I feel the last few days exonerates beta testing on games.

[wimike]

I read many of these posts and I feel some people need to be understanding of some truths.

1. Yes it is a game. But it is still a product of development meant to raise income. It's business. As with any business when you make the game you make the rules. Beta's are meant to test the abilities of said game as well as test the policies to be played by.

2. The time you spend playing is your choice alone. This business invited you to participate in their product freely. You can play as much or as little as you like. As such it means players should try to be respectful and understanding when dealing with representatives of said business that has alllowed you to freely play their game. Helpful attitudes and a little patience will go a long way when requesting assitance and understanding from their viewpoint. Let's be honest it's their game and they can do what they want with it. A few banned players will be long forgotten when release comes along and there will be many more people there to replace them.

3. Multiple accounts from single households should be allowed in any of these games. My wife would like to play eventually also. HOWEVER, no matter how you look at it. When one account is used to assist another account giving advantage to one or both of those accounts that a single account user would not have the luxury of in order to garner higher returns is cheating. Yes maybe it is two individual people helping each other out as friends. BUT, a single user does not have that resource and as such will be left at a significant disadvantage. This is unfair to the individual. No product developer will ever have a successful product if it has such design flaws to allow others to manipulate advantages to themselves unfairly. You may get the few but you won't get the many. Not good business.

4. Multiple account tricks, design flaws, unreported bugs used to advantage are all great reasons why every company should have complete beta wipes before going live. At some point it should be an equal footing for all players involved. Back in the days of some early mmorpg's a few people got really devoted to those games and found through tricks of the trade they could no longer just play the game but make a LOT of money while doing so. As such numerous virtual property trading companies appeared on the internet allowing people to spend their real life money on virtual property. I know, I participated myself. I bought several hundreds of dollars worth of virtual money to get in game products. I also know these people never gave one penny of my money to the company that developed said product. It is not right that someone should benefit financialy off the property of creation of someone else no matter how you look at it.

Anyway not trying to irritate anyone here just dousing a little cold water on the hot heads. Play the game the way it was meant to be played. Help find the unknown issues and know that when it goes live you have a real good understanding of how to approach things. Not how to use and abuse misunderstandings or mistakes. Thanks.

[Draxxon]

As an independent programmer myself, I applaud this post, and agree completely.