Dev's You better answer!

[Abriael]

so wait they only want the opinions of the players who stayed this whole time? not the higher majority that left? lol k.

Not on an extremely limited alpha that shows just a fraction of the game, otherwise those opinions will majorly be "there's nothing to do, it sucks!". That's why there's a NDA to begin with.

If the Alpha is good enough, sure it can lure people back into be Interested in the game. SE already has us no matter what they do from now till release. So why not send Invites to people that haven't played for the longest time, If it's that good enough, those inactives will spread the word and it will be more Believable, than if you had an Active tell other people... they will just think your a fanboi ( as they call it).

Because if those people ragequit the game when when it was an incomplete product, but still offered a TON more content than the alpha, and had more features than the alpha, an extremely limited alpha that, as good as it may be, offers much less than the game they ragequit, isn't gonna get them excited. As a matter of fact, will turn them off.

If Square Enix intended the alpha as, even partly, a promotional product, we wouldn't have an NDA, which is the geometric opposite of promotion.

There are a lot of games with testing phases that have the very visible purpose to act as promotion (mostly because they are just localizations of finished products), and guess what? they don't have a NDA, because their purpose is building the buzz, and they have the level of completeness to do that effectively.

Anyone with an even limited knowledge of marketing would know that an extremely limited alpha is not effective promotional material. It's more easy for it to turn off people than to get them hyped. That's what advanced betas are for.

Of course this is besides the point that whatever the motive is, it doesn't make setting rules and then not honoring them kosher or acceptable.

If they ever had the intention to use the alpha as a promotional vehicle to people with inactive accounts, they simply wouldn't have put the rule that excluded inactive accounts to begin with.