For these reasons, testers are often reminded for much of the beta that the full picture has not yet been revealed, both in terms of tweaks to existing features and the addition of entirely new ones, with testers and indeed players without access to the beta, reading reports on its development, otherwise wont to get an inaccurate picture of the state of the expansion. Major features and systems are sometimes only added late in the beta, and more trivial aspects such as terrain detailing and critter spawning often come only near the end of the beta. For example, expansion betas usually start with players only able to access the starting zone/s for the new expansion, with further zones slowly added over weeks or months. Betas offer not only the chance to experience content and systems as they will never again exist, but the opportunity to gain a glimpse into the minds of the developers, as they iterate through possible models for the coming release.Īccess to features and content within a beta typically expands from a very limited starting point, until full (or nearly full) access to all planned features is available. This process lies at the heart of what a beta is: an opportunity to test ideas not merely in the small, internal laboratory of the developers' own experience, but in the wider world of a diverse population of players, with dozens of different approaches to playing the game, and thousands of different opinions as to the merit of the latest changes. The developers often use betas to try out outlandish new ideas, often expressly warning testers that the changes may well be bad ones. New abilities may be introduced, found wanting, and removed, without ever seeing release while others may see a striking range of possible implementations before a final model is settled upon. This often makes betas a very exciting time to be playing a game, with testers able to experience new features and explore new content months ahead of other players.Īs well as providing an advanced preview of the game as it will be released, betas typically see extensive changes and developments, often including repeated iterations of major features, reworking and remodeling of zones and instances, and myriad tweaks and adjustments to player abilities. Open betas serve the dual purpose of demonstrating a product to potential consumers, and testing among an extremely wide user base likely to bring to light obscure errors that a much smaller testing team might not find.īetas (and in a few cases alphas) represent the earliest opportunity for players outside the development team and a handful of selected "friends and family" to experience a game or expansion.
Open beta For more information, see Open Beta at wikipedia.
These stages are semi-formal within the software industry, so "your results may vary".Ī close beta version is one released to a select group for the same purpose, and is often preferred for commercial packages, so that a free beta does not become publicly available, allowing customers to evade the purchase of the product. The stage before alpha some call "Pre-Alpha", "Proof of Concept", or "Prototype".
Sometimes major changes occur in this stage, but usually only in response to feedback during a beta trial.īeta, of course, comes after the alpha stage where major feature implementation usually occurs, is known to be unstable, and not generally fit for anything more than internal trial of carefully selected users. In terms of the software development, beta is usually the stage where all major feature implementation should be finished and the software is in the phase of bug fixing, refinement and stabilization before declaring a Final or Release candidate (sometimes called "Gold" as well). 16 World of Warcraft: Burning Crusade Classic.