Simple Way to make WoW harder.

[Triginhil]

As the title states, easiest way to make the game "harder" is to remove PTR. While it is nice to see what's coming up in the next year or so, PTR also kill a lot of the excitement and surprise factor when it comes to World of Warcraft. For example:

1. Dungeons/Raid encounters are tested for bugs by the player base, but at the same time it allows for said information to be posted throughout the internet and made into mods for example DBM, which anyone can download and be told what to do for a fight at the precise moment.

2. New zones, NPCs, models and quests are also spoiled even before the expansion is released. One great thing about entering a virtual world is not knowing what lies around the corner. Where entering a new zone or seeing a new mob will surprise you.

3. New gear, vanity items, mounts, pets, and models are spoiled ahead of time in still pictures where the player base usually has a "been there, done that" attitude towards everything.

I know the main reason for PTR is to kink out bugs, exploits, and polish the game so its ready for the public on release date, but why not have an internal team to test out the content in the same way and schedule its currently done to the public? If all the hard work and amazing content is being tested within the company, it makes it so there's less information being leaked. While people who rely heavily on addons to let them play the game will whine about it, isn't the big part of an MMO is the discovery and exploration of a new world? If it's all being shown to you in pictures and videos before it is released, then what is the point of spending time and money to go and do it yourself?

I know the game is getting old and stale for some, but if each expansion you had little to no knowledge of what to expect or see, except for the logo and upcoming class changes, would that make the game more enticing for you play? What's your opinion?

[Deleted]

thank you for your opinion

[TheWindWalker]

While people who rely heavily on addons to let them play the game will whine about it, isn't the big part of an MMO is the discovery and exploration of a new world?

That may have been what early Vanilla was, but that will not fly now nor has it since TBC.

If you are playing the game, you are expected to be raiding. If you are raiding, you are expected to know your class and spec to the fine print and back. If you are raiding as any role you are expected to know every boss' mechanics almost immediately. There is no room for discovery when a boss without a Dungeon Journal/Online Guide entry could take you months to get down simply because the mechanic is unclear.

[Triginhil]

That may have been what early Vanilla was, but that will not fly now nor has it since TBC.

If you are playing the game, you are expected to be raiding. If you are raiding, you are expected to know your class and spec to the fine print and back. If you are raiding as any role you are expected to know every boss' mechanics almost immediately. There is no room for discovery when a boss without a Dungeon Journal/Online Guide entry could take you months to get down simply because the mechanic is unclear.

You're expected to know the boss' mechanics almost immediately because of PTR spoiling everyone. If everyone goes into a dungeon/raid blind with only the dungeon journal as a reference, then it'll be a learning experience for everyone, even the "hardcore". The addons will catch up eventually BUT before that happens, the challenge in encounters will be figuring out the mechanics by visual or verbal cues.

[xChurch]

When SSC/TK were first able to be done, they have massive bugs that really gunked up progression and though that can still happen here and there, the chances are greatly reduced with a PTR for people to test as much has possible.

[Wondercrab]

The onus is on the player not to read spoiler-heavy articles or watch videos before content arrives. I, for example, never watch videos about dungeons or raids any more, avoid any story spoilers, and mostly just check the front page here for cool new models and gameplay changes, which are what interest me the most. Asking for a degree of self-restraint from the playerbase in this manner is a small price to pay for the infinitely better bug testing we get as a result, not to mention the ability for fan feedback to make its way to Blizzard's ears in a timely fashion before it's too late to change anything.

I agree that it would be nice to live in a world where nothing's spoiled before it goes live, but the reality is that we have to accept that if we want a better game to come out of it.

Edit: Blizzard do also have people working on QA internally, but even the biggest and best QA team in the world can't compare to the sheer volume and variety of feedback PTRs and betas provide.

[Netherbrood]

one way to make the game harder would be to have the dungeon/ raid journals empty at the beginning of the expac and only allow it to be filled in after the boss is either killed or taken down to a specific percentage. so people don't know what they are walking in to

[ComputerNerd]

Internal or external, paid testers do not think like players.
They have more understanding of how an encounter is meant to be played.
As shown regularly, players are very good at thinking outside the box and finding ways to exploit things or just break them.

This repeatedly comes up, but can be very easily dismissed as before.
The state of some encounters even with blizzard's own testing is very rough.
Without that player involvement they would be worse.

[Hey There Guys its Metro]

Simple way to make WoW harder for you is to play the game. The game is plenty hard enough when you actually do so, and the PTR isn't changing shit.
It may make the top guilds spend another week on the content, but by the time the average raider gets to the bosses the gear curve and information dump will still have happened.

I agree it would be NICE to not be spoiled on new lore and content, but its just not going to happen.
This is a NEWS site. A new alpha build is news, and they are covering it to the best of their ability.

[huth]

That certainly would make it harder... to properly test it. I doubt that's a goal Blizzard has.

It wouldn't make the actual content harder outside of bugs and worse tuning, though.

[Relapses]

The raid content in WoD was fairly challenging when it was new. Both Blackhand and Archi were very difficult encounters at the beginning of their respective tiers. (Blackhand perhaps even moreso since it was trivialized far faster than Archi was.) I think some of the innate difficulty of the tier, however, was offset by split Heroic runs and the overwhelming number of difficulties available for content.

That said, I don't think removing the PTR will help anything and in turn simply make the game as a whole a lot more buggy and would generally have a net negative impact.

[Mueller Greyhound]

Remove LFR and LFD to bring back hard-working and community in the realms. It makes game harder too.

Just throwing in my two cents.

[Borigrad]

And then you get another Ahn-qiraj where the raid is so riddled with bugs it's literally unclearable for months.

[hornybullie]

try tbc, no one was running dungeons.

[Triginhil]

And then you get another Ahn-qiraj where the raid is so riddled with bugs it's literally unclearable for months.

^ bugs, i see what u did there

[Deleted]

They tried not ptr testing boss before...

One was so broken they had to remove and tweak abilities in live (sinestra)

One had half the fight neglacted because it was tuned so you never had to enter the challenging phase (ra-den)

Every time they haven't tested its been a trainwreck.

[Deleted]

I found Mythic progression reasonably hard, I have no complaints about the PTR - like the person above said, everytime they skip testing a boss on the PTR it's a complete shitshow on live.

[Lochton]

Uhm.. Removing of PTR doesn't make the game harder. Having PTR doesn't change the game, just changes the knowledge if so. But at that, it would mean that after the first month, it would be back at the stage of your complaint of PTR.

[Thetruth1400]

When SSC/TK were first able to be done, they have massive bugs that really gunked up progression and though that can still happen here and there, the chances are greatly reduced with a PTR for people to test as much has possible.

Easy solution to both issues.

1) Get an internal testing team to test and look for bugs.
2) Have a team dedicated to emergency fixes if they do arrive on live instead of just on the PTR.
3) If they don't want to hire an internal testing team, they need to have closed PTRs with only the top guilds invited, all of which should also be behind a NDA to keep them from leaking information about the content. That NDA also needs to extend out at least 2 weeks after the patch makes it live so, again, people can experience the content for themselves and learn it, not just have it all handed on a silver platter going, "This is how you do it." That also means removing the in game journal that tells you 'This is what's coming for your role."

[ls-]

1) Get an internal testing team to test and look for bugs.

They tried and failed, players simply think differently.

2) Have a team dedicated to emergency fixes if they do arrive on live instead of just on the PTR.

They already do it this way, they even patched boss fights between tries.

3) If they don't want to hire an internal testing team, they need to have closed PTRs with only the top guilds invited, all of which should also be behind a NDA to keep them from leaking information about the content. That NDA also needs to extend out at least 2 weeks after the patch makes it live so, again, people can experience the content for themselves and learn it, not just have it all handed on a silver platter going, "This is how you do it." That also means removing the in game journal that tells you 'This is what's coming for your role."

NDA is a good thing, but unfortunately some asshole will leak it anyway, and it's pretty much impossible to remove anything from internet.