[US] - News from the Front: Aegis of the Oathbearers

[checkthis5000]

Originally Posted by darichughes

I disagree, I didn't pay the extra money to only play 3 weeks while everyone else play for months. I guarantee that 90% of the CE orders are people who have been trying to get in since '07. I just think if your going to take the fair route, money i payed to get into beta was hard work. The effort people getting in to closed beta by just signing up, took no effort.

Actually you can't just blanket statement the effort that the people in closed beta did. Some went to every convention, got every code, made some artwork, signed up the first day, played DAoC way back when, and who knows what else just to have the best chance of getting in.

All we did preordering the CE was send them some money. If you want to be technical about it, we didn't pay for beta access. We paid for an artbook, miniature, and graphic novel along with the game.

If we take average values. The Artbook alone would probably be worth 20 bucks, the miniature I know would be worth 15, and the graphic novel another 5-10 (we'll say 5).

The game would sell on it's own for 50 bucks, and I paid 80 for my CE preorder, so technically I got 90 dollars (on the low end) of value for 80 dollars. The open beta access, and headstart program is just icing on the cake.

The people in closed beta have done a hell of a lot more work than any of us to get in. Well a lot of them have. There are the lucky that got in as soon as they filled out the application.

So no you didn't pay the extra money to get in 3 weeks early, you paid the extra money for the extra in-game and RL items in the box, and they graciously handed you 3 weeks of closed beta access and the headstart program.

[Falkori]

Originally Posted by checkthis5000

Actually you can't just blanket statement the effort that the people in closed beta did. Some went to every convention, got every code, made some artwork, signed up the first day, played DAoC way back when, and who knows what else just to have the best chance of getting in.

All we did preordering the CE was send them some money. If you want to be technical about it, we didn't pay for beta access. We paid for an artbook, miniature, and graphic novel along with the game.

If we take average values. The Artbook alone would probably be worth 20 bucks, the miniature I know would be worth 15, and the graphic novel another 5-10 (we'll say 5).

The game would sell on it's own for 50 bucks, and I paid 80 for my CE preorder, so technically I got 90 dollars (on the low end) of value for 80 dollars. The open beta access, and headstart program is just icing on the cake.

The people in closed beta have done a hell of a lot more work than any of us to get in. Well a lot of them have. There are the lucky that got in as soon as they filled out the application.

So no you didn't pay the extra money to get in 3 weeks early, you paid the extra money for the extra in-game and RL items in the box, and they graciously handed you 3 weeks of closed beta access and the headstart program.

I've been a newsletter subscriber since the 3rd or 4th one. I was in the Camelot closed beta within the first month, yea I started with Alb, then Mid, then Hib and played the game for 3 years. My system spec's are above what this game will take and I still have not been invited for over a year.

You can't say one group of people deserves the spot over another. You have a group people who just filled out a form and only check their email box everyday and others who are already invested in the game with real world $$. Yes, the guild beta will bring a form of testing that only it can bring, and so will the Open Closed Pre-Order CE beta.

The guild beta will flush out smaller bugs with in the guild system. That will be the majority of their testing. Testing how the guild system will integrate with PvE and RvR on a greater scale than what is being done now.

The open closed beta for the pre-order CE will test the RvR system to nearly its fullest. Right now the beta is focused on racial pairings, one at a time and/or one tier at a time. Open closed beta won't be that focused. It will test multiple pairings across multiple tiers, on multiple servers. Guild beta won't and can't do that, just not enough numbers.

[Fester Addams]

Originally Posted by darichughes

I disagree, I didn't pay the extra money to only play 3 weeks while everyone else play for months. I guarantee that 90% of the CE orders are people who have been trying to get in since '07. I just think if your going to take the fair route, money i payed to get into beta was hard work. The effort people getting in to closed beta by just signing up, took no effort.

Bah!
I have a CE and signed upp for the BETA the day they opened the BETA signup and I have not been invited but that is how things are.

I read the first newsletter back in 2005 and before that had the site bookmarked basically the day it was created.

In fact I was closelly following the earlier atempt for a warhammer MMO that they discontinued at about the time of WoW's release.

I have been a warhammer fan for almost 20 years.

I and many with me dont care about open BETA.

Sure it will be fun to get in but why would you want a prolonged open BETA?

I want the open BETA to only take as long as is needed before it is closed down and the real game opens upp.

Open BETA is just a prelude, there WILL be a wipe after it and I for one would hate to have real feelings for my char at the end of it.

I see open BETA mostly as a time to network, get to know players, try to find people I would like to be on the same server as or start a guild with and naturally learn the basics of the game.

One week, sounds a tad short as I work and wont be able to get all that many hours in.

Two weeks, I could get some decent playing in, get to know a few people and maby make some decitions.

Three weeks, in all probability more than enough, any longer than this and it will be painfull to move over into the live game head start.

Open beta have always been and in all probability will always be short, I dont think I have ever seen an open beta that went on longer than 3 weeks (well Conan dont count, I still have access to my technical BETA account in there).

[rickochet]

Last I heard, all toons from OB are being kept.

[Fester Addams]

Originally Posted by rickochet

Last I heard, all toons from OB are being kept.

Link please.

Whats the point of a head start key if the open BETA chars will be kept?

I have yet to hear of a game that has allowed open beta chars to move into the real game however head start addmittance is becoming more and more common and that may be what you have heard will be kept.

[James_EAMythic]

Originally Posted by rickochet

Last I heard, all toons from OB are being kept.

I'd check your sources friend as that's not part of the current plan

[Sionn]

They let everyone from the preorder open beta keep their characters in LoTRO. All of us had a month headstart. The level cap was 15, but you had lots of time to level multiple characters to 15, and master your crafts, if you could do the quests. In that time, you could also bank completd quests for turn ins after the level cap was removed. It also got me out of the starter areas for when the horde of newbs arrived.

[SKYeXile]

Originally Posted by rickochet

Last I heard, all toons from OB are being kept.

kept on a removable hard drive that is stored between two electromagnets that happens to be inside of car crusher filled with with molten lava maybe.

[beowulfhuntr]

Originally Posted by SKYeXile

kept on a removable hard drive that is stored between two electromagnets that happen to be inside of car crusher filled with with molten lava maybe.

haha good example.

[Fester Addams]

Originally Posted by Sionn

They let everyone from the preorder open beta keep their characters in LoTRO. All of us had a month headstart. The level cap was 15, but you had lots of time to level multiple characters to 15, and master your crafts, if you could do the quests. In that time, you could also bank completd quests for turn ins after the level cap was removed. It also got me out of the starter areas for when the horde of newbs arrived.

I had not heard that... but then did they from the start make the case that pre order open BETA chars were actually doinmg a head start or was that somthing they just blurted out towards the end?

Hmmmm... actually you have already answered this, it was a head start with a lev cap for all the preorders.

Odd tough as this would meen all players in the open BETA in LoTRO were capped to lev 15... ,what was max? 80?

[Senwan]

I was lookin at my beta center account the other day, celebrated my 1 year anniversary of being signed up for the beta!

I had cake.

[TickTock]

Originally Posted by Senwan

I was lookin at my beta center account the other day, celebrated my 1 year anniversary of being signed up for the beta!

I had cake.

What kind of cake?

[|MA|Kroy]

An MMO without guilds is like a cake with no lie. An MMO beta without beta guilds is madness. The closed beta has been in operation for over a year and it'd be the first MMO-beta I'd ever heard of which managed to get this far without introducing guild systems, and finding some "dedicated" testers to put the systems through its paces.

What we'll see with guild-beta is a step-up in the ferocity of the battles and with it, the opportunity for the devs to gather metrics related to balance and glitches, resulting in the kind of tweaks and polish required to lead us nicely in to open beta.

No doubt that ALL the guilds who have received invites to WAR-guild beta AND show up en-masse will be highly motivated, coordinated and 100% dedicated to getting WAR ready. I'm thinking it likely that only 50% of the guilds invited will show up given how much water is under the bridge since the initial announcement.

I hope other guilds are given opportunity to take the place of those who don't make it.

[Wazdakka]

A thoughtful, well-written application may have been a factor in getting into the closed beta a year ago instead of waiting forever. I know it was a short form, but saying something concise about why you want to help the game succeed and why you'd be good for that might have mattered.

[checkthis5000]

Originally Posted by Fester Addams

I had not heard that... but then did they from the start make the case that pre order open BETA chars were actually doinmg a head start or was that somthing they just blurted out towards the end?

Hmmmm... actually you have already answered this, it was a head start with a lev cap for all the preorders.

Odd tough as this would meen all players in the open BETA in LoTRO were capped to lev 15... ,what was max? 80?

Max is 50. So they got a little less than the first third of the game. I think it's a really smart idea to level cap the Early Access/Head Start people so that you don't get people blowing through the content and releasing information about it.

It makes for more discovery upon release, and for a game like LoTRO that's entirely centered around the content and questing, that would be a very important selling point.