So I sing you to sleep, after the Beta

I’ve always been curious about what happens at the end.  As a younger man, I would stay up until the network television signal went to static (after playing the national anthem, of course).  At the movie theatre, they’re always turning on the lights and sweeping the floor before I get out of my seat.  I was crushed when automobile odometers went to six digits, because I’d be far less likely to see them roll over to all zeroes.

So when I was playing the LittleBigPlanet Beta and realized that it was almost 23:59 GMT on Sunday, I was thrilled.  When the time came and went and I was still playing, I was honestly a little disappointed.  So I just left my PS3 on, and stayed in my Pod.  Would I be kicked off at some point?  What would happen?

As you can see, this was the following evening.

I half-expected the News part of the Info Moon to say “Hey you, get off the server!”, but it was just as blank as it had been for the whole Beta period.

Navigating to the LittleBigPlanet (I still want to call it “the Craft Earth”), everything looked normal as I selected Cool Levels.

But then no levels showed up in the Americas…

None in Europe, Asia, or Australia eithers.  Clearly whatever pushed out the global list of Cool Levels was deactivated, or unwilling to talk to my Beta copy of LBP.

Maybe I needed to Search for the levels?

Try looking for some of my favourite Co-op levels first…

…with no luck.

Searching for everyone’s favourite set of levels, The Heist, was no different.

Nor were there any Super Mario Brothers clones to be found.  Clearly the Search function was hitting a deactivated or uncooperative server.

For completeness, I tried the “Recent” button.

At first, it was empty too, but then I tried it again a few minutes later:

And boom, there were all of the levels I’d played recently!

I had trouble loading some of the levels.  They would wind up in this state (notice the dialog box says “Loading”, but there’s no “Loading” ring around the badge).

Others would load successfully and could be played!

None of the levels would ever successfully show me the high score list, so I guess that’s another server that wasn’t talking to me.

So I had great fun replaying some of the levels on my Recent list, giggling like a child running around an amusement park after closing.

Cool Levels and Search would consistently give me an empty Planet, while Recent was intermittent.  My fun ended when I tried Quick Play; I was shown a loading screen that never went away, even after an hour.  So now my Beta’s expired just like (almost) everyone else outside of Sony/Mm.

Now to go camp out at my local video game retailer…