Is there an internal Testers / Beta Tester Group?

[GraveyardJimmy]

Originally Posted by MadTommy

It seems to me to be a far from ideal situation not to have a dedicated test team that can give far more concise feedback and bug reports to the developers, rather than an open forum.

Developers have stated there are internal testing teams. Like other games (red Orchestra 2 for example) they need a larger sample size to reproduce bugs and find all of them, hence releasing patches for testing rather than general release. Testing is usually done in a similar manner in many studios (such as RO2): Internal testing (by team and smaller groups which can be costly) then after that move to a larger group (either under an NDA before release or by volunteers for new patches, like now) then rework patches or release.

Even hardware manufacturers like NVIDIA release public beta tests after internal testing.

[SEE]

I supose MP would be a bit of a problem too. A popular server such as ATAG when testing a beta version would only be accessible to the players approved for beta testing.

It could work for SP though and prevent some of the harsh negative feedback that follows when a beta doesn't quite match users expectations (at the end of the day - installing a beta is optional not mandatory).