Battle for Azeroth Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[Deleted]

It might be just trolling, to tempt those posting Wrathduin nonsense

Would be funny if someone mentions something like that to Wrathion and he goes. "EW NO ...he's a Human..."

[Nathanyel]

I think Tel'abim would make a great pvp zone.

Yes, because the faction conflict is no better than fighting over bananas.

[Soulwind]

Yes, because the faction conflict is no better than fighting over bananas.

It'd actually be quite appropiate.

[Fahrad Wagner]

It'd actually be quite appropiate.

I was just about to say it!

[Eurhetemec]

I hope they, instead of just disabling them and moving to this new system they've designed, replace PvP and PvE servers with 'Normal' and 'Pristine'. I am seriously keeping my hopes to see a Pristine realm one day.

Really? Until Classic servers were announced that seemed reasonable, as Blizzard clearly liked that idea better, but now? Pfffft. It seems unlikely in the extreme that they're going to put out Pristine server as well. I mean, Blizzard seem to want to move away from the server model - which they're smart to do, it's a dying model - as can been see with their "Trans-server Communities" concept they mentioned in Blue posts recently.

[Nathanyel]

It'd actually be quite appropiate.

Didn't we have the topic of "proxy wars" in MoP already?

[Soulwind]

Didn't we have the topic of "proxy wars" in MoP already?

Sure, but the idea that they can turn Tel'Abim, a place only known because of its bananas, into a PvP zone and call them Banana Wars is perfect, which is why people keep suggesting it.

It's not like you can do something more interesting with that place, like having a portal to an arabian continent on the other side of Azeroth.

[Nathanyel]

It's not like you can do something more interesting with that place, like having a portal to an arabian continent on the other side of Azeroth.

Not the Tel'Abar leak again

[Nathanyel]

Just wait. Any day now they'll announce it.

Battle for Azeroth is just the prepatch!

[Draedarr]

WoW has always supported a maximum of 64x64 tiled maps. Some maps like Kalimdor are already getting pretty close to that limit (height wise in this case). With the current engine they can't go past 64x64. However, if they were to change this to support a higher amount of tiles I don't think there'd be much of an performance impact as the game never loads close to that many tiles at once (stuff you see in the distance is different). Changing that will probably a bit harder than changing some numbers around, but probably not impossible.

They could instead also further iterate on the cosmetic map system they introduced in Cataclysm and further developed and used in WoD. It's what powers maps like the Silithus Wound or the Blasted Lands WoD event map or other maps where you are able to see large chunks of the world that really belong to another map. There might be some cool stuff they can do with that which could make it look pretty seamless and load without a loading screen, when going between continents but still be on technically separate maps.

Sorry for the technical rant, these kind of ideas get me excited.

No problem Marlamin, i'm working in some little game projects and love this talks .

WoW already uses Occlusion Culling right? I think the second option of iterate and improve the map system would be more doable in the near future, the map tiles itself is a feature that they may be already working and testing, but not something for the near future, it would demand a lot of time from them to work on this stuff.

[belsalles]

Any idea when the beta will arrive?

[madokbro]

How likely is it that they are saving N'Zoth for a void expansion?

[IgnisVenom]

Something that I learned a few days ago. So, MogIt is an addon that basically allows you to see another person's mog. However, when you check the mog out, the character it's displayed on is basically what your character would look like if they were the race of the person whose mog you're seeing. So, I checked out my friend's mog, who was a Tauren, and a model of a Highmountain Tauren popped up. Thought it might be interesting to note.

[Shadochi]

How likely is it that they are saving N'Zoth for a void expansion?

Very unlikely that they are saving a boss. If they want to also use a boss in a future expansion they just come up with a reason why he isn't actually dead.

[Lahis]

Just wait. Any day now they'll announce it.

World of Warcraft patch 8.1: Going Bananas.

"Travel to the mystical island of Tel'Abim and uncover it's secrets to acquire the magical Banana Hoard of the Hozen King Konkey Dong to empower your faction in the Battle for Azeroth."

[rda]

I just couldn't help myself looking at this laughable exchange:

There's no chance in Hades that the continents will all be merged onto a single server.

Why do you even care?

If you want a seamless world with no loading screens, state that you want that directly. This is entirely possible with parts of the world running on different servers.

Depending it could happen, although i don't know if the engine would be capable of it.

What? "The engine"? What does "the engine" have to do with it? You mean "the server part of WoW".

there is zero fucking chance that all of the continents will be merged into one instance

OK. I don't think this is true, just isn't necessary / irrelevant, but fine, this is the least laughable post in the entire exchange.

On a programming side i really think it could be made. The engine is improving more and more, the downside of this sort of tech is that many old computers would suffer to run it.

Damn, "the engine" now starts migrating to the client. No, the downside that you describe does not exist. Some changes in "the engine" (or "the server part of WoW", which you need if you want to talk about the hypothetical - and unnecessary - case of all continents running on the same server) do reflect on the client, but not all, and the reflection is absolutely not going to be "since the server started processing actions for all continents, the client has to keep them all in memory as well". There will be changes to the client to support a seamless world, but they absolutely don't have to require more memory or more of anything. In fact, they might easily require less, this is a common goal when you are moving from loading screens to a seamless world - to *limit* the amount of resources consumed by the client and get rid of issues with big maps (and allow the designers to create arbitrarily complex maps because they no longer have to care about any limits, these limits are enforced dynamically and automatically).

WoW has always supported a maximum of 64x64 tiled maps. Some maps like Kalimdor are already getting pretty close to that limit (height wise in this case). With the current engine they can't go past 64x64. ...

What??? Marlamin repeating the BS regarding "the engine"? What does this have to do with "the engine"? You seem to be calling everything that lives on the server "the engine", like one of the guys above does.

And why the heck discuss the limit on the number of tiles in a map? Because that's the only pair of numbers you can see? There are other limits which you don't see that are way more important and way harder to change, guaranteed. You are like the media who report what they can understand instead of what matters.

I realize that you are surrounded by folks who can't tell a MAC from a HMAC, so there is little reason to go into technical matters too deep, but this "technical rant" of yours was just amateurish.

Frankly, this isn't the first time. Recently, when I posted something about classic that goes a little deeper than this laughable level of discussing some limit in an intermediate data structure and inserting "the engine" where it doesn't belong, you haven't been able to say anything coherent either. I am beginning to think that maybe I was giving you too much credit and in fact your experience and knowledge arent't too high above those of students / wannabe devs who storm these "talk with the dev" panels at Blizzcon. Where the hosts are relaxing, sipping colas and telling random stories from their dev life, and the audience is not getting any wiser about the actual development (for that you'd need a normal session centered on a technical topic - who needs that, right? that's too complex and boring, better "hang out with the cool guys" and hear anecdotes) but feeling damn privileged regardless.

No problem Marlamin, ... WoW already uses Occlusion Culling right?

This was the post that broke me up.

Buddy, this is a non-sequitur. What you were discussing before has no bearing on it.

And yes, WoW does use occlusion culling. It did since the beginning. You are asking about a staple without which nearly nothing is possible, you just immediately die perf-wise. It's like asking if WoW runs on systems with color monitors. Yeah, it does.

---

There is nothing wrong with discussing the technical side of things which you don't fully understand. But I would have thought that at least someone would have some clue. Apparently not, nobody left.

[Shadochi]

Not the Tel'Abar leak again

If only we had some organization that could easily debunk leaks...

[Nathanyel]

If only we had some organization that could easily debunk leaks...

" 'Bring back Speculation Brotherhood' - what's the point?"

[In Ogres We Trust]

In the end, there can only be one... Battle for Azeroth... .

* Queue the soundtrack from the Highlander series. *

[Draedarr]

I just couldn't help myself looking at this laughable exchange:



Why do you even care?

If you want a seamless world with no loading screens, state that you want that directly. This is entirely possible with parts of the world running on different servers.



What? "The engine"? What does "the engine" have to do with it? You mean "the server part of WoW".



OK. I don't think this is true, just isn't necessary / irrelevant, but fine, this is the least laughable post in the entire exchange.



Damn, "the engine" now starts migrating to the client. No, the downside that you describe does not exist. Some changes in "the engine" (or "the server part of WoW", which you need if you want to talk about the hypothetical - and unnecessary - case of all continents running on the same server) do reflect on the client, but not all, and the reflection is absolutely not going to be "since the server started processing actions for all continents, the client has to keep them all in memory as well". There will be changes to the client to support a seamless world, but they absolutely don't have to require more memory or more of anything. In fact, they might easily require less, this is a common goal when you are moving from loading screens to a seamless world - to *limit* the amount of resources consumed by the client and get rid of issues with big maps (and allow the designers to create arbitrarily complex maps because they no longer have to care about any limits, these limits are enforced dynamically and automatically).



What??? Marlamin repeating the BS regarding "the engine"? What does this have to do with "the engine"? You seem to be calling everything that lives on the server "the engine", like one of the guys above does.

And why the heck discuss the limit on the number of tiles in a map? Because that's the only pair of numbers you can see? There are other limits which you don't see that are way more important and way harder to change, guaranteed. You are like the media who report what they can understand instead of what matters.

I realize that you are surrounded by folks who can't tell a MAC from a HMAC, so there is little reason to go into technical matters too deep, but this "technical rant" of yours was just amateurish.

Frankly, this isn't the first time. Recently, when I posted something about classic that goes a little deeper than this laughable level of discussing some limit in an intermediate data structure and inserting "the engine" where it doesn't belong, you haven't been able to say anything coherent either. I am beginning to think that maybe I was giving you too much credit and in fact your experience and knowledge arent't too high above those of students / wannabe devs who storm these "talk with the dev" panels at Blizzcon. Where the hosts are relaxing, sipping colas and telling random stories from their dev life, and the audience is not getting any wiser about the actual development (for that you'd need a normal session centered on a technical topic - who needs that, right? that's too complex and boring, better "hang out with the cool guys" and hear anecdotes) but feeling damn privileged regardless.



This was the post that broke me up.

Buddy, this is a non-sequitur. What you were discussing before has no bearing on it.

And yes, WoW does use occlusion culling. It did since the beginning. You are asking about a staple without which nearly nothing is possible, you just immediately die perf-wise. It's like asking if WoW runs on systems with color monitors. Yeah, it does.

---

There is nothing wrong with discussing the technical side of things which you don't fully understand. But I would have thought that at least someone would have some clue. Apparently not, nobody left.

When i said the Engine, i was not talking about the server side, but the client side (i think that i expressed myself in a bad way, going to use client the next time to make things more clear). Take Unity for example, you create a game using the Engine, the compiling you create the .exe, i thought that this was simple knowledge. This is what i was talking about, the game runs on the client side, and he receives the information (coordinates, names and everything else) from the server to populate the game world.

I know that WoW uses it, but started writing the phrase, needed to post it quickly to solve other issues and forgot to take the question about the culling out and edit it. After all there is no sense in not culling things you are not going to see and suffer from performance loss.