The Daily Grind: Do betas affect your enjoyment at launch?

MMO betas get a lot of press these days, and whether you feel they've devolved into pre-release marketing campaigns or are serving their original testing purposes, one thing almost everyone can agree on is that open betas (and even some late-stage closed betas) offer a pretty accurate representation of the game you'll be playing at release.

This can lead to premature burnout (or at the very least, a bit of boredom once the game goes live), and this phenomenon is particularly noticeable if you play a lot of themepark games where there's a very definite character progression path and an optimum route from zone to zone.

Titles like RIFT can build a lot of positive buzz by inviting tire-kickers in to "test" early and often, but the strategy could conceivably backfire if folks feel they've played their fill prior to release. What about you Massively folk? Do you scale back your beta activities so as not to spoil a game's launch, or do you go all out and play a beta as you would a live game?

Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!