BfA Patch Speculation thread (8.3 and later).

[Marlamin]

Me starts thinking they ran into problems with the latest build. I cannot find the source but I'm quite sure (not 100%) they said in an interview that 8.2 ptr would hit shortly (like in days) after 8.1.5 goes live...we are now 2 weeks in and still no ptr. Sounds to me like something unexpected happened.

I believe there was an attempt at putting the PTR up twice now. One in the lead up to the Q&A and one last Tuesday. Can't be entirely sure seeing the amount of information we have is limited to (non-PTR, likely staging) servers going up and down and whatever the rumor Mill has at the time.

[Drekmar]

PTR today would be nice. Or crucible preQ on live.

[Tipton]

I remember Preach talked about something he was NDA'd till the 11th April with Blizzard. Taliesen and Evitel also mentioned something Blizzard-ish soon they couldn't talk about.

So perhaps so show-and-tell-influencer-type-thing on Thursday next week.

[Rae888]

I remember Preach talked about something he was NDA'd till the 11th April with Blizzard. Taliesen and Evitel also mentioned something Blizzard-ish soon they couldn't talk about.

So perhaps so show-and-tell-influencer-type-thing on Thursday next week.

Preach and T&E aren't WoW news people though. They don't have websites where people can go to see all the new stuff... I'd guess rather it has to do with some kind of event... either Blizzard is going to start hosting a world first raiding stream starting with Crucible, or maybe there is going to be a streamer dungeon event to show off Mechagon similar to what they did with Maw of Souls in Legion.

[Asphyx22]

I feel a lot of people will be disappointed if we don't get 8.2 ptr this week. It's been a while.

[Vynestra]

More like 4...which means PTR will run to August..yup, called it

Flight in SEPTEMBER and Nazjatar will be no fly.

They said 2 weeks ago thursday that there will be another QA in a few weeks, which is assumed to be the 8.2 PTR qa, and big info dump.

But even IF it was 4 more weeks, the PTR would still end in July, not August.

And also didn't they confirm nazjatar will be flying in a QA somewhere?

God you people are so obnoxious with your doom saying.

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I feel a lot of people will be disappointed if we don't get 8.2 ptr this week. It's been a while.

I'm prepared to get it with a QA the week of Crucible release.

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PTR today would be nice. Or crucible preQ on live.

I was expecting crucible pre-quest today...But so far no signs of it.

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I believe there was an attempt at putting the PTR up twice now. One in the lead up to the Q&A and one last Tuesday. Can't be entirely sure seeing the amount of information we have is limited to (non-PTR, likely staging) servers going up and down and whatever the rumor Mill has at the time.

Interesting, quite possible they've been running into issues.

I hope we see a build this week, but im keeping my expectations set to a few weeks from now.

It feels like to me 8.2 is taking longer than they thought, since its so major, and they want to do it right, hence the azerite knowledge increase for a few more weeks.

[Asphyx22]

I am always prepared for disappointment when it comes to Blizz

I legit laughed.

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I'm prepared to get it with a QA the week of Crucible release.

I suspect they might wait until Crucible releases too. I just feel they are REALLY trying to drag things out, and people are getting anxious.

[Vynestra]

I legit laughed.

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I suspect they might wait until Crucible releases too. I just feel they are REALLY trying to drag things out, and people are getting anxious.

I honestly think its more that they know 8.2 is extremely important and want to do it right. So they're taking extra time.

[serra2]

Yeah, I'd rather they take a couple of weeks to really nail things down.

[George Costanza]

If they want to do it right they should have it out on the ptr sooner and for a longer period.

[Chickat]

If they want to do it right they should have it out on the ptr sooner and for a longer period.

Not if the main system Cha tea aren't done yet. No point testing something that they know is not even close to ready.

[FlubberPuddy]

8.2 could possibly be a bigger patch than 7.2 which would explain the longer time to hit PTR. Especially if they're adding new systems or overhauling existing ones like Warfronts, Azerite, and whatever new WQs and bodyguard system in Nazjatar they're doing.

[infinitemeridian]

8.2 could possibly be a bigger patch than 7.2 which would explain the longer time to hit PTR. Especially if they're adding new systems or overhauling existing ones like Warfronts, Azerite, and whatever new WQs and bodyguard system in Nazjatar they're doing.

The only caveat is that 8.1 was significantly smaller than 7.1.

[George Costanza]

Not if the main system Cha tea aren't done yet. No point testing something that they know is not even close to ready.

They usually lock stuff in the early builds.

[Varolyn]

8.2 could possibly be a bigger patch than 7.2 which would explain the longer time to hit PTR. Especially if they're adding new systems or overhauling existing ones like Warfronts, Azerite, and whatever new WQs and bodyguard system in Nazjatar they're doing.

I think it's highly likely that 8.2 is larger than 7.2. Broken shore was just modified, and other than that very small island that DKs went too, there was no brand new zone. 8.2 will have both Nazjatar and Mechagon as brand new zones, even if one will be quite small.

[Chickat]

8.2 could possibly be a bigger patch than 7.2 which would explain the longer time to hit PTR. Especially if they're adding new systems or overhauling existing ones like Warfronts, Azerite, and whatever new WQs and bodyguard system in Nazjatar they're doing.

They also intended for their to be at least a 1 month gap longer due to wanting 8.1 to hit later than 7.1. Id say they originially intended for 8.2 to release in Late April/early May, So they are probably about 6 weeks behind schedule. I think this is all going to sort itself out. Hopefully this means 2 months less at the end of the expansion, and the next xpac comes out at a similar time to BFA.

In a perfect world this is what I think the patch schedule should look like until 9.0.

8.2 ptr- April 4th
8.2 live- June 25th. Longer ptr time to gopefully get the AP revamp right.
8.2.5 ptr- July 11th
Azshara raid live- July 16th
8.2.5 live- September 10th
8.3 ptr- September 24th
8.3 live- December 10th
8.3 raid- January 21st
8.3.5 ptr February 6th
9.0 Alpha- February 27th
8.3.5 live- March 31st
9.0 beta- April 26th
9.0 prepatch ptr- June 8th
Prepatch release- September 1st
9.0 release- September 29th

Gives them 27 weeks between Alpha and the prepatch going live. So realistically about 20 weeks until thye have to stop making major changes. 5 months of hard testing would do 9.0 well imo. Almost 7 months of testing should make the next xpac less buggy/more polished.

Also only around 9 months of the final tier. Only problem is its 10.5 months of the final zone which sucks, but still better than Argus-bfa live which was 12 months.

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I think I'd rather them push back 8.3 to Jan and a 9.0 release date to October 2020 imo. 8.2 looks good and it would give them more time to develop 8.3.

[FlubberPuddy]

The only caveat is that 8.1 was significantly smaller than 7.1.

I think it's just more that they front-loaded us with 7.1 and in BFA they didn't do that with 8.1 - instead choosing to make 8.1.5 the patch with things that would've came in 8.1. Like Crucible of Storms in coming to us in 2 weeks which would be the equivalent of Trial of Valor, except instead of sitting between Tier 0 and Tier 1 (ToV) it rests between Tier 1 and Tier 2 raids.

And things like Kara in 7.1 where Mechagon is the equivalent mega-dungeon coming in 8.2. Seems more they're just moving around content to see how it flows.

I absolutely hated how little 7.2 was along with its 11 week 1 quest gate and a new zone with mainly just WQs, not a whole lotta story, and waiting for the raid to open.

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They also intended for their to be at least a 1 month gap longer due to wanting 8.1 to hit later than 7.1. Id say they originially intended for 8.2 to release in Late April/early May, So they are probably about 6 weeks behind schedule. I think this is all going to sort itself out. Hopefully this means 2 months less at the end of the expansion, and the next xpac comes out at a similar time to BFA.

In a perfect world this is what I think the patch schedule should look like until 9.0.

8.2 ptr- April 4th
8.2 live- June 25th. Longer ptr time to gopefully get the AP revamp right.
8.2.5 ptr- July 11th
Azshara raid live- July 16th
8.2.5 live- September 10th
8.3 ptr- September 24th
8.3 live- December 10th
8.3 raid- January 21st
8.3.5 ptr February 6th
9.0 Alpha- February 27th
8.3.5 live- March 31st
9.0 beta- April 26th
9.0 prepatch ptr- June 8th
Prepatch release- September 1st
9.0 release- September 29th

Gives them 27 weeks between Alpha and the prepatch going live. So realistically about 20 weeks until thye have to stop making major changes. 5 months of hard testing would do 9.0 well imo. Almost 7 months of testing should make the next xpac less buggy/more polished.

Also only around 9 months of the final tier. Only problem is its 10.5 months of the final zone which sucks, but still better than Argus-bfa live which was 12 months.

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I think I'd rather them push back 8.3 to Jan and a 9.0 release date to October 2020 imo. 8.2 looks good and it would give them more time to develop 8.3.

This is what I would like to see. They've always had issues with the cadence towards the end of expansions. It's time they gave the tier .1, .2, .3 patches breathing room. Battle for Dazar'alor lasting about 4 months then the mini raid crucible of storms is pretty nice for about two months (any more would be pushing it for a 2 boss raid just due to repetitiveness feeling coming quicker).

[rda]

Greetings. :-)

Haven't posted in months. BFA is a dud, obviously. I won't do a "told you so", because, truthfully, many in the thread were acknowledging the main issues well before launch, we were and continue to be in this together. I think the game is slowly crashing. But since I invested so much time into it, I am going to sit and see it through the end (not that the really final end of "the game is closed, you can no longer log in" is terribly close). So I figured since I am going to sit and see it through the end, I am going to post from time to time - more fun in a company.

I'll say several things:

1. 8.2 does not look big to me. There's a ton of posts talking about how "yeah, BFA is bad, but from what I see in 8.2, it has a ton of potential" and I just don't understand where this potential is. The lists of things in 8.2 look long, but once you go into them, all items are really small and there are only a couple of things about it that are really worth talking about, and they are a traditional raid, traditional zones (two) and an instance (supposedly big, but we had patches with three instances added) - all traditional and a fair size, but nothing terribly special. There are two important things to add here: (a) the azerite rework that they kinda promised and that we don't know much about still, and (b) the new wave of dynamic events in the zones (that's them talking about having new things to do frequently - I don't want to put words into their collective mouth, but I thought they once said 'something new every day'). For (a) I think almost anything they do will be better then the current azerite system, so there will be at least some improvement, but whether specs are going to become significantly more interesting to play, I don't know, I am skeptical. For (b) I have some hopes, but I also had hopes for the island AI and the AI in the islands was just a fluke, it didn't matter. So, I'd like to see them do something interesting with the zones, but let's see what it ends up being first, it is an unknown so far.

2. Speaking of island AI - although in and of itself it was a meaningless nothing, the continuation with PVE BG (the AB brawl) was good. I think they should continue here and eventually open all BGs, including big ones, to the AI. The AI is not good enough to produce interesting fights, don't get me wrong here, the fights are boring and uncreative. But the AI on the swarm level can produce interesting interactions - although they'll have to work on it continuously because if they don't the swarm is going to get exploited, this already started happening in the brawl. Playing against the AI is not going to be terribly exciting for the players, but it's reasonably varied and not a bad variant of PVE - we do play instances, don't we? so, why not BGs, they play better in my opinion, low-key fun.

3. I think we aren't going to have 8.3. It just seems to me we are going to have 8.2 relatively late and we will have it just opening and unlocking completely for maybe 2 months or so. We'll probably have something small after 8.2 - and maybe that's going to be called 8.3 even though it will be just fixes and a single feature kind of worth of being called out separately in a patch - but that's the only way I think we'll have 8.3, by having something that would normally be called 8.2.5 be called 8.3 instead.

Anyway, good to be here again and I promise not to whine just for the sake of whining (not that I did that before too much), just talking about how the game is, no wishful thinking and an overall skeptical look, but no gloating.

[eduwneso]

I was expecting crucible pre-quest today...But so far no signs of it.

In legion almost every pre-quest came 1 week before, so I assume the prequests for crucible will come next wednesday.

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--Snip--

I don't agree with you I must say, but I understand why you think that and I respect it.

For me 8.2 is big and very important for BFA, it gives us two zones, one raid, one mega dungeon, heroic warfronts, story and more. This patch is way bigger than 7.2 in every way and I will put my hand on the fire and say that it's one of the biggest if not the biggest mid expansion patch that wow has ever had.

Granted, even if it's the patch with most content in the world is meaningless if it doesn't do things right, but, as everything stands right now, with the azerite revamp that it will have, I want them to nail it, because this patch can be one of the bests of wow and I'm rooting for it.

[Nyel]

I honestly think its more that they know 8.2 is extremely important and want to do it right. So they're taking extra time.

They didn't do this for the release of 8.0 / BfA but you think they'll do this for 8.2? That's not Blizzard's approach.

@rda Welcome back!

By the way, when will 8.3 drop when it contains yet another raid tier? In no way will Blizzard put so much effort into one patch (8.2) when there's an 8.3 which needs to trump 8.2 in that regard. I mean going high with 8.2 and then going low with 8.3 wouldn't improve Blizzard's / WoW's overall situation. Effort for 8.3 is just wasted workload they could better put into 9.0.