SE Rep - can you share with us the criteria for selection of Alpha testers

[Gokulo]

I'll repost because I think it was lost with the other topic. As someone else explained it before: Anyone that bought XIV and played it even for a second has an active account. Unless they specifically went and deleted it from their S-E Acc page, they only had inactive characters, which means they did meet the first requirement of alpha. The bad choice of words is making the whole thing messy, though.

Also, I think that other topic might have been deleted for some other reasons, rather than just complaints

[Abriael]

I'll repost because I think it was lost with the other topic. As someone else explained it before: Anyone that bought XIV and played it even for a second has an active account.

Nope. Sorry. That's a bit shaky a defense.

In no indutry that involves recurring fees and and in particular in no subscription game of this industry a lapsed account is referred to as "active". It's a very precise term not subject to interpretation.

An "active" account on pay 2 play games is an account where billing is still active and is still enabled to play. Lapsed accounts do not fit in that definition.

If SE really meant that (and I doubt it), then their wording was simply very much inappropriate, and criticism to it is very much warranted.

I was thinking maybe someone posted something that was against NDA, but I dunno. Even then you'd think they just delete the post, and not the entire thread. I'm not sure they did it to hide people's 'complaints' but I did think it's kinda wierd that it was completly just deleted, and apparently not just moved or closed (unless I'm missing it somewhere?), especially when there's a few other smaller threads with the same tone and topic.

Exactly. It's basic moderation 101 to delete only offending posts in a thread, not the whole thread. Even in case the thread was considered inappropriate (and I saw no reasons why it would be), outright deletion should be considered an extreme measure only to be used in extreme cases, that's why mods have the lock button.

Anyone that ever moderated a forum in his life would consider that kind of action not really Kosher, as its's seen as a bad form of disprespect of all the people that took their time to post in that thread in a constructive and balanced manner, and there were many.

[Gokulo]

Nope. Sorry. That's a bit shaky a defense.

In no indutry and no subscription game of this industry a lapsed account is referred to as "active". It's a very precise term not subject to interpretation.

An "active" account on pay 2 play game is an account where billing is still active and is still enabled to play. Lapsed accounts di not fit in that definition.

If SE really meant that (and I doubt it), then their wording was simply very much inappropriate, and criticism to it is very much warranted.

The problem here would be that S-E differentiates between things. An active Final Fantasy XIV service accounts doesn't particularly mean you can play the game. It's just that you've created the service acc in S-E manager. After that you have "Options" that are required to play the game. Blame the convoluted system.

[Renen]

The problem here would be that S-E differentiates between things. An active Final Fantasy XIV service accounts doesn't particularly mean you can play the game. It's just that you've created the service acc in S-E manager. After that you have "Options" that are required to play the game. Blame the convoluted system.

You also need an active account to post on these forums. And guess what, it means you are paying for the account not just "made it"