Carbine details the elite and how you too can become one!

For awhile now, the fine folks at Carbine have been dropping subtle hints that big things are afoot for WildStar in 2013, not the least of which is closed beta testing. Well, not so much subtle hints as they were actual, literal sentences. From Executive Producer Jeremy Gaffney's December state of the game, for example:

"We've been doing test events with our Friends and Family testers to prepare for closed beta testing in 2013. As the saying goes, "It's ready when it's ready" - and we're getting pretty close to being beta-ready."

So when today's WildStar Wednesday dropped talking all about the Core Tester program, I knew they must pretty serious about this whole beta thing.

Director of Community Troy "Aether" Hewitt gave a rundown on how the team is getting ready for the impending beta. They looked high and low at beta programs of all sorts, and saw that their NCsoft bunkmates ArenaNet had something pretty good going on.

Dubbed the Core Tester program, "this small group consists of a core team of rabid testers that get to see the roughest of the rough features, even before those features hit beta." says Hewitt. The Core Testers get in early and give real input in helping the developers shape their game.

So, just how does one become a Core Tester? There is no application to fill out and no audition to attend. It's one of those "you'll know it when it happens" kind of things:

"It's not enough to want to see the game, report bugs, and give feedback. We need our Core Testers to be willing to crawl through the mud, get dirty, and deal with immensely frustrating prototypes, broken content, and generally messy systems. We are also looking for people that are interested in, and can handle, speaking directly to the dev team, whether online or on the phone."

So folks, hear this: if you want a chance to have real input on the game's development, simply pay attention, get involved, and you too could end up with your name on the box and join the hallowed ranks of Core Tester for WildStar! 

Click here to read all of the words Aether had to say.

Bill "Lethality" Leonard