How Fast do these betas usually go?

[Kungfu Joe]

So, the beta is slated to (hopefully) start Monday or Tuesday. I wasn't a PS1 vet (but I did get a key from Twitter), so I'm guessing I won't be among the first wave.

Based on general heuristics and personal experience, how fast do these betas usually move? How frequently will more waves be added?

Yes, this thread is speculation (seeing as how I can't very well directly ask the question). Why bother with the speculation? Because it makes me feel better. I'm so insanely excited for this game that it's not even funny (ok, maybe a little).

My guess? Well, if everything goes relatively well throughout the beta (which it most assuredly will not...that's the point of a beta), I would guess new waves once a week. I would postulate that half of the purpose of this beta is to stress-test the servers...so, after a given week, if things aren't completely borked, I'd think they'd want to up the numbers to really pile on the stress.

Thoughts?

[Emperor]

Beta times vary depending on the game and what the dev team is looking to get out of it. We've heard this will be an actual beta, not a marketing promotion labeled as a beta, which seems to imply it won't be as short.

[Kungfu Joe]

Originally Posted by Emperor

Beta times vary depending on the game and what the dev team is looking to get out of it. We've heard this will be an actual beta, not a marketing promotion labeled as a beta, which seems to imply it won't be as short.

I've heard this as well, and have participated in a couple. Slow moving is fine. I just hope they ramp up the player count pretty fast (and have a good bug-reporting system)

[Sephirex]

Tech test invites rolled out pretty quickly and from what I'm hearing they want to roll out Vet and Key invites even faster.

I'm betting invites every day or two if thing's are running smoothly.
Once all the vets and keys are in, it might die down to once a week.

[Hosp]

Depends entirely on the game. I'd say an average multi-player FPS closed beta is about 1-2 months. But that's just speculation from the Betas I've been in.

[SpcFarlen]

According to SOE "soon" means 8 weeks. So...

[The Degenatron]

I think that within the first two weeks they will want to be up to their 2000 player limit on the first "live" server. Since not all players are on at once, you can expect that means somewhere between 2500~4000 players activated depending on participation.

Once they start hitting their pop limits on the first server, they may want to bring a second and third server online to test load balancing on the login server. Then they'll bring the population up on those servers as well.

Also keep in mind that they will likely mirror this on the European servers as well.

So I'm guessing that within the first two months they should be up to around 10,000 active players in the US and another 10,000 in Europe.

[dafuq]

natural selection 2 - in beta for almost 2 years now pre ordered it 2010 december

[The Degenatron]

Originally Posted by dafuq

natural selection 2 - in beta for almost 2 years now pre ordered it 2010 december

Pffft - I rage quit NS when they refused to direct port NS1 to the source engine. I understood they wanted to do things not possible in Source with NS2, but I just wanted NS1 in Source for better effects and mapping options.

All that said, could you imagine NS in Forgelight? 1000 marines vs 1000 Kharaa on a huge 64 square km base? You could do an entire Hadley's Hope scenario.

[Bittermen]

Originally Posted by dafuq

natural selection 2 - in beta for almost 2 years now pre ordered it 2010 december

Hell yea... What name do you play under?

[Shogun]

the first waves will do some hardcore testing for sure to squish the worst bugs and complete gamesystems that are glitched or not ready yet.
no idea how long this will take.

if there are no problems regarding the population, they will scale up.
but i am sure when it comes to balancing, they want to go with full servers!

my hope is, that the servers are stable enough to master the first waves and soe starts to scale up immediately.
but i am really looking forward to test out specific things for the devs and get into situations we will never experience after release. like everybody on the map using a tank ;-)

[Coreldan]

Well, they will be doing schedule test sessions that help with this, but generally speaking if you are talking about 2k people online at the same time, you are looking at approximately 20-25k active players in the pool, since not everyone is online at the same time.

However by gating the testing schedules, they will achieve higher number of concurrent users with smaller pool, the above theory is a bit more so for 24/7 testing.

[Harasus]

Pure speculation, of course, but a month to get all the invites sent out, and then 2 months of beta after that?

[BlueSkies]

it'll probably last a few months. that said, I am sure this conversation will pop up after launch:

DbagSupreme: I can't believe I'm paying to beta this game!!1!!1
Random: dude... its f2p
DbagSupreme: shut up!

[Papscal]

Once a mmo thats uses a persistent on going world and map reaches beta, it never leaves beta. If its going to be properly maintained that is.