In my personal opinion I find that games who offer access with purchases are very buggy at launch, some never fixing the problem. Being a BETA tester has turned into 'I can play the game now and get used to it before it launches', its basically turned a testing phase into a glorified demo for some gamers, it has faded from what it originally was meant to be, testing the actual game and helping to find and fix the code, glitches, bugs etc. Being a BETA tester needs to be given out to people who will actually test the game and find these faults, it needs to be tested on a wide range of computer hardware to the developers can get good feedback on what will cause problems. All this will helps us when the game launches, if we do our job right and actually test the game and find the bugs it will help the community as a whole to enjoy the game more.

I agree with Valkr. But this community seems like it really has a desire to see the game flourish and, for the most part, seem mature. Combined with BI's open communication, hopefully the beta's will actually provide some useful bug reports and suggestions.

I just hope they don't get overwhelmed with wish lists that are unattainable. You can please some of the people all of the time but not all of the people some of the time.

I would not. I hope they choose BETA testers that are in BETA to TEST. I am beyond sick of these BETA becoming 'previews' or early releases. Get real BETA testers in there that are hunting issues and helping make it a better game, people that leave feedback, find bugs, actually TEST.

No buy your way in, none of that crap.

I should have read your post before I made mine. But yeah, the free preview BS leads nowhere good, usually.

I agree with you for the most part, but PLAYING the game is the reason why they have beta testers. The things they NEED to have fix are issues that are directly related to the game play part of the game. I would MUCH rather have things directly related to the players fixed rather than some clipping corner of a building. I always seem to find the people who are vocal about being "real" beta testers as the people who simply want to get in for the reasons you have stated.

When it is more stable perhaps and they are ready for large scale testing then yes sure why not, but for alpha and early CBT, invite only at Dev discretion, maybe random or however they see fit.

Normally I'm opposed to paying for betas simply because the idea of paying to do QA work doesn't sit well with me, and because beta is the developer's chance to prove to us that the game is/can be good. On the other hand, I'm a sucker for shiny virtual goods and enough hype can do anything, so I'm likely to cave in.

As Unbihexium said, I too am a sucker for the Founders Shiny shit, if a founders pack for Chaos came up, I'd buy it with or without beta access... but beta access would make me get it that very day.

I guess I would if the testing would actually help create a better game that does what the community wants.

In before suddenly everyone has stories of how they found thousands of bugs and showed up to every test session in every mmo ever.