[MUD-Dev] Rewarding Beta Testers (There's Pricing Deal)

[SamuraiCat at Catacombs]

At 12:19 AM 9/11/2003 -0400, Vladimir Cole wrote:

> I like the idea of lifetime membership offers for people who help
> beta test a game or who help form the core of the
> community. Here's a portion of a recent email that There sent to
> its community of testers and former testers:

I'd imagine there are some limitations to this that they're not
mentioning in the email. First thing that comes to mind is the
fairly typical "lifetime membership can't be transferred" deal -
i.e. as long as YOU (the original account holder) has the account,
it's free for life... but if you transfer it to someone else, poof,
no more freebies.

Beyond that, considering the number of people you really need to
properly do a beta of a MMOG these days (never mind that they tend
to ship full of bugs, each bug having usually been found and known
of by large chunks of the beta testers), that's a *lot* of potential
free lifetime accounts. And on top of that, IMHO, the vast majority
of beta testers aren't worth such a reward - many of them are just
looking for a free game to play 'til the next beta comes along, or
info on the game so they have an advantage at release, etc.

If you were to make the freebie lifetime account a seperate reward
to strive for - i.e. something that not all the testers could get -
then there would be cries of favoritism, etc. Ugh.
_______________________________________________
MUD-Dev mailing list
MUD-Dev at kanga.nu
https://www.kanga.nu/lists/listinfo/mud-dev