Quote Originally Posted by Radacci View Post
i'm sure they'd wanna hear feedback on skill balance etc.
Most companies have "professional" testers, that play content and check if there's something wrong with it and why, and even get a salary for that. A friend of mine worked at the UK SE to test localizations of FFXII (they had an announcement on the site) so I guess they can spare some yen for some people to test gameplay things.

MMOs however have such features that require a big number of testers, so they have to recruit volunteers en masse. They work for free, of course, but many people couldn't care less about giving feedback, and a lot more aren't trained at giving it. So my guess is they still rely on internal, reliable testers for core mechanics.
Just my speculations though.