Beta drama! Oh my!

Over the past few weeks, the forums have been wracked with complaints about Blizzard's system for distributing the beta keys which so many people covet. Generally, these complaints fall into one of four categories:

1. Complaints about low-skill/casual users or uninterested people playing in (or not playing in) beta.
2. Complaints about people receiving multiple keys.
3. Complaints about selling of keys.
4. Complaints from Blizzcon users about them not getting an appropriate key.

Of the above, number four really seems to have the most merit, in my opinion. I really do think it's kind of a douche move on Blizzard's part that a Blizzcon attendee might not get a chance to participate. Granted, these threads have died down recently, so I wonder if this issue has already been addressed. I don't really have any clue.

The obvious response to the first complaint is that the casual base is a part of the target consumer group and therefore must be tested for quality assurance. I mean, they want to make the game fun for everyone--how are they supposed to do that without any lower-level players getting to give feedback? Now, there is some understandable ire at the "balance" suggestions given by butthurt casuals, but, honestly, I think Blizzard is smart enough to make the right decision. They're not infallible, of course, but they're also not idiots and they have quite a lot of experience. Anyway, there's not a whole lot new in this paragraph. God knows I've seen this stuff posted a few times around the forums.

As for players who don't really participate in the beta, everything I've heard indicates that Blizzard's metric for sending out more invites is primarily based on the user load of the server(s). Therefore, a non-participating user might as well not be in the beta, for all intents and purposes. Again, this is stuff I've read around, and not really original thought.

Second complaint is a pretty decent one. I've heard tales of people receiving opt-in invites on multiple accounts. It seems kind of strange that Blizzard wouldn't have some kind of system set up to catch stuff like this, but I'm actually not sure if it would be that simple to stop it from happening. The most obvious thing to do would be some kind of IP checking, but that would unfairly penalize different players in the same house or dorm or whatever. Can't think of too many other practical ways to filter it out, since there are not a whole lot of potential unique identifiers in the Battle.net info.

Third one seems like an offshoot of the first two, and there really isn't a point in complaining about it because it's essentially impossible to stop. I saw one idea about having Blizzard itself sell keys, but that doesn't seem like a practical solution for a couple reasons, none of which I intend to go into in this post.

Anyway, people have been making sweeping statements along the lines of "Blizzard's invite system is broke." I've even seen the word 'ethics' used a couple times, but I didn't look closely at them, so I don't know if they were jokes or not. But is the system really broken? I don't think so. I mean, what is the stated goal of the opt-in program? To get a wide variety of users with different system specs into the beta. No information is available, but I can't see how they would fail to do this. In that sense, the system succeeded. Furthermore, they made everyone feel like they had a chance to get into beta, which I think is already a plus. On the downside, making people feel like they could get in makes it that much more frustrating when they inevitably don't, and I think that a lot of the anger right now is caused by this. It definitely doesn't help that the wait for the beta was so long.

Now, the latest development is that beta users can invite a friend (just one, right? It sounded like it), and people who are out of the loop are crying foul because it gives to those who have already, while ignoring those who have not. However, I think there are actually sound reasons for this course of action. First, being able to play with a friend is a great incentive for users to continue testing. Second, the slightly-less-random nature of this distribution method will probably result in the keys being given to people who will actually use them, increasing the number of players on Battle.net by an amount which is relatively easily predicted by Blizzard.

All in all, I think Blizzard has handled the situation pretty well, and I dare anyone to think of a better system which is still practical. The Blizzcon situation could have been handled a lot better, and I take issue with the fact that I don't have a key *shakes fist* but this certainly is not a debacle or disaster in any meaning of the word.