Battle for Azeroth Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[Seramore]

here we go

[rda]

here we go

I think Twitter would be a better medium for your thought-free one-liners. You need help getting registered?

[Seramore]

I think Twitter would be a better medium for your thought-free one-liners. You need help getting registered?

Are you speaking in third person?

[Simca]

So they can technically hide whole quests, whether they will use this technique however is completely different topic tho. :/

Yup! They already use it for a bunch of DBs but again only @Simca might know which ones those are.

I haven't investigated it super extensively, but so far, as far as I know, they only hide two things: GameObjects and Quests.

GameObjects are hidden by original design. To request data from the server for an NPC or a Quest, you just ask 'hey i need an npc, here is the ID'. To request data from the server for a GameObject, you need to provide the GUID of the GameObject you want data for. This is more complicated. GUIDs are unique values, specific to each instance of each GameObject on each server (or at least they're supposed to be that way; there's some GUID reuse bugs we've seen over the years but ignore that). In short, this means that the object hasn't been spawned, isn't close enough to you, or is in a different phase, you can't query it. If GameObject data was fully queryable by fansites... well let's just say that there would be no more WoW Secret Finding Discord because nothing would be secret. This is why Blizzard hides most things behind GameObjects these days (and SpellScripts).

Quests were restricted from fully being queried sometime in Mists of Pandaria. When a player obtains a Quest for the first time or sees a player login with a Quest for the first time (since server reset), the server makes a note that that Quest is 'unrestricted information'. It will then give out any information you ask for about the Quest. If you try to query a Quest that does exist but has not been seen by the server, you will get an empty response back.

[rda]

This is why Blizzard hides most things behind GameObjects these days (and SpellScripts).

I don't think this is why they do most things opaquely on the server. It's because it is handier to do most things on the server with their infrastructure (it always goes that way, the server is much easier / safer to do various hacks on). Same with quests - they hid them on the server not because they wanted to hid them, but rather because there were simply too many quests appearing (vignettes, etc) and they were getting a degree of dynamicity (beyond just "you can only do quest X if you did Y or Z and you are a particular race") and composing that into a sane contract that could be shared with the client seemed like too much work for what would have to be continually extended.

They simply wanted more freedom so they left things on the server.

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For example, this --- "If you try to query a Quest that does exist but has not been seen by the server, you will get an empty response back." --- could have been done when they were adjusting quest rewards according to loot spec. The thinking might have been that the quest itself would change, and so asking for the parameters of a quest before you got it is pointless, nobody can tell what its parameters are yet, they are going to be specific for your way of obtaining it.

[rcshaggy]

With Gallywix updated do you think they will update Baine's armor to make him more like he does in the artworks?
https://hydra-media.cursecdn.com/wow...52da3262d141a1

Can't believe I called that way back when.

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I’d hope so especially if he’s a big baddie.

Yeah and wonder if Blizzard will keep him as a Forest Troll (Since he is part of the Vilebranch Tribe of Forest Trolls) or recreate him as a Blood Troll.

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Well if we get nothing next week theres a decent chance we get -something- the 30th. Whether it's pre-order or alpha or whatever.

Sounds good to me.

Well it's coming soon...
So hopefully will see if it's true or not.

[Simca]

GameObjects probably weren't intentionally hidden by design; it just happened to be a side effect of how they did it.

Quests were definitely hidden intentionally; this was done after several rounds of datamining revealing the final plot points of various patches by pulling Quest text. Querying a Quest that the server has restricted could never normally happen unless you're using addons specifically designed to pull down all known Quests by bruteforce.

Strangely enough, the restriction cases you talk about for Quests are almost all client-side information these days (PlayerConditions) and are a top source for pulling secrets out of the game. You may not know what GameObject #123456 is or what Quest #12345 is, but since you have the PlayerCondition linking the two together and telling you it only works when you wear a Shadoweave Mask... it is sometimes enough.

Blizzard has definitely become cognizant of the efforts of the datamining community in regards to finding secrets in the game though, at least since Legion (I believe before Legion they largely did not know or did not care, probably both). In early Legion secrets (i.e. Ret Paladin Hidden Appearance), Quest titles for tracking quests spelled out almost exactly what to do. These days, all Quests that involve secrets are named 'Tracking Quest' - the title gives no other information and there is no text.

[Ilir]

The raf change is the dumbest thing ever on blizzard's part. Makes the whole thing totally useless.

The allied races won't be out before 96 days (the time when ALL the previously still working 300% raf will be depleted).

[rda]

Quests were definitely hidden intentionally; this was done after several rounds of datamining revealing the final plot points of various patches by pulling Quest text.

Maybe you are right about this then. I was not aware of the timing. Good point on non-descript names where they play a technical role, too.

[AngerFork]

The RAF nerf is hilarious.

Here is the reasoning:

"With this significant update to pacing, the existing Recruit-A-Friend program would no longer provide the best experience for players new to World of Warcraft. Even with scaling zones, triple-speed leveling would mean new players going into dungeons could find themselves overwhelmed by multiple new abilities gained over the course of a single instance run, and might still outpace storylines that help the world make sense and make players feel like they’re part of it—and we want new players to feel at home in Azeroth."

Please read it carefully. "Even with scaling zones, triple-speed leveling [would be too fast]".

So, they made leveling somewhat slower (thanks to the unnecessary mop HP increases, not to scaling, but whatever). And they admit they made it slower in the quote. Yet they are saying that this is still too fast.

So, let me get this straight. It was faster before and they sat tight. But now it became slower - as they themselves say - and it's suddenly way too fast and they have to intervene.

This is one more change in order to make things take longer. Everything for the time played metric and for more sub money from players for free to Blizzard. They simply were working on leveling and thought "heh, while we are here, let's change this as well". That's all there is to it.

We are heading to them manipulating drop rates. Not necessarily straight decreasing, no, manipulating. As in, increasing and decreasing strategically, including on a per-player basis. Similarly to how Candy Crush decreases the difficulty of the next level if the player was away for a long time or increases the difficulty if the player has beaten too many levels recently - to force buying boosts. Similarly to that patented PVP ranking that matches those who recently bought a hero against easy prey and matches those who haven't bought anything in a while against tough targets with paid heroes or whatever in order to demonstrate that things bought for real money are powerful and incentivize purchasing them.

I think you might be taking what they said a bit in a different direction than what they said. While you are right that they said that triple speed leveling would be too fast, look again at the specific reason they gave: new players getting new abilities too fast. WoW already is a fire hose for new players. So many different zones, pet battles, mission boards sending you to a bunch of zones they don’t know...it can easily overwhelm a new player. Throw into that getting multiple new abilities in one dungeon, it would be understandable that someone might not know how to properly fit that ability into their rotation. That is why this change is there...so as to turn down that fire hose a bit for friends that are actually recruited.

To answer your other question about why they did it now after letting super fast leveling go on for so long, I think you need to remember that they’ve largely to this point ignored their past leveling content, save for Cataclysm. Until they got scaling in, they really didn’t have any sort of system to fix the new issues they would see with leveling each expansion as they updated gear levels/stats/XP. This seems to have led to a “Hide without much work” sort of goal for leveling, try to rush people to the good stuff. But with this new tech, they don’t have to hide it. They can fix their old issues and make it better, so why not remove some of those old devices to hide it?

[Simca]

It occurs to me that in my original post, I never mentioned Items. Items are restricted in a similar way to Quests except this was done way earlier, back in the days of the original Naxxramas. I'm not sure of the original intention for this; it may have been to block dataminers, but it may also have been about Item link validation, which was something they were cracking down on at the time. There were a lot of fake Item links back at one point in Vanilla and they made it so that restricted Item requests kicked you to the login screen.

[Doomchicken]

I think you might be taking what they said a bit in a different direction than what they said. While you are right that they said that triple speed leveling would be too fast, look again at the specific reason they gave: new players getting new abilities too fast. WoW already is a fire hose for new players. So many different zones, pet battles, mission boards sending you to a bunch of zones they don’t know...it can easily overwhelm a new player. Throw into that getting multiple new abilities in one dungeon, it would be understandable that someone might not know how to properly fit that ability into their rotation. That is why this change is there...so as to turn down that fire hose a bit for friends that are actually recruited.

To answer your other question about why they did it now after letting super fast leveling go on for so long, I think you need to remember that they’ve largely to this point ignored their past leveling content, save for Cataclysm. Until they got scaling in, they really didn’t have any sort of system to fix the new issues they would see with leveling each expansion as they updated gear levels/stats/XP. This seems to have led to a “Hide without much work” sort of goal for leveling, try to rush people to the good stuff. But with this new tech, they don’t have to hide it. They can fix their old issues and make it better, so why not remove some of those old devices to hide it?

Do yourself a favor. Do not...and I repeat. DO NOT read an RDA post. It's a waste of your time. What he o so conveniently leaves out in his long wall post of absolute drivel is that for YEARS people on this forum and blizzards forum have bitched and bitched and whined about leveling being too fast and too easy but the second they nerf it (and not even by a huge amount either time wise) suddenly it's gone from "Durrr blizzard leveling too easy durr" TO "Durr Blizzard is nerfing leveling speed to push boosts Durr" Just put him on ignore and move on, just like everyone else that's actually sane.

[rda]

To answer your other question about why they did it now after letting super fast leveling go on for so long, I think you need to remember that they’ve largely to this point ignored their past leveling content, save for Cataclysm. Until they got scaling in, they really didn’t have any sort of system to fix the new issues they would see with leveling each expansion as they updated gear levels/stats/XP. This seems to have led to a “Hide without much work” sort of goal for leveling, try to rush people to the good stuff. But with this new tech, they don’t have to hide it. They can fix their old issues and make it better, so why not remove some of those old devices to hide it?

They didn't fix anything. Leveling remains as dumb as it was and it continues to teach pretty much nothing about the endgame, as usual. It just has less gray quests and is at times more tedious.

I agree they did the change to RAF because they were doing other works in that area, so they thought "let's change that, too, while we are here", I said as much. And I could see how they might have thought to do this change because they thought that their changes to leveling make leveling so much better, so let's disable RAF to have people try it. But the important thing is that they didn't make leveling better *yet* they felt fine with forcing players who *paid extra* to go slow and experience their not really good changes. This forcing of the Blizzard way gets irritating and what's worst is that what they are forcing to do isn't even good. To say nothing that all such forcings somehow nearly always magically work to increase the play time (if they decrease play time, they are catch up techniques to avoid players unsubbing because they cannot get even with others).

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What he o so conveniently leaves out in his long wall post of absolute drivel is that for YEARS people on this forum and blizzards forum have bitched and bitched and whined about leveling being too fast and too easy but the second they nerf it (and not even by a huge amount either time wise) suddenly it's gone from "Durrr blizzard leveling too easy durr" TO "Durr Blizzard is nerfing leveling speed to push boosts Durr"

Nice intro and outro, bro. That nonwithstanding:

With enough people talking, there are always people arguing pro and against every factor. These are different people. Don't know why it is surprising to you that similarly to how some wanted leveling to take longer (although I'd be interested in seeing how many of them there are, I thought they wanted to have more meaningful and more interesting leveling, not same but longer leveling), others didn't and don't want leveling to take longer.

[Avikur]

So when alpha/beta does go live do you think all classes will be included straight away or do you think they will slowly release them like Legion? I know the reason for that in Legion was the artifact quests and weapons but I wondered if they would do it again as it focuses testing to specific specs

[Drekmar]

So when alpha/beta does go live do you think all classes will be included straight away or do you think they will slowly release them like Legion? I know the reason for that in Legion was the artifact quests and weapons but I wondered if they would do it again as it focuses testing to specific specs

No reason for them to stagger them, Legion had major class changes, BfA does not.

[Marlamin]

Eh nightborne and void elves still have no face posturing that every other race in the game has and the void elves have less customization. If they don't do a real update by the 30th it'll mean they rushed these models out to make the Jan 30th deadline so they could have it all 'done' for the quarterly report. I guess they could say these are 'early previews' and that the models will have more work done by release but that just seems like a messy way to do things and definitely not the way of the old 'when it's done Blizzard'.

Yeah, unsure if this is a hard requirement for them to be playable. I hope they properly finish them before making them available but I wouldn't bet on it.

[Seramore]

If pre-orders are to come out on the 30th, I doubt that they'll simultaneously make allied races available with them right away. With that in mind, I can't speak for the customization numbers but the actual facial rigging stuff should be fine by the time they're available.

[Reman]

Generally, the bad news precede the good news. I can totally see the 30th feasible (or even today !).

[3vyan]

Yeah, unsure if this is a hard requirement for them to be playable. I hope they properly finish them before making them available but I wouldn't bet on it.

What more needs to be done regarding the female nightborne face rigging?
They seem pretty done in the wowhead PTR dressing room.

Also, why does everyone keep believing we will get preorder and allied races the 30 of January?
Is there something real backing this rumour up or just wishful thinking?

[MabusGaming]

I think the RAF changes are because preorders are coming soon, and they don't want people to RAF their way to 100 for allied races. And of course I am sure this was mentioned already.