Hall of Shame

[PaulNAdhe]

These are the exaulted Beta testers, the lucky ones who were given the rare chance to advise, first hand, the developers of the game we're trying to play.

Chris Green
Ryan Kristopher Huggins
Joe Millenbach
Eric Wertzler
Brian Taylor
Rick Francis
Rebecca Rose
Nate Timperley
Nicholas Lindeman
Deborah Durham
Jake Bernstein
Stona Jackson
Jeremy Swigart
Scott Lantz
Alan Sagan
John Surovy
Eric Wetzel
Jose Maccera
Matthew Claussen
Shane Shull
David Brown
Michael Gleeson
Nathanael Lewis
Chris Johnson
Shaun Mullahey

Are any of these people still visiting this forum? Or have they slunk off in shame?

This game is such an unredeemable mess that these beta testers should hang their head in shame.

To hell with this game. I've invested dozens of hours and there is no way that it will be made playable with the miniscule patch mentioned elsewhere.

I'm going back to SMAC and wait for GalCiv.

[notyoueither]

Play testers have minimal influence on a design. They are there to find bugs. With a game of the complexity of Moo3, it will be a very long time before the last bug is found, and it is unkown how many bugs they found (with code like that, I would imagine quite a few).

Aside from that, personal attacks are not considered appropriate on Apolyton.

[Ianpolaris]

notyoueither,

I fail to see how that was a personal attack. Those involved with the quality control (or lack thereof) should be named, counted and held accountable.

In fact that is what accountability means and IMHO there is far too little of that in the modern world.

-Polaris

[statusperfect]

Ianpolaris. Defender of gamers and grand judge of betatesters.

[CharlesBHoff]

By the time that the game of any tpye of program get to betra testing major desige change are not going be make as they are finding bugs plain and simple.

[darcy]

Why target the beta testers? They have no power. We have no way of finding out if they really missed the glaring bugs, or if they reported them but were ignored.

At the end of the day, the only one to hold accountable for everything related to MoO3 is Quicksilver. Not Infogrames, not the beta testers, not the state of the industry and not the bad weather. From the tiniest bug to the largest black hole in design, every last thing is exclusively the work of Quicksilver.

[Alex]

Yes, they were mainly hunting bugs in the beta versions, that's all. What could they have done besides that?
"Hey, there is a problem here with this design..."
"Really? Well, too late, the game is going gold next week".

[Nirvana_CN]

I have Beta tested Several Games, Age Of Mythology, Empire Earth, Impossible Creatures and now Rise of Nations. (Cept the unrealsed RoN )

Trust me, all we can do is report the bugs, and hope the devs fix them. In all the above games there were bugs in the retail version that we beta testers spotted months before release.

In effect we only advise the Dev's.

The only game where the Dev's listened was in AoM as i was part of a private Alpha Testing group, but even so they didnt fix everything we found.

Give the beta testers a break. Its a very frustrating job, especially when most are unpaid, you can suggest all the ideas under the sun, and 99.99% of them will never be adopted into the game, we have to live with knowing howmany bugs a game has.

Oh and yea all the games i tested i was under an NDA license to not release any game info, demeen the game, write reviews of it, put it in a bad light etc.

[Chronus]

BOOOOOO!!!

Listing and bashing people who donated their time to help improve a game and then holding them accountable when all they could do is suggest? Or was there something "different" about this particular beta group?

I've never seen such bad taste.

[Boris Godunov]

Good lord, you'd think MOO3 was the Holocaust and this was Nuremberg...

[moomin]

Good moderate comparison there, Boris. Nice.

Anyway, why the Moo3 mess isn't the fault of the beta testers some of them have much to answer for - those glowing AAR posted over at igmoo. Guess they just didn't notice stuff like nonexistant AI and broken PD.

[Boris Godunov]

Moomin, when someone posts stuff like this about beta testers for a computer game:

Originally posted by Ianpolaris
Those involved with the quality control (or lack thereof) should be named, counted and held accountable.

In fact that is what accountability means and IMHO there is far too little of that in the modern world.

-Polaris

I don't think I should be the one accused of lacking moderation.

[vmxa1]

IIRC they had a very short time frame to beta test the game and I suspect they had many of the complaints that people here as voiced. I mean those that were not even saying the game sucks. People that had some fun, like me, but still listed many things they need correcting or improving. So I have no problem with the testers.

[Ianpolaris]

Guys,

If you will recall, the betatesters gave glowing reports of Moo III to the rest of us. Thus they should be held accountable publically. What's so extreme about that? Last I checked that was simple common sense.

-Polaris

[Nirvana_CN]

Sounds more like an archaic Witch hunt of volenteers to me..

You cant hold anyone accountable for their opinions, thats the great thing about the free world!

They thought it rocked..i agree..you dont..grow up and get over your obsession