Guild Wars 2 Press Beta Weekend

[Centaur]

Too bad... I was really hoping (and expecting) the NDA to end there. Then again, it probably does make sense to keep the NDA in place a little longer, to give those press members their exclusivity. Otherwise everyone who participated in the beta in the past could start posting about their experiences, which would surely reduce the amount of attention going to the sites (or magazines) of those press members

[stingwolf2000]

gave these a good merging. No spankings required though.

I will also use this post to take the time and make my official pouty face at Arenanet for not giving me an invite.

*offers a gentle comfort*

[Centaur]

Here's a small comment from Eric Flannum on the issue:

Those of you who are freaking out really need to calm down. Not all of the invites have gone out and certainly not everyone who has been invited has said anything. There are a lot of media involved in this event and a lot of people who aren't media as well. Remember, we are still in a closed beta phase right now and those beta testers are all under NDA. A lot of you seem to assume that the only people who are playing in the closed beta are friends and family and that no "real" fans are playing the game. I can assure you that we don't have nearly enough friends to fill even a modest closed beta and that plenty of "real" fans have and will play the game. As Mike said in his letter we are letting press into this particular event and we are in general letting them talk about their experience. Those who are not press are still under strict NDA. We never promised that this feb event would be without NDA and we never said this feb event was an open beta of any sort. What we did say was that we are ramping up to larger and larger events and even gave a monthly timeframe. We are sticking to that promise. I hope this helps keep things in perspective.

[Ruse]

Lol, I never considered that closed beta media invites would start a hullabaloo. Good grief.

[Scarsdale Punk]

It's astounding what creates an angry mob over there. Rabble! Rabble! Rabble!

[Ruse]

It is. Though in some ways, having seen the past coverage some of these press outlets have given the game, I can see why people want info released from people who have half an idea what they're doing, and not people who don't know the lore or understand how GW2 is shaping up to be different from other MMOs.

Some of those IGN gameplay videos from Gamescom were just...painful, for instance. They just stood in place and spammed one or two skills over and over.

[Erik]

If I were in the marketing driver seat and looking to get my game some publicity and I had the choice between sharing it with the people who've followed me for the last 5 years or showing it with a crowd who hasn't hung on every picture, video and press release... I'm unfortunately going to give it to the latter. Now that doesn't mean I think that the people who've been with them the whole time shouldn't also get an invite, but I think that perhaps they're trying to get out info to a newer crowd knowing that we the faithful will doing our due diligence to find any new info about the game like we've always done.

Still quite exciting to see official press invites go out because if you put me back in that marketing driver seat, I'm not going to invite people in to check out the game, give first impressions, take video/screenshots and give a rating, though I don't trust professional game reviewers, if the game isn't just about ready to be released. If the NDA is to be lifted on the 20th that's one step further towards nerdgasm. I'm still hoping for an end of April release but I hope to win the lotto without playing too, so take that for what it's worth.

Kind of like a party in a two-party system, isn't it? Where they move toward the middle to get new votes from across the fence, because the party faithful will stick with you anyway.

[ComplexNuber]

Some of those IGN gameplay videos from Gamescom were just...painful, for instance. They just stood in place and spammed one or two skills over and over.

I wouldn't have expected anything more from IGN.

[Ruse]

I wouldn't have expected anything more from IGN.

Yeah, but that's kind of my point, lol. I'm sure a lot of actual gamers/fans could produce a lot better video than IGN managed to do. IGN managed to make combat look dull and like the same thing we've seen from 100 other MMOs, which is NOT the impression you want to be giving people who haven't been hanging on every word and screenshot (like most of us have).

[Naithallis]

I think this is also referring to the petitions some people have started to get their favorite press outlet into the beta. With the announcement that the NDA will not be lifted, it really makes those petitions even more worthless.