How does a game company decide to come out of Beta?
I think it's when they just get so sick of the bitching and whining about every damn thing they try to do, they finally just throw their arms up and say 'screw it, they get what they get.'
I'd say we're getting annoying enough it must be soon!
The game waddles around getting bigger and bigger until it's water breaks.
(true story - in childbirthing class we were given this advice. "if you are full term and you are going to the grocery store, go to the pickle aisle first thing and grab a large jar of pickles. Then, if your water breaks while you are in the store, just drop the pickles.)
and how does a male walruz give birth anyway? maybe I dont want to know...
ok as far as TS and beta this is actually beta II, we went from being in open signups to closed beta II, for quite some time. I'd never seen that before.
so, when is TS done? when its done. its sort of like chili, but not like pickles or babby. maybe its like babby, im not sure.
also- when its done we will have burritos and onion rings and thick frosty milkshakes and doughnuts too. yummy doughnuts w/ sparklies.
Dys: if that were the case, no game would ever come out of beta, it would just suddenly close shop. Blizzard's got 10 million players and apparently they can never do anything right, ever. ;)
Having played almost every MMO that released in this millennium, I have learned that the real excuse for bugs is that it's easy for there to be unintended consequences when there's millions of lines of code. With every content release there will be bugs that did not get uncovered on their test server because there will be thousands of more people doing things in ways the company did not anticipate. Games with yearly budgets well into 9 figures still have bugs with new content.
In other words, beta isn't an excuse for bugs because bugs need no excuse. Beta is an excuse for which bugs they fix and how quickly. What separates one online game from another is not the presence or absence of bugs but how, and if, they respond to them.
In the company I am in, the time the beta ends, is when we run out of money :)
Seriously, a game is out of beta when the company starts to be happy with the product, if the game starts making sense, and feels " completed " even tho it will never be.
Once its fun, it can go to public/out of beta and be advertised to let people come in.
@glassy: Let's not be toooo hasty. And I don't want to hold up Innie as a canary in our collective coalmine. My remark was intended to be a bit jokey, and light-hearted.
So should we keep an eye out for stoot carrying jars of pickles in game?
I'm sure Stoot is already carrying around pickles in his bags. We'll know that the game is close to release when their Twitter account sends a tweet reading "Stoot has dropped the pickles!"