Guild Wars 2

I see so many people speculating on when the release date will be, or wondering what stage of production level that HoT is at right now. Well let me point you in the right direction:

http://www.centercode.com/blog/2011/01/alpha-vs-beta-testing/

The link above explains fairly well the differences between alpha and beta testing. In short, the game is currently in Beta testing phase, which means that it is currently completely built, and has been tweaked many times over. There will still be some bugs, there will be stress tests, but for the most part, the game is complete.

As someone who has not had any experience on the production side of the gaming industry but has been very involved in the production side of other ventures that are artistic in nature and require very careful attention to detail, I can say that even though it is “complete,” there are still many small details to focus on to get right so that the final product is something that can be released without needing an extensive amount of revisions or updates.

Remember that they are releasing this for use by millions of people, each with a different computer/set up. A bug that appears on my computer may not show on yours, and figuring out how to fix that from a developer side while still delivering the desired product is not an easy task.

Hopefully this tidbit clears up a little misconception about the state of the expansion. As with the release of the game, I would expect them to do a few stress tests, one every month or so, and the game would be released a couple of months after. I’d expect a late summer/fall release at the earliest.

Fwiw, back in 2012, there were beta weekends in April, May, June and July (iirc). The game released late August. Now, we’ve got beta in May, so draw your own conclusions. I just doubt HoT is as big as the entire game was.

IndigoSundown.5419:

I just doubt HoT is as big as the entire game was.

It certainly won’t be, and I don’t think Anet is even advertising for that.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Fwiw, back in 2012, there were beta weekends in April, May, June and July (iirc). The game released late August. Now, we’ve got beta in May, so draw your own conclusions. I just doubt HoT is as big as the entire game was.

That’s true, it certainly won’t be as big. But they’re still implementing new mechanics that must be checked countless times over. At this stage, the size of the game doesn’t matter so much. The size really matters in the production time before you get to alpha. It’s bugs and polishing now, which you can conclude that it’s smaller so there will be fewer bugs to fix, but do you remember how many bugs were shipped with the game? I doubt they’ll want that to happen again.

Then again, this Beta is different than the Betas before the original release were. Perhaps they decided on a model that they believe will benefit them the best and get the game to us sooner by shotgunning these three short tests back to back. We won’t know til they announce something.