General WoD Alpha/Beta Discussion

[Ehnoah]

So bascially Beta is not that long as expected from most, since they test 3 Thinks in one time.

Before it was:
Leveling -> Raiding

Now:
Leveling
Raiding
PvP

So basically, everyone can do what he want to test, so it is quite faster and save lot of time.

[ATZenith]

I want to test PvP. I am excited to see the changes.

[Tiberria]

LFR and Flex were both tested over the weekend (1 wing at a time and usually only 1 wing of flex or 1 wing of LFR up at once) during the 5.4 PTR. Since normal mode in 6.0 is the same thing as Flex on live, it would be no change for Normal mode. I can only see them leaving Heroic (i.e. current Normal) up for 1-2 hours per fight if Mythic is really going to be massively different from Heroic (as in way more different than current Normal and Heroic are). Otherwise, top guilds will spend their entire weekends trying to formulate strategies or find glitches in fights that they can use to their advantage for Mythic.

[Joeygiggles]

Blizzard doesn't care. As seen by their raid formats. To the top 300 guilds they said: "sorry. Majority are greater than you guys. Enjoy doing 3 raid lockouts for the first tier. Enjoy 54 bosses a week."

Blizzard knows the top raiders won't quit. Unless Wildstar does extremely well, it's not like there's an alternative to top raiding somewhere else.

Just an FYI look shares a lockout, Doing the raid does not

[Tiberria]

So bascially Beta is not that long as expected from most, since they test 3 Thinks in one time.

Before it was:
Leveling -> Raiding

Now:
Leveling
Raiding
PvP

So basically, everyone can do what he want to test, so it is quite faster and save lot of time.

They continued to test leveling zones, even after raid testing had started. The only way that testing things at the same time reduces the duration required for testing is if the raid testing was really the bottleneck extending the duration of the beta. If it wasn't (and Watcher has said that raid testing didn't delay either of the last 2 expansions), then it likely makes no impact on the testing duration.

[Wow]

So basically, everyone can do what he want to test, so it is quite faster and save lot of time.

Problem is they are taking so long to even get started with this it won't matter a lot to most that its a little faster. So even if this stops a nov launch date its probably not gonna stop 5.4 from lasting over a year.

[Krazzorx]

LFR and Flex were both tested over the weekend (1 wing at a time and usually only 1 wing of flex or 1 wing of LFR up at once) during the 5.4 PTR. Since normal mode in 6.0 is the same thing as Flex on live, it would be no change for Normal mode. I can only see them leaving Heroic (i.e. current Normal) up for 1-2 hours per fight if Mythic is really going to be massively different from Heroic (as in way more different than current Normal and Heroic are). Otherwise, top guilds will spend their entire weekends trying to formulate strategies or find glitches in fights that they can use to their advantage for Mythic.

Well, admittedly Blizz said Flex in 5.4 PTR was basically normal (WoD heroic) mode difficulty due to mistaken gear scaling.

Regardless, what I was more asking was: did Blizz actually say that or was he just guessing?

[Ehnoah]

@wow

Yeah that is sure I think. But that happen because of some errors =/ I think Blizzard not lie at us with "It can be done faster". But yeah... just a bad timing for errors to pop up

[Krazzorx]

Just an FYI look shares a lockout, Doing the raid does not

Normal/heroic/mythic all have different loot lockouts. Essentially: for the very top guilds, WoD will be a repeat of ToC.

The raids not having a boss lockout just means you aren't prevented from running Normal mode Blackhand 10 times a week, you just only get 1 shot at loot.

- - - Updated - - -

If they were designing for progression oriented guilds, all difficulties would share loot lockouts. Even for non top 1% guilds, some players at all difficulties feel bad about themselves if they don't do everything to get gear possible to help the guild. Even if its not required. As in: this could happen in guilds who still haven't killed normal mode Garrosh.

They are more designing around this: your guild raids on Monday but your friends need help on Friday. If all difficulties share a lockout, you couldn't help. With them having independent lockouts, you can easily help.

[Deleted]

Engineering is going to become the most useless profession in the game. It will serve no purpose you already can;t make money off of it.

What? I've made over 350k (Sky Golem being the biggest profit 30 days after 5.4 patch day) in the past year from Engineering alone selling on Auction House. You are clearly doing something very very wrong!
Plus, everything they've said makes it sound much more likely that Engineering will be even more profitable during Warlords, you know things like non-Engineers buying our "Enchants" to apply to their own items (Goblin Glider for example) and the introduction of a non-Engineer version of Loot-A-Rang and other such items.

[ATZenith]

What? I've made over 350k (Sky Golem being the biggest profit 30 days after 5.4 patch day) in the past year from Engineering alone selling on Auction House. You are clearly doing something very very wrong!
Plus, everything they've said makes it sound much more likely that Engineering will be even more profitable during Warlords, you know things like non-Engineers buying our "Enchants" to apply to their own items (Goblin Glider for example) and the introduction of a non-Engineer version of Loot-A-Rang and other such items.

Yeah I don't have the money to make a sky golem. And they sell for 20k on my server.

- - - Updated - - -

Btw is that sub conference today?

[Deleted]

Normal/heroic/mythic all have different loot lockouts. Essentially: for the very top guilds, WoD will be a repeat of ToC.

This isn't true at all, for the top guilds, you won't set a foot in lfr:

Week 1: You level up 1-2 (or more) characters and gear them up with heroic 5mans and daily CM reward and whatever else you can find.
Week 2: The first week of raiding, Normal and Heroic open up. Top guilds will do a normal run for each of their chars, Heroic at least once on their mains, the higher in the top the guild is, the more of these heroic runs they will do that first week for several chars.
Week 3: Mythic and first wing LFR open up. Top guilds will start mythic, or do some extra normal/heroic clears before starting mythic progression, in any case, there won't be a reason to enter that lfr wing unless it has some very specific overpowered items.
Week 4 and further: More progress on Mythic, from here the value of normal mode is dropping a lot, and then the value of heroic runs drops a lot, to a state where only mythic is being done.

In ToC you kept doing the 2 lockouts for a lot longer since it gave the badges/tokens/whatever it was.

Edit: --

When the second tier drops, those top guilds will only do a double hc/mythic again for a while, and only normal if the new tier sets/trinkets are overpowered so that they would be better than the mythic items from the previous tier. After a week or 2, it's back to mythic only with perhaps some cherrypicking of hc bosses.

[Deleted]

Normal/heroic/mythic all have different loot lockouts. Essentially: for the very top guilds, WoD will be a repeat of ToC.

The raids not having a boss lockout just means you aren't prevented from running Normal mode Blackhand 10 times a week, you just only get 1 shot at loot.

- - - Updated - - -

If they were designing for progression oriented guilds, all difficulties would share loot lockouts. Even for non top 1% guilds, some players at all difficulties feel bad about themselves if they don't do everything to get gear possible to help the guild. Even if its not required. As in: this could happen in guilds who still haven't killed normal mode Garrosh.

They are more designing around this: your guild raids on Monday but your friends need help on Friday. If all difficulties share a lockout, you couldn't help. With them having independent lockouts, you can easily help.

Mmm not a repeat of ToC, sure the first tier there is a lot to do since everything is an upgrade but as mentioned in one of the interviews if you're within the top 300 bracket when the next tier drops you should be looking to jump straight into Mythic, So if you're full Mythic geared from first tier, "heroic" gear won't be of much use to you in normal gear of course apart from tier/trinkets perhaps.
So really its just Mythic Ill be running each week and heroic the first few weeks for tier/trinkets if they're that good. Really nice thing is though even when I'm just raiding Mythic only I can still go help out some old guildies in heroic or normal for that matter.

The whole flexibility of the entire raid system is looking really nice for all players not just casual or hardcore but everyone. Not to mention it sounds way more alt friendly in terms of gearing up etc. Lets just hope it runs smoothly into new content patches.

Edit - To clarify the next tier I meant after the first tier of WoD is cleared. Oh and obviously mythic mode will still be locked for one week so top end guilds wil be forced into heroic one week one then can jump into Mythic.

[TheHodedOne]

3 months since my last visist to the forum , I was expecting to see a bunch of videos of beta playing or at least the beta ETA, what a joke, blizzzard is serously fucking up all their games. at this point this Exp will come in 2017 LOL.

[Aceveda]

3 months since my last visist to the forum , I was expecting to see a bunch of videos of beta playing or at least the beta ETA, what a joke, blizzzard is serously fucking up all their games. at this point this Exp will come in 2017 LOL.

Pretty sure you posted here not long ago

[George Costanza]

If they think they are going to be doing mythic raid testing without inviting the entirety of the hardcore raiding scene (i.e. probably the world top 300 guilds or so), they will have hell to pay with the negative feedback they will be getting. They are almost forced to invite everyone up to a certain progression level.

They probably pick random people, while including handpicked people as well. They do that for most of the other, mostly because they want to test everything from Casual to hardcore, it's not like being in the top 300 or 100 guild lists will guarantee you a spot for beta.

[CosmicGuitars]

3 months since my last visist to the forum , I was expecting to see a bunch of videos of beta playing or at least the beta ETA, what a joke, blizzzard is serously fucking up all their games. at this point this Exp will come in 2017 LOL.

April 29th wasn't 3 months ago.

[Krazzorx]

They probably pick random people, while including handpicked people as well. They do that for most of the other, mostly because they want to test everything from Casual to hardcore, it's not like being in the top 300 or 100 guild lists will guarantee you a spot for beta.

The difference is raids are only tested by an extremely small population of WoW's players even during the PTR. With such a small beta, they have to target them.

Honestly, I don't think they need to worry about casual stuff being tested. Hardcore players are far more likely to abuse the system as much as possible to find the quickest paths than casuals. Obviously they will invite casual players, as seen by the pax invites, but the first waves will be top end raiders and pvpers. They have to when they are testing raids and pvp immediatelyc

- - - Updated - - -

This isn't true at all, for the top guilds, you won't set a foot in lfr:

Week 1: You level up 1-2 (or more) characters and gear them up with heroic 5mans and daily CM reward and whatever else you can find.
Week 2: The first week of raiding, Normal and Heroic open up. Top guilds will do a normal run for each of their chars, Heroic at least once on their mains, the higher in the top the guild is, the more of these heroic runs they will do that first week for several chars.
Week 3: Mythic and first wing LFR open up. Top guilds will start mythic, or do some extra normal/heroic clears before starting mythic progression, in any case, there won't be a reason to enter that lfr wing unless it has some very specific overpowered items.
Week 4 and further: More progress on Mythic, from here the value of normal mode is dropping a lot, and then the value of heroic runs drops a lot, to a state where only mythic is being done.

In ToC you kept doing the 2 lockouts for a lot longer since it gave the badges/tokens/whatever it was.

Edit: --

When the second tier drops, those top guilds will only do a double hc/mythic again for a while, and only normal if the new tier sets/trinkets are overpowered so that they would be better than the mythic items from the previous tier. After a week or 2, it's back to mythic only with perhaps some cherrypicking of hc bosses.

As a note: this doesn't effect me. My guild certainly won't make people raid that much.

However if there are OP trinkets and set bonuses, it could painful.

[The Hero of Legend]

April 29th wasn't 3 months ago.

Your avatar is too perfect with your comment.

[Krazzorx]

"The Mists of Pandaria beta was different because so many people needed an invite from the Annual Pass. This time around, beta will be more limited and only used for testing and feedback."

Does not lend itself to inviting many casual players. They want to invite actual testers and people who provide feedback. Obviously some casual players want to actually test, but that beta mentality is far more dominated by the balance minded hardcore players. Its a much safer bet inviting a 2200 arena player than a random random bg hero in the sense of inviting someone who actually will provide useful feedback.

Obviously in some circumstances the bg hero provides more useful feedback, but when you start inviting in the 1000's of people, the numbers balance out to the 2200 arena player a better bet.

The only content I basically could see a casual player being good for testing is length of time to level in content for the average player. And that can be determined through random Blizz employee (those not working on WoD) testing.

- - - Updated - - -

I know that comes of as a bit harsh but, I'm just trying to think what a more casual mindset can be used for if the main goal is to try to break everything. That's not something your average player does. That's something your average hardcore player does though.