it wasnt that broken excuse me sir but did you GROUP at all?

Yes. I was playing with a friend whom i sent the extra beta code i got.

We did not run into any show-stopping bugs in the time we adventured together(like i did 2 times when soloing before). We bumped into some issues that could be solved by relogging, and it took us a while to make the server put us in the same instance initially(only right at the start). Other than that, no major issues.

If you are just looking for a free trial then you shouldn't participate in a closed Beta, or a Stress test weekend test. Should just wait till just before launch when they have a final or "Open" beta. Otherwise testing is in fact to test and fix the game and get it ready for launch not a free trial.

Its not really a rumour, zenimax outright said it.

now thats going to be the marketing beta.

They are holding something back.

You can see more about the beta version the long-term testers are viewing in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJJgErbKgVM.

I found it odd that Zenimax decide not to communicate.

It should be a brief official announcement after the beta in my opinion.

They did, actually. There was a picture of an official statement from the beta forums posted earlier that stated "this was an old build, you will be playing the new build next beta". I have it bookmarked but not on this computer so i cant give you a link atm.

I'm guessing because you didn't use a smiley-face or otherwise make it seem like you were joking that you are, indeed, serious. Wish I was playing the same game as you. I really do. I found that most of Sunday was fine, but Saturday night I couldn't even play due to constant disconnects.

Hopefully, they'll have at least one more beta I can participate in before launch. I liked what I have seen so far, but it certainly doesn't make me want to pay a monthly fee for it.

Yep, they announced that officially https://twitter.com/TESOnline

The YouTube videos encouraged some interest.

But the latest Beta put the kibosh on that.

In a hurry.

It was posted somewhere to be advised that it was just a stress test of the servers and that none of the changes from the PTS were included. Maybe it was on the forum announcements. Perhaps the patch notes section. But either way, it would have been wise for them to make this clear. They could have mentioned this in the beta invite. I'm guessing it was an oversight. Or perhaps they underestimated how uninformed many of their testers were.

Sadly, too many peoe use a free beta as a preview. And in this case, it makes uninformed reflect poorly on the game.

My guess on why they chose the older beta build was because the much newer version would have necessitated a scrub of all beta characters, everyone starting from scratch again.

And we haven't seen the level of bellyaching and howling that would have incurred from the weekend beta testers, the following likely being a commone enough example:

While I agree with many of the posters in this thread that a beta test is meant to "test" not "promote" the game. I also understand the point the OP is trying to make here: A month away from release, thousands and thousands of bug reports sent to the developers over the past 3 beta tests and still, 6 months after the initial large scale beta test we're faced with the same bugs that plagued us back then!

I fully understand it is an older version of the game, but why lift the NDA on a version of the game you KNOW is riddled with bugs? That can only lead to bad press, and in this market, we all know what bad press can do to a game (see: TOR).

except there is a hole in your philosophy, wipes in alphas and betas are expected I wouldnt have cared if they wiped my character as long as it allowed me to play the game with my wife the way we wanted to....instead by trying to save a wipe they cost themselves a sale, and in the long run probably me as well since I tend to not stay long in games my wife refuses to play

Because they wisely did not try to stop something they couldn't prevent anyway. Not when they let 4 millions of people in.

they lifted the NDA after that one guy basically covered pretty much everything in his video, as soon as we posted the info on it yeah the NDA was lifted the next day

i think this was one of my very first beta-tests i've ever played through,

my computer crashed the game a bunch of times during friday night until my brother suggested i lowered the graphics-

and that was the only real downside i had

as for the game; it looked really good, even with some of the quests being broken and items not being found or properly functional,

so i am really looking forward to see what we will get in the next beta- and i'm almost euphoric to see how the game will look after release

as for the stress test; it certainly did stress a lot of stuff,

many people on screen at the same time in the PvP, i think the server (or something) crashed and kicked us out 2-4 times during sunday's party

still, if this will help the developers with fixiing that problem, i'm just glad to have contributed.

really do miss being able to swim under water though,

the underwater exploring in skyrim was one of the features i liked much about the game..