Do betas affect your enjoyment at launch?

"Everyday we take the Massive daily posts and bring them to Dragoon discussions. We would like to thank Massively for their original content."

MMO betas get a lot of press these days, and whether you feel they've devolved into pre-release marketing campaigns or are serving their original testing purposes, one thing almost everyone can agree on is that open betas (and even some late-stage closed betas) offer a pretty accurate representation of the game you'll be playing at release.

This can lead to premature burnout (or at the very least, a bit of boredom once the game goes live), and this phenomenon is particularly noticeable if you play a lot of themepark games where there's a very definite character progression path and an optimum route from zone to zone.

Titles like RIFT can build a lot of positive buzz by inviting tire-kickers in to "test" early and often, but the strategy could conceivably backfire if folks feel they've played their fill prior to release. What about you Massively folk? Do you scale back your beta activities so as not to spoil a game's launch, or do you go all out and play a beta as you would a live game?

TH

After playing many Betas it's a yes from me, always takes the fun out of launch day, but betas are seen as elitist groups to belong too. Remember the complete noob MxO players that would brag they were in beta four years on.

TH