First they said beta was for early september, then they declare it's the 29th.
Then they say that those who pre-order will get early access. Which is, apparently, by getting it on the 27th. We'll get emails, they say.
Oh, but not beforehand, we'll get emails *on the 27th*. And obviously, we can't pre-download.
For this, we had to use their client Origin. And apparently, some people already have "redeemed" their key and gotten early access. Why they make access to the beta email-dependant? I don't have the slightest idea. Likely would have been much easier for them to just activate it automatically instead of sending out emails... Instead, here I am waiting for that email still...
Now, I'm not whining about not getting "enough" beta time or whatever, I can live without beta access between the 10th and 25th of october no problem, I got plenty of other stuff to do. But this is rather annoying. They keep promising stuff, and then doing it in a way that makes one raise his eyebrows. Why bother announce that it will be available for a certain day if you can't have people preload it and all start playing at the exact same time?
Just sounds to me like they are trailing on their schedule, and are scrambling to give out what they planned when they planned it. Really gives the impression that the game will be, albeit quite an eye candy, buggy as hell when it comes out. Mind you, I didn't play the alpha, but I'm assuming that if they only let people play on 1 map, it's likely because they are only fully satisfied about that one map. It's what we won't see that concerns me the most.
Your thoughts?
My thoughts is it sounds exactly like 90% of early release problems, which is why pre-orders are generally a suckers option with regards to getting any real benefit over people that buy it on day 1. At least with digital distribution you don't have to worry if your retailer can even COVER all the pre-orders they have taken.
And yes no doubt the game shipping date and the actual going to gold will be very tight, with probably very little time between code "completion" and going to gold. Again this is pretty typical of the game industry these days, which is why release day patches are so common
