In a thread asking about whether people are happy or unhappy with the playtesting progress it seems rather silly to insult people who have a different opinion of the process than you do.
It also seems rather silly to insult a company for how they are doing their playtests when you have no practical knowledge of what exactly is going on.
I agree with the criticism that far too much is changing every iteration and that there is no obvious direction to what is happening. Changes seem all over the place. And some extremely important changes (eg, monster math) are NOT being made.
And why do YOU need to know any "obvious direction" to what is happening? Is that your job as a playtester? To be assured that everything is happening for a reason that you are fully aware of? Changes seem all over the place to you? Well... there's probably a reason for that which
you aren't privy to. And to believe you should be privy to it is rather naive in my opinion.
And as far as "extremely important changes" that have not been made yet... why are they important? Do you have some inside knowledge of WotC to know what it is they're really concerned about testing right now?
Or is the truth more that you're more concerned with playing a "fun game" with your friends right now, than you are actually testing the rules as they stand?
After a year in playtest I'd be expecting things to solidify a lot more and for them to be pretty much working on details at this point (with maybe one or two exceptions).
I'd expect the base game to be quite obvious. I'd expect the design goals to be obvious.
If you don't know what WotC's design goals are by this point... you obviously haven't been paying much attention. Because Mearls and company have been
extremely forthright during this entire process of what their goals are for the game. The only thing they haven't been as forthright on is
why certain changes in certain packets are made or not made. You know why? Because it doesn't matter why they are changed! That's not our job! Our job is to test the rules they have given us and tell them why it works or doesn't work... NOT to "understand where they're coming from" with every single nitpicky little change that has occured.
While I haven't done much playtesting for WOTC I HAVE been involved in playtesting RPG products for something like 2 decades now. I know that the very first drafts written by designers that have seen absolutely NO playtesting (not even with the designers own group) are generally reasonably close to the final product and almost always clearly exhibit the features that make that game special.
And every game is exactly the same I suppose? Just like working QA for Blizzard is the exact same process as working QA for an indy publisher. Cause goodness knows that if you playtest
Fruit Ninja OF COURSE those same principals will be found when you playtest
World of Warcraft.
Look... if you don't like how the D&DN playtest is progressing... you have every right to criticize the items and rules you are asked to playtest. But that doesn't mean you also can insinuate the company who asked you to do this are morons.
Because doesn't that say something about you as well? Who's the bigger moron? The company that supposedly doesn't have a clue and can't seem to produce something worthwhile... or the person who volunteers to work for them for free?