Beta Invites went out again today. As part of today’s beta goodness.. Stephen Reid created a thread on the official forums to use to announce this, and future invite waves. Here’s the text of Mr. Reid’s initial post:
Hello all,
Instead of posting new threads every time we send out a new round of Game Testing invites, we’re going to try and consolidate the notifications right here.
A few parameters first, so hopefully you know what to expect:
– This thread will track both general invites to Game Testing and Beta Testing Weekend invites. (Generally speaking: Beta Testing Weekend invites are for one weekend only; Game Testing invites are for a longer period which is sometimes time limited.)
– We’ll update this original post, but also post in this thread (or the inevitable restart) to remind people that we updated the OP.
– We’ll update here either after invites have been sent, or just before. (We’ll try to update close to when invites are sent, but can’t guarantee it’ll be on-the-dot.)
– Generally speaking, when a batch of invites are sent, they’re sent in one go. If you haven’t received an invite within a few hours of the batch being sent, assume you haven’t received an invite from that batch.
– As always, ensure no-reply@bioware.swtor.com is in your ‘safe senders’ list. Email invites will be sent from that email address.
– If you are ever unsure if you’ve received an invite, login to the site and visit swtor.com/tester/ to see if you’ve been accepted to testing.
– We do not discuss exact numbers regarding Game Testing invites, so please don’t ask.
– We may choose to talk about countries or territories invited, but we also may not. If we haven’t been specific, follow-up questions won’t be responded to.
With that out of the way, here’s the current status as of today, October 3rd:
Invites sent last week (ending September 30th)
- Who was invited: Testers from the USA, Canada and select European countries
- What was sent: General Game Testing invites
- Server location: East Coast USA
Invites sent this week (ending October 7th)
- Who was invited: Testers from the USA, Canada, France and Germany
- What was sent: General Game Testing invites
- Server locations: East Coast USA (North America testers); EU servers (France/Germany testers)
More to come.
Now, as you’d have expected.. the thread morphed into a Beta related Q&A thread, with a couple follow up posts from Mr. Reid
Here’s the followup posts (I tried to keep the question/comment Mr. Reid was responding to inline as well).
Crap, East Coast US servers…so likely no invite for those of us in the west.
I point out the location of the servers solely because it’s a frequently asked question. The server location doesn’t generally impact who we invite.
Actual EU servers?
Well, its only taken like 2 years guys. I’m confident EU is going to be a complete success and not at all treated as a marginal sub-customer zone!
Seriously though, its about time.
We’ve had EU servers for quite a while, and have been testing on them. Again, listing the location just as people tend to ask that.
On which day are the beta invites usually sent out?.
There is no ‘usual day’. I will say that generally they don’t get sent on weekends.
you didnt mention UK, any UK invites gone out?
To quote myself:
“We may choose to talk about countries or territories invited, but we also may not. If we haven’t been specific, follow-up questions won’t be responded to.” ;)
dumb question – does this mean all invites for today are sent?
If we post in this thread, it means invites have either just been sent or are about to be (and we’ll try to specify which). Generally speaking it’s a ‘one shot’ deal – if we’re staggering invites over time for some reason, we’ll let you know.
aw :( woulda been nice to know what day to check my mails on. so i dont need to keep checking the tester page everyday lol.
Well, hence the existence of this thread. Check here if you prefer. ;)
Is stating which countries/territories were invited really an issue?
It leads to speculation, discussion and then usually arguments and flame wars. We have enough of those as it is.
Now will there be central servers for beta testing as well or just on live? I ask because of download purposes for the beta client (assuming I get a invite), and for latency issues. Yes generally a East Coast or West Coast server shouldn’t be a issue, but it is still in beta and I would expect some form of latency with that. Thanks for the update SR.
If you mean servers in the Central Standard Time zone, we have no plans for those right now.
You’re not really going out of your way to assuage the valid fears we have either though, are you? Given that it came to light we’ve had next-to-no input on Game Testing since it began.
Care to tell us, promise us, that your huge EU market will be involved in all content testing from now on? Personally I have visions of US based US-only “PTR” servers to test new patches after the way we’ve been treated pre-release.
Why should I play a changing developing game where my feedback will be ignored because of where I live?
EU testers have been included for quite a while now, and market research has been conducted with EU players (including hands-on experience of the game) for over a year. EU feedback has been incorporated into the game as it currently stands, and that process is continuing.
It’s too early to talk about post-launch testing server locations, but we’ll be looking to the entire player population of The Old Republic for feedback about the game.
lol thanks. should have made it a locked sicky so the updates dont get lost in the spam ^_^
Which is why we’ll update the original post as well as post in the thread.
and by few i mean countries like France, Uk, Germany…
… which are only three of the total number of countries that have been invited to EU testing so far.
So what exactly does this mean in BioWare terms? Because I’m at a loss here! Does it mean that you you are not going to invite people from all around Europe? I thought invitations for game testing were supposed to be “random”..But this is hardly the case!
It means that last week, we invited from select European countries. That didn’t include every country in our European launch territory list. We will be continuing to invite European testers, and we’ll get to every country in our launch list.
For those outside of that list, we have no news on testing invites right now.
ehehe what makes you think the order of the list of countries in the pre order page is random? It’s in the importance order
The list of launch countries for Europe is actually in alphabetical order.
Cool but that didn’t answer the question of whether they went out today or not?
So, Did they go out today? Your original post mentions invites for this week, and the countries and servers, but didn’t mention if they went out today, or when they will.
They went out today. As mentioned, we’ll post as close as we can to when invites go out so people don’t feel the need to check their email every day, all day.
I know, I didn’t mean it like that ;)
I’m aware that they are inviting waves in “one batch”, not in a steady trickle, but that doesn’t rule out multiple such batches over the course of several subsequent days, does it?
If a wave was deemed big enough – and later, I think we’ll get to this point – we might send it over several days.
We’ll make that clear when updating, eg “Today we’ve begun inviting people to Big Wave #1… more invites will go out tomorrow and the day after”. That sort of thing.
They will announce it if they do have, I think they have a sort of a hierarchy with guys who are running the tabulations and what not deciding what they think is the right amount of people they need, then they tell it to a guy who goes and tells it to the boss and then the boss tells the emails guys to send some more out and then the email guys tells Mr Reid and then he announces it. It is all on the basis of need. If they need more, more will be sent out and Mr Reid will be told and he will announce it. I don’t believe he is told of the future plans.
There’s a couple of grains of truth in there.
Believe me though, I am aware of future plans. ;)
it is? then i better by a new monitor…
PRINT SCREEN OF LIST
That’ll be a list of retailers, not a list of launch territories (as I linked to).
Believe whatever you want to believe, but we’re inviting from across Europe, and every country in our launch list will ultimately be included.
Pretty sure most early questions are answered now, so I’ll come back when we have an update on invites.
Give us some west coast love!
I know a ton of people from back east who’ve gotten invites already, but not a single friend of mine out here (and there are about 40 of us signed up) have gotten an invite. Why do you hate us so? ;)
I guess you need more friends…
We’ve invited plenty of people from the West Coast, and indeed all over the US. When inviting US testers, we don’t select based on location within the US.
This may or may not be able to be answered (I’m guessing not), but thought I would as anyway. I see the North American testing invites that went out were for East Coast servers.
Are the next set of invites for North America going to be for the West Coast servers, or will the East Coast servers still be used? Or, is this information you’ll release when the invites go out and not before?
They weren’t invites to the East Coast servers – they were invites to test on servers that happen to be located on the East Coast. That information is mostly there for people who are concerned about latency (mostly those in the EU).
It’s just very frustrating. Only Germany, France? There are far more countries in the “green zone”. Some of us have been waiting since the rumors of 2007. Show us smaller countries more love now, not just a maybe in the future.
You’re right, there are many more countries in which we’re launching – which is why we invited from a number of other EU countries just last week, as I also mentioned in the post. Some big. Some small. More are coming.d
Last week of course, those in France and Germany were asking why they hadn’t been invited. I think the apropos phrase is “plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose”. (Yes, I had to look up the spelling there.)
So i have a question. When you say invite 500 people from NA last beta invite (not using real numbers) and you say that this next wave is bigger than the last and will have EU (again not using real numbers and not sure about EU in next wave) will it be 750, 500 NA and 250 Eu or will you even them out so (350 NA, 400 EU?)
Again, not going to quote numbers – even fake ones. Why? Because it’ll lead to inevitable arguments about why we gave even just one more invite to Country A over Country B. ;)
I will say that the numbers are increasing for both NA and EU testers as we go forward.
So to see if there were any new updates sent we have to subscribe or check every day?
Why not just put a locked sticky on the general page, when I see the post count go from 1 to 2 then I know there is news in it and can read it.
As it is with this if the count goes up I have no idea on if it is some inane reply or an actual Mod posting.
Keep an eye on the Dev Tracker. When we send invites, we’ll update in this thread. That’ll hit the Dev Tracker. You could also bookmark the first page of the thread and just check that.
I’m keeping this thread open because I can answer questions in a relevant place. That said, I’d appreciate people keeping it vaguely on topic. Refrain from too many “Nooooo I didn’t get invited” or “Yessss I got invited” posts please; it doesn’t help anyone else.
So first, are these invites for full beta or another weekend session? Second, if it’s for the weekend, does that mean the testers for the previous US weekend will get re-invited to this one?
As I said in the post, those invites were for general Game Testing. When we re-invite the Squadron 1020 weekend we’ll specifically call that out.
So with this current weeks status said that you sent out the beta invites today, and you confirmed that you sent the whole batch, the follow-up question I have is will there be any more invites, going anywhere (EU, US) this week?<
We will no longer ‘trail’ invites in advance, unless it’s happening on the same day. We let people down on that before and won’t repeat that mistake. In other words: wait and see.
Um, I live in Texas in a part where it is Central Standard Time zone. Does this mean that you guys wont be inviting me for sure and I can quit checking my mail and other people who live in this time zone or am I just reading this wrong.. Sorry if I am.
Please get back to me and let me know either by posting or sending me a message or e-mail, or something. Thanks ;)
I was just stating we have no plans to physically locate game servers within the CST zone. We’ll have servers within the US on the East and West coasts.