Posted by Lethality | 24 Comments

Message Malfunction! Erroneous Game Testing Survey Emails Sent [UPDATED]

If you got all excited when you saw a couple of emails having something to do with Game Testing in your inbox earlier this evening, you weren’t alone! Even yours truly went to my closet to get out my beta testing pants before I realized it was an error.

The emails appear to have been fairly wide-spread, with many folks in the community receiving them, and then blowing up on the forums accordingly.

Senior Community Coordinator Allison Berryman popped into the fray on the forums to let everyone know that they’re aware of the problem, and are looking into it:

Hello everyone. We’re aware of the e-mails that are being reported and will have more information for you as soon as possible. Thanks for your patience!

So unfortunately it was a false alarm, and there isn’t any evil plan by BioWare to tease you. Well, not with this anyway!

As soon as BioWare posts an update, we’ll update this post.

[UPDATE] BioWare has confirmed that the emails were indeed sent out in error, but that they did come from EA. So there is no concern of any malicious activity or spyware, etc. Also, they have no affect on your game testing status:

Earlier today, two e-mails were sent to members of the Star Wars: The Old Republic community. These e-mails were sent to a larger group than intended, and have caused some confusion in the community. We can confirm that these e-mails were from EA and BioWare and apologize for any confusion they have caused. Please note that receiving these e-mails does not affect your chances to be invited to test the game. Thank you all for your understanding!

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Posted by Lethality | 9 Comments

Beta Weekends Redux – Re-Invites Go Out To Original Group [UPDATED]

If you were one of the lucky few who were invited to the first-ever TOR Beta Weekend a few weeks back, you should probably consider playing the lottery this weekend. Why? Because you’re being invited back a second time, something we were told wouldn’t happen!

This evening, Senior Community Manager Stephen Reid made a quick forum post on the topic, after news of emails reaching Beta Weekend players was being reported:

Why are they being re-invited? Because we feel for a significant proportion of those invited to test during Beta Testing Weekend #1, they did not have an optimal testing experience. As I mentioned before, we had some issues, including some people not receiving an invite, and others being unable to get the client in time because of issues with their acceptance of their invite. With those factors in mind, we felt that because many people did not experience the game, it was worthwhile to re-invite everyone.

Also according to Stephen, the testing group for the next Beta Weekend will be much larger:

This weekend’s entire testing population is actually just a small fraction of the total number we’re planning to invite to the next weekend, and our number of invites will go up after that.

So even though there’s still no set date for the next Beta Weekend, previous players can rest easy that they’ll be a part of it! You can read the entirety of Stephen’s post here.

[UPDATE] Stephen Reid posted several more comments in the thread, and indicated that not all of the re-invites might be for the “next” Beta Weekend but spread out over several:

We may in fact ‘spread out’ the re-invites over more than one weekend, and just bump up the overall numbers invited to test.

Thanks to BraxKerdan for the tip!

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Posted by Lethality | 4 Comments

Alert: Beware Of Bogus Beta Key Giveaways

Normally we wouldn’t do an entire post on just one developer comment, even with as much love as we have for Mr. Reid! But his post today was important enough that we wanted to help make sure the message gets out as far and wide as possible:

At this time, there are no websites, anywhere, who are officially partnered with EA or BioWare to ‘give away’ Game Testing invites or ‘Beta Keys’. Any site suggesting otherwise is mistaken.

The only way to get a Game Testing invite (of any kind) at this time is to be signed up to test and to be officially invited by BioWare, via email. As always, to check if you have been invited to test, login to http://swtor.com/tester/

Please be aware that some sites may ask you to download software in exchange for promised ‘Beta Keys’. This software may be malicious and may damage your PC. You are never required to download anything to be invited to Game Testing – you will only need to download the game client after you are invited, which is only available from SWTOR.com.

As always people, just be aware of things that seem to good to be true. If you don’t hear about it on SWTOR.com from BioWare, then you can assume it’s complete fabrication. There is no safer stance than that!

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Posted by Lethality | 3 Comments

Game Testing & Beta Weekends FAQ Available

BioWare Senior Community Manager Stephen Reid took some time to post short FAQ on the official SW:TOR forums in response to endless threads questioning virtually everything about the program.

Mr. Reid offers answers to nearly all of the most persistent questions, including your eligibility for multiple Beta Weekends:

After a Beta Testing Weekend is over, will I get re-invited to a future Beta Testing Weekend?

At this time, we are not planning to re-invite those who are invited to a Beta Testing Weekend to future Beta Testing Weekends. This may change in the future.

I previously participated in Game Testing, but am no longer participating. Does that omit me from being re-selected, either for a Beta Testing Weekend, or Game Testing generally?

Currently, if you have previously been selected to test Star Wars: The Old Republic, you will normally not be re-selected for future testing. (This applies whether you were selected previously for Game Testing, a Beta Testing Weekend, or any other testing access.) That may change closer to launch, but we want to get as many fresh eyes on the game as possible.

You can read the entire FAQ here, which we can presume will be updated if/when new questions/answers arise!

Good luck to all of the TOR faithful hoping to help test!

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Posted by Lethality | 16 Comments

Beta Weekends Update: No Testing September 9th-11th

We don’t like bringing you bad news here at Ask A Jedi. Really, we don’t! But sometimes, no matter how bad, that news needs to be reported. However, don’t look at this as bad news, but rather delayed good news!

Earlier today, BioWare Senior Community Manager Stephen Reid posted a Beta Weekends update on the official forums, with what player might be able to expect next, and when they might expect it:

There is no Beta Testing Weekend scheduled for this weekend. There may be further Beta Testing Weekends during September, but we’re not going to guarantee it. The weekend that just finished was really our first dry run of Beta Testing Weekends as a whole, and we have plenty of data to crunch, and decisions to make before we start things up again.

To be clear, that means that you can ease up on the blood pressure medicine and stop checking your spam folder – there isn’t any testing this weekend and they’ll let us know when it will resume.

The good news is, it sounds like when it does, Stephen confirmed there will be a shiny new build, as was disclosed yesterday.

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