Players can at last enter beta of Overwatch May 5-9. Over these five days, more than 9.7 million players including myself  logged onto Blizzard Entertainment’s latest free installment. Now that Beta is closed, Overwatch will open May 24, for $40 on PC and $60 on console; available on Xbox One and PS4.

Beta tests serve two purposes for developers: publicity and a test. Free games are a huge deal because good ones are not very common, so when a player logs on and happens to like the game, they tell their gamer friends to play. Because it is free, access is much more widespread which furthers the popularity of the game.

Beta aids in publicity in the way of exclusivity. Because the game was only available for a set amount of time, that makes people play it even more. Players were higher than level 27 on closing day, which averages out to over five levels a day – that is a lot of play time.

Beta’s main and more technical purpose is to test the game. Overwatch has been in development since 2013/early 2014, and is set to release in Spring of 2016. Bugs are not good for business, so when almost 10 million players test it out, programmers and developers can fix almost everything.

Because these players cover the globe, all global, regional, and local servers are tested, as well as compatibility, map/play kinks, and overall public rating. Players can also contact Blizzard through the complaint/message server, giving opinions on what they believe should happen before Overwatch officially drops in the end of May.

Some of the bugs that I experienced during beta was in the spawn room. Your weapons (displayed classic first person in front of the camera) would not generate, or appear at all. They would still shoot, but they are delayed. Luckily this particular problem was only during the first spawn of the game, and once out of the spawn room and on the map they would appear. If they didn’t, weapons would always appear after your first death and next spawn.

One of the more major problems I ran into during beta concerned those with weaker internet connections. Similar to the invisible weapons, I would not be able to see characters, both enemies and allies. Their gamertag was visible but their physical character body would not appear until again, your first death. This could be a mix of weak internet on both sides and an overloaded server. If your connection averages more than 25 fps (frames per second, can be made visible in most in-game settings), this should not be problem.

To my surprise, there was not nearly as much lag as expected. Most mass-multiplayer domains experience some amount of lag, but it was minimal to none in Overwatch, even in the Beta, which is almost always worse than the actual game release.

Upon the release, my expectation varied. The original trailer that was released in November 2014 as well as other reports referenced that Overwatch would be released the following fall (2015) but ended up going into Spring/Summer 2016. Being that it was pushed back lowered my expectations, but was gladly surprised. Despite the visual bugs, Overwatch is truly a fun, fast-paced, multiplayer game, fit for almost all age groups and is an equal to Blizzard’s other games and others like TF2.