Larian Studios Forums Dragon Commander Dragon Commander - General Beta?

When does the open Beta start? Launch date is about a month and a week and 2-3 days away as it is.
The lack of any update whatsoever, including the FAQ on the official DC site still saying May/June is a touch disconcerting as well.

Or is it just me getting a tad impatient?

I'm not sure that it is going to start.

The point of a beta is to get feedback on things and change the game on release, but the game is going to be on store shelves on July 2, and there's other preparation that needs to be done as well - pressing the discs, making the boxes, shipping things, so it has to be locked down earlier than that. Not to mention assorted other bugfixes and last minute tweaks.

So really, how much time could there possibly be for a semi-open beta?

I agree, not much beta work can be done so close to launch. Which makes me wonder what happened to the "send out as many beta codes as possible" idea.

There is going to be a beta very soon, but the start date has yet to be determined.

Huh... Guess it's going to be a short beta. Or...

Anyway, thanks for the info, Raze.

A (semi) open beta can't be wrong. Even if the discs for the box release are already in production bugs and balancing problems can still be fixed and issued in a day-one patch which is pretty common nowadays.

I want this beta >_>

Who doesn´t ?

I think mos of Larian's fans want this beta.

At this point, wouldn't it be a demo?

I suspicious that they won't meet Jul 2nd release date; not to be negative but I think they do intend to have a real beta. Given that the initial release is digital the turn around can be pretty fast but I'm not sure there is enough time to incorporate feedback and still release it by July 2nd.
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I.e., the comments we see in this thread assumes that July 2nd is engraved in stone but if you consider it might slip then all the pieces fit in place.

That depends on the functionality. In a demo you can usually follow the story up to a certain percentage to just get a feeling for the game if you would like it or not. In a beta you usually play for finding bugs and glitches and balancing problems. Therefore almost the complete game is available or at least the parts the beta testers should test.

Demo = there should be no bugs (polished)
Beta = just the current state of the game (event. unpolished)

@meme
I think the release date on 2nd July is realistic or Larian would already have announced a delay. You can patch a digital (and even physical) release until the final day of release (famous day-one patch). I'm more concerned about the almost non-existing marketing for Dragon Commander atm. Since the end of the kickstarter campaign for D:OS I haven't heard a single piece of news about DC anywhere on the web. That's not a good sign for a game which is to be released in about a month.....

Let's be honest: We don't need Larian to work on a public beta for us. I bet that most of the people here interested in the beta have already bought the game through Kickstarter. We're not that important - people who haven't heard of Dragon Commander yet - are.

Lord Crash has it right that the most important thing Larian can do is to crank up the press machine. The good news for them is that it's not going to be as much work as promoting the Kickstarter. I'm not asking for website updates merely because I, personally, am interested in learning more (although I am interested). It's so there is more that I can tell to other people who have not already bought the game.

I'm thinking that they'll throw out beta invites after the kickstarter pledge manager is done. That way they could send them to people who took those pledges as well as who bought the game from their vault as well.

I hope you're wrong! Really looking forward to this title.

Since Larian is working on two games as once, I would imagine they are very busy.
Still they implied they have not forgotten me and a Beta is still coming.

We launched a tiny beta this weekend to see how it holds up. Once we ironed the wrinkles out of it, we'll have some more people joining and some more. Of course we will not forget the larian.com forum!

I hope I will be able to try it soon ! Did everything work well ?

I hope I will be able to try it soon ! Did everything work well ? no bugs with Steam ?

Steam is never (seldom) the issue. It's a tried and proven system. The only thing we're noticing atm is that there's not enough users to actually play in MP so most play against AI. We'll analyze data tomorrow to see how we proceed