I just found this article that Beau Hindman from massively wrote back in December. I think it’s a very sharp and good article with regards to our 6 years old beta state:

http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/12/19/free-for-all-the-continued-confusing-misuse-of-the-beta-tag/

I agree with you Beau and we were even worse in that we didn’t put a big BETA stamp on the website. I’ll try to explain the reason for sneaking around then backstabbing by suddenly explaining that we’ve been in beta for 6 years.

When Notch and me started the game ages ago we didn’t have a lot of money and didn’t expect to need any really before we had a releasable game. Things dragged on though, and along comes 2006. Our coffers are being drained by hosting the game for free but it has potential and we think nobody else will do this sort of game if we don’t. So we decide to start charging for coins and premium time, introducing our freemium scheme. Notch thinks we should call it Gold and I sort of succumb to the idea although reluctantly because I suspect it may become infected and have no better suggestion.

So people think we’re in gold but.. I mean we lack animations, have horrible models, no character customization and lack lots of other features that I think should be in the game at version 1 like end game content.

Our website changes and the volunteer who designs it removes any reference to beta or under development. It’s a fairly polished site which obviously gives the wrong impression. I let it be for at least two reasons. I think our users deserve to be proud of their game and we need the money badly since I’ve started working full time and want to expand the team.

Aaand along comes winter 2012 and we have at least a basic version of the features I want, including multi storey buildings and character customization and I think it’s time to call it version 1. Still fixing bugs though.

An online world under development always means live testing and debugging for their users if it patches or updates the code. Testing teams always miss something such as the infamous corrupted blood plague in World of Warcraft or the examples in the article with comments.

Beta for online worlds today apparently just means “time before we reach release date” and hopefully more and more customers realize that. Live debugging and testing continues as long as the code changes because… the only option is to stop developing. Unless you’re just adding more of the same, things will eventually explode or at least go “poof” even if you test it thoroughly.

The rest is how customers react to problems and the way the problems are handled. Sometimes it’s a bank run and sometimes the game can compensate in good ways. It’s all situation dependant.

So are we still in Beta? Naah. I hope I didn’t say that!

Rolf