OK, it's clear now what the general opinion is and that's all I asked for really . BTW the poll was not about whether or not it's ever going to happen but would there be a benefit if it did. Oh well, back to speculation and Game Informer :foodndrink: .

:thumbsup:

Couldn't have said it any better myself.

Harmful! An open Beta of a single player game is essentially free labor. Let them test their game with paid testers.

Many games already ship is what is basically a beta state, with the customers running into the bugs and reporting them and the company patching after release. We do not need to encourage that unscrupulous behavior!

As to one of the points brought up though, "casual fans of the series" wouldn't even know about a beta or be bothered to download it. It's more an issue of unpaid labor than people getting the game for free, in my opinion.

There's a possibility of it being useful. But there's a better possibility of me throwing a snowball in hell than it actually happening.

This isn't an MMO; therefore, an open beta is kinda a waste of money, as is a demo.

if i was todd howard...........i would release a pre alpha build in april. and i would add some extras to it like an instant win button that you can only use 10 times a day.....just to make it believable. i would make the framerates super crappy and the graphics would be on the lowest possible setting. the character would either be super fast or super slow. i would love to see the firestorm on the forums after that.

Buying a game that quality control didn't adequately test turns paying players into beta testers.

I'd rather volunteer to help find ways to break the game (so it can be fixed) than pay $60 to get a broken game that won't be adequately patched for weeks.

wtf people why would it be harmful or pointless for a beta i mean it may take a little time but you can just take a section of the game like a quest and there doing this game with a new engine on a large scale it could have all sorts of problems. game usually are better with betas because it allows people to give feedback.

thats not entirely true many games with a multiplayer component expected to get HUGE amounts of traffic need a Beta inorder to test server loads and how the game stands up to repeated abuse it allows for a TON of bug stomping that testers would never find in a closed environment that said TES is not a game with multiplayer and even if it had it it would never receive the traffic that something like Halo or COD gets