Beta Testing

Everyone and their surprisingly computer-savvy dog knows that the public testing phase for Cataclysm is starting in the near future.

Imminent!

I am very interested in news about and previews of the expansion. When MMO-Champion had leaked screenshots, models, and information from the pirated friends-and-family test client available, I spent a lot of time looking over it all. I'll be following all the news that comes out before the launch of the expansion, eager to hear about cool new places to see, things to do, and people to set on fire.

One thing I won't be doing, however, is playing the beta test myself.

Even I think it's a bit of a strange dichotomy. On the one hand, I enthusiastically seek out spoilers and previews, and I get excited to see screenshots of radical changes to the world I've been playing in for five years, or models of the new creatures and zones. On the other, I have exactly zero interest in actually seeing any of this stuff for myself in game before the official launch.

I think, for me, it's similar to the difference between a trailer for a film and the film itself. No matter how many trailers a film studio releases to get the prospective audience excited to see their movie, they never show you everything (even when it seems like they're trying to!), The experience of sitting down in the cinema, or in your living room with a DVD, and actually watching a film is very different from watching a trailer even a dozen times (and there are some movies, like The Dark Knight, where I probably watched the trailers three or four dozen times).

Likewise, as exciting as it is to see the new look for Orgrimmar or the ruined portions of Stormwind, it's just a teaser. It gets me excited to see it for myself. The difference, however, is that the beta test for Cataclysm, as close to final as it might be, is not going to be the "real deal".

I had some experience of this when my wife, Lexa, acquired an invite to the beta test for Wrath of the Lich King. Of course, I was excited to watch her explore Northrend, and even tried out a death knight for myself - but that quickly made the downside of beta testing evident. Not everything worked as it was intended to. When it did, every quest popped up a feedback form that seriously interfered with my experience of the game. I'm not the kind of person who gets "immersed" in my character even at the table for a face-to-face game of Dungeons & Dragons, much less in an MMORPG like World of Warcraft, but I do like the experience of the game to be interrupted by "outside" things only when I choose.

The other reason I'm not interested in the beta test is that, frankly, I want what I do to count. When I create my worgen rogue, I'm not just doing it to experience the new starting zones and then put that character on a shelf or even delete him; I'm doing it because the new starting zones and race give me an opportunity to level a character of a class I haven't successfully played before. I don't want to do all that and then have the character wiped away at the end of the beta test! Likewise, I don't want to explore all the new zones with my mage and then have him reset to level 80.

To return to my film analogy, playing in a beta test is like watching a "screener" cut of a film before all of the visual effects have been completed. Yes, it's 90% of the final film, but I'll never feel like I've actually seen the film properly until I've seen the final version - but, having seen the "screener", my experience of watching the release version of the movie will never be as satisfying. So it is with Cataclysm; I want to know what to expect and will be following all the spoilers and previews as they come out, but for me that's about building anticipation and excitement for the day when I can play the finished version of the expansion for myself.