The Overwatch beta is finally arriving on the 27th of October, almost a year after Blizzard first announced the brand new title. People are understandably excited, after all, this is the studio's first brand new IP in years, additionally, those who have played the game at trade shows like E3 and Gamescom have all come away with very positive impressions. However, there are a few catches you need to be aware of.
For a start, the beta is US only for the time being. Which is pretty disappointing for people in other parts of the world. Hearthstone went through a similar thing, with the EU getting access to the beta around three months after its initial launch, so maybe we will see Overwatch expand early next year.
Secondly, this is one of Blizzard's closed betas, so you will need luck on your side if you are going to get in. Blizzard seems to be pushing Twitch quite heavily in the marketing for Overwatch, so we will likely see tons of streamers and YouTubers with early access to the game.
There will be two testing groups, the core beta testers will have access to the game at all times. However, Blizzard will be sending out additional beta weekend keys every so often in order to properly stress the servers for a few days at a time. The first wave of invites will be going out this month and you can register for the beta over on your Battle.net account.
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KitGuru Says: I was really excited for the Overwatch beta announcement. Unfortunately, it is probably going to be limited to the US for quite a while. Are you looking forward to Overwatch at all? Will you be trying to get in to the beta?
I understand that Blizzard are an american company, but locking out the game from the EU for now and other regions is literally pointless imo.
They aren’t locking the game for forever. They’re really trying to test the servers also as well. I mean, unless you want the EU to have a half-shod, buggy experience…
That’s the thing, your point is that they’re testing the servers, how would the stress of the US servers have any relevance to the stress of EU servers? Surely the more servers that are used by Blizzard for testing of the game at an earlier date would mean the discovery of bugs would be heightened therefore hastening the public release of the full game. Lastly, to complain about a beta being buggy is quite redundant.
maybe they dont want to set up all that server infrastructure in EU yet. maybe they’re not done localising it yet. maybe they dont have permissions of some kind
What you’re doing is getting annoyed by nothing. You’re just guessing. I have NO IDEA what so ever what it takes to put servers up let alone the task it takes to put up servers in different continents.
The cost, the logistics, the languages might not me done, the permissions as Tyler pointed out might not be finalized. Blizzard has staff in France but not in sole offices owned by them, been there once and it’s an office block with a solicitors on top of them, so do them have the space to put it there? If not then sites have to be costed and set up, people found to man those areas, business tax, expenses and god knows what to consider.
I very much doubt that any one person, even in Blizzard truly knows how much of a mammoth task it is to set a new IP across the world.
So basically since the company don’t owe you a thing, nor does any other company for that matter just sit back and be happy that something you want to play is going to be coming out soon and that the beta testing will come to the EU and the rest of the world at some point in the future.
It’s for stress testing. You can’t just dump out a game to everyone, that’s why it’s a closed beta.
Merely my opinion
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