SE needs help for testing their servers before 5.0

[Shougun]

The fact that some people think they need to be given incentive to help them with a stress test is proof of either 1 of 2 things: they've either never played a MMO outside of FFXIV or are brand new to the MMO genre. Sending out beta invites to thousands of players to help test server stability and content for bugs and tuning is the normal standard across 99% of MMO games. SE has always done their testing internally, but after the Raubahn EX fiasco they know that they need more help to test it out so they can fix all the issues before the game launches. Your incentive for doing this is not standing around for 48 hours spamming 1 button to hopefully get into the duty instance to progress the story. I commend SE for taking the needed steps to make sure that Shadowbringer's launch is as smooth as possible.

Not that I'm disagreeing with people on the importance of this stress test and getting every extra person is just better data for SE but there is a bit of a difference from a beta invite for stress testing and a non-incentive test (let's exclude Ixion Fate for this) in that with a beta invite you get to play the game when normally you couldn't (and usually it's also free, and sometimes even carries progress) where here we're already playing and paying for the game. So in comparison you get a lot of value out of a beta stress test while in the later not so much, but of course I didn't mention the FATE which they did pick a fairly nice FATE to test with (so there is some value in ours as well).

Anyway, I just wanted to say that there is an incentive to beta test and so I don't think people are that bizarre for considering one here. Of course people pointed out the very important and yet longer game incentive of helping SE is better servers but like.. come on.. long term plans (even beyond a few days).. people planning..? When the majority of any people anywhere plan longer term wake me from my slumber , maybe teach me how to do it better too lol.

I'm not going to argue with that, it's a fair point. My point still stands that it will benefit everyone in the long run to try to participate in this pseudo "beta server test" and hopefully it gives SE the data they need for a smooth launch

Agreed to your point, it will benefit everyone .