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  1. #41
    Spam Assassin! MoanaLisa's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Echo of Soul View Post
    FFXIV pretty much disproves every defense you have for the PTR and having the playerbase be the QA team.
    “A little helpful” is hardly a defense. Or did you not read the part where I said that Blizzard’s QA was lax, too much so? The fact is that letting morons roam around in your application does turn up stuff sometimes. It’s not a substitute for a healthy QA department.
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  2. #42
    The Insane rhorle's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Echo of Soul View Post
    Having a PTR sucks ass. Everything is known before the patch even comes out and even if you don't look anything up the community expects you to so if you try to play the game as it's supposed to be played you get kicked out of groups on day 1.
    Not much would change because the "community" would still expect you to learn everything super fast and read it on fan sites or what not right after the content goes live. You can avoid story and all of that and there is little expectation to know it. Raids I could see but if you aren't in a "race to world first" guild then it is a self imposed burden.
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  3. #43
    Quote Originally Posted by Miffinat0r View Post
    We all know that Activision Blizzard had the PTR because they didn't want to pay for QA testers.
    No, we don't know that. We know that they have internal testing teams, but that large public tests are more valuable for tuning and fixes. That's the nature of the game.

    I don't expect MSto change much about the game or its development, other than replacing whatever toxic elements remain. If they make any changes, I suspect they will lead to increased efficiency and a better game, overall.
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  4. #44
    Quote Originally Posted by Miffinat0r View Post
    Raids right now come out buggy still. Not sure why a PTR prevents this considering players aren't trained QA professionals.
    Think it's more to see how players approach the encounters to fix possible exploits and for tuning, not necessarily for bugs.
    Dedicated testing teams do tend to get into a fixed mentality as opposed to a broad audience where people think outside the box because they don't have checklists to follow.

  5. #45
    Quote Originally Posted by Gaidax View Post
    You don't pay 70bn dollars for incompetent studios, bruh.
    No shit. They paid for the enormous financial potential of the IPs in question. If you actually believe the talent or whatever is left of it at Blizzard was an important factor in the acquisition of the company by Microsoft, I'd like to sell you some beachfront property in Siberia. Microsoft has unholy levels of resources and once they fix the pay rate to actually be competitive (they obviously will), there will be no shortage of talent to hire.

  6. #46
    Quote Originally Posted by Miffinat0r View Post
    Raids right now come out buggy still. Not sure why a PTR prevents this considering players aren't trained QA professionals.
    "Players aren't QA professionals." You said a mouthful.

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  7. #47
    PTR is always helpful for finding stuff that QA simply can't catch that players would. It's like crowdsourcing for exploits.

  8. #48
    The Unstoppable Force Gaidax's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Edward Wu View Post
    If you actually believe the talent or whatever is left of it at Blizzard was an important factor in the acquisition of the company by Microsoft, I'd like to sell you some beachfront property in Siberia.
    Of course it was.

    You don't pay 70bn for just "IP". Someone needs to be capable to do something with that IP and despite its shortcomings in the end Blizzard talent is what will drive Warcraft and not some bunch of random hires and execs who never seen the thing.

    Granted 70bn was not paid just for Blizzard, but it's really dumb to think it and its talent did not factor in that decision and pricing.

  9. #49
    The most important thing that will get stuff out of the PTR is if they can manage to properly tune and make it bug/exploit free the last 3 bosses of the 9.2 raid. They are using it as test citing 'Story reasons'.

    If they manage to do it right then maybe next raid will have no mythic PTR testing, and if that goes right the next one will have no test at all.

    MS supposedly has a QC policy company wide but that might not affect WoW much, maybe it just means longer Alpha build times.

  10. #50
    Quote Originally Posted by Miffinat0r View Post
    We all know that Activision Blizzard had the PTR because they didn't want to pay for QA testers.

    Blizzard always had a PTR server because it's a way to save money for QA.
    I don't think that is what PTR is for.

    Quote Originally Posted by Miffinat0r View Post
    Now if the deal goes through Blizz will have influx of more resources, my hope is MS would do away with the PTR and keep everything tight lipped until a global release, like every other game.
    I doubt it. MMO and single player games are different. There is only so much testing you can do with a limit number of QA people.

    I do agree that I prefer they release no information until release but I gather that is impossible unless they make people on the PTR sign an NDA, which is impossible to enforce anyway.

  11. #51
    Quote Originally Posted by Sansnom View Post
    I do agree that I prefer they release no information until release but I gather that is impossible unless they make people on the PTR sign an NDA, which is impossible to enforce anyway.
    And even if they did, everything would get datamined on day 1 anyway, so it doesn't help a whole lot.

  12. #52
    Quote Originally Posted by Miffinat0r View Post
    We all know that Activision Blizzard had the PTR because they didn't want to pay for QA testers.

    Blizzard always had a PTR server because it's a way to save money for QA.

    Now if the deal goes through Blizz will have influx of more resources, my hope is MS would do away with the PTR and keep everything tight lipped until a global release, like every other game.
    I have never played a mmo or any big on going game that didn't run some sort of test server.
    "Privilege is invisible to those who have it."

  13. #53
    I'd be shocked if WoW isn't largely left alone with few expections. Phil is not an idiot, I'd see things like PTR's and Beta's lasting. THe big change I see is Blizz going back to more content more often with more of what worked in the past and listening better to what people want.
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  14. #54
    Quote Originally Posted by Miffinat0r View Post
    We all know that Activision Blizzard had the PTR because they didn't want to pay for QA testers.

    Blizzard always had a PTR server because it's a way to save money for QA.

    Now if the deal goes through Blizz will have influx of more resources, my hope is MS would do away with the PTR and keep everything tight lipped until a global release, like every other game.
    There was a PTR with premade characters in Vanilla, prior to the big bad merger with Activision, when Blizzard was throwing every dollar it had at WoW. Just because you write something like it's a fact doesn't actually make it true - you have absolutely no confirmation that the exclusive reason for the PTR is to "save money". Indeed, you and people like you would be here screeching about moronic wastes of money if Blizzard tried to hire the tens of thousands of people who actively test the game on the PTR, so it's lose/lose for Blizzard as usual here.

  15. #55
    Judging by their current history of Windows update quality, I wouldn't hold out much hope.
    How joyous to be in such a place! Where phishing is not only allowed, it is encouraged!

  16. #56
    Not sure why so many people assume or believe blizzard doesnt hire QA professionals?
    The PTR raid testing is mostly there to feed them raw data on encounters, not to bug test them...
    Same goes for the PTR in general.

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