Dustin Browder at VG247 - 10k beta keys

[Aldrius]

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)

Um... he didn't say anything like that. He said he could forsee adding or changing units (if it came to that).

But honestly, the Lurker just seems like a really odd example to me... it had to only have been cut like a month ago at most... so I don't think adding it back into the game, at this point, would be as dramatic as adding say a unit that was cut a long time ago, or making up an entirely new unit.

[hyde]

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.


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.

I do not want to come off as a jerk or elitist or whatever.


But as a former Stats&Math major, I can tell you right now they can scale the server bandwidth capacity to emulate those 10,000 players on - as if it were 500,000.
Like wise, any stats you see in reports are taken from pools of thousands or whatever that is big enough to represent the real population.

10,000 is 10% of your said 100,000. That is a concrete number and pool of participants to gather data from. Not to mention that 10k is "Players on at any given second" , their actual pool of players is probably 20-40K.
Say only 1 in 4 key holders are on at any time, that would create the 10k.

The Diablo2 Beta test only had an initial pool of 5000 until the Stress Test at the last few weeks. Which was more or less a "Sorry fans for making you choke, here - almost anyone gets to try the stress test"
Even then, it was not an open stress test.

I realize many of you feel "Cheated" or "betrayed" as many "Not so good players" or "Not so devouted StarCraft/RTS fans" are on the SC2 beta.
Unfortunately they have no way of measuring who would play more or less, the randomization is the most fair method. Just hold out until retail

[Todie]

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

Why does it makes me worried?

-Because [...]
-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?

i feel you. its a let down to learn like this that the chances of getting in to beta by now are almost completely gone.. i guess ill stop checking my B.net account daily. but my question was directed at Maverick

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)

Um... he didn't say anything like that. He said he could forsee adding or changing units (if it came to that).

But honestly, the Lurker just seems like a really odd example to me... it had to only have been cut like a month ago at most... so I don't think adding it back into the game, at this point, would be as dramatic as adding say a unit that was cut a long time ago, or making up an entirely new unit.

regardless if it seems like an odd example to you, removing the lurker may well have been a long time coming, only that there was no need to do it quickly or announce it when it was just in the internal builds.

Dustin actually said this:

I don’t know if we’ll add or remove. We could very easily add or remove. I certainly hope not to.

... even though they could easily add, he's hoping not to..

he could have outright said the zerg was missing something, but no. if anything, terrans are apparently the ones lacking in power right now...


actually, sicne tehy're pretty much just going by the stats right now, they arnt really gonna take notice about what people think of certain units etc for a while longer. i bet they'd want start trusting that type of feedback, and start looking at that quite closely, to consider adding / removing units. even Lurker.

[Aldrius]

regardless if it seems like an odd example to you, removing the lurker may well have been a long time coming, only that there was no need to do it quickly or announce it when it was just in the internal builds.

They said on twitter like a week or two before beta came out that they were working on the Lurker to make it more useful in games. So clearly it wasn't removed very long ago.

Unless the people handling the twitter account are just very, very lazy.

he could have outright said the zerg was missing something, but no.

Uh, he actually did say that. He said they were working on unit diversity, particularly in regards to the Zerg.

[Todie]

ok, right. but i meant to point out he didnt say zerg was missing a unit ; he would have said if they did, clearly.

[Nicol Bolas]

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.

That's because it's true. They were targeting fall 2009 for SC2's release too; that didn't change the fact that they missed the date by 6+ months. Trying to do something doesn't mean that it will work out.

And Blizzard's more committed to getting it right than hitting the date.

... even though they could easily add, he's hoping not to..

Of course. Adding a unit requires a lot of art and animation work, but during this kind of beta, most of the art and animation staff aren't doing much (or at least, not as much as the design and programming staff), so they could probably hammer out a basic model/animations in a day and get something reasonably polished in a week or so.

However, the design implications of adding/removing units are absolutely gigantic. Removing a unit requires balancing other units around that loss. Take out Roaches, and now you need to deal with that hole in the Zerg. Take out Immortals, and you have to find a way to make Protoss survive without something that can kill armored units that effectively. And so on.

[Crazy_Jonny]

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

Maybe a little bit of both. Working on a game for 6 years can do that to you. I'm pretty sure we'll see a release soon, he's just playing it safe with the press.

[Todie]

i realize that nicol.. but would he really forget to verbalize the exception that is reintroducing a unit that they recently removed if that was on the table? ... im obviously arguing, he's "hoping" not to have to do that either

[Aldrius]

i realize that nicol.. but would he really forget to verbalize the exception that is reintroducing a unit that they recently removed if that was on the table? ... im obviously arguing, he's "hoping" not to have to do that either

I don't know why you resent the Lurker so much... o_0

He's not going to mention something like that in an interview like this I don't think. Especially if they actually ARE planning on putting the Lurker back into the game. (Which honestly, I think is fairly likely.)

[Crazy_Jonny]

I read the whole interview, and I think you guys misunderstood Browder's answer.

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. I can see we’re at 9,000-something right now, and 10,000 is the goal. That makes our match-maker really happy, makes it really sing when we’re about at those numbers. If we get much higher than that we’ll just leave it, and if we see concurrency fall off we’ll add more keys until we get back to those numbers.

It could very well get higher than 10,000, meaning the number refers to active players, not keys distributed. Its seems he's saying that's their minimum, and if it drops below that they'll give more keys, which I doubt will happen because almost everyone who gets a key is going to play nonstop.

A day one patch was also confirmed in this interview, meaning they'll start manufacturing the game while beta goes on.