People who really love games will go to great lengths to become beta testers on upcoming titles they're really into. I understand the appeal: everyone likes being first, everyone likes being part of something exclusive, and everyone likes being able to take credit for participating in something, especially if it ends up being something big and famous. Oh, and everyone likes free stuff, and when you play in a beta, you're getting to play a game early and for free.
But you're also signing up to be a development-team's gaming guinea pig, prostrating your in-game experience at the feet of their progress. Sunk a bunch of time into creating a character and leveling it up? Too bad--all characters get wiped during the next patch. Only have time to play on the weekends? Not this weekend--it'll take at least that long to download the 5GB patch you'll need...you know, the one that's wiping out all of your progress up to now. Server booting you off? Client crashing every 45 seconds? Framerates in the teens? Forget calling tech support--you essentially are tech support, helping the developers to zoom in on and hopefully eliminate problems and their causes, so that all the future paying customers don't have to deal with them.
Of course, given what I do for a living, I'd rather know that someone (not necessarily me, but someone) is testing out a game before it's released and people spend their money it. Now that I've had some experiences playing games in beta form, I think I've revised my opinion on actually being a beta tester: I think I'd rather test a game I wasn't excited about--testing one you are looking forward to and running into constant problems turns out to be no less frustrating than if you'd bought it and discovered them. Except of course that you're not out $50.
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