Game X Online -- Post Beta, Pre Release

Question

Meet Game X. It's an online game. A rather popular online game, in fact. That doesn't really matter, though. Whenever the game has to be maintained, this happens:

This is the natural course of online games. It goes down, so that something can be done to it. Nothing wrong with that. We can't play it during the downtime, but questions can still be asked about it, because we have played the game, and remember how it works. It's a reasonable assumption that mechanics will stay the same.

As time goes on, Game X continues to be played. The developers have announced a content update for the game! Celebration ensues! More stuff to do! More things to kill! They haven't given us a release date for this content, but given us a sneak peek at what they plan to add. Our "chart" now looks like this:

(Yes, I'm using Excel. Sue me.)

At this point, questions regarding the Content Update would be off-topic here. We have nothing to play, nothing to go on, except what the developers tell us. Anything about the base Game X would sill be something we'd help with, though.

A bit more time passes, and the developers announce a beta! More celebrations, yadda yadda. They will keep the regular game going, and the Content Update becomes a separate instance:

Notwithstanding NDAs or other legalese, we would allow questions about both instances. Both Game X, and Content Update. Since both can be played, there is no speculation going on here.

Alas, the beta has now ended, and much dismay was had. But rejoice! We now have a release date for the Content Update! It's not quite ready yet, but it will be soon.

At this point, we'd still continue to accept questions about Game X. Questions about Content Update, though, become somewhat sticky. We had a body of work to reference. With Content Update, there's the implication that changes will be made in between the time the beta ends, and when it will be released. If there wasn't, there would be no need not to release as soon as the beta concludes. What those changes are, nobody knows. Our only sources at this point are the developers yet again. We can no longer verify the accuracy of what Content Update contains.

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This is the dilemma we are currently facing with Reaper of Souls, the Diablo 3 expansion.

This isn't a scenario we've really run into before; betas usually run right up to the release date, and the amount of downtime between beta end and release is usually small enough to render the chances of asking speculative questions rather small. Trust Blizzard to give us a completely new scenario.

I think there's merit in deciding how we want to handle this.

How do we handle questions about currently unplayable content that we used to be able to play? Unreleased content that carries the implication of change between what we could play, but no longer can.

Answer 1

Leave them open

There is a fundamental problem with closing these questions just because it currently isn't playable: We can ask questions before, and after the downtime, but not during it. We see the same problem with our existing "unreleased content" policy already: People will complain if it's even just an hour within release.
What if the downtime only takes half a day? Can we also not ask questions during that downtime? At what point do we ban questions because the downtime is too long? When does the ban start? The very moment it's no longer playable? Maybe even half an hour before because, hey, it's impossible to verify answers in half an hour! This is nonsense.

We have information to go on to answer these questions - information from the beta. Whether or not that information is going to be accurate when the content releases is irrelevant. We need to maintain and update our answers anyway, regardless of how the changes are deployed.

Trying to enforce a temporary ban is seriously overcomplicating things. The content was released, the info was available, and the question might as well stick around until the actual release drops. Anything else is just paranoid fear of potential changes that might invalidate answers. If the answer doesn't draw from actual data from the beta, it's speculation either way - and we vote accordingly. There's no need for special rules here.

Answer 2

Close questions about Content Update, allow questions about the Beta

As I've said before, information from the beta of a game isn't really all that more reliable than, say, a promise from Molyneux about what's going to be in one of his games; the actual content can change before Content Update is released. In fact, the very fact that there was a beta suggests that the developers are open to changing it; they may elect to delay the release in favor of another beta with wide-sweeping changes based on the first beta.

If we allow questions about a not-yet-released update based on a beta thereof, then why not allow questions about a not-yet-released game based on pre-release marketing, E3 demos, trailers, etc.? No, that's not rhetorical; I'd like to see an answer from the people in favor of leaving such questions open, because ultimately, neither one is a very good indicator of the future.

In short, the question "How do we handle questions about currently unplayable content that we used to be able to play?" is misleading; we never used to be able to play the content, or at least, we don't know for a fact that what we played is what we're going to play when it hits, because the actual update is Unreleased.

I guess what I'm really arguing for, is that we treat Content Update Beta for what it really is; a separate, independent version of the game which was available, and ran its course. Questions about it are perfectly fine, but its existence doesn't magically make the actual, future version any less off-topic.