General WoD Alpha/Beta Discussion

[Lidenbok]

The LFR changes are fucking fantastic. Swear word for extra emphasis.

I don't even raid, and probably won't raid ever again but I still don't think LFR should be dropping raid gear. I welcome it and quite frankly good riddance to the minority that are going to be quitting for this. Buh' Bye.

[Arbs]

Like no one is discussing Raid stuff, I want to have civil arguements with people about the Gearing / Item Level issue. But it is so quiet .

[Yarathir]

The LFR changes are fucking fantastic. Swear word for extra emphasis.

I don't even raid, and probably won't raid ever again but I still don't think LFR should be dropping raid gear. I welcome it and quite frankly good riddance to the minority that are going to be quitting for this. Buh' Bye.

Not gonna pretend like I know a lot of people will quit over it, but if they do.. are you gonna keep saying "Buh bye" when WoW is left with a lot less subscribers?

[Simca]

On a brighter note. They could be polishing the Alpha up even more.

Yup, of course! Each build we see looks substantially better than the last.

Nothing development-wise stops because of file format technical issues - there are not even many (if any) people from the WoW team working on fixing those issues. CASC is part of Battle.net's core now, both on a technical level and on a practical level. The Battle.net team is responsible for fixing the problems that the Battle.net App has with CASC right now.

In many cases when I or others I know have been unable to launch the game, deleting the entire data directory and running the game directly in 'streaming' mode from the EXE works. The issues with file corruption that I've seen appear related to the Battle.net App getting badly out of sync with its Agent and updating the .idx files with improper or invalid information. The Battle.net App doesn't have any kind of recovery system in place for corrupted .idx files right now, which is bad. If your 100 MB worth of .idx files have an error somewhere, time to throw out the entire 24 GB install and download it all over again! This isn't even to mention the issues where the NGDP log file gets over 800 MB and can crash Agent because it can no longer write to a text file that large (and the crash, of course, often ruins the .idx files). As a side note, the file streaming appears to be functioning very well (it even saves its newly streamed data properly and updates .idx files on game exit) - just as well as it was before CASC, so that makes me think that WoW's CASC implementation is fine.

Edit: Updated terminology because indexes are separate from idxs.

[Arbs]

I'm not sure if LFR players have ever demanded that heroic or normal gear, special mounts, titles, achievements etc. were removed. Only the other way around. :P

I think it is an entitlement thing they are after, They want everything but don't want to get better or work for it.

so when Blizzard decides hey you gotta do the other content to get those rewards & put in the effort / work for it.

They take it as an insult, but Blizzard wants them to actually try the other content than maybe they will understand why the players from that general idea get angry that their hard work means nothing when you get the same rewards for doing very little. Reason why I praise the Carbine devs for what they say. Will it make me play the game, No. But I like that they are putting their foot down & Blizzard should do the same.

- - - Updated - - -

Yup, of course! Each build we see looks substantially better than the last.

Nothing development-wise stops because of file format technical issues - there are not even many (if any) people from the WoW team working on fixing those issues. CASC is part of Battle.net's core now, both on a technical level and on a practical level. The Battle.net team is responsible for fixing the many problems that the Battle.net App has with CASC right now.

In many cases when I or others I know have been unable to launch the game, deleting the entire data directory and running the game directly in 'streaming' mode from the EXE works. The issues with file corruption that I've seen appear related to the Battle.net App getting badly out of sync with its Agent and updating the indexes with improper or invalid information. The Battle.net App doesn't have any kind of recovery system in place for corrupted indexes right now, which is bad. If your 100 MB worth of index files have an error somewhere, time to throw out the entire 24 GB install and download it all over again! As a side note, the file streaming appears to be functioning very well (it even saves its newly streamed data properly and updates indexes on game exit) - just as well as it was before CASC, so that makes me think that WoW's CASC implementation is fine.

So in other words, we should blame the Battle Net Tech team for the delay of the Alpha / Beta.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

I don't think(In accordance to MMO-Champion) LFR Change will change the populace it's a minority(That Blizz follows). Like I said to me this change won't break the game to me, it never does. I just think it's unnecessary but that's a different topic.

[Krazzorx]

Like no one is discussing Raid stuff, I want to have civil arguements with people about the Gearing / Item Level issue. But it is so quiet .

Well, in that case:

I'll have to go find the tweet, but one of the CMs tweeted the LFR trinkets will be simple trinkets so you won't get the Wrath situation where some 10m trinkets were BiS. LFR won't have UVLS like trinkets for instance.

On the heroic dungeon gear vs LFR gear, I don't think Blizz was in a position to equalize them. Equalize them and you objectively make heroic dungeons the preferred way to gear up. And then you'll have Cata 5 mans repeat. While it doesn't make objective sense, Blizzard very carefully did not harm LFR players. That would've. People would've forced themselves into hard 5 mans even if they weren't good enough as they geared up faster.

- - - Updated - - -

I'm not sure if LFR players have ever demanded that heroic or normal gear, special mounts, titles, achievements etc. were removed. Only the other way around. :P

That was actually posted for both sides. In particular the ones who want heroic dungeons to be equal or better than LFR ilvl.

Objectively it makes sense for heroic dungeons to offer better gear. Practically, not at all. The only way they get away with these changes is by not harming the LFR audience at all outside of an extremely small minority who wants cool gear and doesn't transmog. (Its such a tiny % who transmog gear into current xpac LFR gear).

[Aeluron Lightsong]

Join the adventure now and save 50% on World of Warcraft and Mists of Pandaria. It’s the perfect time to expand your horizons and unlock tons of exciting new content. Hurry, though, because this sale ends May 6 at 11:59 p.m. PDT.

Hehehehhehe

[Leakage]

tons of exciting new content

heheheh indeed

[Aeluron Lightsong]

heheheh indeed

For those that don't have MoP. -_- Took that out of context.

[Paula Deen]

Hehehehhehe

Coincidence that it ends on a Tuesday after the books comes out?

[Krazzorx]

The only reason I could see them doing that now is for alpha launching? People will see that announcements and and streams and Go and see "oh, current xpac is 50% off and if I buy the new one I get a max level character? Awesome".

I guess it could be random, but does Blizz do anything randomly?

[bobn9lvu]

Good GOD, can't you just make a copy of thje whole danged game dir and do a file refresh of copy whenever an update occurs so you don't have to re-dl/install the bleeeping LARGE game again?

Yup, of course! Each build we see looks substantially better than the last.

Nothing development-wise stops because of file format technical issues - there are not even many (if any) people from the WoW team working on fixing those issues. CASC is part of Battle.net's core now, both on a technical level and on a practical level. The Battle.net team is responsible for fixing the many problems that the Battle.net App has with CASC right now.

In many cases when I or others I know have been unable to launch the game, deleting the entire data directory and running the game directly in 'streaming' mode from the EXE works. The issues with file corruption that I've seen appear related to the Battle.net App getting badly out of sync with its Agent and updating the indexes with improper or invalid information. The Battle.net App doesn't have any kind of recovery system in place for corrupted indexes right now, which is bad. If your 100 MB worth of index files have an error somewhere, time to throw out the entire 24 GB install and download it all over again! This isn't even to mention the issues where the NGDP log file gets over 800 MB and can crash Agent because it can no longer write to a text file that large (and the crash, of course, often ruins the indexes). As a side note, the file streaming appears to be functioning very well (it even saves its newly streamed data properly and updates indexes on game exit) - just as well as it was before CASC, so that makes me think that WoW's CASC implementation is fine.

[Lidenbok]

Not gonna pretend like I know a lot of people will quit over it, but if they do.. are you gonna keep saying "Buh bye" when WoW is left with a lot less subscribers?

Yes. Yes I will.

Lets just be honest here, people that have an issue with this change are probably the same people that expect maximum reward for minimum effort which is one of the many type of players that are ruining the game for everyone so again buh' bye. Raiding gear should be exclusive to the people that ya know.. raid? And put the hours into progression and earn the items. Just how the game was pre-LFR.

Also on the topic of subscriber numbers, they will more than double the amount they lose just by WoD launch alone, literally no skin off their nose.

Just to put things into perspective for you and everyone else here. FFXI has been going for 12 years. For the years 2003-2009 it had 2 million subscribers which is a lot, but still a quarter of what Blizzard have now, over the course of 2009-2014 they dropped to 200k. The game is still going strong with monthly content updates. I always laugh when people say "omg wow going f2p they lost 10k subs" please, they could survive even with a third of their subs they have now. And Square-Enix isn't even close to the size or wealth of Blizzard, Blizzard is a damn enterprise.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

It matters not, we shouldn't be so hostile with one another either.

[Paula Deen]

It matters not, we shouldn't be so hostile with one another either.

Fuck you Aeluron > : (

jk :3

[Icecreamcake]

Is it true that the expected release date is around December?

[Aeluron Lightsong]

It's the technical end date of Fall. No indication that will happen but many have latched onto that date nonetheless.

[Shampro]

Damn Simca, that detailed statement didn't exactly brought up my hope. :'I

[Aboubacar]

So no ETA sounds like, no Alpha this days

They are really pushing the limits on testing the playerbase's patience this time around. Really annoying that they barely put blog posts out (one this week had little new info, despite being very interesting) on top of not having a beta ready to play by this point. They expanded the team by 40% to do what? Was it the janitorial staff? More money for slower content ugh.

Nothing to even talk about in this thread for so long now