TerraDraconis

Does the HAPPY DANCE!!!!!!!!!!!!

The open beta or in this case the VIP beta is usually the last step before an issue goes live. Typically Open Beta lasts 2 - 4 weeks. It has gone longer in a couple of cases but it tends towards the 2 week mark often.

In this case there is enough that it might be easily 3 or even 4 weeks before it comes out. Really without seeing the beta, [Just over 5 hours now.] I can't judge how close it looks to being done. It could be all polished and just needing stress testing etc, or it could need more love and attention before it is ready.

Yeah yeah, I meant Burns not Smithers. It was early morning and my coffee hadn't kicked in yet.

I'm pretty certain that if you are patched up as of this morning you will be fine. I was making a joke based on Zwillinger's laughing smithers no promises reply.

Basically if someone finds a game breaking bug before launch they will clearly patch it up. Otherwise my guess is what is on beta as of this morning is what will be on beta this evening.

Why do I now have visions of a 2.7 Gig update to download and apply tonight when I get home?

Better.

Haunted pawn shops run by dwarf hoarding swamp people hosted by Jeff Foxworthy.

If you haven't updated the beta server for a few weeks there is a 1.8 Gig update to apply. If you have applied that one and any later updates there was an 8 Meg update to apply from yesterday.

And yes I have been patching the beta server religiously so that I can play it when I finally gain access.

Back to my point about perception. I can't think of a single bug that really really 'bugs' me.

Yet I see threads like this where minor things are major issues to someone. So it's all about personal perception.

I can see it now. Some poor person wandering around Virtue shouting. "Hello! Anyone here? Anyone?"

I think I would be terrified of what picture link they were giving out. It might be that goatsee one. ::shudder:: And no I'm not going to link to that picture.

That just goes to show you that some people are simply as dense as a bag of hammers.

Actually it always shows up in my tray at level 2. I started a new character just a few weeks ago and it showed up.

I can honestly say that none of those are major or even minor issues for me. Maybe very very minor issues. But that is it.

Keep in mind that your major issues are not the other persons major issues and what drives the other person nuts probably doesn't even cross your radar as a problem.

Might I suggest you look at both Turbine and Cryptic as two examples of hybrid games that use money from the store for development.

Both of them have ungated content and both of them have purchasable content. I'm not seeing the issue.

Oh and if you are a paying subscriber then the gated content is and remains free, you only have to pay for it if you are not paying to play the game. How is that unfair? If you are not paying a monthly fee for the game why should they give you free access to new content?

so play the beta tonight.

Where did you get this silly idea?

Are you paying a subscription to play the game? - Then you are a VIP player.

Are you on your free month for just buying the game? - Then you are a VIP player.

There is nothing in there about are you a non American player.

To be clear the VIP Beta is the standard Open Beta.

IE you have to be a subscriber to be a VIP and you have to be a subscriber to play in the Open Beta. So all they have done is make clear that open beta's will be VIP only once Freedom rolls around.

That said an open beta can run 2 - 6 weeks usually. It tends to the 2 - 4 week time frame unless there is a major problem found and that would put the release sometime in September which is where the smart money has been betting. We shall have to see what we see starting tomorrow. IE how ready is it really for primetime.

Sounds good to me. I mean really being hyper caffinated should be a requirement of playing... shouldn't it?

Oh don't. A lot of people don't realize that there is a separate test and beta servers. This is done for a couple of reasons. Originally they did the closed beta's on the test server. The problem is that when they do that they can't release patches and updates to the existing game because the test server has the closed beta on it.

So after a couple rounds of that they went and created a separate server to be the beta server. Making 2 test servers. This way they could put the closed beta on one and test it as long as needed while still being able to patch and update the main game using the test server.

It just hasn't gotten around to people that there are two possible servers that you could be using. Everyone is familiar with the test server but the beta is more restricted. Really only available during the open beta periods.

No.

There are 2 "test" servers. The traditional test server and the Beta server that you have to download separately from the first one.

So to make your life as fun tomorrow evening as possible make certain that you are downloading the beta server and not the test server.

The shortcut on the launcher reads. City of Heroes Beta and is just below the link to City of Heroes Test.

Ok, quoting the post on how to connect to the beta server if you haven't played on it yet.

And that is what you need to do to launch it if you haven't ever run it before.