Clans invited to play beta early! [Unconstructive whining will be deleted]

[Anderz]

NO ONE IS IN BETA YET.

Clarification from Higby via Reddit:

First platoon isn't a beta invite, it's a forum for outfit / clan and community leaders to interact and give feedback to the dev team. Beta hasn't started yet except for a few internal SOEw teams. We will of course be starting beta small and expanding out once we can handle the load for each group, we'll be adding ps1 vets and priority beta key accounts first, as we've been pretty open about. There will be different phases, you may very well have a friend in beta when you aren't yet. This isn't an exclusivity thing. We have to ramp up like this rather than just inviting 50,000 people in one day and crashing the servers, learning nothing.

Hope you all understand and appreciate that we want nothing more than to have all of you in the beta ASAP, but if we don't do it intelligently we'll just waste time, yours and ours, and delay our eventual release.

Ok, so Dogbolta caught something interesting over at the official PS2 Beta forums with this post:

Originally Posted by Dogbolta

Is it possible that closed beta has already started?

Could be way off the mark but when ever I log into the PS2 forums and check different users some of them have posts/topics credited to their accounts.
But you (I) cant actually see those messages like I would expect to happen during a closed beta where only those participating have access.

Of course with an NDA it might be those people in the closed beta cant even acknowledge they are in one.

Users with posts in what I think is the PS2 forums.
http://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/u....m?user_id=822
http://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/u....m?user_id=792
http://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/u....m?user_id=820
http://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/u....m?user_id=795
http://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/u....m?user_id=813
http://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/u....m?user_id=805
http://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/u....m?user_id=797
http://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/u...m?user_id=2278

As I said I might be way off mark but it also could be possible.

So I thought I'd dig a little deeper and see if there is any truth behind this.

One of Dogbolta's links points to the profile of 'SnipeFrag', who you'd know is a regular poster on PSU (here is his profile).

So I followed the link in his profile to his clan, Archangels Gaming.

Next, I looked through his recent posts and found this nugget:

Tony M Jones, Community Manager of PS2 wrote:
My name is Tony Jones and I am the Community Manager for PlanetSide 2. I wanted to personally extend an invitation to you to join us as we make the next epic MMOFPS experience. So why am I contacting you? I’ve looked all over for the best FPS and MMO groups in the world, the elite of the elite. I believe that you are in that elite group, and PlanetSide 2 Command has authorized me to extend a unique opportunity and invite you to join us in making an amazing MMOFPS game even better.

When you join our First Platoon program, you will be among the first in the world to get access into the PlanetSide 2 Beta. As gamers we’ve all wished we could talk to the developers and fix things like annoying level design or imbalanced weapons. In the program, you will have direct contact with members of the PlanetSide 2 Development Team and the opportunity to share your thoughts on gameplay and general design.

If you think you’re up for it, respond to this email and enlist today! Become a member of the First Platoon!

This was posted on May 26! We're on to you SnipeFrag!

So it looks like SOE have been inviting clan players into the beta earlier than the rest of us.

Whether they're actually in the beta yet is another thing entirely, but it's obvious they currently have posting powers on the beta forums.

EDIT:
I hope people see this as a good thing. Beta forums can become a quagmire of crap once they open to the public, so getting pro FPS players in early gives SOE a chance to get better quality feedback and telemetry first, rather than feedback from people who are just in the beta because their friend got them a key off of twitter.

It's also promising from a competitive gaming perspective, as BF3 was such a fail in that department. To see them really work so closely alongside gaming clans is a step in the right direction IMO.