Många trodde att Blizzards media-event skulle ge oss ett startdatum för betan. Så blev inte fallet. Det sägs att den som väntar på något gott väntar aldrig för länge.

Datumet för Blizzards nästkommande conference-call är nämligen redan på onsdag den 3:e augusti. Samtalet kommer i vanlig ordning att innehålla en genomgång av företagets ekonomiska resultat men förhoppningsvis också ny information om den mycket efterlängtade Diablo 3 betan. Vi håller tummarna!

Tills dess kan vi följa diskussionen om de bakomliggande orsakerna och användarnas orosmoment för Diablo 3 betan.

Have you guys seen what’s in this thing? It’s not even a beta. I’m not flaming or trolling. I honestly don’t see the purpose behind this snippet of the game they’re releasing. What, precisely, are they actually able to test? There’s no pvp. There’s no runestones. The content will take a player about an hour. One follower, one artisan. It’s the introductory area of the game, and these are usually the areas that are the most stable and polished within any video game. The AH, yes, but they’ve had an AH in WoW for years and I don’t see how that would even need testing at this point, there’s no RMT AH (thankfully in the beta at least). This isn’t a beta, it’s a demo. What’s the point of even having a beta test, then?

We’re testing client and server stability. We want to make sure the game is running, and running well, on a wide range of systems, and the server infrastructure that runs Diablo III is completely new, so we need testing on that front as well. Quite right, we’re not necessarily looking for gameplay related testing, although we do hope to see feedback on the various systems and see what people like/don’t like from the first few hours of play time.

Also… we wanted to the spoilers to a minimum, and they’re there, up front and center in Act 1 after the Skeleton King. So that’s where we cut it off.

Don’t you guys have QA labs just for this purpose?  It just seems to me that you don’t even need to test this game, really. I can’t imagine how long it will go, can’t be very long at all, because you aren’t exactly new to the online game scene. All of this stuff in D3, it’s been done before by Blizzard and it’s down to as close to a science as it’s going to get.  Is this going to be a very open beta, like SC2, at least?

We have a huge and talented QA department just for purposes like these, yes, but it’s still no comparison to thousands and thousands of players hammering the system. We can run simulations to see what breaks just from over-crowding, but it’s ultimately no comparison to real players testing the system. 

But we also do want player feedback on systems and how the game feels and plays for the content that’s available. The first few hours are the most crucial for any game, so we definitely want to make sure we get them right. 

This will be the most limited beta in recent memory, and because of of how new the back end is, we expect it to be the most unstable as well.

Klicka här för att komma till Blizzards officiella FAQ för betan.