Upcoming PTR for Chains of Domination

[8bithamster]

it is funyn to see people who thought it wouldnt be till end of 2021, or even early 2022.

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i stopped when every other sentence became "See as a game developer myself, this is a bad call"
boi you aint been a game dev that long, nor are you a game dev outside a tiny little indy game no where in size comparison to wow, my dude


cause "those of us in the know" is semi legit, content creators get a fair bit of insider info one way or another.

don't worry. They'll just scream that Towellie and Bellular were absolutely right, and Blizzard is doing this to cover up the fail that is Shadowlands or something. It's what blind fanboys of drama seeking channels do.

[Spikeychris]

nop, why are you insulting unemployed people? do you look down on them or veiw them as lesser ?

Not sure how that would insult unemployed people but my fairly obvious point was if you don't think Covid has affected game development you either don't have a job or have a job that doesn't involve remote working with a large amount of people trying to contribute at the same time.

[Marrilaife]

Almost like there is a global pandemic that has slowed production.

Almost like Blizzard is rolling in money they got from all the players who can't go out due to lockdown so they play more games... Kotick got 200mil$ bonus. They seriously don't deserve any pardon, not only they make more money but it's virtual entertainment, unlike movies that have problem filming because it requires people being physically present in the filming location, game development can be done from home and while there are some slowdowns, people don't have to waste time on commuting so they gained there.

[Wuusah]

Most of the industry? Did you even see the massive amount of delays covid caused? Not only in the video game, but also other media producing industries like film?

Didn't FF14 have one delayed patch and then they went back on track with a ~3 months cycle between patches?

PTR cycles for major patches are a minimum of two months. So if it goes on PTR mid-April, it's not releasing before mid-June.

Exactly and if we look at PTR cycles in BfA, those were always 3 months for major patches with new raid tiers. And that was before Covid, so if Blizzard still struggles with Covid and already needed 3 months PTR testing before...

People are quick to hate on Towelliee and Bellular but a July-August release is very much possible. I think August is a bit far fetched but June is definitely optimistic. Or Blizzard will force a June release no matter how buggy that mess is.

[FelPlague]

Almost like Blizzard is rolling in money they got from all the players who can't go out due to lockdown so they play more games... Kotick got 200mil$ bonus. They seriously don't deserve any pardon, not only they make more money but it's virtual entertainment, unlike movies that have problem filming because it requires people being physically present in the filming location, game development can be done from home and while there are some slowdowns, people don't have to waste time on commuting so they gained there.

blizzard has constantly been trying to hire for months and months, they have had openings for all development roles for over a year and a half now.
i hate to break it to you "just throw money at it" is not always an option, they can have open spots, but its hard to find competent people, especially ones they can train and risk investing into virtually, normally they could have them come in office and be trained and set up there, nope.

[bloodykiller86]

Well the community is what they breed. Overall I think the FFXIV community was pretty understanding when Yoshie-P told us that patch 5.3 will be delayed (2-2.5 months).

Anyroad ETA is second half of June. If they get back on schedule that would land us a december release for 9.2. From there the two year mark of the expansion would land us in November, 11 months from 9.2. Sounds about okayish. Plus, end of expansion raids are usually monstrously epic. A pretty good thing considering both FFXIV and GW2 will have a fall release. Likely no 9.3 but oh well.

nah the community has been toxic since vanilla and i doubt we get no 9.3 lol

[Bladesyphon]

Didn't FF14 have one delayed patch and then they went back on track with a ~3 months cycle between patches?

They did, but it's key to remember that XIV's patches are, by and large, far smaller than anything Blizzard puts out in WoW. So even though SE was delayed, and went back on track after, it's not that huge of an achievement when you consider one of their patches has probably about half the content of a single WoW patch does. Their patches all follow an extremely strict, predictable pattern, so there's no real deviation or change of content in between each patch, so getting back on track after a few months delay wasn't that difficult for them, as all the content they release in each patch is more or less the same thing with a different coat of paint.

You also have companies like Sega, that weren't affected by the pandemic at all with PSO2's release in the west, nor it's content release structure, nor were some western developers like Bungie and Destiny 2 during the release of their seasonal content last year (Though Beyond Light was delayed due to the Pandemic, so there is that).

Point is - every company is affected differently by the pandemic. Blizzard, as a whole, wasn't hit too badly because they already have a system to work from home, same with Sega. Square, on the other hand, was affected much more severely because up untill the Pandemic, it sounded like they had no structure in place to work from home.

[Kolvarg]

blizzard has constantly been trying to hire for months and months, they have had openings for all development roles for over a year and a half now.
i hate to break it to you "just throw money at it" is not always an option, they can have open spots, but its hard to find competent people, especially ones they can train and risk investing into virtually, normally they could have them come in office and be trained and set up there, nope.

Well, to be fair at this point Blizzard is well known for paying under the average for most but their highest positions, with many new hires not being able to afford rent in the area because of how low they pay in the context of how expensive the area is.

All I'm saying is that a considerable part of why it might be hard not only to find competent people but also to keep talented people in the company is their own fault, between cost reduction measures and the general philosophy of spending as little as possible to generate as much as possible.

Blizzard is a huge company and for sure still making good games, but the days of it being "the" dream and career-defining job for any aspiring game dev are long gone.


Not saying I disagree with the concept that throwing money is not always an option, or that somehow them making more money has some direct correlation with how much content they produce especially in the short term. But they do have as much or even more capability and resources to deal with the pandemic and remote working than any other company, that's all.

[FelPlague]

Well, to be fair at this point Blizzard is well known for paying under the average for most but their highest positions, with many new hires not being able to afford rent in the area because of how low they pay in the context of how expensive the area is.

All I'm saying is that a considerable part of why it's not only hard to find competent people but also to keep talented people in the company is their own fault, between cost reduction measures and the general philosophy of spending as little as possible to generate as much as possible.

Blizzard is a huge company and for sure still making good games, but the days of it being "the" dream and career-defining job for any aspiring game dev are long gone.


Not saying I disagree with the concept that throwing money is not always an option, or that somehow them making more money has some direct correlation with how much content they produce especially in the short term. But they do have as much or even more capability and resources to deal with the pandemic and remote working than any other company, that's all.

from what ive heard they pay the normal regular amount, but issue is the location they are in means living there is insanely costly, which is why blizzard even has a campus people can live in while they work there.

[Wangming]

They did, but it's key to remember that XIV's patches are, by and large, far smaller than anything Blizzard puts out in WoW.

Honestly it doesn't matter how much I tried, I never understood where this argument comes from. The only thing smaller is the number of bosses in a given raid. A raid, a dungeon a trial and a continuation of the story is the minimum for a patch. Used to be three dungeons, but that was changed to make space for other content. (Would you look at that, I contradicted another of your points.) Also it takes them half the time to release patches. Granted if you count only regular raids as raids, one tier does last 7-8 months, which is more or less a WoW raid tier, but between those a lot more is released.

I know you might have other favorites, but please don't spew blatant falsehoods, to make others look bad. It's unprofessional.

[RobertMugabe]

Sooner than what; a year after the expansion launch?

All this is telling us is that that it'll be mid-April before it's even on the PTR. Seeing as PTR cycles are roughly 2 months, that puts this at a roughly June launch. Even assuming a June 1st launch, that means we'll have been on this patch for 216 days (over 7 months) since the expansion launch or 175 (Almost 6 months) since the raid first dropped.


If there are only going to be 2 patches a year, there needs to be enough content to last that entire time that actually keeps people entertained enough; not slog grinds, not "Just do the same content but slightly harder", actual deep, evolving content.



For Blizzard? Yes.

Well "everyone" was saying that it's looking like an august release. If it's may or june then it's not AS bad.

[tomten]

Its "Either we can work through teamveiwer, but if cant run that, send it to a local repair place and we will reimburse you"

Nope. You can build a fully remote infrastructure that can even update GPO's, do remote reset after downloading a premade image of what the company uses.
And this is for your average 100-200 employee company... Not a billion dollar company that has both the knowledge and tech skills to fully make their own customized shit.

[Eapoe]

Build up an audience with good content then commercialise, unfortunately. I watch T&E for WoW news now, though their style isn't for everyone. Always get a laugh at their jabs towards Bellular.

I like T&E quite a bit. One of the only shows that puts a positive spin on things. Even when bad news they try to make some comedy of it and don’t spin all doom & gloom. Same with Hazelnutty, but I don’t watch her as much.
I watch Bellular sometimes, but tend to skip the rest of the video when he becomes all about conspiracy issues (9.1 in August) or how bad something is. I do enjoy his in game story theory crafting and a lot of times he tends to be pretty close to what is going to happen.

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PTR is usualy 2 months, unles this time its three times as much it will not go live in october so...

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dont know what you do, but as an accountant in IT/software company i can tell you covid moved deadlines for some project by YEARS, even though most of our employee can actualy work from home...

I don’t, but where I work was supposed to have major software upgrades. One of them was pushed back months, and any troubleshooting/fixing we need done is months out.

Even home improvement/remodeling is backlogged by months, and even when you can get something scheduled it’s way more expensive in material costs than it’s been in a long time:

[razorpax]

don't worry. They'll just scream that Towellie and Bellular were absolutely right, and Blizzard is doing this to cover up the fail that is Shadowlands or something. It's what blind fanboys of drama seeking channels do.

All towellie said was “the blizzard worker said June is optimistic and august is the likely release”

[8bithamster]

All towellie said was “the blizzard worker said June is optimistic and august is the likely release”

"the blizzard worker".. when will youtube watchers learn that people say that kind of shit just to get attention. He might as well have said "the toilet gnome I talked to on another friday night pub binge", just as accurate

[razorpax]

"the blizzard worker".. when will youtube watchers learn that people say that kind of shit just to get attention. He might as well have said "the toilet gnome I talked to on another friday night pub binge", just as accurate

I would almost agree if it wasn’t for the fact the guy actually does have an inside line to the dev team

I’m not saying ppl shouldn’t believe him but I am saying people need to pay attention to the context

[Dracullus]

I would almost agree if it wasn’t for the fact the guy actually does have an inside line to the dev team

I’m not saying ppl shouldn’t believe him but I am saying people need to pay attention to the context

It's very simple:

- things that put him under NDA - true; usually he hints in title "something will happen today", but without details
- rest - gossip.

I don't even deny Towellie could casually talk to some dev and he said something like "shit, things go slow this year". But idea that someone would leak to him plan to release even later than expected, is just madness.

Whole August things started with Preach, after Blizzcon he said "there was so few info I don't think it will come before August". He did exactly same shit after SL reveal. For some reason he assume that if Blizz doesn't provide excel spreadsheet with all systems and content, things are in early stage.

[8bithamster]

I would almost agree if it wasn’t for the fact the guy actually does have an inside line to the dev team

I’m not saying ppl shouldn’t believe him but I am saying people need to pay attention to the context

suuure.. he has such an inside line to blizzard that he's allowed to talk about it. And the pope is dope, and the rack is whack, Potatoes are a fruit..

any other fibs? or was this it? If he has someone on the inside, Towellie should have had the brain that NDA's exist, and he doesn't want to risk his "source"

Ow wait, seeing Towellie interact with any form of constructive critics shows he has 0 brain. It's all "lol I don't agree gtfo!!"

[razorpax]

suuure.. he has such an inside line to blizzard that he's allowed to talk about it. And the pope is dope, and the rack is whack, Potatoes are a fruit..

any other fibs? or was this it? If he has someone on the inside, Towellie should have had the brain that NDA's exist, and he doesn't want to risk his "source"

Ow wait, seeing Towellie interact with any form of constructive critics shows he has 0 brain. It's all "lol I don't agree gtfo!!"

I don’t think the guys opinion is covered by NDA any more than when every content creator at 2019 blizzcon who said “we talked to a dev they are way behind”

I only know one thing and that is the fact towellie is the only content creator that hints to the rest of us things like release dates and the content in a patch

[tommyhil622]

from what ive heard they pay the normal regular amount, but issue is the location they are in means living there is insanely costly, which is why blizzard even has a campus people can live in while they work there.

No i heard that they don't pay well. Many positions are paying under the standard in comparison to other companies. Unfortunately Covid has made matters worse and the hiring process is quite difficult. I work in the IT industry and even for us it's hard to find replacements regardless of what accommodations you may find for them in terms of working remotely.