pixelheals

If you follow me on twitter than you know that the tank and I received our BETA invites for Mists of Pandaria.  I won’t lie, I’m super excited to get in the game this weekend and experience it.  I’m trying to work on figuring out how to manage my time in the game so I can experience the most and offer the most feedback.

That leads me to something I want to discuss very badly, which is what being in the BETA of any game means.

Being in the BETA does not mean you are in a demo of the game.  If you’ve never been in a BETA before, here is your reality check: the BETA is not often complete, doesn’t offer all the shiny features the previews talked about and has a lot of bugs; did I mention a lot of bugs?

So why get in the BETA then?  You get in BETA to offer feedback and guidance to the design team.  No matter what game you are in the BETA for, you have a serious role to your fellow gamers and to the creators of the game.  You’ve been given an opportunity to make this game better!  You need to examine and experience as much as you can!   Pay attention to detail, check everything so you can report the bugs, and give honest reviews on content in the hopes that any issues will be fixed before the game goes live!  If the game goes live and still has issues that could have been resolved by people testing things in the BETA that is bad.  It could affect the success of the live game in a negative way, which is not good.

The amount of responsibility that comes with a BETA invite is huge, at least to me.  So don’t sell your fellow gamers short, enjoy your BETA and give the best possible feedback you can!  Let’s make our games better!