The real reason for the "code giveaway"

[Rhoklaw]

So, while it did seem odd that you could download the game without even making an account, seemed a bit odd, but whatever. I downloaded the game, chose a server and clicked Play. Turns out, you actually do need a key to activate the game, but how this was designed was ingenious.

Think about this for a moment. How does a game developer gather metrics on a game's popularity without actually, letting anyone "play" it. Well, you do what this company did and let people download the game and then request an activation key. Then you have a "free key giveaway" in which 100's or even 1000's of keys get posted on their Discord ( not entirely sure what they were thinking, but now it all makes sense ). Oddly enough, every key was used instantly. Which means either BOTs stole all the keys OR, none of the keys were real.

Hear me out cause this is the really good part. When you download the game, they still let you choose the server before hitting the Play button and amazingly after all these keys being taken instantly, EVERY single one of their 18 servers still shows LOW population. Interesting huh? 1000's of keys given out, yet you have 18 servers with LOW population?

Sounds to me like NetEase pulled a fast one on us and all this free giveaway was just a ploy to get some metrics.

[Rhoklaw]

Originally posted by alan0n:

Originally posted by Rhoklaw:

No, I'm describing what I saw and experienced when I posted this thread. By the way, it doesn't matter how many shards a server has. It won't affect a servers total population and every single server said LOW population. This was a week after they "supposedly" gave out 100,000 keys. Forgive me for calling BS when I see it.

What you 'saw and experienced' were inaccurate shallow impressions with no contextual understanding but plenty of guess work behind them.

I am quite literally telling you that you are factually incorrect. On just the server I play on alone there is between 1k-4k players online at any given time. Its not a matter of how you feel or what you think you saw.

Your impression was objectively wrong, as anyone who has actually honestly played the game can attest too.

Look dude, go watch ANY person who has streamed this game and every single one of them are playing by themselves. Even their friends are offline. Since YOU are playing the game and love it so much, perhaps you can share video proof that any server is actually active enough to claim there are 100,000+ testers. If not, feel free to leave this thread.

[Coyote]

I heard the Starry Studios was the second gunman on the grassy gnoll.

[alan0n]

Originally posted by Rhoklaw:

Look dude, go watch ANY person who has streamed this game and every single one of them are playing by themselves. Even their friends are offline. Since YOU are playing the game and love it so much, perhaps you can share video proof that any server is actually active enough to claim there are 100,000+ testers. If not, feel free to leave this thread.

Why? I dont need to, got first hand experience that is way more relevant. Also just for your information, taking a streamers playime as a typical in game experience is folly. They make money from generating either interest, drama or anger. They do not make money from playing games.

[Rhoklaw]

Originally posted by alan0n:

Originally posted by Rhoklaw:

Look dude, go watch ANY person who has streamed this game and every single one of them are playing by themselves. Even their friends are offline. Since YOU are playing the game and love it so much, perhaps you can share video proof that any server is actually active enough to claim there are 100,000+ testers. If not, feel free to leave this thread.

Why? I dont need to, got first hand experience that is way more relevant. Also just for your information, taking a streamers playime as a typical in game experience is folly. They make money from generating either interest, drama or anger. They do not make money from playing games.

Well, I've seen the proof as well, so again, unless you can prove me wrong, kick rocks if you don't like what I have to say.

[Dee]

Originally posted by Rhoklaw:

So, while it did seem odd that you could download the game without even making an account, seemed a bit odd, but whatever. I downloaded the game, chose a server and clicked Play. Turns out, you actually do need a key to activate the game, but how this was designed was ingenious.

Think about this for a moment. How does a game developer gather metrics on a game's popularity without actually, letting anyone "play" it. Well, you do what this company did and let people download the game and then request an activation key. Then you have a "free key giveaway" in which 100's or even 1000's of keys get posted on their Discord ( not entirely sure what they were thinking, but now it all makes sense ). Oddly enough, every key was used instantly. Which means either BOTs stole all the keys OR, none of the keys were real.

Hear me out cause this is the really good part. When you download the game, they still let you choose the server before hitting the Play button and amazingly after all these keys being taken instantly, EVERY single one of their 18 servers still shows LOW population. Interesting huh? 1000's of keys given out, yet you have 18 servers with LOW population?

Sounds to me like NetEase pulled a fast one on us and all this free giveaway was just a ploy to get some metrics.

code giveaway is suspicious. There is a Download Folder seems like an Virus lol.

[Dagmar]

Yeah, at this point it's clear the entire reason for their "closed beta" had nothing to do with testing, it's strictly for publicity. Streamers get keys, but their Discord is flooded with people who were on the "70+ keys giveaway" list and should have been getting a key, but despite several different promises (the MagicBot will give you a key... nope. Oh wait go to this website for the key... nope. Oh this moderator will get you a get in 36 hours... nope) apparently exactly no one who isn't a "content creator" is getting a beta key.

Count on the "cosmetics" that require money being practically everything relating to base building. NetEase is going to do their usual.

[Dagmar]

Originally posted by Rhoklaw:

Look dude, go watch ANY person who has streamed this game and every single one of them are playing by themselves. Even their friends are offline. Since YOU are playing the game and love it so much, perhaps you can share video proof that any server is actually active enough to claim there are 100,000+ testers. If not, feel free to leave this thread.

Well, there might be 100,000+ testers if they were actually managing to give out the keys they've been claiming to have issued. They're probably just conveniently omitting that they have two overseas interns "handling" that who haven't actually given out any keys that they didn't manually message people over Discord.

[alan0n]

Yes, you guys have all figured it out.

They are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on enough server infrastructure and bandwidth to support 200,000 players just too not beta test their game.

Because the most obvious path to profit is obviously to make a game, not test it, make it look like a virus, and generate publicity. Again, all for a game they aren't even trying to test.

You guys are obviously just lizard people from hollow earth sent by your machine overlord to confuse us regular humans with your incomprehensible nonsense.

Edit: You also obviously have used some kind of anti-spelling weapon as this post was littered with misspellings and poor grammar that needed to be fixed.

[Dagmar]

Originally posted by alan0n:

Yes, you guys have all figured it out.

They are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on enough server infrastructure and bandwidth to support 200,000 players just too not beta test their game.

This will be far from the first time a game developer has abused "open/closed beta" almost exclusively as a promotional tool.

Key telltales:

• There was no way a Discord bot was going to be able to respond to 70,000 messages in a short span of time. That decision was bereft of sanity.
  
• There's even less way a single person is going to be able to do that for reasons that go beyond just anti-flood thresholds in Discord (I humored the idea, zero response from Maru).
  
• Oddly enough they have a separate list for "streamers" (who definitely are just promoting the game for free) and would you look at that, they're also supposed to message Maru. They're probably the only ones getting responses.
  
• The constant stream of people asking about why the button is greyed out ("NOT A WINNER") suggests that vanishingly few people are getting it to cough up a code, if anyone at all is.
  
• Correlating a Discord username to a row-column database to retrieve a code is pretty trivial stuff, yet it's not been fixed the entire week. "It's case-sensitive" is just ridiculous because most actual database collation methods are case-insensitive by design and even a new hire should know a dozen ways to compare two lcased strings. Even Excel can do this.

No one's saying the dev team isn't fixing bugs, but this "beta" release has the reek of "we don't actually think we need more testers, but we would love more publicity".

[Sol4rSky]

Usually games who go to these lengths to limit who gets in through so many raffles and such, they don't end up being any good on the long run or last long. Whenever I visit their discord and see the desperation people show and the whole 505050 keys were given, giveaways, with dates planned and such, makes it feel like a job just to try and get in lol. ♥♥♥♥ that.

Let's see if this will get "mixed" reviews on steam after release, or how long it'll be populated for. I'm sure they'll pull some weird ass systems if they haven't already. But maybe I'm wrong and it will be good, we'll see.

Also in regards to OP : That's some interesting points. I was interested myself why they offer the download option and I didn't even bother to download it when I saw it, went straight up to check better and indeed you need a key, since I saw how it works I knew straight away something was up, so yeah kinda makes you wonder why you're allowed to download/jump in, yet require a key. Knowing how people like to download anything that's "free".

[TDCD]

Originally posted by evildagmar:

Originally posted by alan0n:

Yes, you guys have all figured it out.

They are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on enough server infrastructure and bandwidth to support 200,000 players just too not beta test their game.

This will be far from the first time a game developer has abused "open/closed beta" almost exclusively as a promotional tool.

Key telltales:

• There was no way a Discord bot was going to be able to respond to 70,000 messages in a short span of time. That decision was bereft of sanity.

No one's saying the dev team isn't fixing bugs, but this "beta" release has the reek of "we don't actually think we need more testers, but we would love more publicity".

Few of my friends got keys from that 70k, they are enjoying game and thats all that matter.

[alan0n]

Originally posted by evildagmar:

This will be far from the first time a game developer has abused "open/closed beta" almost exclusively as a promotional tool.

Key telltales:

• There was no way a Discord bot was going to be able to respond to 70,000 messages in a short span of time. That decision was bereft of sanity.
  
• There's even less way a single person is going to be able to do that for reasons that go beyond just anti-flood thresholds in Discord (I humored the idea, zero response from Maru).
  
• Oddly enough they have a separate list for "streamers" (who definitely are just promoting the game for free) and would you look at that, they're also supposed to message Maru. They're probably the only ones getting responses.
  
• The constant stream of people asking about why the button is greyed out ("NOT A WINNER") suggests that vanishingly few people are getting it to cough up a code, if anyone at all is.
  
• Correlating a Discord username to a row-column database to retrieve a code is pretty trivial stuff, yet it's not been fixed the entire week. "It's case-sensitive" is just ridiculous because most actual database collation methods are case-insensitive by design and even a new hire should know a dozen ways to compare two lcased strings. Even Excel can do this.

No one's saying the dev team isn't fixing bugs, but this "beta" release has the reek of "we don't actually think we need more testers, but we would love more publicity".

So... let me get your reasoning straight.

This whole thing is purely intended to be a promotional tool, and the vehicle they have chosen for this promotional endeavor is... to piss people off by purposefully mishandling the code giveaways?

That makes exactly zero logical sense to anyone with any semblance of attachment to reality.

Occam's Razor suggests a much more realistic explanation: You felt entitled to a beta key, but were not willing to put in the small amount of effort required to actually get one, and now are upset that the studio dared to not fulfill your entitled demands so are just posting nonsensical things to spite them.

[Rhoklaw]

Originally posted by alan0n:

Originally posted by evildagmar:

This will be far from the first time a game developer has abused "open/closed beta" almost exclusively as a promotional tool.

Key telltales:

• There was no way a Discord bot was going to be able to respond to 70,000 messages in a short span of time. That decision was bereft of sanity.
  
• There's even less way a single person is going to be able to do that for reasons that go beyond just anti-flood thresholds in Discord (I humored the idea, zero response from Maru).
  
• Oddly enough they have a separate list for "streamers" (who definitely are just promoting the game for free) and would you look at that, they're also supposed to message Maru. They're probably the only ones getting responses.
  
• The constant stream of people asking about why the button is greyed out ("NOT A WINNER") suggests that vanishingly few people are getting it to cough up a code, if anyone at all is.
  
• Correlating a Discord username to a row-column database to retrieve a code is pretty trivial stuff, yet it's not been fixed the entire week. "It's case-sensitive" is just ridiculous because most actual database collation methods are case-insensitive by design and even a new hire should know a dozen ways to compare two lcased strings. Even Excel can do this.

No one's saying the dev team isn't fixing bugs, but this "beta" release has the reek of "we don't actually think we need more testers, but we would love more publicity".

So... let me get your reasoning straight.

This whole thing is purely intended to be a promotional tool, and the vehicle they have chosen for this promotional endeavor is... to piss people off by purposefully mishandling the code giveaways?

That makes exactly zero logical sense to anyone with any semblance of attachment to reality.

Occam's Razor suggests a much more realistic explanation: You felt entitled to a beta key, but were not willing to put in the small amount of effort required to actually get one, and now are upset that the studio dared to not fulfill your entitled demands so are just posting nonsensical things to spite them.

I've never seen such a diehard try so hard to defend something that is OBVIOUSLY not as it should be. There is no 100,000+ beta testers. There isn't even 10,000+ beta testers. The server list proves this. Stop licking your overlord's boots man. As I said, you're playing the game. So take that famous screenshot of the servers being full and prove us all wrong. Nope, instead you'll just keep shoveling the same ♥♥♥♥ into this thread.

[Dagmar]

Originally posted by alan0n:

So... let me get your reasoning straight.

This whole thing is purely intended to be a promotional tool, and the vehicle they have chosen for this promotional endeavor is... to piss people off by purposefully mishandling the code giveaways?

Nope, that's your argument. I think they just put incompetent people on the task of key distribution and didn't bother to task better people with it because management is really only interested in free promotion.

Originally posted by alan0n:

That makes exactly zero logical sense to anyone with any semblance of attachment to reality.

...and to be clear, your argument is your problem. It's called a "straw man".

Originally posted by alan0n:

Occam's Razor suggests a much more realistic explanation: You felt entitled to a beta key, but were not willing to put in the small amount of effort required to actually get one, and now are upset that the studio dared to not fulfill your entitled demands so are just posting nonsensical things to spite them.

Occam's Razor suggests no such thing. Occam's Razor suggests rather strongly the people in charge of the beta keys have no idea how to do such a thing and are mainly only interested in getting keys into the hands of streamers who can get the company free publicity because that's the drum their bosses are beating. I did "all the things" rather patiently and saw basically no sign that anyone but streamers were getting keys and there's nothing "nonsensical" about what I posted. At each step in the process they said to do a thing to get a key, people did the thing and it turned out to not work. So they told them, "Oh sorry about that, do this other thing" and that didn't work either, by the third thing they failed at they were trying stuff that was clearly not going to work so... the writing was pretty much "on the wall".

...or would you care to try and explain how it is that they couldn't simply email out 70,000 keys being that they have everyone's email address. That would have been a matter of 2-3 hours without even straining the server. At my last employer we had that sort of thing going on twice a week with HTML emails containing hyperlinked images that would occasionally burn a webserver straight to the ground (LOL) just from the number of people who left Outlook on their desktop in preview mode around the clock.

[alan0n]

Originally posted by Rhoklaw:

I've never seen such a diehard try so hard to defend something that is OBVIOUSLY not as it should be. There is no 100,000+ beta testers. There isn't even 10,000+ beta testers. The server list proves this. Stop licking your overlord's boots man. As I said, you're playing the game. So take that famous screenshot of the servers being full and prove us all wrong. Nope, instead you'll just keep shoveling the same ♥♥♥♥ into this thread.

The servers don't need to be 'full' to reach 100k players. If the maximum capacity of the each server is 5k (per shard, of which each has 10) and there are 18 servers... then 10% of that capacity (ie a very low population level) is more than enough to house 100k players.

Just because it says 'low pop' doesn't meant that the actual number of people on that server is a small number. Its all about scale.

Originally posted by evildagmar:

Nope, that's your argument. I think they just put incompetent people on the task of key distribution and didn't bother to task better people with it because management is really only interested in free promotion.

...and to be clear, your argument is your problem. It's called a "straw man".

This is completely disingenuous. I have quite literally paraphrased both yours and that other upset kid's stated opinions back to you. Just stating a buzzword does not win you a debate, especially when you seem to not even understand what that buzzword means.

Originally posted by evildagmar:

Occam's Razor suggests no such thing. Occam's Razor suggests rather strongly the people in charge of the beta keys have no idea how to do such a thing and are mainly only interested in getting keys into the hands of streamers who can get the company free publicity because that's the drum their bosses are beating. I did "all the things" rather patiently and saw basically no sign that anyone but streamers were getting keys and there's nothing "nonsensical" about what I posted. At each step in the process they said to do a thing to get a key, people did the thing and it turned out to not work. So they told them, "Oh sorry about that, do this other thing" and that didn't work either, by the third thing they failed at they were trying stuff that was clearly not going to work so... the writing was pretty much "on the wall".

...or would you care to try and explain how it is that they couldn't simply email out 70,000 keys being that they have everyone's email address. That would have been a matter of 2-3 hours without even straining the server. At my last employer we had that sort of thing going on twice a week with HTML emails containing hyperlinked images that would occasionally burn a webserver straight to the ground (LOL) just from the number of people who left Outlook on their desktop in preview mode around the clock.

Occam's Razor suggests that the simplest explanation is often the case.

Sooo again.... a company purposefully spent tons of money to run a beta test, but then never actually invited anyone. Possibly through purposeful mismanagement even (Hanlon's Razor applies here also).

Sorry, but you are wrong. It is far simpler an explanation that people make mistakes and you got unlucky on the email draws. This fits Occam's Razor perfectly.