Beta duration is unacceptably brief for a pre-order perk (Destiny)

by kapowaz, Wednesday, July 09, 2014, 09:57 (3799 days ago) @ Claude Errera

I cited lots of different types of games actually Claude; maybe you should go re-read. Fixating on WoW and then repeating the same tired refrain 'Destiny is not an MMO' is a pretty weak straw man.

It's not like Guild Wars or Diablo III, either. Did I miss any other titles you mentioned?

I didn't cite examples of other games with open betas based on whether or not they are ‘like Destiny’; clearly there aren't that many games that are like Destiny (although one that comes to mind that I didn't mention is Planetside 2, which had a 3-month long beta). Even so, most of those games I mentioned share an awful lot of mechanics with Destiny.

In any event, the point of citing all these other games is to demonstrate what is likely to be the popularly perceived manner in which a public beta to an online-only, persistent-world game would play out. All of these games roughly match that description (except, interestingly enough, Halo 3 and Reach). So, if you take a game like World of Warcraft (or one of its expansions) with an 8-month beta as representing one end of the scale, and then Halo Reach, with its 2 and a bit week beta as another end of the scale, roughly where on this scale would you choose to put Destiny, based on the scope of the game and its similarity to others on that scale?

I think most people would say somewhere in the middle. Towards which end is debatable, but I'd argue that — particularly given the game has a much bigger scope than either Halo 3 or Reach — it would not be closer to the shorter end of the scale. What has actually happened is the beta is even shorter than the shortest example in the list. I'm fairly certain that's unprecedented for any video game with a public beta.

This fixation of ‘Destiny is not an MMO’ is a red herring; the game shares lots of mechanics with many MMOs, even if Bungie is clearly concerned that using that term might send the wrong kind of signals to their target audience. This seems by far the most plausible reason why they've done it; witness Cody's hostility above to a game he has never played, for example. Let's not cloud the issue here: the ‘beta’ is short, shorter than most would reasonably expect, and shorter than is probably necessary for it to even be considered a beta rather than a pre-release demo. That is the point I was making in the first place, and I'm puzzled why this is considered a controversial statement given all the above.