announcement on 9/5/99, and the rest until now.

I wish that Infograms/Fraxis had done something similar. I would have waited (and maybe payed a little more too) to have a throughly beta'd full release of Civ III with MP too.

And we WON'T even talk about the differences in the "Limited Editions" of the two games......

E_T

Grim Legacy · March 7, 2002, 06:37

You know what they say: study long, study wrong! =D

FrantzX · March 7, 2002, 10:40

Any HOW many patches are there for StarCraft and Diablo II? I seem to remember lengthy betas for both games...

korn469 · March 7, 2002, 10:51

Quote:

Any HOW many patches are there for StarCraft and Diablo II? I seem to remember lengthy betas for both games

FrantzX

well starcraft/broodwar is up to patch 1.09b which came out on 2/26/02 or a little over 3 1/2 years after starcraft came out!

http://www.blizzard.com/support/?id=msc0411p

there is the patch readme, and virtually every starcraft patch has been balance changes or feature additions, so if you are trying to imply that starcraft was bug ridden, or that all of the patches for it was bad, you're incorrect

as long as the game isn't buggy and the patches aren't super big and they are adding things to the game what is the problem?

most people
patches --->

me
patches --->

FrantzX · March 7, 2002, 11:23

And isn't what most people want is more balance and features for Civ III? By the way, I'm with you korn469. Patches are almost always a good thing.

korn469 · March 7, 2002, 11:47

FrantzX

i'm not sure how many more patches they have in mind for civ3 but it sounds like at least one and hopefully a few more than that

so far civ3 has far outsold SMAC which firaxis released 3 patches for (and then 1 i think for SMAX) so hopefully we'll get like two or three more patches loaded with feature and gameplay tweaks

Dida · March 7, 2002, 14:20

Isn't the way Firaxis dealt with Civ3 even a better way of doing beta?
I meant, they release the beta version as full Retail, made $50 bucks on each copy, and release a couple patches to ease the complaints from gamers, while everyone else is doing beta testing for them, for -$50. (That is, we pay them to be their beta tester).
When WE and Firaxis finally finish debugging this game, they will release (hopefully) a playable, enjoyable Civ3, with multipiplay, and make it an Expansion. Another $30 profit right there. What a smart business practice.

I Am Jeff · March 7, 2002, 18:08

Wc3 beta will not be useless due to bnet emulation

SpencerH · March 7, 2002, 18:34

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When WE and Firaxis finally finish debugging this game, they will release (hopefully) a playable, enjoyable Civ3, with multipiplay, and make it an Expansion. Another $30 profit right there. What a smart business practice.

The only problem with this strategy is that we'd have to be completely out to lunch to put out any more money for this game! Lets face it, for those of us who've played CIV, CIVII, SMAC, and crossfire, CIV3 is a loser by comparison. I'm sure new players love CIV3 and that we're jaded, but I'll be damned if I'll pay anymore. If it wasn't for the possibility that we'd be able to re-work the entire thing with hacked editors and graphics, I'd have chucked it in the bin. They should pay us for keeping their leaking ship afloat.

Aeson · March 7, 2002, 19:38

I really don't know what people are complaining so much about. Software is always going to have bugs, thats just a fact of life. Look at games like Everquest which have had literally hundreds of patches, a few expansions, and they still have bugs. If everyone's hardware and operating system was exactly the same, then perhaps a (nearly) bug free game could be developed, but otherwise it just isn't going to happen, no matter how much beta testing there is.

Civ 3 cost what.. $30 - $60 dollars depending on where you bought it? I got the LE for $35 in November, and have gotten at least a couple hundred hours of enjoyment out of it since. A rate of just pennies per hour. $35 is a (cheap) night out on the town, dinner and a movie. I'd say that most software titles offer more enjoyment for the dollar than any other entertainment industry. That is at least if you bought your computer for a "real" reason, other than just to play games.

Andrew Cory · March 7, 2002, 19:43

Quote:

Originally posted by SpencerH

The only problem with this strategy is that we'd have to be completely out to lunch to put out any more money for this game! Lets face it, for those of us who've played CIV, CIVII, SMAC, and crossfire, CIV3 is a loser by comparison. I'm sure new players love CIV3 and that we're jaded, but I'll be damned if I'll pay anymore. If it wasn't for the possibility that we'd be able to re-work the entire thing with hacked editors and graphics, I'd have chucked it in the bin. They should pay us for keeping their leaking ship afloat.

I, personaly, have been having a hell of a lot of fun with the game, and consider it money well spent. I played CivII, SMAC, and consider Civ3 to be the best of the lot. There are some things I would like to see different, like some of the diplomacy, but all in all, this game has afforded me _hours_ of entertainment...

Hell, last semester, I wrote a paper with the theisis: College students should not be allowed to play Civ3. So in addition to hours of fun, it has also given me a nice GPA boost....

- Groucho - · March 7, 2002, 19:57

Quote:

Originally posted by SpencerH

The only problem with this strategy is that we'd have to be completely out to lunch to put out any more money for this game! Lets face it, for those of us who've played CIV, CIVII, SMAC, and crossfire, CIV3 is a loser by comparison. I'm sure new players love CIV3 and that we're jaded, but I'll be damned if I'll pay anymore. If it wasn't for the possibility that we'd be able to re-work the entire thing with hacked editors and graphics, I'd have chucked it in the bin. They should pay us for keeping their leaking ship afloat.

Why do you assume you're in the majority? Just because all the whiners post in this forum doesn't mean that the whiners outnumber the satisfied gamers. I've played most every Civ type game since Empire for dos in the 80s (remember it? the entire map was done in ascii), and CivIII and SMAC are the only ones still on my computers (SMAC for the unit workshop - CivIII for the best of a bad lot of AIs to date). So no, I am one of "us" and I don't think CivIII is a loser. ToT or CTP, now those were losers.

SpencerH · March 7, 2002, 20:39

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Why do you assume you're in the majority?

I never thought I was. I think its likely that the majority of people currently playing CIV3 have not played all the previous incarnations and for them CIV3 is a fresh exciting game.

Quote:

I don't think CivIII is a loser

I didnt say it was. I said that it was a loser in comparison to previous incarnations. CIV was (for me) a brilliantly innovative and entertaining game that I played for years. I bought a PC solely to play CIVII (I was previously only a MAC user) and consider it money well spent. SMAC/SMACX were great mods of the original concept with enough new ideas to be playable and replayable. The AI in CIV3 is the best so far and the inclusion of "culture" was an interesting twist. But even with those improvements, CIV3 feels like an unfinished product and it doesnt stack up to the previous landmark games. After less than 4 mo I'm spending more time moding the game and graphics (most of which are only possible because of the work of a few people here and at civfanatics) than playing it.

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ToT or CTP, now those were losers.

ToT and CTP were not in the same class as SMAC/SMACX but were interesting variants of CIVII for me.

Quote:

I, personaly, have been having a hell of a lot of fun with the game, and consider it money well spent. I played CivII, SMAC, and consider Civ3 to be the best of the lot. There are some things I would like to see different, like some of the diplomacy, but all in all, this game has afforded me _hours_ of entertainment...

Me too, but I wont spend any more money for a "patch". In the end discriminating our purchases is the only lever we have to get quality games like the previous versions. If the patches are free and out before warcraft III, I'll try them. If not, ces't la vie. In the meantime, I can only hope that we here can make enough changes to make it interesting again.

kimmygibler · March 7, 2002, 21:36

More patches is good. I wouldn't mind the condition of civ3 at all if they had released better patches. It's taken months of waiting between patches with no feedback at all. An example of a good patched game would be OOTP4. It was released at 5:00 last friday. The first patch was released sunday evening. Any obvious and simple problems were fixed. Further patches will likely address more complicated issues. This is somehing firaxis misses big time. I expect the simple problems to fixed immediately.