What's the purpose of a "closed beta" ?

I'm a little new to the beta stuff but why make a closed beta then make it into an open beta when you can just start off with an open beta? Is there a specific purpose to the closed beta?

The main reason is that they need to moderate the number of players that can be on the server at once. If they opened it to the entire public, the servers would most certainly crash. This way the ease people in over time so they can keep everything stable and enjoyable.

Open beta is when they have all the game features worked out and just want to stress test the servers. By calling it "open beta" they can just let the servers crash and then fix them without people getting pissed at the developers for releasing a broken game. Since it's technically not a released game.

Clever I know.

ohh okay. yeah i was kind of figuring that,that was the purpose for the closed/open beta. because when i was playing the battlefield 3 open beta for the 360, the servers would continuously crash and what not. so a stress test for the open beta would make a lot of sense.
but even when i was playing the PoE beta on a friends account, the game seemed really good, had some kinks as every beta will. but i was most definitely satisfied and very addicted -.-

Yeah it's a lot of fun. The fact is though that they are adding a ton of content to the final game that you aren't seeing right now.

You merely played a demo of the final game. It's gonna be great.

And yeah I was in the BF3 beta too. Omg that game had problems. So far after logging about 12-15 hours in PoE it has only crashed on me once. The servers were down for like 10 seconds. That's the benefit of a closed beta. Much more stability.

yeah i played it on my friends and it would randomly log us out when we went into different parts of the map but i dont think thats the beta itself but my friends shitty connection. i really wish i had this damn beta though. i would be able to wait if i hadent already tried it but since i did, its like giving a kid some candy then taking it away, i only want it soo much more :(

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postosuchus wrote:

yeah i played it on my friends and it would randomly log us out when we went into different parts of the map but i dont think thats the beta itself but my friends shitty connection. i really wish i had this damn beta though. i would be able to wait if i hadent already tried it but since i did, its like giving a kid some candy then taking it away, i only want it soo much more :(

At lest you got in for a bit. There's still a dozen or more guys with almost a year of waiting for their keys. I imagine they don't have friends accounts to play on either.

yeah i would assume that would be awful. i only heard about this game about a week or so ago from a friend that was one of the first to recieve a code. he was going ape shit over it, and for good reason. im sure everyone here, if they havent already recieved it yet, would absolutely love a beta code at this point. so i cant really say im any different than all the other unlucky people on here.

Yeah I just recently recruited a couple of friends to play with. Now they are just waiting on the random invite or for me to get a friend key.

I also thought that they invited the veterans first. Almost like a first come first serve type thing to avoid the fact that someone who has been watching the game for a year or more wouldn't be left behind while someone that signed up yesterday would be playing. Could be wrong though.

There might be a psychological element to it as well. For example, most people who see an open beta will just be thinking "ooh, free game", while those who manage to get into a closed beta will feel lucky for the opportunity and perhaps more inclined to give feedback/bug reports and it's just much easier to keep tabs on things with the smaller playerbase.

Also it keeps the quality of the playerbase up too since people could be banned if they do something stupid, wheras a ban in an open beta just means making a new account.

Testing, bug reporting & bug fixing before giving access a broader audience to the game.