Beta Testers, the Bane of Gamers.

So this weekend I got to spend some time on the Star Wars Old Republic beta. Obviously, it's still under NDA, so I'm going to stick with discussing things that are officially released common knowledge, plus the testers themselves.

Fact: a lot of people testing for Bioware don't have a clue how this works. The game releases in what, a month and change? So why would you suggest changes to the underlying structure of major systems, like space combat? I'm pretty sure there might have been a design meeting at some point where they discussed the merits of rail shooter vs open space combat. Do I wish it was more like Tie Fighter and X-Wing? Yes, of course, I loved those games. Do I think it's going to look like that in 40 days when it's nothing like that now? No, I don't know where to find that good of drugs. Stick to useful feedback.

Second: I don't care that you liked KOTOR. SW:TOR is not KOTOR. Doesn't matter that it's Bioware with a lot of similarities. If it was KOTOR 3, they probably would have named it KOTOR 3. It's not a single player game. It won't be a single player game. And come on people, grow a damn brain stem already. MMO does NOT mean WoW clone. Get a damn clue. It's a type of multiplayer experience. Nobody asking for them not to fuck it up by turning it into a single player game where we have to pay the upkeep of the DRM servers, which is what the KOTOR fanboys are asking for wants this game to be WoW. We just want the MMO to have the MM in it. It's easier to ignore other people in an MMO setting than it is to get an MMO experience in a single player game.

Third: Running from point A to point B won't kill you. You don't need to start off with a speeder bike. Hell, try doing some of the quests, you might even like the game if you do the content that isn't the storyline. Oh, but wait, this is a single player game with inconvenient other people in it.

And here's a big one, folks. Quit trying to give technical feedback if your PC makes the original Game Boy look hot. I literally saw one idiot talking about the "amazing" graphics. After he upgraded to a graphics card that let him play in native resolution. That's right, folks. He's used to ever game looking like Wolfenstein 3D, so he must know what good graphics are when he sees them! The graphics, as is, are objectively crap, and the performance was pretty bad on those graphics. Yes, I've seen worse, and it didn't detract too much from the gameplay, but that doesn't mean it performed well or looked all that pretty. Don't give feedback above your level of ignorance. You say opinion, I say you're too stupid to recognize an objective fact if it bit you on the ass.

If this is the sort of feedback designers get from their betas, and the sort of people they inevitably listen to, it's hard to blame the devs for the plethora of mediocre games lately. Let's blame the twelve year old kids who haven't played anything besides WoW, on their dad's old graphing calculators. They're destroying games for the rest of us. Don't stand for it. Sign up for betas, give good feedback, make your voices heard.

And devs, please, please, please start instituting some form of testing for potential beta testers. Pick a demographic, get some baseline knowledge levels on certain subjects for that demographic, and quiz people. It won't work completely, but it should weed out the worst batch of idiots, they can't use Google.

EA, or, the Charmin Jock Strap of the Tech "Support" World.

Ok, EA. I get it. Big company, just released a new game, and your online distribution platform takes more work to push than heroin in Salt Lake City. But come on. The outsourcing couldn't be more obvious if the phone got answered "Thanks for calling the International House of Curry...". The first person you talk to knows roughly enough about computers to know they require electricity. The script following is as blatant as a first grade school play.

Maybe if you had the common sense to not release Origin until it actually works as a Steam ripoff, things wouldn't be so rough right now. Yesterday, one of your "techs" was so moronic I asked if I could talk to somebody who understood third grade English and knew at least as much about computers as me. He didn't know enough English to be offended. I'd rather not be right about that, guys.

So, since I'm sure you're actively ignoring everything coming through normal channels as much as you're passively ignoring this blog, I'll tell you about how broken your stupid shit is here, where there's probably a higher chance of you hearing about it than from your bottom tier, $0.05/hr people.

For starters: There is absolutely zero excuse for requiring me to have Origin AND a browser open at the same damn time to play a game. In fact, this level of incompetence makes the shit in Dilbert sound sane. It was clearly invented by some jackass in upper management who thinks Minesweeper is a hardcore, competitive game.

Next up, we have the fact that Origin doesn't set it's default download path into the drive it's on. In this day and age, that's beyond mandatory, and into "someone should get slapped across the face with their pink slip for getting this wrong" territory. And if you're really going to screw that up, there shouldn't be a bug in the options menu that can make it repeatedly NOT change the filepath to the one the user designates, but indicate it is changed when you hit the install button.

Maybe these issues don't seem huge, but when you can't talk to somebody with a multiple digit IQ score about them, it starts to be a serious problem. In fact, you corporate morons should stop rolling in the money from releasing "Madden Clone Whatever Year" with zero technical changes, and hire a consultant who's actually played a video game in their life to tell you how you're being idiots.

So, on to today's tech support joys. I'm having a stupid software conflict where for some reason various third party voice chat apps don't want to work with Battlefield 3. This game kind of revolves around teamwork in the multiplayer modes, if you didn't know. This is an intolerable problem. Luckily, the guy I talk to comprehends the concept of "Escalate me to someone who knows more about computers than the monkey you evolved from". So he asks me for a DxDiag dump, copy/pasted into the live chat, and disappears, supposedly to escalate me I guess...

Sorry, guy, but your silly little input limit on the live chat means I'd be copy pasting and digging through for the spot I left off for about an hour. How about you take your Ctrl-c/Ctrl-v and cram it, and give me a way to upload that massive wall of text. And while you're at it, can I maybe be escalated in a rational amount of time? I've been waiting over an hour now. Last I heard was... "Amresh: Just copy and paste it ." That was an hour and a half ago at this point. Maybe at least a confirmation I'm actually waiting on a human that didn't fail the turing test? I know there's someone above you who isn't busy, because everyone else who contacted your support already mercykilled themselves after the 73rd bash of their face against the brick wall you call "Service". Cheers. Die in a fire.