Battle for Azeroth Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[Yarathir]

Something got pushed to the PTR for me, but it downloaded quickly. Not sure if it was actually anything notable.

[Ningjinq]

Thats the point I was making, they show finished parts of zones in such a way that people have illusions those zones are completely finished as a whole.

So people should stop saying nazmir and rest is done because they've been shown finished parts of them.

BFA though I believe we got finished versions of parts of every zone compared to some zones not even be shown last 2 xpacs at reveal.

[ATZenith]

nobody said it was hard, it's a process that just takes time

That isn't what I mean. I mean that it's probably not hard to get a zone ready for a preview or showcase at Blizzard. Like I bet the zones at Blizzcon had weird framerate issues and what not. Something that would be ready for a full release.

[Ningjinq]

Honestly I don't think it's very hard to create the zone. The hard part is the behind the scenes, and the small quests and details that go into it.

I imagine it’s work intensive. During Legion Alpha I remember we could watch the development of Suramar city, even when it was unplayable, with far sight abilities.

[Shadochi]

I imagine it’s work intensive. During Legion Alpha I remember we could watch the development of Suramar city, even when it was unplayable, with far sight abilities.

Pretty much correct. Suramar from first alpha build to first live build I believe:

[AstralNader]

Kinda a Cringe video but it does show something.

[Steampunkette]

That isn't what I mean. I mean that it's probably not hard to get a zone ready for a preview or showcase at Blizzard. Like I bet the zones at Blizzcon had weird framerate issues and what not. Something that would be ready for a full release.

So, real talk: The stuff we saw at Blizzcon was probably a month old or more.

Any development team putting a playable demo on the showroom floor needs to polish the shit out of that demo. But you don't put the entire development team on that one segment (Particularly not when the Dev Team is around 200 people) because of bottlenecking (issues where the amount of work that can be done is stymied by various factors, more common with larger workforces).

So while the "Nazmir" team, for example, is making sure the accessible area is polished to a shine, the rest of the team is working on everything else.

And all of this is constantly being patched to an internal testing build. But at some point, the writing and art teams have to stop adding new content to Nazmir in the "Public Demo" build and instead allow the QA department to test the hell out of it, provide feedback, redirect work, address the issues, and cycle things back to QA for more testing in the polishing process.

Sure, the writing and art teams may get called over to fix any typos the editors missed or raise or lower a specific item in the game world so that it spawns correctly, but for the most part they're -done- working on the content that is going to be in the playable demo.

And while QA is polishing the zone, the writing and art teams are off working their magic elsewhere. Either adding more content to the zone, or working on other zones. By the time the Demo hit Blizzcon, another month or so of work had been done (Remember: They also had to upload all the game files onto the 200+ PCs they had on the show-room floor, after all, which took some time!)

The demo was in November, it's January, now, so from sometime in early October to now, the Nazmir zone team has been hammering Nazmir. It's almost certainly in a "Finished" state, outside of polishing.

[Shadochi]

So, real talk: The stuff we saw at Blizzcon was probably a month old or more.

Any development team putting a playable demo on the showroom floor needs to polish the shit out of that demo. But you don't put the entire development team on that one segment (Particularly not when the Dev Team is around 200 people) because of bottlenecking (issues where the amount of work that can be done is stymied by various factors, more common with larger workforces).

So while the "Nazmir" team, for example, is making sure the accessible area is polished to a shine, the rest of the team is working on everything else.

And all of this is constantly being patched to an internal testing build. But at some point, the writing and art teams have to stop adding new content to Nazmir in the "Public Demo" build and instead allow the QA department to test the hell out of it, provide feedback, redirect work, address the issues, and cycle things back to QA for more testing in the polishing process.

Sure, the writing and art teams may get called over to fix any typos the editors missed or raise or lower a specific item in the game world so that it spawns correctly, but for the most part they're -done- working on the content that is going to be in the playable demo.

And while QA is polishing the zone, the writing and art teams are off working their magic elsewhere. Either adding more content to the zone, or working on other zones. By the time the Demo hit Blizzcon, another month or so of work had been done (Remember: They also had to upload all the game files onto the 200+ PCs they had on the show-room floor, after all, which took some time!)

The demo was in November, it's January, now, so from sometime in early October to now, the Nazmir zone team has been hammering Nazmir. It's almost certainly in a "Finished" state, outside of polishing.

For all we know they could've pulled another Gorgrond, decided to redesign, and the zone is in a much more unfinished state than during the demo. Point being that we don't know anything.

[belsalles]

The development of Legion is over. The release of patch 7.3.5 ended this cycle.
The design team is all in BfA.
Only working on Legion the technical part in my opinion.

[Seramore]

It's almost certainly in a "Finished" state, outside of polishing.

definitely not my dude

[Caerule]

While BfA seems impressively far along on the surface, I do feel like they polished up a lot for Blizzcon. Until we get an actual look at it during the datamining and testing phase, it's hard to say how far they are. We know some good things:

Landscapes seem far along.
They've got the themes for dungeons and raids all hammered out.
There's armor and weapon sets ready to go.
4 of the allied races appear to be done before the game is even here.
A lot of file changes are already in 7.3.5.
The new Battleground is already here soon too.

That's definitely promising. But that doesn't mean they are necessarily close to wrapping it all up.
Balancing classes and raids will need to run its course.
We don't know how far along the final storylines, WQs and War Campaign are finished.
There may be a lot of art assets, creature models, doodads, dungeon content yet unfinished.

Mostly though, the Warfronts seemed really placeholdery. And the randomly generated islands scenarios with advanced were only shown as pictures.

I have literally no clue how fast development of those can go. But they may be the main focus right now, of things that we know of, that may be the difficult challenges in the development project. If that is the case, then how far along the leveling content is, may not be as useful a tool to predict how far along the expansion is.

Anyway, I am really excited for the more public phases of public development to begin. The cycles of stuff being datamined and revealed on the testing realms are a part of what makes the time in between expansions interesting enough to remain invested in the community.

Edit:
Could people keep the discussion focused? I'm not in real agreement that the expansion is near-finished either. But I don't have to turn my arguments into gender-bashing. Yes, there's women in the fandom. Move on. This isn't the 90s.

[Steampunkette]

For all we know they could've pulled another Gorgrond, decided to redesign, and the zone is in a much more unfinished state than during the demo. Point being that we don't know anything.

It is possible that like Gorgrond or the Jade Forest it might be completely reworked.

But it's very unlikely.

And it's even more unlikely that all four zones we've seen (Two leveling, two dungeons) have all been hit with a complete rework.

[leviathonlx]

They showed zones for WoD the same style as they did for Legion and BfA. Those quick overviews where you see the zone, but in reality is only polished part of the zone while most is unfinished.

Yea the one zone they showed a preview of was just a preview of one spot. Overall Zandalar seemed more complete than most of Kul Tiras.

[Drekmar]

Yea the one zone they showed a preview of was just a preview of one spot. Overall Zandalar seemed more complete than most of Kul Tiras.

Woah, thats one spot from 4 different PoVs, nice find. When it coms to Zandalar, I wonder how Zuldazar looks, I mean it should be a huge city all over the mountain.

[belsalles]

Blizzard will probably do alpha like Legion: zone by zone

[rcshaggy]

[Yarathir]

Woah, thats one spot from 4 different PoVs, nice find. When it coms to Zandalar, I wonder how Zuldazar looks, I mean it should be a huge city all over the mountain.

If the BfA main cities are anything like Suramar, they'll be great.

[Ningjinq]

Am I the only one who wants to shoot lightning bolts at Nathanos’ face when he talks to the Horde player. I mean threatening the person who saved Azeroth and killed a Titan spirit and imprisoned Sargeras? I mean really dude?

[Yarathir]

Am I the only one who wants to shoot lightning bolts at Nathanos’ face when he talks to the Horde player. I mean threatening the person who saved Azeroth and killed a Titan spirit and imprisoned Sargeras? I mean really dude?

You'll have to forgive Sylvanas' biggest fanboy and elfaboo, Nathanos.

[Pigglix]

Quick question about nightborne..well..may apply to void elf aswell...anyway

Their weapons, are they comming along with the heritage armor set or we will be able to buy them from their main city or so far we dont know if their weapons models will be avaiable for the players?