Robert Bowling, a.k.a. FourZeroTwo, the Creative Strategist for the game Modern Warfare 2, posted on his blog a few months ago concerning the reasoning behind not releasing a public beta. The original post on his blog is no longer there for reference, but thanks to Google Reader archiving it for me I can re-post it here, with relevant parts emphasized.

I wanted to clarify the supposed “news” coming out of GameCom this morning regarding no MW2 Beta.

First, nothing has technically changed by this news. As I’ve told you many times in the past, expect no Public Beta unless we announce otherwise. That is still the case. We would never say something as definitive as “No Beta Ever!” as that’s simply not how we work. We’ll do an internal beta, if we feel a public one is needed, we’ll explore that route as well.

It is true that we have not announced a Public Beta for MW2, and that remains true unless I announce otherwise.

However, while no Public Beta is currently announced we do plan on running an extensive Closed Beta among Infinity Ward, Activision, and possibly 1st party partners worldwide. The internal beta will allow us all the benefits of a public beta test without the impact it takes on the time required to prep, distribute, & manage a public beta during this crucial time in development.

Remember, Multiplayer has been in development since Day 1 of working on Modern Warfare 2, and this is the essential run up to launch when we’re playing everyday, hammering away on it to make sure it’s as polished as can be by launch. As always, our internal QA team has daily multiplayer tests in addition to company-wide nightly MP tests we hold from the moment MP is in a running state throughout development.

Once the internal beta is completed, if for any reason we feel we didn’t receive the feedback, address the issues, or have the result we expect. We would consider pushing forward with a public one, however at this point only an internal Closed Beta is planned.

That said, any fears that no Public Beta will result in any quality loss in the final multiplayer game is completely unfounded; Multiplayer has always been and will always remain a major focus for the team at Infinity Ward and we would never ship a product we didn’t feel lived up to the high standards we hold ourselves to.

While we love public betas for all the obvious reasons, an internal Closed Beta allows us the extra freedom and flexibility to give the entire multiplayer a chance to be widely beta tested without requiring excess development time simply to prep the game for public release instead of an internal beta test which is ran on dev kits / test kits. That fact alone, allows us to have a smoother and faster process of iteration when addressing issues and pushing fixes out to beta participants.

This decision allows us to deliver a more polished experience, which in the end, is what we all want.

Now, let me show you this “polished experience” that Infinity Ward delivered. No doubt this is a high selling game, but those sales were based on an anticipated product, not on what was actually delivered. Now that the game has been out and played by a large number of gamers, the many flaws in this game have come to light. Here are a few.

Javelin Glitch

One of the many new weapons available to players in this sequel is the javelin, a highly explosive anti-vehicle weapon. The glitch allows the player to trigger their javelin to go off immediately when they die. Due to the high explosive nature of the weapon and no warning being given to opponents, this is a fairly cheap way to rack up kills by taking out large numbers of opponents in one shot.

Private Match Glitch

This glitch allows you to start an online private match and somehow get the system to put other gamers into your match from the online matchmaking system. This allows you to setup a game with your own custom rules as well as allowing you to spawn before others enter the game. This gives you a distinct advantage to camp the spawn points and easily rack up the experience.

Infinite Care Package Glitch

Care packages are rewards you get when you get a certain kill streak. The player throws a smoke grenade marker where a helicopter will drop the care package. The package can contain any of a number of other rewards, anything form a UAV to an AC-130 gunship. This is a massive game breaking glitch that gives a distinct advantage to a team that takes advantage of this over a team that doesn’t.

Unlimited Ammo Glitch

Not quite sure what exactly causes this glitch, but it seems to almost be a virus on the Xbox 360. The glitch happens when the host of the match happens to have the glitch in their Xbox 360 cache memory. If ever there was a game breaking glitch, this was it, as demonstrated in the video below.

Summary

I think it’s safe to say that Infinity Ward screwed the pooch on this game. Before the release of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, they took the time to prepare a public beta test of the multiplayer system. It was understandable. That was the first Call of Duty franchise game that wasn’t based on World War II. They wanted to make sure their new system was balanced and free from as many glitches as possible. With Modern Warfare 2, as you read above, Infinity Ward was so full of themselves and arrogant enough to think that a simple internal test would be sufficient to find any and all game breaking glitches.

The videos above, and many others available online, show that Modern Warfare 2 is riddled with game breaking glitches. Gamers are tired of this and expected better from a company like Infinity Ward. My confidence in their ability to put forth a quality product has taken a big hit due to their ineptitude on this release. That being said, the game is still fun and I know that eventually the glitches will get patched out, but that’s still no excuse for why they didn’t do more extensive testing before release.

Now we gamers are left with nothing but Bowling’s reassurances that they’re looking into it.

Preparing an in depth #MW2 Status Report for players to stay aware of what we’re addressing & how it’s progressing. Lots of updates in works