A day, a week, or a month?

I do NOT want to know when OB will start, I merely would like to know how far in advance we testers will be informed before the final wipe. A day beforehand, a week, a month, or something else?
There's still some testing I'd like to test ;-)

Given the past history of GGG, I would say no more than a week.

Luckily both the OB and final wipe happen to coincide, since 0.10.0 is already out in Alpha I am willing to guess you have 1-2 weeks before the final wipe. I think things are looking very promising in terms of OB starting in December.

I have my suspicions though that it will be a surprise and OB will be released 1 December 2012 with 1-24 hours warning. 0.9.13 was scheduled to last for roughly a week until 0.10.0 was released, and guess what, its been 10 days =)

I feel the team would likely give at least a week for preparation, play-time/saying goodbye to their current characters, and for people to get word out to ramp up the hype a bit. However, I don't doubt the possibility of a surprise.

Although the team isn't one for publicly announcing long-term release dates (understandably so), when it comes to announcing the Open Beta's date, I'd say the sooner the better for the same aforementioned reasons.

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iao wrote:

I feel the team would likely give at least a week for preparation

for what reason? there's nothing to prepare, nothing to manage beside perhaps creating some (new) character names...

From my expectations, what I noticed in similar situations before (including other games): a high amount of the players would stop their 'work' in the game if they knew its (maybe definitively) only a week left before the final (ultimate) wipe. Some may try to finally reach a specific goal - but not many, I'm afraid. So, this last week would not deliver much data to the devs if they announce it, not much response to catch remaining bugs.

I think, the exact announcement ("we will deploy 0.10.0, wipe all existing chars to level 1 and start the open beta at noon on monday, december xxx") will be posted not earlier than the friday before, maybe even closer to the date.

Preparation is just one of the reasons why; I stated others. For some people it's important, for others not.

For example, I'd like to schedule a time where I can sit down and watch the Open Beta be released and play along with others when it is. Others and I might not be able to do that if the announcement comes too late.

Also, Chris made a statement regarding this topic here:

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At the moment we're preparing the announcement of when the Open Beta will be released. It's important that once we announce an exact date that we are 100% sure that it'll be ready then.

We're having a turbo race on the 9th. It's likely to be after that race... I'd think?

But Open Beta HAS to launch a week or two before christmas.

1) Xmas = big bux
2) GGG wants minimal staff working xmas week (they need/deserve a break)

i dont think it will be released on christmas because i dont have my computer at home and couldnt play it.

I would be surprised if it was earlier than the end of December, with all these recent changes we have been hearing about, they will likely want things to be tested thoroughly, then again, there is a lot of hinting going on right now.

Personally it might be better if it were after Xmas, surely they will need a break so they can prepare themselves and be ready for the giant Open Beta :)

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anubite wrote:

But Open Beta HAS to launch a week or two before christmas.

1) Xmas = big bux
2) GGG wants minimal staff working xmas week (they need/deserve a break)

Not only is it inc money because of Christmas and the minimal staff but it would give them couple weeks to iron out the bugs and get hotfixes in that I am sure will pop up. I had said Dec 14th or 21st but after thinking more on this I would say they need to release by the 10th to give them a solid 2 weeks to fix any major game breaking issues that may appear before everyone gets their bonus money from friends/family/etc for Christmas and come here to spend!