Battle for Azeroth Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[Deleted]

Well they stopped trying to do yearly expansions so there's that. Yes, people did rip them out absurdly for *Cut content* WoD obviously as a biggie but I remember during Legion people bitched about Thal'dranath.

There's nothing absurd about it. Especially since most of these cut content are removed without any notice outside of stuff like a gravestone reading Ray D Tier. Or whatever.

Finally during the last dev Q&A Ion managed to say: Yeah we fucked up the legendary system. That is also a thing Blizzard is learning now. Admitting when they fucked up.

Of course people will drill them new assholes if they don't communicate "development difficulties" properly.

[Kiri]

Is it? I know I'm on a forum with mostly Blizzard fans but pardon me if I'm not being sorry for taking offense when half the expansion gets cut. Sometimes they act like all this development stuff is new to them. They started to have a decent content schedule with Legion. Their sixth expansion. It was also the first with a launch that didn't lag like hell.

Hm? There is no need to feel sorry about anything. This has nothing to do with fanboyism either. They promised more than they could deliver, or at least something different from what they can deliver, and got a lot of negative feedback over it. Hence they changed the way they are doing things.
Development does not seem new to them. Most developers get really passionate about the features they come up with. Then they run into this problem or that publisher mandate, and suddenly things have to be changed or cut. Then suddenly you have Argus instead of an Elven Island.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

Hm? There is no need to feel sorry about anything. This has nothing to do with fanboyism either. They promised more than they could deliver, or at least something different from what they can deliver, and got a lot of negative feedback over it. Hence they changed the way they are doing things.
Development does not seem new to them. Most developers get really passionate about the features they come up with. Then they run into this problem or that publisher mandate, and suddenly things have to be changed or cut. Then suddenly you have Argus instead of an Elven Island.

We're still pretty spoiled compared other devs in terms of what we know of the dev process.

[rcshaggy]

New mount for Battle for Azeroth;

[rda]

We're still pretty spoiled compared other devs in terms of what we know of the dev process.

No. /10chars

[Marlamin]

What’s the likelihood that there are other spoilers still hidden from dataminers that will appear once Antorus comes out and is beaten?

Very high.

[Nathanyel]

Well a lot of people fooled themselves that what they want are vanilla servers. BfA on the other hand just raises questions and concerns. Not much ammunition to use. Perhaps Beta will change it.

Indeed, the Classic threads I visited were mostly:
"Maybe some QoL or even class fixes?"
"No idiots, you wanted Classic, you're getting just that!"

That's neither discussion nor hype, just arguing.

Not to mention BfA discussion also spreads into other subforums like Lore.

[Fahrad Wagner]

@rcshaggy So damn cute

[madokbro]

So, we know that the Allied Races are based on existing skeletons.

How difficult would it be to make their stances and poses unique? Like, Void Elves not standing around exactly like Blood Elves.

And how likely do you think that they indeed will make the effort?

[Shadochi]

Insert doctor who reference about shots:

"When you fire that first shot, no matter how right you feel, you have no idea who's going to die. You don't know who's children are going to scream and burn. How many hearts will be broken! How many lives shattered! How much blood will spill until everybody does what they're always going to have to do from the very beginning -- sit down and talk!"

In other news, IM HERE TO SHITPOST FOR THE NEXT COUPLE HOURS

[Kjanaprik]

New mount for Battle for Azeroth;
[IMG]https://orig00.deviantart.net/e9b8/f/2017/313/c/0/marvil_and_varian_2017_11_07_by_verinf-dbt9ov5.jpg[/IG]

Varian gets un disenchanted ?

[Arkthensis]

So, we know that the Allied Races are based on existing skeletons.

How difficult would it be to make their stances and poses unique? Like, Void Elves not standing around exactly like Blood Elves.

And how likely do you think that they indeed will make the effort?

It's not difficult, you got female and male variations, each require cycles, stand cycle might be 1minute30 sec, never timed it, you got several idles so you don't always look at the same animation, then you have all the others, like running, fast running, walking, sneaking, eating, sitting and so on and so forth.
Problem is, once they start doing that, they got to do it for all the other races, for example, not hunched orcs would make some undead jealous, so you gotta redo all that for that race. And I assume they do not have a dedicated team to work on that.
it's doable but in the long term.

[Eurhetemec]

No. /10chars

Care to name some AAA MMO devs who share more of the dev process?

I mean, there are other game dev teams who share more, but I can't think of any AAA MMO team that does. Maybe I'm forgetting someone?

[Arkthensis]

Care to name some AAA MMO devs who share more of the dev process?

I mean, there are other game dev teams who share more, but I can't think of any AAA MMO team that does. Maybe I'm forgetting someone?

if you consider Star Citizen a MMO, an around the Warcraft series would be great

[Aeluron Lightsong]

if you consider Star Citizen a MMO, an around the Warcraft series would be great

Star Citzen has been development since forever and hasn't really shipped anything like at all.

[Arkthensis]

Star Citzen has been development since forever and hasn't really shipped anything like at all.

SC ain't on topic, but last sentence on it : Ship it or not, no me care, and I'm a backer, they created a need for a game that big, and Around the Verse is a great inside look at the making of their game, without talking about the lore (they sometimes do but not much).

Something alike with Warcraft would be great, small episodes about maybe a new animal, going from concept to modeling, to rigging, to animations, and implementation in game would be great, so they can engage with the community on a technical level, and kinda show what they do without us having to assume everything's perfect in blizzard land and they're just lazy devs

[Shadochi]

Care to name some AAA MMO devs who share more of the dev process?

I mean, there are other game dev teams who share more, but I can't think of any AAA MMO team that does. Maybe I'm forgetting someone?

Pretty much.
Other than Blizzard, most other gaming companies don't have PT(R) clients/servers, and in which they have incremental updates for "strangers" to test as it passes their internal manual and automated QA (tho this isn't uncommon practice outside of the gaming industry).

And to answer @rda's earlier reply to me (don't feel like going back and looking for it, earlier today).
In most IT companies which I visited (7 over the past 3 months, majority are outsourcing/service companies) there is a distinct difference between alpha and beta both in practice and in theory.

Alpha happens when a function of the product passes internal (manual and scripted/automated) QA and fixing of bugs that were found that way.
Alpha is to test if the functions of the product are working as intended, usually in increments (new function of a product every 1-2 weeks) so that the test is more focused on what they want to test.

While Beta is for products that are almost finished and fully functional, to gather information about user satisfaction.

Now this wasn't always the case in the gaming industry, because before (public/opt-in) "beta" was a lot more scarce for games so Blizzard just called both alpha and beta a beta, while the more closed version was called alpha (F&F). Then over the past 6-8 year more and more gaming companies started doing almost polished betas (sometimes left "game-breaking" bugs in intentionally to rationalize the beta name) for marketing reasons.

And then I think in either a Q&A stream or on a blue post it was explained that the reason why they moved to the Alpha/Beta naming scheme is because that is pretty much how it's done in most other IT companies (definitions above).

(Also Legion's Mardum testing was also an initial test of dynamic-sharding (automated creating of CRZ), while on BfA they might also try and test PvP-PvE sharding. What we see is a lot less than they are actually testing).

But then again I already know how you'll come in here and say that you are right about everything since you're such an expert and now how the entire WoW team, engine, server infrastructure and all their in-house software works.

- - - Updated - - -

if you consider Star Citizen a MMO, an around the Warcraft series would be great

SC is in that zone where it's not either an indie or AAA.

Since there's a giant team and monetary value behind it so it's not Indie.

BUT it's also crowdfunded and not backed by a publisher so it's not AAA

- - - Updated - - -

so they can engage with the community on a technical level, and kinda show what they do without us having to assume everything's perfect in blizzard land and they're just lazy devs

A lot of the minor panels on blizzcon covered a lot of this and some even more technical stuff.

[plz delete account]

So is the Exodar just a permanent city now, seeing as the Draenei seem to have gutted it for parts for the Vindicaar?

[Arkthensis]

A lot of the minor panels on blizzcon covered a lot of this and some even more technical stuff.

YES, And they were a treat !! Loved them!
It would be great to have some during the year, not being overshadowed by other presentation during an event.

[Shadochi]

So is the Exodar just a permanent city now, seeing as the Draenei seem to have gutted it for parts for the Vindicaar?

Think it was mentioned in some Cata tie-in media that they are working on repairing it. The vindicaar might be a small test to see if they can do it independently of the Naaru.

Also, not saying your wrong, but I don't remember hearing about it being built of Exodar parts, so if you could give me a link I'd be grateful (or I'll search for it later since i'm interested)