Friends and family beta is out!

[Alex06]

Update: It is confirmed that there is no friends & family SC2 build:

Xordiah: For those in doubt. I can also confirm, that we have not launched any external beta yet, so no friends and family beta is live at the moment.

http://forums.battle.net/thread.html...=3000&pageNo=2

******* said (10:45 AM):
The friends and family beta is out. June 28th, 2009 I was visiting Blizzard HQ and I was given a Key. I was visiting many devs for interviews since I have these gaming devcredentials that are yet to be utilized. I got offers from the devs I visited but I'm leaning towards Ubisoft Montreal's offer. From June 24 to July 3rd I was visiting devs for scheduled interviews that were planned ahead.
********said (10:49 AM):
Beta Keys were also rolled out to the Press Late last month in order to reserve there ID handles and a small string of beta keys were handed out July 2nd to the friends & family beta. I had hands on time with SC2 at Blizz HQ.
Alexander (Alex06) said (4:50 PM):
nice

Conversation between me and a friend on MSN...

EDIT: E-mail removed at the request of "informant".

[DemolitionSquid]

Expected but nice confirmation.

[mgcemir]

how long does friends and family beta usually lasts? if my memory serves me right wotlk f&f was imba short.

[spychi]

I think that two more weeks and we will have the beta

[Gifted]

I know of a F&F beta that lasted 1 week, I know of some that lasted a month. It's typically meant as a way for employees to show off the work they've done. It's also a way to do BASIC tests on an infrastructure to see if it has any OBVIOUS bugs.

This is good, it shows signs that the infrastructure is "complete" and they're doing the obvious tweaks to it before they get flooded with 40,000 complaints of something that should have been caught immediately...

EDIT: To elaborate on the projects I've been on, the time is typically dependant on the deadlines they have to meet. In a circumstance like Blizzard is facing, I suspect it will DEFINATELY be intended to be shorter. This is obviously based on them not finding any more glaring errors in the release of Battle.net

[Wankey]

Dammit man, most misleading title ever.

I thought I was a friend

[Nicol Bolas]

What is a "friends and family" beta?

[Pandonetho]

Yeah, I'm not quite sure I understand what a "friends and family" beta is.

[Gifted]

Little heads up, Just confirmed with another person that they are in the friends and family. I'll be happy to post info about battle.net if possible soon. Talking to them now on MSN

[DemolitionSquid]

What is a "friends and family" beta?

Betas can have many stages/phases. Slowly growing the userbase. There's the "whole company" phase, then the "friends and family" of the company employees phase, then the "geographical area" stage (in this case, North America), and finally the "global beta" phase.