I am pretty excited! I was just informed that I have been selected to join Shadowbane’s beta testing effort. I have beta tested various systems (not game systems) for work, Dark Ages of Camelot, Anarchy Online, Ragnarok Online (blech), Asheron’s Call 2, and a few others that aren’t worth mentioning. I am pretty excited about this one. I believe this will be the first one to give Everquest a run for its money, mostly for its inclusion of Mac users. I couldn’t realy get into Everquest though. After I tried to play that one, it seemed really one dimensional, especially on the mellee side of things, autoattack and face towards the bad guy, no power to solo after certain levels, etc. Hopefully this one will match my personality more and will become a good past time.
I’ve done 3 or 4 betas myself. Don’t most of them have a nondisclosure agreement? You aren’t supposed to tell us ANYTHING about the game you’re testing.
This one didn’t have one, probably because it is due to go live March 25.
Oh, man. One of the guys here at the office is in that Beta- and boy, does the game suck. Slow as hell on his reasonably high-end machine, massively unwieldy interface, and, in his opinion, boring.
On a related note, the MMORPG that we’re working on is going live on Monday, after being in Beta for something like two years. Even though we don’t have the system in yet for people to pay for their accounts, we already have two paying customers- they mailed the checks directly to us! Now… to just get a few thousand more… 
Uh, Lightnin’, would it so happen that you’re talking about Dransik?
I am not surprised that a competing MMORPG would say it sucked. What is it by chance that you are testing Lightnin’?
That’s the one, Disciple of Alf. I’m not advertising, though! 
Not a tester- I’m one of the devs, dorkusmalorkusmafia (and may I say, your screen name always makes me giggle).
And normally I’d agree that perhaps I’m a bit biased… but honestly, from everything I’ve heard, it’s bad. And it’s a shame- I’ve actually been looking forward to Shadowbane. It’s not really a direct competitor, and it’s the kind of game I’d like to play. Plus, the company’s only about six miles from my house- go hometeam!
I’ll likely play it when it goes gold… like I said, I’d love to see them succeed. In my experience, there’s not a lot of competition between game companies… and the industry’s so incestuous I’ll likely end up working with one or more of their employees.
Hey, didn’t you sign something stating you wouldn’t say “(blech)” about their product in public, in return for being allowed to beta it?
When’s City of Heroes due?
I don’t think City of Heroes is due for another year. I looked into Dransik but I don’t like the 2 dimensional Zelda looking play. It looks pretty sweet though. Damn, the download for Shadowbane really sucks. T1 and it is still taking about 8 hours. 
My connection resets at midnight so I lost half the download, I was thinking I could leave it on and not have to worry about it.
Hahahahaha! City of Heroes? Well, they’re on their third push-back of a beta date (never a good sign), they’ve had a rather large ‘who’s doing what’ shake-up, and they’ve gotten to the point that they’re not going to even give updates anymore until after E3.
I was really looking forward to that game, but it’s looking like so much vaporware at this point…
Well, just thought I would give an update. The game itself isn’t bad but it plays almost exactly like diablo. The graphical requirements are set artificially high, there is no first person view so most of the customization you do of your character makes no difference, and the movement is often from an overhead perspective making it more difficult to move around. If you like diablo type games then this is for you. Lightnin’ you weren’t exactly right, the game is ok in its own right but it wasn’t quite what I was hoping it would be. I cancelled my beta account and wenton my merry way.
I used to beta test flightsims. I thought it would be cool and kinda fun.
I won’t do that again. Man, that was painful.