Greetings Norrathians! If you previously registered for a beta copy in anticipation of testing the next expansion, please type /beta again. There was a technical issue that caused many copies to fail. I've not seen any beta for ToL announced on these boards, but I had heard a rumour that invites were going out. I have not had an invite, so I guess I'm having a mini-panic. Is the above message saying. If you registered for beta previously, like for TOV/COV, then type /beta, or are they saying if you have registered for ToL your beta copy may not have taken? If its the latter, wheres my beta invite????
Take a deep breath. Each year, there is a process. Chosen raid guilds and some specific others typically gain access a little bit ahead of the general player (due to the time needed to tune those type of events). A bit later, more people and eventually everyone with an active account generally gets the opportunity to try beta out and get a speak peek of the content ahead of release. The purpose of beta is to test everything, find thing that don't look right or work right and bring it to dev's attention so it can be fixed (so there's usually a hierarchy on priority for that). Ahead of being told you're eligible to access beta, everyone has to do their own "/beta" command (as that brings characters on that account over to the beta server) and this is what the post was mentioning. Right now the first group of beta testers were having issues getting their characters over and that was due to the system not working right. So the message was stating to just do a new "/beta" (which all of us can do for when it's our turn to access beta).
This wouldn't happen if EQ had a producer in charge. Oh wait... And yes, this is indeed shade thrown at our non-existent producer who hasn't bothered to address the EQ community in almost a full year (assuming you don't count a like on a June 2021 post). But Crystilla is correct, a few chosen dev friends get special keys early (before raid guild key distribution) just to make sure the Beta environment works. No idea why they decided to make a system message for something that affects a mere handful of folks unless they just wanted to get it in place before the long weekend.
Because beta copies only occur daily, it's fairly common practice to run /beta early so that your character is there day one. Historically you could do that a few weeks before beta opened and your character would be there; the message is primarily helpful for those people. Very few people (primarily devs and CRT members) have access to beta right now. There were three years (RoS -> ToV) where beta testing guilds got keys a few days before general access. That was primarily a function of 1) beta raid testing starting the day beta opened in RoS because they wanted to film the trailer and 2) Prathun being the one giving out the keys (he's no longer there). In CoV we got keys the same day general beta access was available, and I think it's highly likely that'll occur this year too. Like the last seven years, beta access will almost certainly be based on preordering. That will likely begin Tuesday or Wednesday this coming week. The one oddity thus far is that they haven't announced the expansion, which normally occurs a week (or more) before the sale ends/preorders start.
well " Perks" were supposed to be avail end of sept .. I wouldnt hold my breath on Beta beginning next week .
The new expansion has been announced and beta has started at the end of the current expansion sale for a while now so it would be strange if that changed at this point. And trying to compare new features to something they have been doing for decades isn't exactly fair.
the new expansion has been announced already ? I must of missed it .. I havent seen anything from DPG or a video showing whats to come .. only reason we know its Luclin ie. ToL is from Riou and EQresource .. I could be wrong but afaik we have not gotten official word yet from DPG which Sancus said by now we should have .. so i'll believe it when i see it .. IF they do not announce Pre-orders this week , but end the sale i'll be highly pissed ..
You are right it hasn't been announced yet but there is some strong evidence right now. Information has started appearing via the patcher which is how Riou got that information The beta server has changed from locked to open which suggests they are getting ready for players Riou appears to be getting daily beta changes from the beta patcher. CoV was announced last year October 14th and pre orders/beta started October 21st which shows there is not a lot of time between announcing and starting. As a final note ToV was on sale last year from September 1st to October 20th and the preorder/beta started right after the sale ended.
Sometimes stuff like perks get delayed, but for something like an expac if it doesnt land this year thats all for eq. The expac wont be delayed.
from your typed words to DPG ears .. lets hope so also I stated that beta would be delayed , not the expansion ..
To flesh this out for anyone who doesn't understand. . . . . . usually the pre-order for the next expansion starts when the sale for the previous expansion ends, and the last few times, if you pre-ordered it included an invite to beta.
You seem to be implying it's some sort of nepotism which it isn't. Anyone who may have access right now is definitely under an NDA. Regardless of that, it's never too early to remind people to /beta. Assuming you plan to preorder and play in beta you may as well do it now too.
This. The guild got their raid invite last week (no access yet) but the first thing guildies asked is can they /beta yet. I always remind them to make sure they take PP, tradeskill trophies, etc with them. Along with taking anything else out of housing, houses etc. Waiting to see if Dragons Hoard gets copied over too. And to only do it once!
I'm not implying any kind of nepotism. I'm stating that a small number of folks usually have early access to Beta. That in itself is nothing new. What I am now stating (instead of hinting) is this is the absolute worst "start" to a new expansion announcement ever. The first official confirmation of a new expansion is a stickied post in the Veterans Forum asking for Beta volunteers and the first "official announcement" that most EQ players saw was a system message in game about /beta copying. A 3rd party site has had the name of the new expansion on its website for over a week. That's a horrible way to run a business. Especially one that has launched 27 other expansions. I'd hope that Darkpaw Games would be proud and excited to bring us the 28th EQ expansion and WANT to tell us about it. WANT to give us a splashy announcement or even a tease. The player base is at least kinda excited about a new expansion ... feels like the developers/producers/studio do not care about their work. EQ2 announced their expansion sale for the current one on Sept 7th. The very next week they announced the next expansion. They know how to do this.
That only applies as part of the beta process from the pre order of recent expansions and does not mean that other things that may or may not be happing on that server wouldn't fall under an NDA.
Almost a Month now The people who get in a week earlier then the pre-order public open and such, are under a general NDA with EQ
This. How hard is it to take some pics and post an announcement? There is time to work on 'perks' that pretty much nobody likes but DP cannot announce another expansion that people are supposed to shell $$$ for and play for 12 months. Disappointing.