Cliffy B the idiot?

[Skjalg]

You make a good point, but it doesn't take half a million testers to test an encounter... it takes 50.

I'm not saying it is wrong of blizzard to do what they are doing, all I'm saying is that I agree with Cliffy's point of view on the negative effects that releasing a beta will have.

[Taylor]

But in a closed beta everyone else will bitch the uber-guilds had an unfair advantage!

It does remove some of the excitement of the new encounters though; I do see where you’re coming from completely. It was a shame seeing all TBC bosses drop so fast and so many going down as the PTR goes up, in legacy Molten Core was only being explored by a tiny amount of guilds and encounters like The Four Horseman* completely halted progress for months – you got a tiny trickle of information and it was much more exciting.

Unfortunately this stems from other things as well – guilds have got very good, raids have got much easier to organise, and the poor class design has hamstrung encounter design to gear-checks and gimmicks.

* Though this was many due to the “Oh, Blizzard actually don’t want a balanced raid composition. Bye bye, Warlocks, let’s fill this puppy with overpowered, pampered Warriors.”