FOMO: "Fear Of Missing Out", also commonly known as people with a mental issue of managing time and activities, many expecting others to fit into their schedule so they don't miss out on things to come. If FOMO becomes a problem for you, do seek help, it can be a very unhealthy lifestyle..
Yes, because it means I don't have to deal with prideful anymore. Fuck prideful
Don’t read the posts. I don’t. All I know is there is a new zone, new quests, a flying system, and a new raid. I know next to nothing else about it, and that’s because I avoid spoilers.
It'll be exciting if it fails sufficiently spectacularly.
"There is a pervasive myth that making content hard will induce players to rise to the occasion. We find the opposite. " -- Ghostcrawler
"The bit about hardcore players not always caring about the long term interests of the game is spot on." -- Ghostcrawler
"Do you want a game with no casuals so about 500 players?"
It's kinda obvious why they do it. You can't encrypt it and test it at the same time. So everything they want to test, which includes audio and text lines playing at the right time, needs to be accessible. They can pretty much only reasonably do it with a few models (if they have a replacement), texts and with videos, because there you can just double check that they are properly implemented, but for quest chains the risk of fudging it and releasing it untested is too high and defeats the point of testing. The only solution here is in-house testing.
You are welcome, Metzen. I hope you won't fuck up my underground expansion idea.
Blizzard *could* allow us to playtest boss fights on the beta server but hide the actual skins. Just reuse old skins. Instead of fighting sylvanas on the 9.1 beta server, reuse the Patchwerk model and have that big ugly slug adroitly jumping, dodging and diving around with a bow and arrow saying random things in an empty room. that way you hide the lore.
TO FIX WOW:1. smaller server sizes & server-only LFG awarding satchels, so elite players help others. 2. "helper builds" with loom powers - talent trees so elite players cast buffs on low level players XP gain, HP/mana, regen, damage, etc. 3. "helper ilvl" scoring how much you help others. 4. observer games like in SC to watch/chat (like twitch but with MORE DETAILS & inside the wow UI) 5. guild leagues to compete with rival guilds for progression (with observer mode).6. jackpot world mobs.
My point is though, until they hire a bigger QA department, we'll always have a PTR that spoils the patch before it arrives in our hands. Simply knowing about what it is without delving too much into datamining still ruins the excitement for a patch. I know they'll never remove PTR and go the way of focused QA testing but it definitely doesn't help any.
I mean, this applies to all patches and expansions as well. There's a lot of fingers to point for the decline of retail, but one of the big ones imo is wowhead. The game has become a lobby for instanced content and everything else is just filler bullshit because nothing is surprising, there's no secrets outside the ones Blizzard has to purposefully implement, everyone knows everything going into a patch.
I'm not saying that filler bullshit would be any better when it comes to brass tax, but it would go a long way if most of the community didn't know what to expect from patches / expansions that wasn't advertised by Blizzard and packaged, stamped, and sanitized by a WoWhead article.
And no, I really don't believe when people say things like "The majority don't read wowhead / know a patch is coming" - let's not be naive. These people, if they exist, are few and far between.
There are plenty of games that function as a GaaS model that don't rely on public testing and datamining to fix bugs / generate hype. I'm not saying the game will be less buggy (probably moreso), but I'd take a few bugs during the first week over losing out on mystery, intrigue, and exploration / discovery in an MMORPG.
Last edited by infinitemeridian; 2021-06-07 at 12:48 PM.
I don't. I am actually more exited about TBC becuase i forgot most of it.
Datamining for the story is just stupid. But it is my own fault for reading it. No self controll. So i play retail only for the mechanical side... but even there it does not hold up anymore sadly.
Blizz has to use the ptr server for extensive testing for two reasons:
1. I don't think they have the manpower to test for bugs themselves.
2. Players are waaaaaaaaaaay to sensible with even a little bug in their game and totally loose their shits over it.
I don't think Blizz cares about feedback from the PTR. Apparantly the forums are not representative for the overall playerbase it turns out and they are doing quite well with the way they chose. Suprising? Hardly.
They use the PTR to find bugs. Not change the game.
Keeping everything a secret only postpones the reaction though.
The reason few people seem excited about 9.1 (Besides internet opinions always leaning towards negativity) is because 9.1 doesn't really have all that much for them to be excited about, this would also be true if everything was kept a secret, except then the "Wait, this is it?"-reaction would come after the release of the patch, so the same reaction, but delayed a bit.
I don't think I've gotten excited for content drops since Wrath.
Usually I forget spoiled stuff until I run into it again, unless it's big.
Big spoilers can ruin a lot of fun because those are more memorable.
Well, I also don't mind spoilers for movies/series/books. Because the road is the goal, and even if I know that XY happens, seeing exactly *how* it happens makes it interesting.
#TEAMGIRAFFE
To further your point... a good narrative rewards experiencing it multiple times. But I have too many demands on my time to re-read and re-watch and re-play everything. So "spoilers" are like getting that second experience with your first.
Also, as someone old enough to remember "missing" an episode and not knowing if I'll ever see it again, getting spoilers from my classmates and co-workers was an absolute godsend.
The answer is simpel: just do not spoiler yourself. You do not need to check out all story events, just because somebody datamined them. You do not need to watch screenshots and videos of all new zones beforehand. Thats completely up to you.
I usually only checked out class changes and only started to have a look at story related stuff, when I had lost all hope for storytelling either way in BfA. Was no problem until then.
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I get that's your take, but it's really hard for me to understand that.
I agree with you, the way can be very interesting, even if you already know the result, but IMO that is only possible if the story is written with that already in mind. E.g. in Rothfuss's "Name of the Wind"/Kingkiller series, the tale starts at the end and we all know everything is going wrong, but the story is structured in a way that makes it interesting nonetheless.
However, if you would have told me the end of GoT beforehand, I sure as hell would have opted out before. Ok, let's not take GoT, because it is an extreme example, but take domez classics like Fightclub or 6th sense. You really would not mind spoilers for such movies?
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I am actually not even sure if the word "Spoiler" is correct here, because you are actively looking for an information that is integral to continue your enjoyment of the show and that you can not get otherwise.
It might be semantics, but IMO its not a spoiler in that case. A spoiler would be if your friends tell you what happened without being asked and with the full knowledge that the episode has a rerun the same day.
You could always, you know, not spoil yourself.
Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
Ultimately, the point is your friends giving up information about what happened in some media you have not yet experienced used to be the status quo. The mass availability of media has given rise to a "spoiler culture" that bemoans the same actions that used to simply be a part of your daily social interactions, treating what was once celebrated as anathema. The terminology hasn't changed, though. Nor has the definition. But the connotation definitely has changed.
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True.
Then you miss like 2/3rds of the new content since Blizzard has never done a good job in-game of explaining new additions, and the community itself expects you to know much of the content before patch day hits.