Blizzard "The technology for acct wide-heirlooms isnt here"?

[vesseblah]

Well I am a programmer (c family of languages going on 10years now), I happen to also have alot of experience working with network code and databases, and I can tell you it's trivial.

The funny thing is even without any technical qualifications it's obvious to any person possessing common sense that it's trivial, because private servers running on MySQL and operated by "kiddies" can do that and more, it's laughable to claim that Blizzard with all its knowhow and abundance of resources can't solve problems a bunch of "amateurs" can.

Their reasons for not providing solutions are (a) they are at the bottom of the priority list regardless of feasibility or (b) they make more money out of not solving the problem.
You take your pick.

Option C is more likely. That you have experience from so small projects you have no clue wtf you're talking about. Most likely problem is that the original inventory code is so big mess that nobody at Blizzard wants to touch it with a ten foot pole at this point to prevent it from blowing up in unexpected ways. Which also explains why the default bag can't be changed. Also talking about what amateurs do with hacked shit realms is totally irrelevant because it's just one realm and one server where adding items with manually triggered scripts is easy. Totally different than moving items between realms automagically.

[Tazr]

Blizz could do it with heirlooms but it would work much the same way as mounts/pets currently do.
Essentially every character you ever create would be mailed the heirlooms you have already unlocked on other characters.

It would be be extremely annoying having a bunch of mail/plate/leather heirlooms being sent to your new priest/warlock or w/e
(that said I would still prefer it over newly created toons on new servers having nothing.)

We need a cross-realm bank to store/transfer "account wide" items. Then you wouldn't be screwed if you wanted to level a character on a friend's server. Toss the set in the "bank", the other toon takes it out. Better yet, for gear, make the entire equipment system no longer take bag slots. You earn it, it gets stored on the back end permanently, and you equip items by clicking drop down buttons in the character window (or via addons/equipment manager to equip sets). Account-wide items show up for every character qualified to equip the item.

[Deleted]

Well I am a programmer (c family of languages going on 10years now), I happen to also have alot of experience working with network code and databases, and I can tell you it's trivial.

The funny thing is even without any technical qualifications it's obvious to any person possessing common sense that it's trivial, because private servers running on MySQL and operated by "kiddies" can do that and more, it's laughable to claim that Blizzard with all its knowhow and abundance of resources can't solve problems a bunch of "amateurs" can.

Their reasons for not providing solutions are (a) they are at the bottom of the priority list regardless of feasibility or (b) they make more money out of not solving the problem.
You take your pick.

Man there is so much tin foil hat stuff in this thread.

I am a DBA for the last 12 years for a medium sized media company.

OK so exactly what do you know about the Blizzards network infrastructure?

I know what I know, zero, nada absolutely nothing.

But you can't really think everything is in one mysql database?

I can tell you for 100% fact it is not, I think the last estimate was WoW had 14,000 servers.

I think they have a central database cluster which holds all the account wide stuff.

And each server has its own database (possibly clustered).

And between all of that there is masses of firewalls and network infrastructure that we don't know jack shit about.

Have you noticed how access the central database server leaves a copy of the item on the central server? (Mounts, Pets etc).

Have you considered that maybe this is to avoid loopholes to dupe stuff etc?

I do also 100% agree that it is solve-able but I also don't think its a 2 hour job for 1 developer, I personally think there is something in the network infrastructure that would cause problems.

I do 100% agree that they could do this (the easiest way imo would be to use the same tech they use for server transfers on the website).

But people just going "oh its trivial" need to wake up a bit I think.

If you want to put your tin foil hat on go ahead.

If I had to pick what I want the blizz tech team work on.

Virtual Servers or Cross Realm Heirlooms, I will 100% go for the Virtual Servers I am afraid.

[AlisonPrime]

Coding is a fickle mistriss.

Changing something to make something act differently could make things act completely wonky

For example if people recall back during Dragon Soul they changed it so Vengence would no longer work in PVP and all of the sudden you had paladins breaking 1 - 2 million DPS. It REALLY isn't that easy to do this type of change without the risk of fucking things up completely.

Think about it maybe they got test servers of their own, and they're testing this very feature out and it just hasn't worked but out of that procress they found they could link servers together to create more populated worlds (Cross Realm) and that evolved into the technology to link auction houses and main cities (Virtual Realms) maybe those two gimmicks are them actually trying to work on this problem at the very moment but rather throw out the failed results they look at them as their own successes

It took Thomas Edison 100 tries to make the light bulb, but he didn't say he failed 99 times instead "I invented 99 ways to NOT make a light bulb"

[Maios]

Well I am a programmer (c family of languages going on 10years now), I happen to also have alot of experience working with network code and databases, and I can tell you it's trivial.

The funny thing is even without any technical qualifications it's obvious to any person possessing common sense that it's trivial, because private servers running on MySQL and operated by "kiddies" can do that and more, it's laughable to claim that Blizzard with all its knowhow and abundance of resources can't solve problems a bunch of "amateurs" can.

Their reasons for not providing solutions are (a) they are at the bottom of the priority list regardless of feasibility or (b) they make more money out of not solving the problem.
You take your pick.

Or (c), it has nothing to do with them being "able" to do it (nice condecending comment to your fellow programmers) and everything to do with the integrity, accuracy, scalability, and usability of whatever they implement so that it won't disrupt the entire game or make a completely hackable system.

I'd guess I could take 1 hour of mucking with your "kiddies" MySql database to completely destroy it's integrity.

[Ligier]

This thread reminds me of when I asked Blizzard a few times several years ago about the idea of REGIONAL transfers. They kept saying that toons on US servers would not be compatible with the EU servers. But if all they needed to do for cross realm mailing was change a bit of code, then why not change the code so US toons become compatible with EU realms so you could transfer them - even at a higher price than just a normal server transfer. Maybe I'm missing something, but at the end of the day, the EU version and the US version are still both owned by blizzard, and the same things go into each patch on both regions, so why not allow regional transfers?

[Byniri]

Wasn't that statement like several months old?

[Lochton]

Man there is so much tin foil hat stuff in this thread.

I am a DBA for the last 12 years for a medium sized media company.

OK so exactly what do you know about the Blizzards network infrastructure?

I know what I know, zero, nada absolutely nothing.

But you can't really think everything is in one mysql database?

I can tell you for 100% fact it is not, I think the last estimate was WoW had 14,000 servers.

I think they have a central database cluster which holds all the account wide stuff.

And each server has its own database (possibly clustered).

And between all of that there is masses of firewalls and network infrastructure that we don't know jack shit about.

Have you noticed how access the central database server leaves a copy of the item on the central server? (Mounts, Pets etc).

Have you considered that maybe this is to avoid loopholes to dupe stuff etc?

I do also 100% agree that it is solve-able but I also don't think its a 2 hour job for 1 developer, I personally think there is something in the network infrastructure that would cause problems.

I do 100% agree that they could do this (the easiest way imo would be to use the same tech they use for server transfers on the website).

But people just going "oh its trivial" need to wake up a bit I think.

If you want to put your tin foil hat on go ahead.

If I had to pick what I want the blizz tech team work on.

Virtual Servers or Cross Realm Heirlooms, I will 100% go for the Virtual Servers I am afraid.

Hmm, I still await 5.4 before screaming about this subject. 5.4 brings a good solution for this problem too.

Unsure if 14.000 servers (I know it's 1 blade pr. server. I know it's 1-3 blades pr. loot server pr. battleground. I think it's 2 blades for dungeons/raids, 1-3 blades for PvP. And yes, there's a seperate blade system for the account wide items) You have the overview right'ish, none but Blizzard can really confirm it. But it's not really so easy to transfer an item from one blade to the other. You are right that it can be solved, and you are right that it's not an easy fix.

I mean, if we look at it. They need to auto-delete 1 item from your server A and create this item again on server B. There is a potential for mistake here, but it not arriving or not being deleted. As well, they also need to setup an "adress" system. You can't just write your character's name and hope it goes to your server. And I think Blizzard also want to avoid @randomserverEU/US.

Really, people need to relax. It's not easy to solve in the end, people might make it sound easier in their heads - but it's not. It's not like your account wide system, as you only have 1 of that item code (unless you bought more, who knows). So you can't just enter a third account tab (like pets and mounts) and then pick that item from the list, if you could, then you would have to anyways remove it from the previous char. And don't think Blizzard would allow permanent account wide heirlooms (like the mounts and titles are permanent but limited by level).

[ThunderPussy]

So much hate in this thread.

I would love heirlooms to be account wide but I'm not going to pretend for a second that I understand any technological issues that may or may not be involved.

I do hope that all this complaining about Blizzards "money-lust" is from people that no longer subscribe though. Not sure why a subscriber who appears to hate something so much would keep giving their 15 dollars away.

[DarkTZeratul]

Placing a vendor at each starting zones that will sell you all the heirlooms you have unlocked so far would be an elegant solution.

It would be *A* solution, but I don't think anyone would call it elegant, and Blizzard's gone on record saying they don't think so either.

[Lochton]

I don't understand it when they said that. You can buy pets, mounts, and the helms now (actual pieces of armor) from the cash shop that go to all your toons but Blizz says that they just can't make it so heirlooms can be sent because it's too hard.

Believe it or are they just BS'ing? Any computer programmers here think it really is to hard for them to do that?

But, you buy that from a store and that store generates all the codes for the items for your characters to be in your mail. It's not like your heirlooms that -YOU- buy from an NPC, not from the store. It is not the same programming.

- - - Updated - - -

I don't see any reason why this isn't possible. Even if it's difficult to send an item from server A to server B, there would be no harm in having duplicates of heirlooms for different characters. Placing a vendor at each of the starting zones that will sell you all the heirlooms you have unlocked so far would be an elegant solution. Should require very little effort since these types of vendors already exist (e.g. the one that will sell you Tyrannical gear for honor once you get the Tyrannical Conquest achievement).

There is harm of having duplicates, Blizzard wants to have you being part of your choices. So, if you want an heirloom, then you better already have one. It shouldn't be anything like, "Oh, I bought it once and now I can have it for all characters" - If this were so, then they would be way more expensive than they are.

[|Dexter|]

I told my self if they going to do this I will quit the game... and I did!

[Heladys]

Well I am a programmer (c family of languages going on 10years now), I happen to also have alot of experience working with network code and databases, and I can tell you it's trivial.

The funny thing is even without any technical qualifications it's obvious to any person possessing common sense that it's trivial, because private servers running on MySQL and operated by "kiddies" can do that and more, it's laughable to claim that Blizzard with all its knowhow and abundance of resources can't solve problems a bunch of "amateurs" can.

Their reasons for not providing solutions are (a) they are at the bottom of the priority list regardless of feasibility or (b) they make more money out of not solving the problem.
You take your pick.

Meaningless claim to authority is meaningless.

[Bamboonomnom]

This thread reminds me of when I asked Blizzard a few times several years ago about the idea of REGIONAL transfers. They kept saying that toons on US servers would not be compatible with the EU servers. But if all they needed to do for cross realm mailing was change a bit of code, then why not change the code so US toons become compatible with EU realms so you could transfer them - even at a higher price than just a normal server transfer. Maybe I'm missing something, but at the end of the day, the EU version and the US version are still both owned by blizzard, and the same things go into each patch on both regions, so why not allow regional transfers?

Don't have the knowledge to back this up but I'm 90% sure there is reason why they split up the regions, think it was something connection based.

But on the other hand, Happy Wars(F2P Xbox live game from MS) does put you in a lobby with players around the world. And the connections are horrible.

On-topic: People are saying they could easily make an account wide achievement but I assume they would have already done this if it wasn't causing any problem. I don't see why Blizzard would withold these solutions from us, server-bound heirlooms leading to more server transfers sounds higly questionable.

[McNeil]

Blizzard has come over as real scumbags these days.... what happened with the company I loved in the 90's

[laughtrey]

Without knowing how the code is, as a software developer my answer is "It could be". I don't know how their items are set up; it could be something like the backpack slots where it isn't just a matter of changing for example int backpackSlots = 16 to int backpackSlots = 32 or whatever. Now, we know the technology exists for account-wide items (look at the store mounts and presumably the new transmog helms) so the question then becomes what makes that different, that is why when I create a new character do I automatically get any mounts I've purchased sent to my mail, but I don't get all my heirlooms.

It could just be they didn't think of that at the time, so the way those items are handled is completely different despite looking like the same thing (they're both items, right?) to the naked eye.

Get your well informed opinion out of here sir, it has no place in angry forum complaining threads.

[Deleted]

There are plenty of ways to implement this some of which have been listed in this thread already they could even just do it the same way mounts and pets work or hell just mail all the heirlooms you bought to each new character you make like they have done with other collectors items before even if it would be a bit messy.

The more likely reason is that they don't want to put the time and money into designing something that would not only not make them any money but would actually lose them profits from all of the server/faction transfers that people end up doing because they can't be asked to level new characters without these heirlooms.

[Grimes7]

I would think that if it was really that easy, it would have been done by now. Since it isn't, I'd assume that Blizz wants to create a means for people to access BoAs they've unlocked without making it a pain on them or us.

/shrug

It really isn't that hard to build up useless JP to buy new sets of BoA... I've done it a few times.

[Balir]

THe moment you received your store bought items in your mailbox on all toons, was the moment Blizzard ran out of excuses as far as I'm concerned.

[Deleted]

<snip>

All that wordiness to say you agree with the essence of my post (that it's definitely feasible) but you didn't like my tone...

Now to replay to Vesseblah?... well seeing as you're not going to employ me, I don't see a reason to give you qualifications, but I like how you jump to conclusions

Suffice it to say your reply betrays you for exactly the kind of developer you accuse me of being, small-time, duct-tape over patch over duct-tape projects that you fear of touching lest they fall over like jenga bricks.
(I do know of those, I worked on some in my junior developer days)

Science becomes magic when sufficiently advanced, I guess technology is just a big mystery to you, a butterfly flaps its wings in Tokyo and heirloom transfers break at Blizz HQ.

(btw if you bother to look a bit back in my post history - don't recommend it as it's not very fanboy-friendly and you're liable to get even more hot and bothered,
you'll see I described the virtual realm implementation down to a 't' before it was announced so maybe I do have a bit more of a clue than you )