9.0 General Discussion

[Sondrelk]

The non world first raiders do matter however the race to world first is insanely popular compared to other gaming events and blizzard knows it

The raid releasing in time for top guilds to get the race done gets eyes on the game and gets more Christmas sales

I mean my heroic team won’t be too bothered definitely less so with it avoiding the holiday crunch

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Keep in mind that a release in October can mean fuck all for testing essentially we’d have two more months and we are builds behind what they have internally

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As much as I hate the idea of 3 months of BfA....it’s possible

Release the 10th and raid open on the first
Leaves easy 2 weeks for progression

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Remember when ppl were saying “oh according to ppl I talked to at blizzcon this is coming in 2021 they are so behind”

Leaving more than 2 weeks for the world first race is more a safety measure. While the initial raid has historically been quite short there is no telling whether it will actually end up being ridiculously hard, or have some boss that is overtuned or final boss that requires clever use of game mechanics, in which case essentially forcing raiders between progressing or taking a holiday break would be a pretty terrible move. Far safer to just delay the raid release until after the new year.

[Atticon]

I think they're very wary of releasing in November given the amount of high profile releases in the middle of that month this year. If they can't release early November they have to delay to a better window in December, which might be why they haven't confirmed a release date yet, they need to see if they can get finished in time for the first window.

[Accendor]

Keep in mind that a release in October can mean fuck all for testing essentially we’d have two more months and we are builds behind what they have internally
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I am working in software development myself, even for big products (not was big as WoW tho ;-) ) and I know that the build on Staging/Beta servers is always behind the state on DEV servers. Thats just completely normal.
However, there can and should not a state that is fundamentally different in terms of bugs at least, because even if they use an automated ticketing system, they do not get much out of 500 people reporting the same bug on beta that has already been fixed on Dev for like 2 weeks.

Basically the main issue is: A beta has not much worth if your development already is miles ahead of what is deployed to the beta servers.

[Queen of Hamsters]

People always seem to forget that internally, they're builds ahead of what we see.

[razorpax]

People always seem to forget that internally, they're builds ahead of what we see.

Ion even addressed this recently

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I am working in software development myself, even for big products (not was big as WoW tho ;-) ) and I know that the build on Staging/Beta servers is always behind the state on DEV servers. Thats just completely normal.
However, there can and should not a state that is fundamentally different in terms of bugs at least, because even if they use an automated ticketing system, they do not get much out of 500 people reporting the same bug on beta that has already been fixed on Dev for like 2 weeks.

Basically the main issue is: A beta has not much worth if your development already is miles ahead of what is deployed to the beta servers.

i mean i agree with that but theyve already said they ignore those reports if its a bug they already fixed

we have ppl on this forum saying there are hundreds of bugs on the leveling gameplay and i can believe it because back in legion beta i experienced the wonderful bugs of highmountain where almost every quest needed a reset and that was about 3 weeks before beta got shut down

we are going to be done with first round of mythic testing in a couple weeks
normal will be made open on beta
heroic and mythic testing will hit again

[Chickat]

I guess much of it depends on whether Blizzard intends to try and "fix" classes in a more substantial way before release. There is no secret that many players do not like the classes as they currently are in BfA, and only a very few of them actually got any substantial fixes in Shadowlands. And I am not even talking about core changes like what SPriest got, but more tuning changes, or at most removing or altering specific abilities.
Good example would be MM with Precise Shots and Rapid Fire. Currently one is actively being ignored for DPS and the other is frantically being playtested to see if there is hope for a way to ignore it completely. Both these abilities are pretty bad, and there are other classes that have similar problems that are given band-aid fixes instead of something more substantial.
In short, I don't think that Blizzard can afford another expansion of classes being almost universally reviled with their dedicated players simply twiddling their thumbs hoping it gets fixed in another year or two.

Id say they have about 6 weeks to fix classes. 8 at the most. They will want them done by the end of PTR for Prepatch. Probably 2 or 3 weeks before Prepatch goes live. So about a month and a half imo. Honestly, I think most classes are in a good enough state now. I hear people aren't happy with elemental or balance, but I have neber seen either of those specs be good enough for anyone.

[Accendor]

Id say they have about 6 weeks to fix classes. 8 at the most. They will want them done by the end of PTR for Prepatch. Probably 2 or 3 weeks before Prepatch goes live. So about a month and a half imo. Honestly, I think most classes are in a good enough state now. I hear people aren't happy with elemental or balance, but I have neber seen either of those specs be good enough for anyone.

Havoc is another candidate that is fundamentally broken right now on the PTR

[Chickat]

Havoc is another candidate that is fundamentally broken right now on the PTR

I havent kept up with it. Whats different from BFA? Not as fun as Legion, but BFA havoc seemed fine.

[Sondrelk]

I havent kept up with it. Whats different from BFA? Not as fun as Legion, but BFA havoc seemed fine.

The problem with Havoc is that the base rotation isnt terribly well thought out, so you end up with a situation where it is only satisfying to play with loads of extra talents and abilities on top, which might seem fine in theory, but in truth leads to restrictive talent and gear choices.
Compare this to other classes like Fire Mage, where the base rotation is complete and decently satisfying, in htat case talents and gear choices can add spice and allow for alternative playstyles, not so much in Havoc or MM, where the talents and other secondary abilities like Azerite or Conduits can only make underperforming abilities remotely useful.

[hikaritd]

I don't know, I'm worried they might end up a couple months short in terms of balancing, polishing and bug fixing.

I dont know why people think they will have to be done with it by launch day. There are multiple "steps" when they do balancing. Beta->pre patch->after it goes live->before raid->after seeing they fukd up and some specs are still broken after raid day 1 lmao->future patch. This is the cycle. My concern is they wont be able to balance due to the SystamLands they created and will say "okay we cant fix it, let it be, if its broken its broken" / "if its sucks they will choose another spec".
And the problem with constant balancing is the systems themselves. If they balance a broken spec to okay level, players can choose another spec BUT they cant actually because the "penalties" if you switching things back and forth. Example: you choose X covenant/soulbind/conduit but during the time i wrote above they buff/nerf it, you are not fine anymore with the class/spec you choose another. But before raid comes out they do a new balance wave and the class/spec suddenly becomes not as good compared to a newly buffed spec and you want to play that but you cant because its no time for level that.
Yes, its very min-maxing situation, playing the best dps spec not having fun i know, but this is the case for me, i want to be top-ish on dps meter, i like that.

[Sarethion]

I dont know why people think they will have to be done with it by launch day. There are multiple "steps" when they do balancing. Beta->pre patch->after it goes live->before raid->after seeing they fukd up and some specs are still broken after raid day 1 lmao->future patch. This is the cycle.

The cycle you speak of has failed pretty hard recently. Regardless, it's in their best interest to not go back to that "balancing cycle" and actually focus on trying to ship the game in a decently balanced state, because making any big balance changes after people choose their Covenants is going to cause a lot of drama.

I don't know, dude - looking at BfA, the "cycle" you speak of involves ignoring everything bar the greatest outliers
And the problem with constant balancing is the systems themselves. If they balance a broken spec to okay level, players can choose another spec BUT they cant actually because the "penalties" if you switching things back and forth. Example: you choose X covenant/soulbind/conduit but during the time i wrote above they buff/nerf it, you are not fine anymore with the class/spec you choose another. But before raid comes out they do a new balance wave and the class/spec suddenly becomes not as good compared to a newly buffed spec and you want to play that but you cant because its no time for level that.

So you're basically saying what I've said - that if they want their systems to work, they can't launch with messed up balance and hope to fix it later, so they need to do a lot of balancing work before release, which means that they might run out of time, especially given that all these systems allow for a huge number of potential builds that need to be accounted for.

[Sondrelk]

The cycle you speak of has failed pretty hard recently. Regardless, it's in their best interest to not go back to that "balancing cycle" and actually focus on trying to ship the game in a decently balanced state, because making any big balance changes after people choose their Covenants is going to cause a lot of drama.


So you're basically saying what I've said - that if they want their systems to work, they can't launch with messed up balance and hope to fix it later, so they need to do a lot of balancing work before release, which means that they might run out of time, especially given that all these systems allow for a huge number of potential builds that need to be accounted for.

There is a level of that kind of balancing that we just have ot accept regardless though. Even the most dedicated Beta testers cannot hope to gather nearly as muich irrelevant data as a swarm of regular players can, something will inevitably falll through the cracks. Things like random quest NPC in Un'goro crater bugging out if yourwarlock has a demon with a name starting with X or stuff like that.
Balancing is laos something that has to partially be done in the leadup to, and right after the initial raid as the swarm of theorycrafters find and exploit loopholes in the balancing that the Beta or even PTR missed.

There is obviously a cutoff where this goes from accepted to bullshit, but it can be hard to judge that before we are a month or two into the expansion proper.

[Accendor]

I havent kept up with it. Whats different from BFA? Not as fun as Legion, but BFA havoc seemed fine.

First part is that half the specs talents and abilities are based around Momentum, a play style that was clearly intended to be very competitive early legion, most likely to be THE damage spec. After many complains from players the playstyle was nerfed to the ground and is unplayable since then. That is fair enough, Blizzard tried something, it failed, the provided a new spec that was actually fun to play most of the time (Demonic). But they let the remains of Momentum there and do nothing with it, which leads to a lot of dead talents. For a class that only has one damage spec and only two specs in general, having half of the dps talents unusable by default, because they are tailored for a play style that has been declared dead by the devs, is a really big issue.


Regarding the second part:
I don't normally quote other people's opinion, but this time somebody else already summarized all my problems with the spec and it even is an official wowhead article, so I am just gonna link that.

You can skip the part in the middle if you want to, the relevant parts are "Introduction", "Concerns going Forward" and "What does this mean for the future?"

https://www.wowhead.com/news=316990/...#spell-toolkit

[Sondrelk]

Seems we have confirmation now that Kel'thuzad doesnt die at the end of the Covenant campaign, leaving him open to be used for a future raid.
Seems like the Maldraxxus threat is definitely not over at all by the end though, further strenghtening the theory that there will be a raid for each covenant. Currently my money would be on the Maldraxxus one being the second.

[Atticon]

Seems we have confirmation now that Kel'thuzad doesnt die at the end of the Covenant campaign, leaving him open to be used for a future raid.
Seems like the Maldraxxus threat is definitely not over at all by the end though, further strenghtening the theory that there will be a raid for each covenant. Currently my money would be on the Maldraxxus one being the second.

Other options are a mini-raid like Trial of Valor/Crucible of Storms or a megadungeon like Karazhan/Mechagon, with the first one coming in 9.1.

[Sondrelk]

Other options are a mini-raid like Trial of Valor/Crucible of Storms or a megadungeon like Karazhan/Mechagon, with the first one coming in 9.1.

Mini-raid could indeed work for Maldraxxus. I assume we should have one, and doing one for Bastion seems redundant considering it would basically just be Trial of Valor 2.0.

[therumblings]

Mini-raid could indeed work for Maldraxxus. I assume we should have one, and doing one for Bastion seems redundant considering it would basically just be Trial of Valor 2.0.

Could do that on purpose and have it thematically similar, maybe have Odyn's sacrificed eye storyline involved. More importantly I think Maldraxxus and Kel'Thuzad are too important to have it be a mini raid

[Sondrelk]

Could do that on purpose and have it thematically similar, maybe have Odyn's sacrificed eye storyline involved. More importantly I think Maldraxxus and Kel'Thuzad are too important to have it be a mini raid

I think a themtically similar thing would only work if the raid was longer, if it is a similar 2 or 3 boss raid then it would probably just come across as lazy.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

They SHOULD save Kel'thuzad for bigger things IMO then just a small one off raid.

[Vasoka]

Anyone think we'll get a release date this week??