No more alpha updates I guess,

[Hyve]

I think them asking to have the screenshots taken down is one main thing;

Control of expectation (Alpha) - Having as much control as you can have over your game is important, and making sure people know and see it officially is the best thing you could do. Considering they're Alpha, and likely to be full of issues, bugs and a lack of detail, it could easily put a sour taste in the mouth of their fans / players

[Deleted]

Perhaps they have legitimate reasons. I'm sure the info will flow soon once the alpha starts properly.

[Krazzorx]

I think them asking to have the screenshots taken down is one main thing;

Control of expectation (Alpha) - Having as much control as you can have over your game is important, and making sure people know and see it officially is the best thing you could do. Considering they're Alpha, and likely to be full of issues, bugs and a lack of detail, it could easily put a sour taste in the mouth of their fans / players

It could be that (especially the green sky and water making everything look far more uncompleted than it actually is, see sky and water in SMV and FF where we know its actually done.) but, all the spoilers are in datamined info. And Blizz let that stay. Its just the ToS info they are breaking. An

And yes, as they said during interviews Alpha = few people testing it. That's it. It's not actually separate.

[snuzzle]

I think them asking to have the screenshots taken down is one main thing;

Control of expectation (Alpha) - Having as much control as you can have over your game is important, and making sure people know and see it officially is the best thing you could do. Considering they're Alpha, and likely to be full of issues, bugs and a lack of detail, it could easily put a sour taste in the mouth of their fans / players

You mean like the pages and pages of people bitching about the (scrapped) night elf female model? Yeah... I can see that...

[fredsterr]

Each day that passes without alpha servers going up and invites going out, the more transparent it becomes that the alpha announcement was just a marketing ploy to distract from ESO's launch.

"Warlords of Draenor™ Alpha Testing Begins" on April 3? Not so much...

Yeah...I think thats a reach. Hell players can read up on patch notes and changes while playing ESO. Its not like potential ESO players had access to play WoD.

[Hyve]

You mean like the pages and pages of people bitching about the (scrapped) night elf female model? Yeah... I can see that...

Some aspects of the game need to be more controlled than others. A lot of the datamined information might not be so bad, and might represent something they're willing to take the Alpha, but the Zones & Maps might be so out-dated or otherwise incomplete that they feel it'll do more damage than good.

[Krazzorx]

Some aspects of the game need to be more controlled than others. A lot of the datamined information might not be so bad, and might represent something they're willing to take the Alpha, but the Zones & Maps might be so out-dated or otherwise incomplete that they feel it'll do more damage than good.

The problem to me is the skies and water. They look real bad and don't necessarily look like placeholders put in there by the sandbox creators at an off glance by the uninformed.

[Barkloud]

You can always read about Wildstar, they just released 71 pages of patch notes.

http://www.zam.com/story.html?story=34150

[Flutterguy]

The information was obtained from private servers that sandboxed it. As soon as the alpha client opens up, you'll get your official information.

[Kalcheus]

The information was obtained from private servers that sandboxed it. As soon as the alpha client opens up, you'll get your official information.

This. It wasn't the information itself, it was how it was obtained.

[Deleted]

did nobody upload those images to another site ffs?

[Deleted]

The information was obtained from private servers that sandboxed it. As soon as the alpha client opens up, you'll get your official information.

A little OT: What exactly does it mean "to sandbox something"? I have not really found a definition of it via google.
Is this just a server which communicates with the game in a way of "yeah, you're online and can fly around but there are no NPCs"? Why is this called Sandbox?

[Tharkkun]

I think Blizzard believes zones are too much spoilers and should be seen by the players themselves for more wow feeling Or at least until beta starts.

Typically the zones aren't available in beta until they are ready for testing. The last thing they need is people critiquing art, zone and dungeon design before it's even ready for beta. Especially the people already complaining about poor textures, quality, placeholder objects, etc.

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there were several screenshots where it was stuff obviously copy pasted from outlands, even entire plateus and mountians.

Placeholders, reference, or otherwise it comes off as breaking the "Ground up" promise. that is why

You really have no concept of software development. Ground up does not mean starting 100% from scratch. If you have a solid building model you would paste it into your environment and modify it from there. It would be a complete waste of time to start from square 1 unless there's no salvageable model available.

[Ghâzh]

A little OT: What exactly does it mean "to sandbox something"? I have not really found a definition of it via google.
Is this just a server which communicates with the game in a way of "yeah, you're online and can fly around but there are no NPCs"? Why is this called Sandbox?

Because "sandboxing" isn't an actual term. It means that you connect your game client to your private server so the client thinks that you are online with "real" blizzard server even though you aren't. There's no other players or NPC's unless you give the private server info to someone else to connect to. It also means that since you aren't connected to blizzard server there's no way of getting banned so you can use scripts to spawn mobs/npcs/gear or otherwise change the world.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandbox...e_development)

[Deleted]

Each day that passes without alpha servers going up and invites going out, the more transparent it becomes that the alpha announcement was just a marketing ploy to distract from ESO's launch.

I've read this a few times and it just makes no sense, not even a little.

The ESO launch is a game, a whole game you can buy and play, right now.

The WOD Alpha, as you yourself pointed out, isn't available, no servers and no invites for the masses.

So I'm just confused to what was meant to "distract" people, patch notes? some pictures?

Obviously I can only speak for myself but if I've decided to buy a new game and am all excited because it's released that day, I'm going to need more than a list of things I don't have access to, to stop me from playing it.

[Sinryu]

according to the interviews celestalon and zarhym did on sunday, Rygarius is writing another iteration of the patch notes with over 5k additional words. And the rest of the community team is working on writing Garrison blogs (there will be 4, the first of which is an overview of what's changed since the feature was announced at blizzcon) right now, should have the first draft written by the end of the week, which we "should see in 2-3 weeks". we should also expect a professions blog sometime in the next few weeks, and PAX east is this weekend, so we will probably get some news then

[Kalcheus]

Each day that passes without alpha servers going up and invites going out, the more transparent it becomes that the alpha announcement was just a marketing ploy to distract from ESO's launch.

"Warlords of Draenor™ Alpha Testing Begins" on April 3? Not so much...

Umm, the Alpha Servers did go up. Where do you think the datamining is coming from?

Also, we have no idea if anyone is currently logged in and testing. It may just be an F&F right now and for all we know they're under an NDA.

[Sinryu]

Right now they're doing a "Take home alpha" the only people that are in are people that work at blizzard HQ and took a physical copy home

[Deleted]

did nobody upload those images to another site ffs?

Nope, why didn't you do it? Instead of getting annoyed nobody else did.

Stuff posted by boub rarely if ever gets taken down, so under the assumption they wouldn't be taken down nobody thought to reupload them.

I probably have all the images in my chrome browser cache, I'll see if I can retrieve them.

[Hyve]

The problem to me is the skies and water. They look real bad and don't necessarily look like placeholders put in there by the sandbox creators at an off glance by the uninformed.

Don't forget they also don't have all the environmental / world details that make them feel alive and populated. Thinking a spell might give you +20% haste rather than +25% is one thing, but if people start thinking the zones will be that bad, that could harm sales.

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Nope, why didn't you do it? Instead of getting annoyed nobody else did.

Stuff posted by boub rarely if ever gets taken down, so under the assumption they wouldn't be taken down nobody thought to reupload them.

I probably have all the images in my chrome browser cache, I'll see if I can retrieve them.

Blizzard didn't want them distributed - You'd be best not to attempt it as well.