New Beta Invites Sent Out

When I saw the announcement of the new beta invites going out of course there was some hope that maybe I would get one.  It would surely put my new toy, wildstar, in the backseat if I did get one.  While reading over the post on MMO-C that basically went like "woohoo I got in" and "still no beta for me" they seemed to come to some sort of an idea about who these new invites might be aimed at.

After the first few pages it became clear that everyone that was getting the invite seemed to be 14/14 heroic and those that did not were not.  Of course there were a few people who immediately decided to complain about how "it is unfair to give it to only the top players".

I wish to disagree.  There are some very good reasons to give the beta to people that are 14/14 heroic and the first and foremost one is that maybe they plan to release the raids for testing.  Like it or not the people that are 14/14 heroic and have been so for some time are the best raiders and as such as the best people to be around to test it, don't you think?  So how exactly is that unfair.

If you want to test something wouldn't it make the most sense to have the people testing it that have the most invested in it.  These are the people that will bust their asses and raid 20 hours a week when content comes out to try an get it done as fast as possible.  These are the people who have been doing the heroic raids and know what works and what doesn't.  These are the people that will, and do, take advantage of every bug they can get control over to get the quicker kill.  These are the people that will find those bugs they can abuse or think of strategies that the developers never thought of just so they can down the boss.  I don't care what anyone says, but if I wanted to have someone test my raiding design I would want it to be the people that know about raiding most and those people would be the people that have cleared all current raids.

Add to that the fact that it is quite possible that many of these 14/14 heroic raiders are bored off their asses now.  Many of the people saying they got invites said that they were unsubscribed and had been for a long time.  This is also a smart move on blizzards part to invite these people.  Not only are they valuable testers if they are going to start some raid testing soon but they are people that are getting antsy with the game, even more than people like you and I, and you know we are about as sick of SoO as can be.

So sending these people invites gets them interested again in the game and as long as they are interested in the game they will be playing it and not looking at other options, like I have been looking at wildstar myself.  Leveling three characters now, and even if I like it, I am not doing so because I want to but more so because there is nothing worth doing in warcraft.

Anything that blizzard can do to stop some of the bleeding, like sending all those hardcore players invites so they can get into beta instead of maybe, just maybe, getting caught up in the hardcore design of wildstar where they could very well loose these people too thanks to the lack of content, would be a good thing for the game.

But even for those people that are not 14/14 heroic and have not received an invite.  Don't be jealous over the fact someone else got an invite and you didn't, be happy that they are inviting raiders with the intention of having them do raid testing.  Why?  Because when raid testing starts that means the expansion is that much closer, because that is usually the biggest thing to test and it is usually the last thing to test.  If they are really trying to get all these raiders in by the 27th and maybe when they open raid testing on the 27th, it could be a sign, a very good sign, that we are getting closer to the tail end of the long wait between expansion and we might be seeing a solid release date some time in the future, sooner than later.

And as a side note to all the people complaining about all the 14/14 heroic people getting invites.  Stop your bitching.  I am 14/14 heroic and I have not received an invite either.  It just so happened that "some" 14/14 heroic players got invited this time around.  Not all of them.  I would not be surprised if they where people with many clears under their belts and not just a few here and there like me.  So just because you killed garrosh in heroic is not a free pass to the beta.  No need to say they are playing favoritism because they are not.  They are playing smart and they are inviting raiders to test the raiding.  There is nothing wrong with that and there is nothing worth complaining about.

Lets hope for the best case scenario and that would be raid testing is opening soon, and 6.0 might not be very far behind now and a solid release date to follow.  Sending invites to all those hard core raiders should be something a casual player is excited about, not jealous about because we did not get one.  As always, just my opinion of course.