The Battlefield 3 beta kicked off a week ago and many first impressions haven't really been the strongest. In essence, the beta has been filled with a myriad of glitches and really poor textures on the console versions, causing many to wonder whether or not Battlefield 3 will be up to snuff when it releases later this month. DICE's Patrick Liu says that the players are misunderstanding what the meaning of a beta test is, a statement echoed by DICE's community manager.

While DICE has promised that the issues found in the Battlefield 3 beta won't be present at launch, it is still very worrying to many people, especially considering that DICE games haven't really had the most stable launches.

As stated earlier, Battlefield 3 producer Patrick Liu believes that gamers are misinterpreting the point of the public beta and believes that these fears of a buggy product are baseless.

"We just wanted to know it wouldn't crash and burn at launch. It was horrible with Battlefield 1943 — it sold ten times the numbers we thought it would, and it was down for three or four days which is really bad. We don't want to go through that again."

When asked about the fan uproar of only allowing for one map in the beta, Liu shared that he thinks gamers have misinterpreted the term 'beta test'

"I think there's been a misunderstanding of the term beta test."

While Battlefield 3 does/did look like it could be one of the best shooters this year, Liu's statement that he thinks gamers have misunderstood what a beta test is really just seems like a way to undermine players. If DICE can assure gamers that the problems in the beta won't be present at launch, why not just use the most recent beta code so they can assure all of their fans and potential customers? In addition to that, the beta will only last over one week, which doesn't seem like a long time to iron out all of the issues. Stress testing the servers is of course important, but to call what DICE has released a "beta" just so they can stress test seems a bit misleading and it certainly wasn't made clear up front when it was hyped.

The point of a beta is to weed out any bugs that may appear at release and to ensure stability of the online infrastructure. Having a one-week demo with one multiplayer map based on what one could presume to be older code doesn't at all make the Battlefield 3 beta seem like a true beta as advertised. With all of the time and money EA  and DICE have invested into Battlefield 3, it is highly unlikely that the finished product will be as buggy as the "beta," but if DICE is going to release buggy code to the public a mere few weeks before the game releases, they should expect some backlash. It's essentially acting as an early demo to many, regardless of the label.

Battlefield 3 releases October 25th, 2011 for the PS3, Xbox 360 and PC.

-

Follow me on Twitter @AnthonyMole

Source: The Guardian