Open Betas - Have you been in a good one?

[Zombies]

Hello SRKers,

I'm looking for anyone who has participated in what they'd consider a good open beta...any genre of game is fine.

If that sounds like you:

1. How did the game team gather your feedback?
2. What did they do (if anything) to motivate you to do so?
3. What did you like or dislike about their methods?

Thanks!

[Arxinal]

Mythos its in limited closed beta but its fairly easy to get in. The biggest thing that makes it so good is communication. Their forums are for testers only and they have daily updates on what they are working on. Also the devs are very active on the forum reading everything and replying constantly letting the community guide the games creation.

Many betas I've been in were horrible you simply get the feeling the devs arent listening and arent keeping you well informed and its no coincedence that these games ussually fail.

[Humbag]

I was in the Halo 3 beta (so were lots).

I just played it haha.

[Zombies]

Hi Arxinal,

So the main form of communication was through the forums...did they have any additional tools that they used? Did they send out surveys directly to testers? Did they have a bug reporting tool?

[Arxinal]

Yea there beta did have a bug reporting tool that was basically an ingame email system. Forums were the biggest thing though.

Only reason it worked is cause their forums ussually have over a thousand people viewing at anytime. The reason i believe they are so active is cause the devs always give info out about the development process. Theres no secrecy here and the community knows our input means something.

[leaveal]

Audiosurf!

[Nekoboy Eriku]

I beta'd Dawn of War, Chaos Theory, and SWAT 4. That was one of the few worthy perks of being a Gamespy founders member back a few years ago.

[MaDWaK]

I've never been in a beta trial. But i hope to get in the PS3 HOME beta.(http://www.homebetatrial.com/)

[elitericerocket]

I beta'd World of Warcraft, Guild Wars, and Warhammer Online.

[Demon Dash]

I know a guy who lands in Japan the day SFIV is open for the public. If he can actually play the game he's the luckiest mofo alive...

[m00b]

Beta'd WarCraft3, WoW, and now Mythos.. I do enjoy the Mythos beta and like someone said earlier, they do actually browse the forums and are actively tweaking the gaming regularly