Beta Testing

My husband and I enjoy online games, also known as MMO's. We had the opportunity to beta test a new game that was launched to a limited audience last Friday night and to the public on Nov. 1st. I was not able to post regarding the testing prior to the launch because of the non-disclosure agreements all beta testers must agree to.

The game we tested is called City of Villains (CoV). It is the counter-part to City of Heroes (CoH), launched about a year and a half ago. CoH allows you to play a superhero character and CoV allows you to play a super villain. A big change with the release of the CoV game is the addition of player vs player capability for both games. One of the main draws to both games is the ability to customize the look of your characters. In the pictures above you can see one character, Renegade Army, dressed as a mercenary, and another with a robotic body. When CoH was first launched many players spent hours creating different characters, exploring all the various options, before spending any time in the actual game.

I found the experience interesting (this is not my first beta test experience). I first started as a beta tester after the product had been in the testing phase for a few months already. Many of the features of the game were disabled. There were two goals that we were given:

1. provide feadback as new features were enabled.
2. all logon at the same time to test the load capability of the game.

Addressing the second first, we managed to crash the game frequently. At times movement within the game was like moving through quicksand as the server struggled to keep up. The game developers were sneaky about getting us to all log on at the same time. The game was only available for two hours each day, so we all dutifully dropped everything at 4:00pm to logon each day (or as soon as we got home).

Providing feedback was important to help the developers perform their final tweaking and adjustments. Many of the beta testers only complained about what they didn't like. Then when the programmers would make a change, more people would complain about the change saying that they liked it the old way. As beta testers we were constantly reminded that we needed to provide complete feedback, what we liked, what we didn't like, what worked well and what was broken. They were also interested in game balance. They monitored what type of characters players chose to play and added or modified abilities to better balance the character types.

Just a month before the game launch we (us testers) were concerned that the game would not be ready. A huge amount of changes adn additions were implemented in the last two weeks before launch. It makes me wonder how many programmers went without sleep that last week.