No Public Beta Testing: good bad for the game?

[Deceptus]

I much prefer SE's *solid* in-house QC and no-spoiler launches.

Lol? Solid? So many people in this thread who say SE has "quality QC" are clearly white knighting.

Yes this is copypasta that I've compiled over the years because it's been so blatant.

2.0

* Warrior was straight upbroken on release. We were told by the developers we were "Playing it wrong".

3.0

* Bard ability Wandering Minuet, which turned them into a caster, and made them immoblie which was completely against what their job used to be. Bards were the mobile job. That change lasted an expansion before they realized their mistake on went back on it.
* Astrologian was a mess on release, and was entirely too weak. They then buffed them to an insane degree and made SCH redundant. After the buff AST could heal / shield for more than SCH, instantly, and for less MP. Then after that AST was nerfed because SCH's were essentially shelved.

4.0

* WHM's were completely messed up. Their main mechanic "Lilies" were completely ignored by players. The SB media tour already had healer mains saying “No, this is bad; please don’t do this”. And the response? “Just wait and try them out.” After SB released: “No, this is still bad; please change it”. “Wait until Savage”. Savage releases: “THIS IS STILL BAD PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF THE TWELVE CHANGE IT”. While they did ultimately make the Lilies more interesting (after two years of players outright ignoring the core job mechanic), it’s still not great.

* SCHs were having to broil ( a single target attack) multi mob packs in dungeons due to the Miasma2, Bane, and Shadowflare (their AoE attacks) removal, had the least efficient shields and worst MP economy. They were thriving so much that they saw an across the board sweep of buffs and new abilities in patch 4.05 to try and fix the clearly untested and untuned mess that 4.0 had left them in. And no, they weren't small buffs and tweaks either. We're talking as high as +150 potency on a single target ability here.

* Tanks were a mess, especially [DARK ARTS] Dark [DARK ARTS] Knights [DARK ARTS]. They had the worst mitigation of any tank. outside of TBN. It was being used as a crutch.

5.0:

* SCH was a complete mess. The Devs removed Energy Drain which was the SCH main aetherflow dump as well as MP regainer. This caused a justified massive backlash from the entire healer community.
* Healers in general were extremely disappointed, so much so that players left the job in mass numbers and we still have a shortage.
* RDM's had extreme mana issues just doing their basic rotation. They would literally run out of mana playing their job correctly. Something as simple as ability MP numbers were released in a screwed up fashion.

Monks have almost always been in a bad spot gameplay wise.

Remember when SE thought it was a great idea to implement a GREED ONLY rule in all of the 24 mans? Yeah that was announced pre-patch and it was thoroughly lambasted and SE rightly had to reverse course shortly after implementation. Even knowing it was the wrong thing to do, THEY STILL IMPLEMENTED IT.