This is how I see it. There's tons of people who don't really have a game they're playing, and are looking for their next 'fix', thinking this might be it. $100 isn't that much if it keeps them entertained throughout all of alpha and beta. It is still a little bit of a gamble, though.
Imo, it also effects the quality of the beta. If people pay to test a game, the majority of them don't care about actually testing, they are just paying to play early. Yes that happens already, but its compounded and on a larger scale when anyone can just buy their way in. It's even worse this time because its paying for literal alpha, the time when a game needs the testers the most. As soon as you allow people to pay to enter, your shit is being judged and scored as a "sold product", no different from a open beta. I'd almost pay just to read the forums and the inevitable "I paid for this, why can't I play today" threads.
But here is the thing, and this is the same reason we all buy into every MMORPG at launch. We want to be in at ground level for the next EQ or WoW. And while most of us piss and moan about paying for digital trinkets, we think that we just might kick ourselves if we weren't there at the beginning for greatness. If you disagree with me then you are deluded as to why you spend a considerable amount of your liveschatting on an anonymous internet forum about MMO's. Are SoE fucking boneheads that have made mistake after mistake, and haven't appeared to learn from them? You bet your sweet ass they are. But what they have here, for all the macho bullshit "EQ veteran toughguy" talk that so many of you spew, is the potential for greatness. Otherwise you would all move on.
This just might be the dumbest shit I've ever read on this forum.
This is the dumbest line of reasoning.. how does paying to play a game early vs signing up to be a tester correlate, at all, to someone's desire to test/feedback a game. If anything, the people who are willing to pay money for a testing position are MORE interested in the well-being/development of a game than a random person who can submit a beta app at the blink of an eye
I was going to say the same thing. I would think someone who dropped $100 would want to give a ton of feedback on how to make the game they paid for better and the person who spent all of 5 minutes signing up for a free beta just because would be the person who tried it and went meh its broken and uninstalled it.
That blows on so many levels, that is a sure-fire way of alienating an entire continent of potential customers.
Dumb? are you that fucking crazy of a fan boy to not see what I'm getting it? You're paying $100 fucking dollars to alpha test a game. I'm not saying don't make money off your game, I'm saying don't sell them an Alpha product that they already need people to help with. It's not dumb, it's reasonable.. you sell a product when it's finished and complete. Again, where are your fucking standards?! It opens the door to rip players off. Feel free to be that guy I guess but I like my chances of a better game when they don't already have my money.
You have to jump some hoops to do that, and run the risk that they later change their log-in / server / IP-detection in a way that makes it impossible for you to log in. Even opening the website with an EU IP refers you to pro7 when you try to make an account, although its obviously easy to bypass you can never be sure it stays that way. Payments might be problematic too.