#2 - July 20, 2012, 2:04 p.m.
You do bring up some good points Theremin. It cannot be denied that there are a lot of spoilers being leaked into the community during a beta, and I can totally understand why that is very frustrating for those who prefer the new content to remain a secret until release, so that the experience of something new and the thrill of discovery is fully preserved. I am sure you are right that some people who do play the beta will not be as excited as they otherwise could have been upon release.
That being said, the benefits of the beta far outweigh the drawbacks, and here is why:
An internal test can never be a proper substitute for a beta, simply because of the fact that a beta resembles the live environment much more accurately.
In a beta, there are always players who play the game in ways that were never imagined by the developers, and there are always players who are so creative or so skilled that they can approach or defeat content in ways that were never expected. There is an incredibly huge variation in play styles amongst the beta players, and just by playing(or trying to play), they unearth many glitches and bugs that would never have been found by the dedicated team of internal testers tasked with hunting for glitches and bugs.
Having a huge pool of players in the beta will also help the developers determine if the new content they are working on actually works as intended or not, if the new content is fun or not.
Also, betas are much better at testing both hardware and connections, which helps immensely in the preparations for the launch and the live environment.
What I am trying to say is that having a beta test before release is a better way to ensure a high standard of quality.