Battle for Azeroth Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[Highwhale]

The bad thing is... the Void is such a vague term. It could be Old Gods, it could be Void Lords, it could be some mass hysteria and paranoia outbreak as leaks suggest without showing neither of the previous two.

Dragons are also vague, it could be an Infinite Dragonflight arc (they're related to the Void too), it could be Alexstrasza's death (I bet she's the following to die), it could be more Chromie stuff.

Also Kul'Tiras. How do you set Void theme in Kul'Tiras? D:

I just don't know how can Turalyon and Alleria fit within this either.

Its simple - add Old Gods stuff in Kul Tiras and make it new Innsmouth where at nights naga drags citizens and transform them into new naga... Something like vanilla Pyrewood village!

[Shadochi]

Okay thanks guys, now I understand it a bit better. I'm quite convinced Blizzard started 8.0 a looooong time ago, but I guess we won't have this answer until it's out hehe!

I think they mentioned somewhere how they were now able to work on the next 2 expansions during WoD because of the MUCH bigger dev team they acquired, which was also partially why WoD lacked a content patch (Since most Old devs moved to the next expansions and the new ones were left to deal with WoD). Not sure if this is true but I remember reading about it in one of the "6.2 is the last WoD patch" articles.

[Marlamin]

The thing with that is that they could just add as many IDs as they think will be necessary (probably more) in the early stages of development, and we wouldn't know how many of them have been already populated in the internal builds.

Say the latest ID for this expansion is 5000 (random number) and they add 2000 more, predicting they'll need around 1500. You'd say "they're really far ahead, and the expansion is the largest one yet!", but you wouldn't know how many of those, if any, have been used in development and how many are still empty.

Mostly, it just confirms that they are working on the next expansion, but that much we know.

From what we've seen they don't really "reserve" IDs, they're added when content is checked in. It's not like they go "Hey Sam, I need 5000 IDs for this new area I'm working on" or something. Sure, we can't precisely see how many currently missing IDs will be used for future content, but I think we can at least generate some stats on how many IDs are missing per PTR cycle. We might not have enough data to go on, though seeing 6.0 was also when CASC was first introduced and they started counting stuff this way.

[Shadochi]

The thing with that is that they could just add as many IDs as they think will be necessary (probably more) in the early stages of development, and we wouldn't know how many of them have been already populated in the internal builds.

Say the latest ID for this expansion is 5000 (random number) and they add 2000 more, predicting they'll need around 1500. You'd say "they're really far ahead, and the expansion is the largest one yet!", but you wouldn't know how many of those, if any, have been used in development and how many are still empty.

Mostly, it just confirms that they are working on the next expansion, but that much we know.

The ID gets added when they add a new file to the internal build, they don't reserve them in advance (i dont think at least).
But because in the builds we get on Live and PTR the files aren't in they show as missing IDs.

[Deleted]

If it does majority of the playerbase will quit.

I doubt that. People love to HATE stuff. Its Like with GOT/TWD people compalin and complain and still watch it. Same with wow

[Soulwind]

I think they mentioned somewhere how they were now able to work on the next 2 expansions during WoD because of the MUCH bigger dev team they acquired, which was also partially why WoD lacked a content patch (Since most Old devs moved to the next expansions and the new ones were left to deal with WoD). Not sure if this is true but I remember reading about it in one of the "6.2 is the last WoD patch" articles.

They did say they had doubled the team size a couple of times.

But saying bad patches and expansions were made by the B team and the A team is working on making the next thing great is just wishful thinking. It may very well be true, but we can't really know if that's how they've structured their office.

Ideally we'd reach the point where both teams can develop and maintain a good expansion, keeping a steady cycle of content. Activision, Ubisoft and others are able to release fairly big games every year because they are being made in parallel by a bunch of different studios. This would be a small-scale version of that. But again, it's possible there isn't a team B, and development is organically spread among veteran and new developers.

The ID gets added when they add a new file to the internal build, they don't reserve them in advance (i dont think at least).
But because in the builds we get on Live and PTR the files aren't in they show as missing IDs.

If the ID can exist without a file, nothing prevents them from reserving them. Maybe they don't. But maybe they do.

[Deleted]

I hope next expansion wont have ap grinds,legendarys and triple RNG

And I unfortunately expect them to have even more of everything, probably with another labels slapped on it.

[Shadochi]

If the ID can exist without a file, nothing prevents them from reserving them. Maybe they don't. But maybe they do.

They need a new file in order to create a new ID entry, but when they ship the build if that file isn't compiled into the build the ID is going to get shown as missing.
It wouldn't make sense for them to reserve IDs since there really isn't a shortage and it makes stuff messy.

[Deleted]

I doubt that. People love to HATE stuff. Its Like with GOT/TWD people compalin and complain and still watch it. Same with wow

With complex things, it's not that easy. As long as at least one of your favorite characters lives in GOT/TWD, you probably will keep watching, though you don't like the shows anymore. For me, enjoyment in WoW depends partially on how much I enjoy playing my characters in the content I usually use, or probably in a different type of content I try out and start to enjoy, and on the community / active friends in the game.*shrugs*

[Soulwind]

They need a new file in order to create a new ID entry, but when they ship the build if that file isn't compiled into the build the ID is going to get registered as missing.
It wouldn't make sense for them to reserve IDs since there really isn't a shortage and it makes stuff messy.

Encrypting files is messy, but they've been doing it for a while. They're very aware of datamining and try their hardest to avoid speculation based on stuff pulled from the game files. Maybe this is too simple and irrelevant for them now, but if players start speculating about the size and development stage of future content based on how many IDs were added in the last build, they'll do something about it.

[Marlamin]

If the ID can exist without a file, nothing prevents them from reserving them. Maybe they don't. But maybe they do.

I don't think (minus early on when they were still testing CASC) they've ever emptied/reserved out large batches for x content seeing everything is mixed together. From a versioning standpoint it wouldn't make a lot of sense either. I think most if not all IDs that we are currently missing are attached to a file, but there's a lot of stuff they don't ship. We know for a fact that even files that are only used on the server's end get IDs as well as they accidentally shipped a bunch of those in 6.0.1.18433 (alpha).

Encrypting files is messy, but they've been doing it for a while. They're very aware of datamining and try their hardest to avoid speculation based on stuff pulled from the game files. Maybe this is too simple and irrelevant for them now, but if players start speculating about the size and development stage of future content based on how many IDs were added in the last build, they'll do something about it.

Encrypting isn't really messy at all. It's pretty well thought out and makes sense for the stuff they use it for (stuff that is done, but won't be released until a specific event/time and without a content patch planned before then). But yeah, if we can actually get information (which I'm still unsure of) from missing things they'll probably do something about it (like reserving batches of IDs). The IDs themselves are never going to go away, though. They're required for WoW to read files.

[Jodmos]

One hour until the expansion release announcement.

[Sarethion]

HYYYYYPE!!

/yeah, not really. I think it will just be some cinematics + 7.3/other games talk + tons of PR slammed on top. I'd be suprised if they actually announce anything big today.

[GenericDragon]

More like WC3 Remastered announcement.

Oooor 40 minutes of boring 7.3 talk.

[ATZenith]

HYYYYYPE!!

/yeah, not really. I think it will just be some cinematics + 7.3/other games talk + tons of PR slammed on top. I'd be suprised if they actually announce anything big today.

That gif is amazing

[Sarethion]

@Marlamin - I'm in a desparate need of #team change, would you mind if I joined yours?

[Raetary]

That gif is amazing

want more?

http://cultofthepartyparrot.com/

[Marlamin]

@Marlamin - I'm in a desparate need of #team change, would you mind if I joined yours?

Feel free! I'm surprised mods haven't poked me about my sig yet seeing how obnoxious it is.

[Lahis]

Feel free! I'm surprised mods haven't poked me about my sig yet seeing how obnoxious it is.

Well it fits within the dimensional size limits, so there shouldn't be a problem

[Soulwind]

One hour until the expansion release.

Fixed that for you.