As the title says - how much needs to be built / refined?
Anyone know?
As the title says - how much needs to be built / refined?
Anyone know?
Based on what's been tested so far, I'd assume that everything is built, for the most part, and now we're in the bug fixing, numbers tuning stage. With the prepatch on the PTR, we\re now weeks away from it being live, and probably not more than 2 months for the game to launch. Don't be surprised if we see a release date next week.
"Can't you see this is the last act of a desperate man?"
"We don't care if it's the first act of Henry the Fifth, we're leaving!"
I already wrote that in the general thread: When I played through the first 30 quests during leveling every quest had at least one issue. Some of them were very small (e.g. Quest name now shown in the quest tracker) but many of them also had really big issues like enemies not spawning, falling through the world, objectives not counting, scripting issues during escort quests etc. In addition there were missing audio files, mostly for Thrall (bot a bug, still something that is not finished).
Basically, at least for that part of the game, it looked like the whole foundation was there and everything looked good on the outside, yet the amount and severity of many of the bugs / unfinished features hinted hat this might still be build in the early beta.
Release date is October 20th so probably all of it.
I'd estimate completion at around 80%. There's some polish yet to be applied, but the foundational stuff is sound. You've got your bevy of assorted glitches and strange behaviors, but nothing ultimately game-breaking. The quests that glitch out can almost always be restarted and function properly, so there's probably some triggering issues they'll need to work on. There's also the never-ending work of fine tuning the statistics and so forth, but given that that's always been a living document sort of thing it probably doesn't count against the Beta as a while.
"We're more of the love, blood, and rhetoric school. Well, we can do you blood and love without the rhetoric, and we can do you blood and rhetoric without the love, and we can do you all three concurrent or consecutive. But we can't give you love and rhetoric without the blood. Blood is compulsory. They're all blood, you see." ― Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead
I leveled from 50-60 a week ago and didn't really have any problems. Can't speak for audio problems since my dialog volume is really low, only encountered issues on one or two quests in the main storyline and some with necrolord campaign, supposedly some of those are fixed already according to some forum posts.
I did the beginning part (up until ending up in Oribos) instantly after getting access and it had bugs on every step of those quests, but after playing them on a 2nd character a few days ago, they were all fixed.
I’m not in Beta, but judging by the PTR’s appearance tab and wowhead’s database, I think there are armour sets still to be implemented.
NOT looking at the raid and covenant sets, every armour type got exactly what appears to be 01 set of questing and 01 set of dungeoning items - not to mention these are all Bastion themed. Plus in the database many of them are either using placeholder names or assigned to BfA models.
If they release ShL with this amount of available armour sets, it will probably be the space with the least amount of options at launch so far.
From what I played in Beta so far:
- The table creatures and heroes are not in yet - being placeholders. Table quests are placeholders too.
- There are issues with 2 dungeons like falling through floor and so on, various covenant campaign steps are broken.
- Disconnects in specific areas mostly in covenant halls.
- All Torghast loot is placeholder.
- Some UI elements feel rough still. Notably, covenant upgrade and renown window feels pretty rough.
- Some WQs are broken.
- You may occasionally pick up quests you aren't supposed to (for example I picked up Kyrian Covenant campaign quest when being a Necrolord).
- Night fae covenant campaign quest broken at some point due to phasing.
- Alt experience is a broken with covenant abilities not awarding.
That's of course besides tuning and such, which is all over the place.
The systems are all in, but there are still plenty bugs and placeholders to clean. IMO, they absolutely can finish it up in a matter of 2 months, the game is mostly in, minus placeholders and select specific bugs. The areas are done and main systems (besides table) are working fine already, even if raw at some details.
Last edited by Gaidax; 2020-08-19 at 09:02 PM.
Based on what I've seen in ptr, A LOT has to be tested and fixed. Lots of old content is somewhat broken right now (just play the Legion intro scenario and look at jaina's ice bridges. If you even can get into it, since the questgiver is stuck inside her ship, which is flooded with water). Customizations are still missing textures, some (artifact) quests are not entirely scaled (tested with affliction warlock questline, some enemies are at max level even if you are level 10, but they can be skipped). The scourge event might be overtuned and makes the game literally unplayable performance wise in capital cities.
Many friendly NPCs are scaled to your level (guards and townsfolk in SW), which should not be the case, because it does not really make sense.
I could not finish the Demonhunter intro since my game kept crashing at one point.
That's just what I've immediatly noticed and reported after two hours on PTR (last week). I can imagine that there is much more broken right now, especially in SL.
Another month of testing might be necessary just for the prepatch. Or it would make the game unplayable in some instances and Blizz would have to hotfix many things until the SL release.
Last edited by LordVargK; 2020-08-19 at 09:12 PM.
Id say given the Beta period is usually 6 months from beta launch we'll likley be seeing a late October early November launch for Shadowlands, I wouldnt be surprised if it arrives around the 5th to 10th of November because of mountains of bug fixes still required, not to mention there are other assets still not in the game.
E.g.:
The Main OST hasnt been impliamented yet, the cinematics havent been impliamented yet.
The final map designs and login screen have not yet been impliamented.
Its optimistic to believe were getting Shadowlands in October 20th, we are notlikely seeing it till at LEAST the 5th or 10th of november, POSSIBLY even the end of November.