Battle for Azeroth Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[Drekmar]

Who visits the official website?

Well, we atleast know you don't. And neither wowhead or mmochamp front page as it was there too.

[Feali]

Well, we atleast know you don't. And neither wowhead or mmochamp front page as it was there too.

I always go straight to the forums

[Drekmar]

I always go straight to the forums

I see, skipping the good part and going straight to the feces club.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

I see, skipping the good part and going straight to the feces club.

Masochist that one.

[Fahrad Wagner]

And I'm back! Did I miss anything?

[Therougetitan]

Is there a wallpaper version of the 7.3?

I can't find a media section on the wow site either. They used to have all sorts of art and wallpapers there. Guess it went away when they updated the site months ago.

[Drekmar]

Is there a wallpaper version of the 7.3?

I can't find a media section on the wow site either. They used to have all sorts of art and wallpapers there. Guess it went away when they updated the site months ago.

http://imgur.com/a/l095E

[Feali]

This is how we do it now. Timegate to create the illusion of heaps of content!

I was done with week one in an hour. That was including all the world quests which gave me nothing interesting. All of them gold + AP.

I got 3 Fire relics for my Mage. Who is Frost. They are all the same relic.

[Shadochi]

@Marlamin blizz's cinematic encrypting got me thinking, would it be possible for them to also encrypt zones/instances until a specific event in game is completed?(also the strigs that follow the addition of the new zone)

[rda]

@Marlamin blizz's cinematic encrypting got me thinking, would it be possible for them to also encrypt zones/instances until a specific event in game is completed?(also the strigs that follow the addition of the new zone)

I am not Marlamin, but the answer is - encrypting anything requires some supporting code and encrypting different pieces of data requires supporting code in different places, but all of that is pretty simple and if they choose to do so, they absolutely can.

Do they have the ability to encrypt zones right now? Nobody can tell for sure without access to the codebase (for all you know there might be a pass-through layer that can do this already and it is just that nobody ever asked it to do this for the things you mention), but likely, no (because they didn't do this before = they didn't see a need = there is no reason to be supporting that if you aren't using it). Can they add this in the future? Yes, easily.

[Paula Deen]

I am fairly certain they do have the ability to encrypt things like zones and the main questioning point that points to that,

Why on Earth would the Kul'Tiras Armor get leaked all by itself? Same with the masks in Cata? Those things seem like they forgot to encrypt them rather than just a mistake of including them in the build at all. I don't know for sure though. Again that is something Marlamin would know.

[Marlamin]

@Marlamin blizz's cinematic encrypting got me thinking, would it be possible for them to also encrypt zones/instances until a specific event in game is completed?(also the strigs that follow the addition of the new zone)

If it is a completely new map, I think they can probably pull it off right now by leaving it out of the clients Map database and hotfixing it in when it goes live. That way the client won't need any changes because it simply would think the map does not exist. We would see a suspiciously large amount of unknown/encrypted files for the terrain files itself which would have to be added in a client patch, and if the map name is long enough we wouldn't be able to guess the filenames either because it'd be missing from the Map database. We'd only know once they hotfix the mapname in.

Why on Earth would the Kul'Tiras Armor get leaked all by itself? Same with the masks in Cata? Those things seem like they forgot to encrypt them rather than just a mistake of including them in the build at all. I don't know for sure though. Again that is something Marlamin would know.

I don't really know either, they have to go out of their way to encrypt things, so this might have just been an accidental addition to the live content branch instead of the pre-patch/expansion branch. But even if they encrypted it, we would've found out the filenames but we just wouldn't be able to look at the textures themselves. All I know is that I'm keeping an eye out for any mysterious things when 7.3.5 PTR hits (probably soonish).

[RoshuanEU]

If it is a completely new map, I think they can probably pull it off right now by leaving it out of the clients Map database and hotfixing it in when it goes live. That way the client won't need any changes because it simply would think the map does not exist. We would see a suspiciously large amount of unknown/encrypted files for the terrain files itself which would have to be added in a client patch, and if the map name is long enough we wouldn't be able to guess the filenames either because it'd be missing from the Map database. We'd only know once they hotfix the mapname in.



I don't really know either, they have to go out of their way to encrypt things, so this might have just been an accidental addition to the live content branch instead of the pre-patch/expansion branch. But even if they encrypted it, we would've found out the filenames but we just wouldn't be able to look at the textures themselves. All I know is that I'm keeping an eye out for any mysterious things when 7.3.5 PTR hits (probably soonish).

Soonish™.

I would love to learn how to look for mysterious things in the database, as data analysis is kind of my thing. I suppose there isn't a guide or something to talk me through things to get the basics and get it running on my computer?

[Marlamin]

Soonish™.

I would love to learn how to look for mysterious things in the database, as data analysis is kind of my thing. I suppose there isn't a guide or something to talk me through things to get the basics and get it running on my computer?

It's mostly mysterious things in CASC, and there isn't really a guide or something. My site has a list of all files in all CASC builds which gets automatically updated shortly after a new build is released, so I'm mostly using that to find new things. As for local tools, you can use CASCExplorer to browse local client files.

[Nyel]

And I'm back! Did I miss anything?

No, there was really nothing you could have missed in the last days.

[RoshuanEU]

It's mostly mysterious things in CASC, and there isn't really a guide or something. My site has a list of all files in all CASC builds which gets automatically updated shortly after a new build is released, so I'm mostly using that to find new things. As for local tools, you can use CASCExplorer to browse local client files.

Being able to run things local is especially handy if I want to brute force my way into file names :P

[Marlamin]

Would that be enough? Wouldn't the map be crossreferenced at other points?

Not necessarily, no. Most (if not all) database files can be hotfixed now so if there's any additional things like flight masters, graveyards etc they need to add they can hotfix those in as well. File wise they can just put all files (minimaps, terrain tiles, objects, textures) under the same encryption key if that map is the only place they're used.

[Feali]

What if the Kul'tiras armor was intentionally leaked to lead us the wrong way?

[Raetary]

What if the Kul'tiras armor was intentionally leaked to lead us the wrong way?

i doubt they are gonna waste time creating fake questing gear just to mess with us.

[Nyel]

Well if it would've been only the file names... okay. But they designed armor sets with maps on them and named them Kul'Tiras - that's no trolling anymore, too much work went into it.