I was wondering just the other night "Will there be a mutiplayer Beta for this game?", and decided to start searching...
To my delight, I found an interview with id CEO Todd Hollenshead about this topic, but sadly he says the idea for a Beta is very "doubtful".
On the bright side, he added “There could be something that’s more along the lines of a PC demo or maybe a Mac demo that comes out from a test perspective."
But when I found this out I was already in awe, and quite frankly disappointed.
So I decided to post this topic asking the People what they think id should do. Plan for an upcoming Beta, or just forget about the idea completely.
I mean, we are the people, we should have a say on what should and shouldn't go in and come out of a game.
And on that note, I'll leave it to the rest of you guys to post your opinion on what you think should happen.
If you think there should be more choices on this poll, leave a comment.

Why in the world would you vote "No"????? Betazzzzz have always proven to help improve games. I think it is funny that people vote and then don't leave a comment or a reason why they voted that way. No guts.

What better way to show off how good a game is? I think this would push sales higher, and keep people pumped about the game. I would love to have a beta on PS3.

It's good for both the gamers and sellers of this game to release a beta surely? Gamers get a taste of the game itself, and betas always imrpove sales

The only reason I can think that a game wouldn't produce a beta is to either try and help not relieve anticipation of their audience, or general fear of failure.

In something so heavily multiplayer, and FPS most people take seriously, no less. A beta is only a good decision. Fingers crossed.

I'd rather have a demo than an open beta, although in this day and age there is often little difference between the two.

I'm not a big fan of either with multiplayer games. It's not that the demos aren't fun but when the final game comes out you often find people clustering around the levels from the demo and not giving the new ones much consideration.

A beta can really help weapon and map balance, and fix many annoying little quirks. Of course you could always fix those after launch too, but it's better to have sth kick ass from the start.
It's too bad most devs these days just treat the beta as a marketing tool (basically a demo), but the audience is partly to blame for that too, because so many people can't seem to understand that there will be bugs and imbalances in beta.

i'd go for a mp beta over a demo any day -- hungry any PC gamer will tell you this -- the difference is great. with a beta you're essentially getting the full, unpolished game, whereas a demo is starkly edited and aborted content. it wouldn't even have to be an open beta -- but as far as the MP element of a game is concerned, betas are a critical part of the dev process to, like was said above, address balance issues among other things. i've never seen a beta that produced bad results. well... maybe crimecraft... god i wish i wasn't involved in that one.

I would like to see a beta.

Would be nice, and I like the idea of possibly giving my input on what problems need to be ironed out.

This is a most defiantly, yes for me, Beta's are always good for a game.

why bother with a beta .. ? the multiplayer is going to be racing and car fights lmao.. whats the point of beta testing it. I'm sure all the vehicles are guna be the same anyway.

NO! let people work. this is id software

Beta pleaasee! We could help improve the game!

Either an open beta or a demo would be fantastic. I'm curious to see how the multiplayer is, so it'd be both good for the gamers and beneficial for the developers to do this. Also, a single player demo would be pretty cool.

I would very much like a beta. Mainly to have a hands-on to get used to the gameplay before the actual release, plus I can see whether I'm going to need to upgrade some components of my rig to see these awesome graphics!

I voted no because I'd only like singleplayer beta or demo.

lol i was jw about somthing like this. i voted yes. just please make it multi platform and same date for all platforms. including pc

A multiplayer beta would be AWESOME. However the question is what part of the multiplayer, the co-op or the racing? :wink_smile: I personally would like the test the racing out, it looks like a cool part of the game and something their obviously trying push on the players to enjoy. Could also turn those that are weary of the racing component into liking it and possibly ramp up more sells. Could also work the glitches/bugs out and hopefully makes the servers as best as possible (racing servers usually svck)

I have no doubt I'll enjoy the singleplayer, its the multiplayer is what I'm interesting in seeing if its "decent" or great, so a beta will give me a chance to find that out.

Beta multiplayer... Yes please!
I can't think of any reasons why someone would vote no

Have a Beta Please. I've been playing Brink since release and it's an absolute mess in terms of quality on the PC. Lag issues, ported UI, Performance problems, connection issues, sound issues, peripheral issues. It's just such a bad way for a game to launch. I'm not saying make it a public beta, make it a private one if you want but please have one which is on a decently large scale so that you can get info on a large number of hardware configurations to find and squash these basic problems. I don't want Rage ending up like Brink on release day.

Please Id software I think everyone is tired of buggy games this first quarter and two of them were highly anticipated namely Crysis 2 and Brink.

Betas are nothing else but a marketing trick. The only purpose they serve is to hype people up before the game is out.

If you think about it, in the past there have been so many brilliant multiplayer titles that never went through beta testing.

Just a week ago or something, Id soft announced that the technical polishing in Rage is brought to the level of perfection. So, don't worry about it.

Betas are awesome for finding bugs and glitches that devs could not find on their own and there's no real spoiler on a multiplayer beta and it gives you a preview of what the game will look and play like.

If the company feels that they want to make a beta for testing/bug finding then by all means bring it on. But if it's going to affect the end result negatively (which we never know if it does or not) and ends up being a horrible demo/beta, then it could cause a lot of people to be turned off by the game before it's even released.

It takes a bit more work to create a demo/beta and set it up for testing, and a lot of companies feel it's a waste of time. They could be using that time and money to make the game better. But who knows. Brink came out and it seems the community is split between the game being great and the game being horrible.

Could a beta have solved the problems with lag, getting large groups of friends into same matches, graphics, and all the little glitches and bugs? Possibly. But could the game have come out better or worse if the people and teams creating the game had to focus a decent chunk of the allotted time and money on a beta? Who knows...

But I don't believe the community should demand a beta or demo from the company making it, or blame the company for problems that arise later because they didn't. It's all a crap shoot in the end. Plus glitches and bugs can always be fixed post patch, after the company has made some money to go back into financing the tech and art teams.

As long as the game is technically fine I really don't care because in Quake Wars the Beta really made a difference. It was absolute crap during phase 1. Phase 2 was somewhat better and phase 3 was actually worth playing as a full product.