Blizzard's Q & A team and Lady Sinestra - what went wrong?

[AetherMcLoud]

I "like" how people who seem to have absolutely no experience in software development cycles criticize even the most minor bugy, that they themselves won't even see anyway.

@above poster: Read the EULA. We DO get what we pay for.

[Auro]

They do test it, but they test it in advanced raid gear and tune it exactly.

paragon is going to kill it, and using lots of skill and many attempts, and tons of min/maxing, can beat it with far less gear.

that often leaves them looking for novel strategies that original testers might not have needed, especially since the "testers" probably were also many of the designers.

And when you design the fight, you know how it was intended to be overcome. many of the hotfixes were for un intended tactics that made the fight easier in ways the developers didnt want. So they hotfixed changes.

[Tharkkun]

The quality of play by the internal testers at blizzard is no where near that of top guilds. I believe the internal testers could not kill Yogg-Saron on normal mode iirc. Perhaps they couldn't even make it to the point in the fight where that occurs.

Uhhhh. They design the game. They can make themselves immune to 99% damage and play the encounters out to test the scripting. It's really *not* that difficult to do. But many bugs don't appear until you attack a situation with specific combinations of players. Sometimes they even leave these fights harder than normal to error on the side of caution. Better to nerf in the long run.

[blizzardcashshop]

People will jump at any excuse to bash Blizzard it seems. Are YOU working on Sinestra currently? More than likely not. So the bugs in that encounter are irrelevant to you as you will more than likely never experience them.

It's like complaining that there were bugs in Beta. They happen, they get fixed.

actually most didn't, most were hotfixed later on live even though they had been reported for 2 months or so

some still aren't hotfixed

you're paying to beta test, just like the rest of us.

[Alfador]

I was one of the quality assurance testers for Vivendi (Blizzard's Publisher) a few years back. They have never been the same since they merged with Activision. It was pretty obvious that this game (Cataclysm) was no where near completion, yet it was released anyway, with several bugs that should have never gone live. All Activision was sees is profit. Bottom line, Blizzard is running this game into the ground while grabbing as much money as they can.

---------- Post added 2011-01-20 at 07:33 PM ----------



No, actually. It's no sweat off their balls if this shit happens. We still keep playing. The problem is, we dont get what WE pay for.

Cool story bro. I'll assume your claims are truthful even though there is no way to substantiate it. I don't even know why anyone claims to be an insider on anything, there is zero reason to believe it. I'm inclined not to believe you, to be honest. This post reads completely like you wanted to rant at bliz for bugs and made up a clever story to lend you faux credibility.

[Lordender]

I'm not gonna defend anyone because i don't know how blizzard does things behind closed doors but I do have experience in game developing and I will say this:

It is impossible to cover every small thing, you don't know how players are going to react to a new boss or new feature, more times than not things get through broken. I think blizzard does a better job than a lot of games, they will never be perfect in planning or releasing content because no one will ever be.

[Alfador]

actually most didn't, most were hotfixed later on live even though they had been reported for 2 months or so

some still aren't hotfixed

you're paying to beta test, just like the rest of us.

Welcome to software in the new millenium. Every piece of software is a coded system with thousands upon thousands of moving parts. You simply can't test all the permutations of actions and their consequences, especially on an encounter you WANT to keep somewhat under wraps, with an in house team. It is absolutely impossible. And yes, they could have delayed wow another month or two to fix all these little things (assuming beta people play the same way as live server people, which they don't), and we'd be still waiting on BC. Would you really like that?

---------- Post added 2011-01-20 at 08:23 PM ----------

I'm not gonna defend anyone because i don't know how blizzard does things behind closed doors but I do have experience in game developing and I will say this:

It is impossible to cover every small thing, you don't know how players are going to react to a new boss or new feature more times than not stuff things get through broken. I think blizzard does a better job than a lot of games, they will never be perfect in planning or releasing content because no one will ever be.

Highlighted for maximum truthage.

[Tharkkun]

I was one of the quality assurance testers for Vivendi (Blizzard's Publisher) a few years back. They have never been the same since they merged with Activision. It was pretty obvious that this game (Cataclysm) was no where near completion, yet it was released anyway, with several bugs that should have never gone live. All Activision was sees is profit. Bottom line, Blizzard is running this game into the ground while grabbing as much money as they can.

Are you 100% sure? Considering Vivendi owns Activision Blizzard (the merged entity) I would highly doubt this. Blizzard has their own internal beta testers and their operations are run by their CEO, Michael Morhaime. Notice how there's no mention of Activision in Blizzard Entertainment on their website? That's because they are separate divisions under 1 legal stock name. So I call BS.

Name a handful of stop/CTD bugs that Blizzard didn't fix upon Cataclysm's release. Name in game bugs that stopped you from completely playing the game. Irritating bugs are irritations but these are not stop/CTD bugs. Then stop and list how long it took Blizzard to fix the irritating bugs. Next let's see if we had any server crashing on launch day this time around? I was able to level to 85 worry free myself

Now go take a look at the industry standard and you'll find the quality of Blizzard products is so far beyond most companies it's unreal. Btw, I work for Oracle. I'm fully aware of bugs. Where's my dog food!

[Arrowstormen]

There was no beta test for Sinestra whatsoever, either. So I'm assuming they had, at best, some internal testing done and found everything to be "in place". Obviously it wasn't perfect, by any means, but they wanted to keep this a big "surprise" to everyone. Unfortunately, that also means that their testing options are limited.

Also, adding/removing various patches in some places may cause new issues to pop up elsewhere.

this. the fight looks awesome to try and should ofcourse be the little awesome secret, but then Paragon had to be testers. well, i still think Paragon had some fun with it too. and the prize were pretty awesome to get a world first for a heroic only boss (thats probaly the hardest one right now too)