Legion Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[Aeluron Lightsong]

absolutely, none of us have a clue, it's all guess work until something official is announced.

The movie development is on it's own. It almost came out last year. Just coincidences they are taking advantage of.

[Avikur]

Of course there will be an influx of new players. When Blizzard does advertising, they bring in people. Millions of people started coming back to WoD prior to 6.0 pre-patch. They were still 10 million 1 month after launch. It wasn't until month 2 that people started realizing the expansion wasn't for them. Which shows people don't mind changes, they mind expansions not being good. They would seriously do way more harm then good, to throw out what ever is done at the end of may or early June, if it's not ready, then to hold off a few weeks and send it out when it's done, especially when there is no evidence to support this theory people have that people will leave because of spell changes, and while also trying to change peoples perception of the game after WoD. Of course if the stars align absolutely they will release but they aren't putting hard deadlines yet, but to say they will missing out, I highly disagree.

I'm not saying they should put it out of it's not ready, i'm saying it should be ready, they've had months, if not years to plan for this.

WoD didn't have many class changes, any new players would hardly have noticed, Legion has massive changes.

[Vynestra]

They get thousands of new players all the time who never make it past the free level 20.

And it's not like blizzard is just gonna bait and switch people. They will do plenty to inform people of incoming changes.

And people will leave legion if it's a bad expansion, not because buttons are changing.

New players won't know whats a good or bad expansion to start, and secondly "one easy trick to lose a shit ton of new customers" is switch everything around on them 2 weeks after they started playing.

[Bohannon]

I'm not saying they should put it out of it's not ready, i'm saying it should be ready, they've had months, if not years to plan for this.

WoD didn't have many class changes, any new players would hardly have noticed, Legion has massive changes.

It should have been ready months ago.

And yes, WoD did have a good chunk of class pruning. There were many a long time player bitching about it.

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New players won't know whats a good or bad expansion to start, and secondly "one easy trick to lose a shit ton of new customers" is switch everything around on them 2 weeks after they started playing.

And "one easy trick to lose even more invested and long term players" is to release shit that isn't done because of some imaginary scenario of some people leaving due to class changes two weeks in. Seriously I've never heard of any player in 10 years of this game saying they quit because 2 weeks after they started class changes happened. It's not a good argument.

[Vynestra]

I thought they'd announce the release date at pax east, but so far the only game we know that will be at pax east is Overwatch.

So I guess we won't have a release date earlier than May I assume.

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It should have been ready months ago.

And yes, WoD did have a good chunk of class pruning. There were many a long time player bitching about it.

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And "one easy trick to lose even more invested and long term players" is to release shit that isn't done because of some imaginary scenario of some people leaving due to class changes two weeks in. Seriously I've never heard of any player in 10 years of this game saying they quit because 2 weeks after they started class changes happened. It's not a good argument.

I'm not saying they're releasing something that isn't done. You know sure it's alpha, but i've been playing it extensively, world quests need polishing, professions need polishing, a lot of things just need polishing.

We're missing like half? of the class order hall campaigns at this point, we're missing Suramar (which more and more are in the files every build), we're missing the rest of the Mythic/Mythic+ dungeons....and what else? Tuning has started for classes, all specs and artifact questlines are in. The zones just need polishing.

I don't see us testing this for 4 more months, or even 5.

Which is why it's VERY do-able, to have the PRE-PATCH out within the next 2 months. Especially if they have a longer pre-patch and end up adding some of the polish/tuning before it launches, like they always have.

I'm not making an argument for an expansion release with the movie, i'm making an argument for having the pre-patch release within a week of the movie. Which imo is do-able.


And I doubt you've ever heard anyone say that because the people who would quit if they got completely bombarded with changes, aren't going to stick around and say "OH I HATE THIS SO MUCH IM QUITTING", they're more than likely just going to lose interest and stop playing, because they don't care enough to re-learn everything.

New players ALREADY have issues within the first few levels -- Do you think the people who straggle past that and get somewhere are really going to have the patience for everything to change and be bombarded with stuff?

It'd be a lot of new information for players, I am just making the argument it'd be safer for the interest of NEW players, which blizzard DESPERATELY needs new players (they've ALWAYS struggled drawing new people in), to make it as easy as possible for them.

They're literally making an ISLAND IN LEGION JUST FOR NEW PLAYERS TO TRY CLASSES -- And then reroll if they don't like them, if you think they don't care about caressing new players as much as possible you are wrong.

[Draculla]

If they will do WoD pattern of testing: (let´s not talk about Alpha vs BETA)

-- WoD --
Last Mythic raid test - September 18
PTR prepatch build - September 12
Prepatch release - October 14
Expansion release - November 13

-- Legion --

We have 18 bosses to test (except Mythic Guldan, Mythic Xavius - last bosses won´t be tested)
We have to count on rescheduling due to technical problems (like this week)
If there will be 1 build per week, we have 4 bosses per week.

Mythic testing would be over in May 23 (as i said - rescheduled bosses included).

PTR prepatch build - May 26
Prepatch release - June 28
Expansion release - July 28/August 4

[Aeluron Lightsong]

Bringing in new players is always good but don't forget about the vets who have been here for awhile.

[Deleted]

If they will do WoD pattern of testing: (let´s not talk about Alpha vs BETA)

-- WoD --
Last Mythic raid test - September 18
PTR prepatch build - September 12
Prepatch release - October 14
Expansion release - November 13

-- Legion --

We have 18 bosses to test (except Mythic Guldan, Mythic Xavius - last bosses won´t be tested)
We have to count on rescheduling due to technical problems (like this week)
If there will be 1 build per week, we have 4 bosses per week.

Mythic testing would be over in May 23 (as i said - rescheduled bosses included).

PTR prepatch build - May 26
Prepatch release - June 28
Expansion release - July 28/August 4

id be fine with those dates :3 (even tho im still hoping they line up prepatch with the movie)

[Vynestra]

Bringing in new players is always good but don't forget about the vets who have been here for awhile.

What am I saying is do-able to help both, it doesn't piss in anyones cheerios.

I think pre-patch will be in June no matter if it's near the movie or the end, but I think make it last a few weeks longer and hotfixing/patching one more time before the xpac could be do-able, not sure they'd do a patch after the pre-patch though.

They've done hotfixes/polishing of stuff before, but they usually don't actually ADD things.

I still think a pre-patch like almost exactly 2 months from now is very do-able.

Horde broken shore will probably be in soon, along with the world event being testable at some point.

[Krazzorx]

Is there any other upcoming event between now and I'd say July except for Pax east that they could announce xpac launch date at? (Obviously could do a mini event but excluding that as that's no fun speculating on as we have no date to guess on)

[Seramore]

Don't forget that generally by the end of the betas they really start to push out the raid testing. The end of the MoP beta had raid testing for 4 days straight at one point, with some of the days having three bosses being tested instead of two.

I really wouldn't take dates from previous expansions into account anymore. It's really unpredictable considering how Blizzard is doing things pretty differently with this testing period.

[Vynestra]

Don't forget that generally by the end of the betas they really start to push out the raid testing. The end of the MoP beta had raid testing for 4 days straight at one point, with some of the days having three bosses being tested instead of two.

I really wouldn't take dates from previous expansions into account anymore. It's really unpredictable considering how Blizzard is doing things pretty differently with this testing period.

I was listening to wowhead weekly and they were making it sound like it's still early alpha and everything being out is normal, it really confused me lol. I was like.... idk, it was weird. They were making it sound like legion wouldn't be out til September and I was just like...seems like a major disconnect.

[Draculla]

id be fine with those dates :3 (even tho im still hoping they line up prepatch with the movie)

Like after Mythic testing there were 2 months for last final touches of class balance and raid testing. Each weekend Blizzard opened Normal/LFR wing for testing. So as Blizzard will release PTR, the build should be completed and everything should be tested at that point. Just Normal/LFR testing and final class balancing (there were builds on BETA every week but no new content, just class tuning).

I think that it´s enough time to test Suramar and add last class hall missions/tune world quests/add ingame cinematics. They have 1 month to do that.

[Vynestra]

Is there any other upcoming event between now and I'd say July except for Pax east that they could announce xpac launch date at? (Obviously could do a mini event but excluding that as that's no fun speculating on as we have no date to guess on)

Not really no. The latest they have to announce is July, and there isn't much. I'm assuming if it's not at pax east they'll do their own event atleast 2-3 weeks after pax, because not doing it at pax would mean they just aren't comfortable with a date yet.

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Like after Mythic testing there were 2 months for last final touches of class balance and raid testing. Each weekend Blizzard opened Normal/LFR wing for testing. So as Blizzard will release PTR, the build should be completed and everything should be tested at that point. Just Normal/LFR testing and final class balancing (there were builds on BETA every week but no new content, just class tuning).

I think that it´s enough time to test Suramar and add last class hall missions/tune world quests/add ingame cinematics. They have 1 month to do that.

It's odd because they've already started tuning.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

Which came out in a PVP related post. Which is odd, usually when they do tuning they just mean general tuning. >.>

[Vynestra]

Which came out in a PVP related post. Which is odd, usually when they do tuning they just mean general tuning. >.>

Meh lol.

Tuning is important to pvp and pve, besides they usually don't have a grandiose post saying "LE TUNING, HAS LE BEGUN! LE WATCH AND LE FEEDBACK!"

lol

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But you can notice the tuning in just the patches, there's floors of balance changes and less mechanical changes. Unless you're a DK.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

And Windwalker monks and so on and so forth.

[Bohannon]

What am I saying is do-able to help both, it doesn't piss in anyones cheerios.

I think pre-patch will be in June no matter if it's near the movie or the end, but I think make it last a few weeks longer and hotfixing/patching one more time before the xpac could be do-able, not sure they'd do a patch after the pre-patch though.

They've done hotfixes/polishing of stuff before, but they usually don't actually ADD things.

I still think a pre-patch like almost exactly 2 months from now is very do-able.

Horde broken shore will probably be in soon, along with the world event being testable at some point.

Well If the prepatch does come out in June which you say here you think it is, that means the it'll come out after the movie is released, even at beginning of June, it'll be out in a good many markets, and therefore, you are admitting that you don't think that developement is tied to movie release dates, and that some players will get their abilities changed that come in if they see the movie early, and yeah, a June pre-patch proves that making new players happy by not changing their spells is not any priority to anyone over at blizzard.

[Vynestra]

Well If the prepatch does come out in June which you say here you think it is, that means the it'll come out after the movie is released, even at beginning of june, it'll be out in a good many markets, and therefore, you are admitting that you don't think that developement is tied to movie release dates, and that some players will get their abilities changed that come in if they see the movie early, and yeah, a June pre-patch proves that making new players happy by not changing their spells is any priority to anyone over at blizzard.

Their internal goal for the expansion was June, I know that much from the same source who told me that DH's would be added, you can go back and find that post before the announcement of the xpac, they told me about survival going melee and some other things. So the source is reliable, so they did want the movie and pre-patch out before or around the movie. I know that much, you can say they didn't, you can say oh your source is lying, now maybe that won't happen, infact that probably won't happen.

But yes, they did want it out by the movie. Not for the specific reason of peoples abilities changing, but I imagine they want new players to experience the new zone and stuff for boosting a new class, and the ability to choose others. That's probably a big focus of theirs, so maybe it'll be out a week or two later because of just the time it's taking -- But I do know the original xpac release goal was June.

Anyone with common sense can understand them wanting the pre-patch out with or before the movie, it's literally a common sense business move and to deny that -- You must truly be gifted with serious ignorance to how business works.

Will they release an un-finished product to meet that business goal? Probably not. But I am not sure that the people who see the movie will come home, that night, make a wow account and start playing. I imagine a lot of them would do it in the coming days/weeks, it's hard to say. But I think pre-patch coming out around or before the movie was an internal goal they really wanted to hit.

[Simca]

I posted this in IRC, but might as well mention here. For interested parties: WDB5 Format Information

It's the newest DB2 (local database file) format for Legion, main differences: 3-byte integer support, field count now counts arrays as '1' field per array instead of 1 field for every index in each array, and there is some field size and offset information included in the file.

Counting arrays as '1' field is the change that wrecked everything, if people are interested in the 'why' behind DB sites being super slow this patch. Nobody ever used the fields in DB files as arrays before this. RDBMSes (database systems) aren't compatible with arrays directly either, which doesn't help.

The reason Blizzard writes and reads these as arrays is that it is faster for the game. You can literally copy the bytes all from the file into memory, and then, after the fact, say 'oh by the way, this entire chunk of memory is actually an internal game table that stores all the spells'. The alternative is reading the structure field by field and then putting each field into the structure in memory. Obviously that is slower.

This all said - Blizzard was already reading everything as one structure before this, and I don't expect the WDB5 format to provide any significant benefits. A cursory glance shows the size of the database files (which are already one of the smallest components in the game) to have shrunk from 218 MB to 215 MB in the last build. A huge rewrite for 3 MB is probably not a good tradeoff.

If you compress the files at all, the savings is actually completely negligible (or even negative). Last build zipped was 45.4 MB, and this build zipped was 45.7 MB. Obviously there was quite a bit of content in this build too, so it's hard to exactly say ('there was enough content that it was a tiny improvement' or 'there was not enough content, so it is actually worse'). In either case, the zipped performance of the new format is mediocre at best.

It is somewhat useful for community tools, since there is now more information available about the file structure in the file itself. Previously, you had to parse the WoW binary itself to be able to load these files properly. That is no longer -strictly- required (though it is beneficial in a few edge cases). That said, the aforementioned community tools are going to have to implement the new format before they can see any of that benefit first, and that may require massive rewrites to deal with arrays.