Conspicuous Silence

[Dash]

Those definitions pretty much are in line with what I envisioned. So now it is safe for me to say that i MUCH prefer the hybrid of the two. There was enough freedom of choice for progression in DAoC that I never once got bored even after all the quests were finished. There was always a 24/7 tower defense to do in RvR if the PvE was feeling thin.

I must be honest and say that I've only ever watched UO played for a few hours here and there, so I don't have a full spectrum of experience to draw upon to make the above statement.

[Motvin]

Curt has said years ago that he thinks a beta test is more like a free preview and you need to have your game mostly polished before any type of open beta so that people don't criticize it for being buggy or incomplete.
38 Studios have said a long time ago that they only want to talk about things that are in game and working so that they don't get called out for talking about some feature that doesn't make it because there's not enough time/resources.

With Reckoning coming out in Feb. I think they had an additional reason to push back releasing substantial info about Copernicus. And maybe amalur.com is thought to contain enough lore to tide over the info junkies until they start releasing concrete info about Copernicus.

And they may have decided not to reveal at Pax East because they wanted to be able to do a huge splash at E3 and make sure they have everything ready.

It's easy enough to rationalize without coming to the conclusion that Copernicus must be way behind schedule or not very good and that's why they are holding back info.
Now if they don't show much of anything at E3 (in early June and 38 Studios is signed up as an exhibitor), then I think it's time to start thinking something must be wrong.

If I was in charge I would have had a website up years ago, revealed most of what's in the game and been in later rounds of beta testing, but they've said all along that they weren't going that route.

[Valdur]

But that Open Beta crowd can be very influential a few weeks before a game release.I saw it happened in Rift and seeing it happening in TERA right now.Last minutes changes are implemented according to the amount of noise from the fresh batch of players getting in and very often not for the best interest of the game in the long run.

[RingX55]

Let's hope then that the Open Beta is largely used just for stress testing the servers and finding minor bugs and technical hurdles. I'm hoping at that point the closed beta people really give great feedback to polish the game.

[DeathtoGnomes]

But that Open Beta crowd can be very influential a few weeks before a game release.I saw it happened in Rift and seeing it happening in TERA right now.Last minutes changes are implemented according to the amount of noise from the fresh batch of players getting in and very often not for the best interest of the game in the long run.

What you saw in Rift beta was a lack of screening Betatesters on Trions part, the forums were a disaster filled with 2 year olds that stomped a very big foot, because Trion bent to listen. The problem was they continued to bend over and never stood up. The same thing is happening with Tera, you have kids motor-mouthing everything and plenty of others jumping on the bandwagon of anyone who spends enough time badmouthing and nitpicking content. From what I seen from rift and what I am seeing on Tera is an average IQ of about 50, or an age of 12. Naturally Rift failed and Tera is on the same path. just sayin.