Next wave of Mists beta invites?

As soon as we're ready to invite more people to test the beta, we'll let you know as we have with previous waves. :)

It just wouldn't be very helpful if we made an advanced warning announcement that an advanced warning announcement will be coming soon. 'Cause then people would be asking for hints as to when the warning about the warning is coming. Pretty soon they'll want clues about the hints about the warning warning to come before the announced announcement.

04/18/2012 04:33 PMPosted by Huralen

well, it's now exactly 7 days since the last wave... would be nice at least to have an announcement if they are skipping this week completely or just delayed a day.

It's not a good idea to look at it that way since we're not sticking to an invite schedule. We invite large chunks of Annual Pass holders, then we give it a while to monitor realm stability and population. Each wave of invites has a varied impact on the beta test. We can't know in advance how many of the people invited will start playing right away (if at all), or how often they'll all play, etc.

Once things start to stabilize after invites are sent out and we see more predictable statistics, we'll set up another wave and start inviting more people. It isn't an exact science, which also means it's not very feasible for us to be transparent about every step of the process between waves of invites being sent.

There are a few simple goals with beta:

- Get plenty of people testing all the new content/features so we get solid feedback, as well as address bugs and crashes

- Get the remaining Annual Pass holders in as quickly as possible so they're given what they've been guaranteed

- Make sure the environment is stable enough that we can accomplish the first two goals

Having said all of that, I just want to try and drive the point home that you'll virtually never get an adequate answer when you ask us when another wave of beta invites will be going out. The community team will be notified once the developers and producers are prepared to invite more people. We get the messaging together, localize it as needed, and post as soon as we get the green light. There's virtually no point in that process where publicly providing estimates on when the next wave is coming will be useful, as that whole process generally happens within a matter of hours (not days or weeks).

Aside from being unable to get everyone into the beta myself, I hope this info helps a bit. :)

04/18/2012 05:40 PMPosted by Beriana

Semi-ontopic are there any plans to add more beta servers?

They've never planned to do that! Those realms are the exact same realms that hosted the Cataclsysm beta, they never planned to add any more. Their plan is that, due to instability and lag most people eventually lose interest thus allowing them to send the next wave. In the event that not enough people lose interest in a timely fashion, they will delay invitations until that happens. If, by the end of the time they had allocated for the beta, there are still people left to invite, they will invite everyone who was left behind and claim fulfillment to their part of the agreement, and if by then the realms remain unstable and unplayable the fanboys will sing at their tune and claim that Blizzard did what we asked for and we are still complaining.

Despite our entitlement, we are still regarded as assets that can be used and disposed of whenever they wish, not customers.

Wowser. I know we're living in the same world-space, but I feel strongly we're viewing it through vastly different lenses. And you certainly know how to paint it bleak, my friend.

this to me says 'we'll get in whatever we want, and the rest can wait til the last week so they cant !@#$% about not getting in'

That's strange. To me it said, "We're working hard to get the remaining Annual Pass holders in as quickly as possible so they're given what they've been guaranteed."

<3