I’m really enjoying playing in Elite. The graphics are much better, the thicker woods make tanks more useful, the trees also make nap-of-earth flying much more challenging (thus more enjoyable), and the more realistic ballistics force us to do more actual dogfighting . . . a plus in my book. Sure it has some bugs (the nametag thing being the most annoying for me), but it is a “testing phase” not a finished game.
I’ve done alpha and beta testing on MMOs before, and this one is a dream compared to some of them. As far as I know, we haven’t had the game go completely down for hours or days at a time yet (common in the testing phase), and
if that does happen, we can always get our game on in
DF1 while we wait.
Internet consumers can tend to be demanding jerks, or at least they can come across that way through their emails/post. Zup made a business decision to charge for the beta download. I doubt that was motivated by greed; it’s far more likely that his budget to get Elite launched is tight enough that he didn’t have much choice.
That having been said, I don’t recall paying up front to get in on the MMOs that I’ve alpha/beta tested in the past . . . I’m guessing they started with a much bigger development budget, they eventually made big bucks off of hardcopies sold in stores, and they definitely charged a lot more for monthly subscriptions once they went live.
Unfortunately, charging up front arouses an unrealistic expectation for a more finished playing experience. That’s an erroneous assumption many players seem to me making, but [even when they’re wrong] the customer is always right.