Dustin Browder at VG247 - 10k beta keys

[DeathsAngel]

Thanks to the guy named "1.24.3.6384" on the Starcraft General Discussion Forum to have link the following interview :
http://starcraft.incgamers.com/blog/...wder-at-vg247/


This interview refers to one done by VG247 and in it there's something that Dustin says that scares me a lot:

What level of concurrency to you want to get to before the end of the beta?

Dustin Browder: I think we want to maintain about 10,000. It’s sort of our goal, and we’ve just about hit that at this point.

If this is indeed true then it means, we wont see another big beta invite wave like last friday....

[Triceron]

*points* *laughs*

But seriously, has anything they said really meant anything other than opinion thus far? "Soon".

[flak4321]

Well DA, by itself this is a little scary, but we need some more detailed information before we can really react to what this means. As it stands, there is really nothing to glean from this.

>Begin Speculation<

With one notable question that this post does bring to mind: what kind of testing can be done with a mere 10,000 testers on a consistent basis? Functionality. They can make sure all the basics work.

>End Speculation<

Note: We can all agree that this will not act as any Battle.net stress test. Battle.net 1.0's average attendance for SC1 in the USEast server was 100,000 to 200,000 four years ago (source: personal experience). It has undoubtedly increased substabtially before BN 2.0 was released with the SC2 beta. It would be wise not to react until we get some clarification.

[DeathsAngel]

With one notable question that this post does bring to mind: what kind of testing can be done with a mere 10,000 testers on a consistent basis? Functionality. They can make sure all the basics work.

Still in the speculation that this interview is valid and all of this is not a joke:
If they indeed plan to do only 10k, this is not in my software engineer mind a good stress test. I expect to have at least 1 million player on B.net 2.0 with SC2. 10k concurrent players online during beta, compared to 1 million let's say on launch day is quite small (1%).

But indeed, I shall not speculate yet, but I still wanted to link the interview and discuss about the veracity of this

[//MavericK\\]

Forget the beta keys...I'm more worried about how Dustin answered the last question...

You’ve got a release date in the first half of this year, right? So you’ve got quite a lot of leeway, I guess. You’ve got four months to actually ship. You’re completely confident on actually hitting that release date, right?

Dustin Browder: I don’t know [lots of laughing]. I’d really love to say yes, I got to tell you, brother. You never know what’s going to happen. You never know when something’s going to jump up and bite you that you didn’t expect. Yeah sure, today it’s looking great, but who knows tomorrow? Certainly I’d be super-excited for that to be the case. I can’t tell you how enthusiastic the team is at this point of getting this game out of the door, not only to get the game into the hands of our fans, but also so we can go home. But at this point we really want to get it out in the worst possible way, and any delays are going to meet with our righteous fury. But there’s no way to know for sure, dude, what’s going to happen at this point.

Full article... http://www.vg247.com/2010/03/09/inte...ly-going-home/

[Todie]

why does that worry you?

nothing new or surprisng or specific in the article IMO..

its all on track so far, but too early to really tell. one thing is made more sure though; they arnt planning on or hoping to make significant changes, like say, add the Lurker (to the MP)

[limE]

Forget the beta keys...I'm more worried about how Dustin answered the last question...

Well, the only thing i says here is what blizzard has said since the beginning of time. They can't tell anything for certain "Especially" not the release date.

[//MavericK\\]

Well...it just kind of bugs me that one side says we're targeting this time frame and then someone else says they don't know if that time frame is gonna' really happen or not.

I guess I'm just bummed that I haven't gotten a beta key and that this just might mean that I'll have to wait even a bit longer for the actual game.

I'm really hopeful for that elusive early-July release. Not holding my breath, though.

[DeathsAngel]

why does that worry you?

nothing new or surprisng or specific in the article IMO..

its all on track so far, but too early to really tell. one thing is made more sure though; they arnt planning on or hoping to make significant changes, like say, add the Lurker (to the MP)

Why does it makes me worried?

-Because first : 1% of B.Net population to stress test is really small...
-Secondly : I wanted to go in the beta, I know not everyone would go, but let's say I had my reasons (long to explain and don't feel like it) that I had a good chance to be selected.


Do I care for the date of the game release? No. Been waiting for years, got delayed a lot. What do I care if it's release in june-august or december?

[Alex06]

I can't tell if Dustin is joking or if he's simply gone mad. O_O