Guild Wars 2

so i pre-ordered HoT because we were told we would get to try the beta tests. i didn’t get to try the new wvw borderland. whats up with that?

Because ANet called it a stress test instead of a beta.

I can see why ANet limited this stress test in size; on the other hand, I can see how many could feel that they are a victim of a “bait and switch”.

It can’t be seen as bait and switch. The only beta events promised to those that pre-purchase are weekend events.

https://help.guildwars2.com/entries/94582027-Heart-of-Thorns-Pre-Purchase-FAQ

Everyone who pre-purchases Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns (whether via buy.guildwars2.com, official retail partners, or in-game) will receive access to all Beta Weekend Events

The WvW event was not a Beta Weekend Event. It makes sense in early testing of WvW to have an invite only based on those that have played WvW regularly. It would not make sense to open it up to everyone and have a bunch of players that mostly play PvE roaming around in WvW that can’t give good feedback because they know little about WvW.

Perhaps there will be a future Beta Weekend Event that includes WvW for everyone interested. In that case, yes all pre-purchasers should have access.

if it’s a stress test then the whole idea of that is to invite as many players as possible, only inviting a small group doesn’t stress the server as much as it should.

sorudo.9054:

if it’s a stress test then the whole idea of that is to invite as many players as possible, only inviting a small group doesn’t stress the server as much as it should.

But inviting potentially millions of people is also completely pointless, since all that would do would be the make the vast majority of people sit around in the lobby for the duration of the test.

While they indeed need many people, they also need to control the exact amount of people that can potentially join. And unless they stop pre-purchase again, that can’t really happen.

lordkrall.7241:

sorudo.9054:

if it’s a stress test then the whole idea of that is to invite as many players as possible, only inviting a small group doesn’t stress the server as much as it should.

But inviting potentially millions of people is also completely pointless, since all that would do would be the make the vast majority of people sit around in the lobby for the duration of the test.

While they indeed need many people, they also need to control the exact amount of people that can potentially join. And unless they stop pre-purchase again, that can’t really happen.

a stress test isn’t “let’s invite only the X players that play this mode”, a stress test is “let’s invite a sh*tload of players to stress the servers”.
what you are saying is that only that small group should join, resulting in an underpopulated server, the exact thing a stress test should never ever have.

beta test=play the game
stress test=pump the servers full of players regardless of activity.

sorudo.9054:

a stress test isn’t “let’s invite only the X players that play this mode”, a stress test is “let’s invite a sh*tload of players to stress the servers”.
what you are saying is that only that small group should join, resulting in an underpopulated server, the exact thing a stress test should never ever have.

beta test=play the game
stress test=pump the servers full of players regardless of activity.

Yeah. I suppose that multiple hour long queues on all three maps suggests that it is not enough people invited…..

Inviting everyone in the whole world would be pointless, since if they just ignored the map caps (which would be required if they were to get even half the people to play) they would destroy the whole server within 2 minutes and thus making the test completely pointless.

sorudo.9054:

lordkrall.7241:

sorudo.9054:

if it’s a stress test then the whole idea of that is to invite as many players as possible, only inviting a small group doesn’t stress the server as much as it should.

But inviting potentially millions of people is also completely pointless, since all that would do would be the make the vast majority of people sit around in the lobby for the duration of the test.

While they indeed need many people, they also need to control the exact amount of people that can potentially join. And unless they stop pre-purchase again, that can’t really happen.

a stress test isn’t “let’s invite only the X players that play this mode”, a stress test is “let’s invite a sh*tload of players to stress the servers”.
what you are saying is that only that small group should join, resulting in an underpopulated server, the exact thing a stress test should never ever have.

beta test=play the game
stress test=pump the servers full of players regardless of activity.

But a WvW stress test is completely 100% different, because of the severe limitations in player numbers that WvW requires to test.

If each 3 servers can only have 100 people then you only need 300 people to absolutely fill the server for testing. There are no overflows for WvW. There’s no mega server.

So you can stress test it with the maximum number of people it can take.

You can try Verdant Brink, the Elite Specializations, new Map Rewards, Stronghold, etc. next weekend!

Good luck.