General WoD Alpha/Beta Discussion

[Deleted]

The train crashed once Blizz announced the lame blogposts; PvP!! Healing!! information everyone desperately wants to see...

[Spirthealer]

Why? They need to make money in Q1 too

Its not like pre orders make money ether, its just holding numbers till release. after release is when they can make the money because that's when it is out.

[Lesane]

The train crashed once Blizz announced the lame blogposts; PvP!! Healing!! information everyone desperately wants to see...

While the blogs are not very interesting, what else could they post about short of just giving us the patch notes?

[Soulwind]

While the blogs are not very interesting, what else could they post about short of just giving us the patch notes?

Artcraft, that always works for me.

[Avikur]

While the blogs are not very interesting, what else could they post about short of just giving us the patch notes?

Personally I'd like to see a blog going through class by class explaining what the intentions are, what they see as areas that need addressing - ie: Warlocks too much survivability, hunters and Rogues specs too similar, Mages lvl 90 talents etc, and what they plan to do to address this, I'm not expecting patch notes or indepth details, just an overview class by class would be nice.

[Deleted]

While the blogs are not very interesting, what else could they post about short of just giving us the patch notes?

Class changes :-)

[Sinryu]

Looking forward to the next Garrison artcraft: Night elf, troll, fem tauren, or male human model reveals; any blog on system changes, the new questing system, a blog about how they're changing professions, since enchanting and jewelcrafting in particular are taking hits....they have a ton of information to impart on us...

[Deleted]

Looking forward to the next Garrison artcraft: Night elf, troll, fem tauren, or male human model reveals; any blog on system changes, the new questing system, a blog about how they're changing professions, since enchanting and jewelcrafting in particular are taking hits....they have a ton of information to impart on us...

Aaaaand they remain quiet, exept on twitter, Celestalon recently added information about dk's lvl100 talent : Breath of sindragosa.
https://twitter.com/Celestalon

I think you guys should just ask him what you wanna know about classes changes, and maybe he's gonna answer.

[hrugner]

I've been tempted to make a twitter just to ask about level scaling for old content and increased availability of class selections for races... but I'm afraid of twitter.

[Seditian]

I don't know, people respecting an NDA seems a little suspicious. It's far more likely that this is a press event beta version.

Bit late to the party, but if there's only a handful of people in that so-called beta, you'd be an idiot to violate the NDA. If there's 10k+ players, it becomes a little easier to not get caught violating the NDA. But if it's only people from fan websites and a few press members, chances are they can instantly see who leaked information. I wouldn't want to be the person who gets Blizzard's lawyer army after him.

[Ilir]

Bit late to the party, but if there's only a handful of people in that so-called beta, you'd be an idiot to violate the NDA. If there's 10k+ players, it becomes a little easier to not get caught violating the NDA. But if it's only people from fan websites and a few press members, chances are they can instantly see who leaked information. I wouldn't want to be the person who gets Blizzard's lawyer army after him.

Lawyer army ? Can't they just ban him or something like that ? Seems a bit extreme.

[Seditian]

Lawyer army ? Can't they just ban him or something like that ? Seems a bit extreme.

It depends really, if they wanted people to "leak" information, they'd give permission. But if you're leaking information that might hurt their numbers, you're probably screwed. You sign an NDA for a reason. But yes, a ban from future beta events is a given, I don't think that'll be the only thing that happens, though.

[Edoran]

Why? They need to make money in Q1 too

There's this little thing called RoS coming out in Q1.

It makes perfect sense for them to want to release WoD in Q2. If that quarter goes by with no release and a continually stagnant final tier, Blizzard takes a big hit. Can't really factor in Hearthstone because it's F2P.

Since pre-orders won't count towards earnings for a quarter unless the game releases in the same quarter, the June 24th date makes a ton of sense from that perspective, despite all the evidence pointing towards that being an otherwise unrealistic date. It's really tough to tell.

[Tiberria]

There's this little thing called RoS coming out in Q1.

It makes perfect sense for them to want to release WoD in Q2. If that quarter goes by with no release and a continually stagnant final tier, Blizzard takes a big hit. Can't really factor in Hearthstone because it's F2P.

Since pre-orders won't count towards earnings for a quarter unless the game releases in the same quarter, the June 24th date makes a ton of sense from that perspective, despite all the evidence pointing towards that being an otherwise unrealistic date. It's really tough to tell.

I am pretty sure that pre-orders will count towards earnings in the quarter that the pre-order sales are made. It isn't as if they don't actually charge your credit card immediately when you pre-order - they do, and therefore, they are earning that money as soon as you make the pre-order.

It's a much more realistic situation to expect them to rely on WoD pre-orders and carry over RoS sales for Q2 revenue and then release WoD in Q3 than it is to expect a Q2 WoD release. Besides, if they release WoD in Q2, won't that leave no major revenue sources for Q3-Q4? Releasing WoD near the end of Q3 (late September just like where MoP was released) will give them a Q3 boost and a carry over of additional sales to Q4, which seems to make all kinds of sense.

[Deleted]

Again 8 games and 10 services on EU bnet shop, Us got 8 games and 9 services...

[Ote]

They dont even have Alpha on The french office yet. From what i've been told they get it 1-2 months before Beta. So, at least one month for beta still.

Some of u, maybe all, wont believe me, but i promise u guys. Im not mesing with you.

[Edoran]

I am pretty sure that pre-orders will count towards earnings in the quarter that the pre-order sales are made. It isn't as if they don't actually charge your credit card immediately when you pre-order - they do, and therefore, they are earning that money as soon as you make the pre-order.

It's a much more realistic situation to expect them to rely on WoD pre-orders and carry over RoS sales for Q2 revenue and then release WoD in Q3 than it is to expect a Q2 WoD release. Besides, if they release WoD in Q2, won't that leave no major revenue sources for Q3-Q4? Releasing WoD near the end of Q3 (late September just like where MoP was released) will give them a Q3 boost and a carry over of additional sales to Q4, which seems to make all kinds of sense.

That makes sense if pre-orders do indeed count toward revenues in the quarter they take place in. Q3 is looking more and more likely by the day. But the other factor here is that if the game releases at the end of Q2 (like that late June date) they'll get carry-over sales into Q3, and by Q4 we should be looking at the first major content patch. If the game releases in late June, that's definitely within the right timeframe for the first major patch late in the year.

Either theory makes sense, the unknown is when pre-order sales count towards revenue. I was always under the impression they wouldn't count until release, but I could be wrong.

[sajin0084]

They dont even have Alpha on The french office yet. From what i've been told they get it 1-2 months before Beta. So, at least one month for beta still.

Some of u, maybe all, wont believe me, but i promise u guys. Im not mesing with you.

....Well they just had a press tour there with alpha/beta....so....

[Tiberria]

That makes sense if pre-orders do indeed count toward revenues in the quarter they take place in. Q3 is looking more and more likely by the day. But the other factor here is that if the game releases at the end of Q2 (like that late June date) they'll get carry-over sales into Q3, and by Q4 we should be looking at the first major content patch. If the game releases in late June, that's definitely within the right timeframe for the first major patch late in the year.

Either theory makes sense, the unknown is when pre-order sales count towards revenue. I was always under the impression they wouldn't count until release, but I could be wrong.

They charge credit cards immediately, so they definitely have the revenue immediately for pre-orders. Whether or not they can claim it as revenue in that quarter is an accounting thing that I'm not sure about.

There is definitely a reason why the last several releases (MoP, RoS, and Cata) have been within 3 weeks of the end of the fiscal quarter. That lets them get the first day/first week sales in that fiscal quarter and additional carry over sales in the next one to balance the revenue flow. However, I think Q3 makes a whole lot more sense than Q2 for a WoD release, even not looking at beta trends, etc. They are already going to have carry over RoS sales + most of the WoD pre-orders in Q2, which is a decent amount of revenue. Would they want to release WoD in Q2 and have the first week sales on top of that? It makes a lot more sense that they would release at the end of Q3, to split the remaining WoD sales across Q3 and Q4.

[Lesane]

There's this little thing called RoS coming out in Q1.

It makes perfect sense for them to want to release WoD in Q2. If that quarter goes by with no release and a continually stagnant final tier, Blizzard takes a big hit. Can't really factor in Hearthstone because it's F2P.

Since pre-orders won't count towards earnings for a quarter unless the game releases in the same quarter, the June 24th date makes a ton of sense from that perspective, despite all the evidence pointing towards that being an otherwise unrealistic date. It's really tough to tell.

Uhm, and what about Q3 and Q4? Since when did Blizzard have a release ready for every quarter so they can boast about numbers? While it's obvious that they do use some strategy with timing their releases in order to screw over competitor's releases, in general they will still mainly release stuff when it's (more than) ready for release.