Beta ends at May 17th?

[Maxa]

"If you pre-order now, you'll get to play right away in the SC2 Beta....but you better hurry, it's ending within the next month!"

That doesn't make sense. If the beta ends soon, on May 17th (with the retail version being available shortly thereafter), that makes beta keys less valuable, not more. Why go out of your way to get a beta key which will very quickly be useless? A key should be more enticing if you think that the beta will last a long time.

[GnaReffotsirk]

That doesn't make sense. If the beta ends soon, on May 17th (with the retail version being available shortly thereafter), that makes beta keys less valuable, not more.

For some it actually makes it more valuable. But it's the limited supply thing that gets them, and the promise of an early date of the final product boosts their interests thinking, "I'm making a good investment; I shall pre-order; It's like buying it soon, why not now?".

[Pick]

My guess is this date is no more accurate than whatever they have listed as the release date. It is just there so they can say "we warned you" when people have limited or no time in beta if they pre-order late.

GameStop: "Hey Blizzard, we need an end date for the beta".

Blizzard: "It will be done when it is done".

GameStop Lawyers: "We *need* to put an end date on this offer".

Blizzard: "There is no way the Beta will end before May 17th, now go away".

[Hammy]

My guess is this date is no more accurate than whatever they have listed as the release date. It is just there so they can say "we warned you" when people have limited or no time in beta if they pre-order late.

GameStop: "Hey Blizzard, we need an end date for the beta".

Blizzard: "It will be done when it is done".

GameStop Lawyers: "We *need* to put an end date on this offer".

Blizzard: "There is no way the Beta will end before May 17th, now go away".

Also what I think.
I would be really disappointed if they released the game in such a state. I'm having tons of fun, but not 10-year-lasting-international-esports-inducing-fun.

[CrowToss]

I hate to say it, but even though Blizzard COULD spend a long, long time balancing in the Beta, that's not economically viable for them. I highly doubt the game will be at the stage absolutely everyone wants it to be when it is released. Remember, StarCraft wasn't StarCraft until halfway through BroodWar patches. As far as I'm concerned, the beta is effectively just cutting a bunch of the early patches we would have seen if the game had gone straight to retail like SC1. SC2 won't be fully actualized for years to come, when the protoss and zerg editions are released and the players have had that much time to decide what the game needs.

A May 17th Beta Close wouldn't surprise me, or upset me. The game won't be perfect when it comes out, but retail will shape the game like beta never could.

[Alex06]

Odd that the beta is lasting even less than we thought it would...The game really is going to release in early June...
And it seems that we are getting the editor in the last month after all...

I was right and that's what scares me. I'm willing to bet that the press conference included the gold release of SC2:WoL or some first variant of it, and that the release date was announced there. I'm guessing that the release date will be like, the 4th or 11th of June.

[Crazy_Jonny]

I second Gt2slurp. May 17th seems soon. And not because I'm worried about not being able to play the beta, but because so many people seem to think that a lot of work remains to be done.

Lets wait and see how many changes the big patch brings before passing that judgement.

Personally, I'm ready for this game! I wanna see what happens to little Jimmy Raynor.

But yeah, looks like I was wrong with my July prediction, the beta lasted exactly 3 months.

[Roland]

Mac gamers get less than a month? I've had a key since day 1 waiting for the mac edition

[SaZun]

Mac's dont need so much testing because there isn't a wide variety of hardware configurations like there are for PC or linux systems.

[Dragoonx]

I got the same info from Amazon as I got a beta key emailed to me.

@Tychus

Bnet 2.0 was working amazingly fine until around the time the group from the beta nomination thread got their keys. Then it started acting funky. I wouldn't call it a rushed job at all =)