How to engage beta criticism rationally, and improve the discourse in this subreddit

Well people are obviously disregarding the NDA. I figure if they are going to take the risk, we might as well pick their brains for as much as we can, rather than vilifying them.

1. Don't tell the person they are wrong. They may be wrong, but as soon as you take that position your discussion is headed in the wrong direction. You can debate whether they are right or wrong for pages and not learn anything. You need to figure out what the person actually did, what happened in the game, and decide for yourself whether that is good, bad, or irrelevant. Your goal should not be to defend Guild Wars 2 from attack, it should be to better understand the game so you can enjoy it for what it is, rather than hate it for what it is not.

2. Ask Questions. In order to understand a beta player's experience you need to know what they were doing. Ask for more details before you draw conclusions. Some good questions include:

• What content were you playing? Was it PvE? Was it dynamic events, hearts, or dungeons? Was it above or below your level? Was it PvP? Was it 5v5, or WvWvW? Was all of the content bad?
• What class were you playing? What weapons did you use? What level did you get to? If you played more than one, how were they different? It's entirely possible that some classes and builds are less active than others. The problem they experienced might not even apply to the class or playstyle you find interesting.
• What did you expect it to be like? How did the game fail to meet those expectations? How do they think an encounter should have gone down? Get specific. Everyone has their own frame of reference, different gaming backgrounds that color how they experience their next game. Their expectations will often reveal why they reacted negatively to something you don't think is a problem.
• What did you like about your experience? Often they will be so focused on the negative that they just don't bother to list the good things, they get overshadowed. Maybe you will care more about those good aspects, or maybe you will care more about what bothered them. You wont know unless they tell you both.

3. Engage the people you agree with as well as those you disagree with. Just as the bad parts might not bother you, the good aspects may not be what you expected either. Get the facts, in as much detail as possible, from both sides. Don't leave a broad statement unquestioned (but be polite of course) ask them to describe how things did work toward their expectations, as well as what surprised them.

4. Draw your conclusion only after getting as much information as possible. Make sure you have the whole story, not knowing their class, or what content they were playing makes it seem like they are describing the entire game, rather than a portion of it. You are reading a story about one person's limited experience. You should be careful not to interpret every broad statement as specifically applicable to everything they did. And the beta testers might even understand the problem better themselves, and leave better feedback after describing it in detail.

That is all. Good luck.