More dishonest corporate marketing~

Ever wonder if marketing meeting must sound like Dr. Evil or Goldfinger schemes?

One can not helped but be a little incensed that SOE has completely fabricated a false narrative about the beta access to manipulate their twitter and facebook stats for Planetside 2. I'm sure it's to inflate the potential market numbers to fool shareholders.

After the discussion about server costs on the bombcast I realize that SOE does not want to boot all the servers up early. I also understand that it is easier to test and direct the players in smaller groups to stress tanks battles, etc. But the twitter and facebook campaigns of "get access to the beta when it starts" has been a constant message.

Now after the beta has started, they have let such a small amount of people in, they couldn't even get all the "veterans" from the original Planetside. Further, they just announced that all twitter recieved beta keys are ostensibly early access a few weeks ahead of the actual release of the game. The general estimate is most beta keys won't get in for another month.

its beta keys. they are allowed to be wishy washy about those. its a damn beta

@Kenobi: "When it starts," can be any form of the beta. Twitter keys were mean't to be part of the beta, so when the "Twitter Beta Key BETA" starts, than you'll get in.

Not sure why they have to be evil schemers for this to make sense.

Of course I'm being colorful when I suggest they're evil. But the conversation simply comes down to this. "Let get our social stats to spike early. Here's the plan, we give them an account, a beta key, and a link to the download page. What we won't publicize is they need a beta invite to get in."

I have plenty of things to do, I'm not hung up on beta not being public, I just didn't like their marketing scheme. Which I suppose is a short sighted statement itself since most marketing campaigns are a mirror of this in one way or another.

You can just see how they set this up. They spread the beta keys to every staff member. On daily intervals they had different staff giving out keys. So when they have a meeting they can falsely tally all the twitter followers by multiple staff members. So rather than 40,000 followers. You have +100,000 followers.

Then again I'm not sure if they follow unique users or simply get the surface number.

So... They required people to "sign up" for Beta access? Where's the beef?

@Gaff: Yes that's basically what it is and no harm done. The heavily implied instant access scheme was the point.

Whatever, it's f2p and out soon. I just don't agree with the marketing staff, even though what they did was a success and proved they deserve their jobs.

its not marketing if the beta access is free

If you are still following SOE after all these years, you deserve what you get.

Uh... No.

Love is pain.
 
So are MMO's and everything surrounding them.,

I'm going to get drunk because this thread is full of whine!  Woohoo!

SOE made my shit list (Starwars galaxie related) 5-6 years ago and I managed not to play any of their games since then.