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I was not - and I'm serious - I was not mad about not getting into the Overwatch beta.
Then I went to their subreddit and I realize that the beta is more like a media-beta in which is proven that streamers and journalists etc etc got betakeys to invite their friends and even random people with twitch accounts.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/dv4NIho.jpg)
Now, I understand the decision blizzard makes, but then I remember another Beta that ocurred recently: the Battlefront beta. It's funny how open is EA/DICE about their beta access compared to Blizzard - two similar companies regarding their power in the market. I remeber I was able to participate in the Bad Company 2 Demo with me buying 0 games since like forever. Same with Battlefront, no preorder required.
Then, when I feel all the rage flowing through me, I remeber the last time I saw a community reacting bad to a poor decision from a company: the Diretide fiasco.
Oh wait, it's almost Diretide time and, as far as I know, there's 0 communication from Valve. Didn't they learn the last time? Is not like they have to make Diretide happen, but if there's no Diretide, well announce it before Twitch chat leaves their place and start spamming the freaking Obama Facebook page.
I'm agree that the community overreacted and showed the worst of the internet, but at the same time, it was one of the few times when a community was able to make change happen.
Will this happen to Blizzard and the Overwatch community? No, I don't think. Probably all is going according to their plan.
I don't think blizzard plan considers people spamming the ༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ Give BETA INVITE
Community has more power than the companies belive, but for thank god we can change a company decision of making a virtual event for haloween for selling virtual hats instead of, I don't know, change our corrupts politicians and stuff.
Priorities.
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Why is blizzard required to offer "equal-opportunity" beta access? So that you can feel like you had a chance?
The beta is blizzard's chance to market the game and abuse the "I can't have it therefore I want it" mentality that humans have. There's exactly no reason why they wouldn't give it out to streamers and that's exactly what they are doing. They aren't hiding that fact and really, everybody should accept that. If you think it's scummy business practice, then don't give them money.
Note that turning Overwatch beta access into a viral gaming meme (like giff diretide) is EXACTLY WHAT BLIZZARD WANTS. Free marketing. Enormous hype. No actual drawback.
PS I'd be surprised if we got another diretide this year although I suppose it could happen. Feels a bit late already considering halloween is this weekend plus valve are preparing for majors very soon etc. I'd expect a frostivus event to be more likely, if anything.
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On October 30 2015 02:51 Sn0_Man wrote:
Why is blizzard required to offer "equal-opportunity" beta access? So that you can feel like you had a chance?
The beta is blizzard's chance to market the game and abuse the "I can't have it therefore I want it" mentality that humans have. There's exactly no reason why they wouldn't give it out to streamers and that's exactly what they are doing. They aren't hiding that fact and really, everybody should accept that. If you think it's scummy business practice, then don't give them money.
Note that turning Overwatch beta access into a viral gaming meme (like giff diretide) is EXACTLY WHAT BLIZZARD WANTS. Free marketing. Enormous hype. No actual drawback.
PS I'd be surprised if we got another diretide this year although I suppose it could happen. Feels a bit late already considering halloween is this weekend plus valve are preparing for majors very soon etc. I'd expect a frostivus event to be more likely, if anything.
I don't think anyone is surprised that streamers are getting all the beta invites. I think people are more upset that they were led to believe they still had a decent shot at a beta invite. Whether it's true or not that essentially only popular streamers got invites, I don't know.
Yeah there's not gonna be a diretide. Probably a christmas event with 6.86 in 2 months.
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If there's no NDA for a game's beta, just accept that it's not actually a traditional random access beta and is almost entirely publicity based. Whether or not they take random people doesn't change the intent at all. Just sign up and move on.
Incredibly rare beta access also allows them to leverage a massive amount of income once they make beta keys some sort of preorder bonus (or included in some sort of preorder bonus bundle).
As for Diretide, Valve pretty much glossed over last year's Halloween and Christmas events for DotA by saying "Source 2 will make it way easier to do these so we'll work hard on that." If they really can't scrape something together this year it won't be pretty no matter when they tell people nothing is happening.
Then again whatever happens (if anything happens) will have a massive microtransaction component so whether people will be satisfied is another question.
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Its weird they would make this "mistake" again when it went so poorly for them with Heroes and Hearthstone........
Wait....
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It's almost like they do it because people just complain then buy the game anyway
tbh it's not like it costs you anything to opt into beta, just like 5 seconds top opt-in
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Dunno I got in first wave and I'm certainly not a high profile streamer, so it's probably a lot of guaranteed access passes for those who are and random access for everyone else. The first waves are just a lot smaller because they also had to add the publicity generating people early on. Sadly I can't even play shooters for more than an hour or so per day before I get motion sickness.
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The only thing funnier than butthurt People that didn't get into a closed Beta are butthurt People that think Blizzard make some Kind of mistake by inviting others for reaosn XYZ while they themselves didn't get an invite.
Cruel, cruel world.
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On October 30 2015 08:29 Plansix wrote:
Its weird they would make this "mistake" again when it went so poorly for them with Heroes and Hearthstone........
Wait....
The hype around Hearthstone before launch was massive and contributed to it becoming a smash hit when it came out eventually. Heroes of the Storm flopped embarrassingly hard for Blizzard because they created very fake hype surrounding it, people just couldn't buy into it.
People have to be genuinely interested in a game for this kind of marketing to work. Overwatch has potential in this regard
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I'm not even into FPS and I would consider trying Overwatch. 
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EPT
