They could be testing bugs,or they could be the "beta testers" of wow and just standing around talking to eachother and insulting eachother

Believe me! We did our jobs and I hope all of you enjoy the DLC

youtube or it didnt happen

I don't think EVERYONE is doing a bad job on beta testing. I actually think many are doing good reporting bugs. Also, just because people in the beta specifically looking for bugs doesn't mean they are "stress testing". What I am asking everyone in my OP is "Do you think beta testers are actually searching for bugs?". Meaning are they in the beta just to get early access, for the publicity, did they test their luck, or/and are they actually playing and reporting bugs. I am not asking if those testing are "stress testing" to find EVERY bug there is. Sorry if this wasn't clear to you. Stop declaring things that are false.

Also, why would anyone feel better from declaring "the beta testers are doing a bad job"?
If you are buying the DLC being tested, wouldn't you want the beta testers to do a good job?

If you are planning on a bug free experience, you may be setting yourself up for a big disappointment. Issues will vary from user to user. Some may complete an entire with little to no issues, while others others experience all kinds of problems. All of the bugs that are found will not be addressed at release.

yeah that is certain to happen but the main idea of this was to try to get most of the major bugs sorted out by a couple of different play styles playing the dlc, while i think a few more could have been chosen I do believe many bugs will be resolved in the beta

I honestly couldn't say whether the were looking for bugs. In all honestly you might be right. Most of the people who were lucky enough to get the beta are just playing it, and I've not seen many threads by people who have found bugs with the DLC.

This leads to two possibilities.

• There are no bugs in the new DLC, which is highly unlikely but not impossible.
  
• They are not reporting any bugs which they really should be, considering they are beta testers.

Oh! No doubt. This will, resolve a number of issues. There are a great group of people in there. It's like I explained in post # 60.

EDIT :

That's because the bugs are being discussed and reported in a restricted access forum. You will not see any of them. The few threads you do see are by new members that did not read the email or are just trolling the general forum.

i hope so but i doubt it but maybe thats just me being bitter that i didnt get in probably would have gotten in if i actually knew my play time instead of putting in random numbers that vaguely seem accurate to me

...Canada.

I think most of them probably are. I'm sure some aren't, but even if they aren't specifically testing for them. They are probably reporting if they find them.

If I were a Beta tester, I'd just play the game like I'd play regular Skyrim. Why? Because that's the best way to test. Find the bugs that occur on a regular play through, because they're the bugs players are likely to encounter.

There's really no need for this thread, IMO. There's nothing you can do to change what a beta tester does or doesn't do.

In the interest of not breaking the NDA I agreed to, I will make six independent assertions.

• I am participating in the Dawnguard Beta.
  
• I am a verification test engineer by trade. Finding bugs is what puts food on my table.
  
• Every piece of software I test, I attempt to break, as best as I can. I jump up and down on it, kick it, and see if it gets back up. I'm also a huge nitpicker. I look for the little things; typos, small mistakes. Lots of little bugs have the tendency to turn the user experience bad as much as one large bug.
  
• Not a single person here that is not a Dawnguard Beta participant has any idea of how many, or how frequently, bugs are being reported. Or how many people that they are being reported by.
  
• You should avoid making assertions about the hypothetical actions (or non-actions) of people whose actions you have no direct way of observing.
  
• Sometimes, the best way to test something is to just use it. It's called "exercising expected customer behavior / use cases". Sure, better testing, the kind I do every day at my job, involves actually trying to break the system exhaustively and perform negative test cases. But the testing power of just using the software normally shouldn't be discounted.

Aren't all beta testers on xbox? If so no I don't think they could even recognize bugs.

Believe it or not, it is possible to purchase and operate both an Xbox and a PC in the same household.

I'll be stepping out of this thread, most of the comments are designed to be incendiary toward the people who are actually trying to ensure that your gaming experience is better.

I hope you enjoy Dawnguard when you can buy it. People usually say, "testing is a thankless job". This thread is a testament to that.

I believe two things:

1.) The vast majority of the beta testers are honestly beta testing.
2.) This model is a great idea.

So you put international in the questionnaire?
(I'm not trying to interrogate you or patronize you, and whatever you say is cool, i just wan't to know if i should bother entering the next beta)

Half and Half really they do have access to the hidden part of the form for testing

That seems really really unlikely if they continue to choose just 0.5% of the people who apply. Almost impossible really. Unless they decide to make 50 or more dlc's

all i see is you guys talking crap about the people who got the beta when in fact in the very first few ours of its release there was an abundance of bug reports.....whether we were looking for them or not....kind hard to "look" for a bug if we dont know what to look for if we see sumthing outa whack we reported...and trust me sum of the bugs were annoying and thanks to us most of you wont have to worry about it

I really wouldnt be (the first time around)

Stop freaking out just because its 360 players. That is the only reason for this post.

i cant see how its possible i mean i did my first time through cuz the beta was out a few hours before i got to play so already reported bugs i was able to search for and post if i saw but unless you know theres a bug u cant look for it you can only observe while you play

If you want anything other than a bunch of people simple playing the game, then you go for a dedicated closed beta team. Simply taking players from the community works well to develop a feel of the game, and to locate glaring issues, but to do more you need to integrate your beta testers into your development team in such a way that they can be tasked to replicate particular problems, or can run through things with your devs.

There's a couple of companies that do it, but I don't think Beth is one of them, or if so, they keep it very tight.

Edit:

I will suggest that the flaw with the current system Beth has used is that it is causing a divide in the gaming community, and it will continue to do so. For every bug found after release of Dawnguard, there will be one or more complaints that the beta testers failed. For every complaint, overly-sensitive beta testers will come onto the thread crying foul.

I'm surprised that Beth didn't require people to sign non-disclosure agreements, but then again, it is more or less an open beta and the tester integration isn't that high.

I'll be the first to admit that I signed up to possibly get it for free. I only knew I git in because I accidentally checked my spam folder. And then I surprised myself; I felt incredibly grateful to be chosen, so I took it seriously. Numerous others are doing the same thing. I see a lot of comments about how a buggy Dawnguard equals a sketchy set of beta testers. All we can do is report bugs, and set out to recreate them. It's up to Bethesda for how many they patch. If I hadn't been chosen, I might have been agitated that others were, and might have made similar comments.

But we're doing our jobs, and doing it quite well. We all want the best gaming experience we can get.