6+ months of alpha is normal for an expansion ?

[pozi]

Isnt they been working in WoD right after the launch of Mop ?

I cant really understand it.

NO 5.5 and NO beta, nothing?

[Xayl1]

Isnt they been working in WoD right after the launch of Mop ?

I cant really understand it.

NO 5.5 and NO beta, nothing?

working on means everything from the most basic concept meeting to the kind of full blown development they are doing now. they likely had not been doing serious stuff till 5.3 at the earliest. They also aren't doing testing like in previous expansions though so it is a bit different.

[waldona]

Alpha began about 4/6 so it has only been a month. In the past alpha has been about 3 months. If they follow past schedules, beta would be late June, early July

[Val the Moofia Boss]

The expansion was indeed in development since MoP launched, but... just because they have been working on it for two years doesn't mean that it's been in alpha for two years. Alpha began last month, which means that it wasn't until a few weeks ago that the devs had created a relatively stable build that could be used to test the game.

[frymastermeat]

Isnt they been working in WoD right after the launch of Mop ?

I cant really understand it.

NO 5.5 and NO beta, nothing?

Really?

On topic, there's really nothing to say about it without just pulling stuff out of rectums because no one here works for Blizzard.

[Zephre]

Alpha began about 4/6 so it has only been a month. In the past alpha has been about 3 months. If they follow past schedules, beta would be late June, early July

Given Wildstars release next month and Blizzards attempts to disrupt upcoming MMOs I predict beta will launch then or shortly after.

[valliant13]

Given Wildstars release next month and Blizzards attempts to disrupt upcoming MMOs I predict beta will launch then or shortly after.

Pretty much exactly what I was thinking. The alpha stuff came out for ESO I See no reason the beta doesn't release within a month of wildstars release. Kind of sad on their part...if they just would release an expansion faster they wouldn't have to do stupid shit like that.

[Sierra85]

i think blizz are more worried about wildstar than any other mmo. not saying wowkiller, but it seems like it has major traction right now. They will want to thwart the growth if they can given the development slate of WoD & current state of Siege of Orgrimmar

[Zerstoeren]

Maybe the stats squish isn't as easy as they want us to think...

[Yakrion]

Pretty much exactly what I was thinking. The alpha stuff came out for ESO I See no reason the beta doesn't release within a month of wildstars release. Kind of sad on their part...if they just would release an expansion faster they wouldn't have to do stupid shit like that.

From a business pov, it's probably smarter to release after/same time as Wildstar than before. It's alot easier to pull people away in the lull after that initial 1-2 month opening burst (either from Wildstar or from WoW).

[Azrile]

Pretty much exactly what I was thinking. The alpha stuff came out for ESO I See no reason the beta doesn't release within a month of wildstars release. Kind of sad on their part...if they just would release an expansion faster they wouldn't have to do stupid shit like that.

Yes.. you are clever... you discovered Blizzards secret plant to thwart ESO.... they announced that Hunter´s will be losing Hunter´s mark.

And again.. nobody ever answers this. Do you think ANYONE decided not to buy ESO because of alpha patch notes? Do you think a single person woke up planning to buy ESO and instead, when reading about hunters losing hunter-s mark decided ´ nah, that ESO game looks terrible compared to a WOW without hunters mark´.

[BananaHandsB]

Alpha did NOT start 6 months ago. Where is the source ur basing this off?

[Azrile]

Alpha did NOT start 6 months ago. Where is the source ur basing this off?

Do you know the definition of Alpha? Alpha started way before Blizzcon.. basically as soon as there was a server up where employees could log into the world, it was alpha. At Blizzcon, they had that world available for attendees to play... clearly well into alpha at that point.

[BananaHandsB]

Do you know the definition of Alpha? Alpha started way before Blizzcon.. basically as soon as there was a server up where employees could log into the world, it was alpha. At Blizzcon, they had that world available for attendees to play... clearly well into alpha at that point.

Still not seeing a source saying this was alpha. Early preview != alpha build.

[Deleted]

WOD will arrive this year at some point. I bet that the beta-test will be rahter short, since blizzard allready have been testing the raid bosses.
however, blizzcon this year makes me worry - why, and what will it be about? hopefully not about WOD, since we should have all informations at that point (hopefully!)

[Xayl1]

WOD will arrive this year at some point. I bet that the beta-test will be rahter short, since blizzard allready have been testing the raid bosses.
however, blizzcon this year makes me worry - why, and what will it be about? hopefully not about WOD, since we should have all informations at that point (hopefully!)

well they have one last Starcraft 2 game left,Heros of the Storm,Hearthstone,Diablo 3,the Warcraft movie,and alot of folks are saying they are going to announce a new game this year and blizzcon would be a great time for that as well.

[Azrile]

To the OPs question. Nothing has ever been normal about WOW because every expansion has had different circumstances. We never know when the real Alpha starts, and only a few times they announced the beginning of Friends and Family Alpha, usually sites like this one pick up the beginning of FF Alpha because they can see the server listed... but for BC and even WOTLK, I think MMO-C wasn´t as sophisticated about finding such things.

Last expansion was totally messed up because of the Annual Pass fiasco and so many people needing to get into beta, which basically made it a very abnormal beta.

Also, keep in mind this time is going to be very different because of their tech. They can now insta-level you and insta-gear you in order to test raids, something they could never do before. In past expansions, they needed to start beta much earlier in order to give players time to level up in order to test raids. This time, they probably will start testing raids very shortly after the beta first starts. They will have all the top raid-guilds testing raids at the same time the rest of us are testing questing and dungeons.

In the end, anything that happened in previous expansions as far as ´4 months of this, 3 months of that´.. is meaningless now.

[Yakrion]

Yes.. you are clever... you discovered Blizzards secret plant to thwart ESO.... they announced that Hunter´s will be losing Hunter´s mark.

And again.. nobody ever answers this. Do you think ANYONE decided not to buy ESO because of alpha patch notes? Do you think a single person woke up planning to buy ESO and instead, when reading about hunters losing hunter-s mark decided ´ nah, that ESO game looks terrible compared to a WOW without hunters mark´.

Yes, because Hunter's losing Mark was the important bit in that ginormous blog post the day before ESO launched. Not the stat squish, garrisons, hit/exp removed, healing philosphy shift, racials tuning, vengeance redesign, and general thoughts of the devs on each classes status.

That post gave plenty for people to talk about for WoW and consider that many don't keep up with the news, so this was the first they heard of alot of it.

I agree with everything you said in the post above this one though. That was basically /thread.

Still not seeing a source saying this was alpha. Early preview != alpha build.

Pretty much any functioning version of the game is alpha. Them adding npcs, buildings, etc. is just different stages of it. Azrile is correct. Besides, it's not like blizzard invented the terms alpha & beta.

[Aktavite]

Isnt they been working in WoD right after the launch of Mop ?

I cant really understand it.

NO 5.5 and NO beta, nothing?

By working on WoD since the launch of MoP they mean one dude sat down and scribbled out some ideas on his lunch break.

The drops of mayonnaise onto the sheet of paper have made it confusing for the individual developers to read properly and has become more of an inkblot interpretation.

[Azrile]

Still not seeing a source saying this was alpha. Early preview != alpha build.

It is the very definition of Alpha. As soon as the program functions in any reasonable way, it is alpha. As soon as Blizzard turned on an internal server that was running any code for WoD, it was alpha.