So.. What's your Beta experience

 

High points, problems... why do we enlist to these trails by fire..

 

If you had the chance, how would you run Beta's be it an MMO or a new rpg tabletop event, I wondered what other people's ideal world was ?

 

 

A normal game will have small areas and few items to break, where as MMO's have vast areas and countless items that need to be tested to destruction. 

Saying that I have never heard of a test for a table top game. my groups generally fire off story from the fly and it's that unexpectability (if that is even a word) that makes the games fun for me.

As for my ideal world, I'm not sure I would change the way it's done now. It seems to work well enough.

From the LARP game development end, I feel like it's essential to have an alpha and a beta test (at least) if you have an extensive set of rules. Always count on there being balance problems during testing--it's practically inevitable. It's also very dependent (in smaller games like LARPs and table tops vs. MMOs) on who shows up. Twenty warriors at a LARP might not make you realize that mages need nerfing until two mages roll in and take out the warriors with some fairy dust!

As a player, I feel like I'm an active part of game development. Participating in betas helped me better understand how to market a new game and how to package the final vision of it while it was still in testing phase.