I do recognise that BA may be cautious of an open beta precisely because of some of the craziness that often comes back in terms of feedback. However, there is a huge advantage to increasing test coverage that they will not get if they rely on a few people to do some testing. If they cannot automate their tests or have poorly developed test cases, a small quality assurance team will find it difficult to cover all use cases. So the risk of failure on release increases. It also takes a very long time to get to release this way. They would be far better off releasing smaller iterations, at a greater frequency, to a wider population. It would be cheaper and do a lot to engender improved goodwill.
Yes, they would need to be prepared to ignore requests for random features and filter out unhelpful craziness...but they should recognise that, once this is filtered out, they will have more to gain than lose. I don't know how it has become a situation where the noise from a few unhelpful characters as been amplified and been used to define the character of the whole community...and any supportive or constructive feedback has been, though perhaps appreciated, heavily discounted in terms of how it reflects the nature of PC, in particular.
I do hope that the patch, when it finally releases, is going to fix many of the issues and niggles that people have been experiencing. I really recognise and appreciate the efforts of both the developers and the testers in whatever they achieve in this patch. I fear, however, that if there are problems with the patch or omissions that a few people were expecting (I'm hoping to see fully animated interactive drinks breaks...or I'm quitting all future BA games!) that the noise of a few about this will drown out the appreciation of others for what was delivered. The devs and testers will feel, once again, aggrieved and disengage even further. I hope I'm wrong about this. Ultimately we all want the same thing but BA needs to toughen up and PC needs to sharpen up.
