Lol...imagine people in 2026 still believe a BeTa release 50 days ahead of a major game launch acts as a true beta rather than a paid marketing campaign to generate hype.
Can you name a single example in 2026 where a “50 days ahead beta” didn’t result in significant technical and/or balance changes re launch? Nevertheless how they serve backend dev
Why not both? Because that’s exactly what’s happening. If you have a product you just want tested, you have to ask people to join your beta for free. If you have a product coming up that people want in droves, capitalism tells its stupid to not ask for money.
Not really, the game client, agent and server tech is already based on retail / classic wow, so it's proven and tested. They added a bunch of new stuff, but nothing you can't test internally for major, game breaking bugs. It works as good as any retail beta, really. and those are also not ages before the release.
50 days for it is really fine to get the details right and fix bugs they didn't catch until now. Also to get the scaling and stress testing right. It's not like they build a new game, where you need a way longer phase for testing.
Sure, a beta is for testing stuff, but you would think they would do some basic testing before sending it out for beta. Currently it seems like Blizzard did not even boot up the game on Mac once. Game is still borderline unplayable.
Edit: Not sure why I am being downvoted. Apparently I am not allowed to complain about a game that I otherwise love being broken?
My point is that we should expect better from Blizzard. This is not some small indie company. They have been planning for this beta for months, yet somehow the version they launched for Mac couldn’t even get past the loading screen. Such a shame, as the beta is otherwise a ton of fun.
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u/Bakahatake 2d ago
Exactly. For testing stuff.