FYI on WoW 1.9 Patch...

[warcrow]

They closed up the Public Test Realms last week. This usually happens when the patch goes in the next maintenance day.

Well, that should've been today but it was not. Explained from Blizzard:

We were hoping to Patch on December 13th but we all agreed that 1.9 was not ready yet and still needed some tuning and bug fixing. So we made a few changes and fixes and released those builds on the PTR. Currently, the PTR builds are pretty close to what we're going to release. However, because of the changes we've made internally, the PTR build is now out of date. We don't really gain anything by leaving an old build on the PTR. We're probably going to bring the PTR's up one last time to make sure the sync bug is fixed and then bring them down again.

It is unlikely that we will patch during the end of Decemeber. We like to have "all hands on deck" when we patch so we can respond to emergency issues as quickly as possible. Players in North America tend to think of it as "patch day" but for those of us at Blizzard, it's more like "patch week". One day we patch Europe, the next the US, then Korea, then China etc. -- all on different days (this is done so that we don't bring down their servers during primetime).

Gotta wait till January then.

 

[Genx87]

Not surprised being the holiday season and all.

 

[skace]

IMO better to have it stable during a break than introduce something new and possibly cause tons of downtime during a really huge play period. Although, I'm sure theres lots of people that would have really enjoyed playing 1.9 this holiday.

 

[BoberFett]

Having cut my MMO teeth on SWG, I can wait happily for a January patch. To have a company admit that a patch isn't ready, and wait to release it until after a long holiday is music to my ears.

SOE was notorious for putting something on test, ignoring the tester's bug reports, and throwing it on live and going home for the weekend. What an awful company. I hope they rot.

 

[cKGunslinger]

Originally posted by: skace
IMO better to have it stable during a break than introduce something new and possibly cause tons of downtime during a really huge play period. Although, I'm sure theres lots of people that would have really enjoyed playing 1.9 this holiday.

:thumbsup:

 

[rstove02]

From what I hear from the developer chat the went on the other day is that another reason that 1.9 is being pushed back was because they are further messing with the paladin talent trees plus they want to add in other items instead of letting them slide for 1.10.

One of the bigger items they are putting in now and not letting slide for 1.10 is decursive breakers. All this time I thought the doubling mana costs of dispells were going to be their only change (a change only done because of PvP battles). Both decursive and the CTMod debuff remover will be broken in 1.9. Out of the two CT was saying that they might have a possible workaround.

Long story short I am not looking forward to 1.9 for my priest with the mana cost increase plus decursive breaking. No I do not PvP (holy spec)...but it disturbs me that more and more changes lately to the game are being done to satisfy PvP while giving no reguards to PvE. It is dang well near impossible to have a game have a unified rule set that is balanced in both PvP and PvE. Sadly it looks like Blizzard is siding in the PvP camp.

Another thing I find interesting is lately they [Blizzard] seem to like nerfing the less popular classes while buffing the more popular ones.

 

[sparkyclarky]

Originally posted by: BoberFett
Having cut my MMO teeth on SWG, I can wait happily for a January patch. To have a company admit that a patch isn't ready, and wait to release it until after a long holiday is music to my ears.

SOE was notorious for putting something on test, ignoring the tester's bug reports, and throwing it on live and going home for the weekend. What an awful company. I hope they rot.

Blizzard frequently ignores bug reports from the test realms. How else do you explain a patch going live that allowed warriors to gain an extra talent point (a completely game breaking issue), when the issue was pointed out on test?

 

[BoberFett]

Guess I missed that one. But if you think that is game breaking, you haven't seen anything. SOEs bugs can literally render the game unplayable. Not just unfair, literally unplayable.

 

[Velk]

Originally posted by: sparkyclarky

Originally posted by: BoberFett
Having cut my MMO teeth on SWG, I can wait happily for a January patch. To have a company admit that a patch isn't ready, and wait to release it until after a long holiday is music to my ears.

SOE was notorious for putting something on test, ignoring the tester's bug reports, and throwing it on live and going home for the weekend. What an awful company. I hope they rot.

Blizzard frequently ignores bug reports from the test realms. How else do you explain a patch going live that allowed warriors to gain an extra talent point (a completely game breaking issue), when the issue was pointed out on test?

That's not a completely game breaking issue by any stretch of the imagination. A completely game breaking issue would be warriors being able to insta-kill mobs or a dupe bug, or mobs dropping hundreds of gold per kill, or the zone crashing when you cast heals - things that have far reaching implications for the game beyond the fix.

 

[sparkyclarky]

Originally posted by: Velk

Originally posted by: sparkyclarky

Originally posted by: BoberFett
Having cut my MMO teeth on SWG, I can wait happily for a January patch. To have a company admit that a patch isn't ready, and wait to release it until after a long holiday is music to my ears.

SOE was notorious for putting something on test, ignoring the tester's bug reports, and throwing it on live and going home for the weekend. What an awful company. I hope they rot.

Blizzard frequently ignores bug reports from the test realms. How else do you explain a patch going live that allowed warriors to gain an extra talent point (a completely game breaking issue), when the issue was pointed out on test?

That's not a completely game breaking issue by any stretch of the imagination. A completely game breaking issue would be warriors being able to insta-kill mobs or a dupe bug, or mobs dropping hundreds of gold per kill, or the zone crashing when you cast heals - things that have far reaching implications for the game beyond the fix.

One class getting an extra talent point when all of the talent trees are balanced around not being able to get a 21 point talent if you get a 31 point is game breaking. But that's just one in a long list of screwups they've had. Patch 1.8 for WoW gave tons of people huge latency issues (rendering the game virtually unplayable due to the insane pings). They released BWL as a broken mess. They have bugged or broken class talents with patches, fixed them, then proceeded to break them again. They have had plenty of dupe bugs. And they still have incredibly server instability on numerous realms a year after launch (not necessarily patch related, but still something that needs fixing). They aren't exactly saints by any stretch of the imagination.

 

[skace]

Originally posted by: sparkyclarky
One class getting an extra talent point when all of the talent trees are balanced around not being able to get a 21 point talent if you get a 31 point is game breaking. But that's just one in a long list of screwups they've had. Patch 1.8 for WoW gave tons of people huge latency issues (rendering the game virtually unplayable due to the insane pings). They released BWL as a broken mess. They have bugged or broken class talents with patches, fixed them, then proceeded to break them again. They have had plenty of dupe bugs. And they still have incredibly server instability on numerous realms a year after launch (not necessarily patch related, but still something that needs fixing). They aren't exactly saints by any stretch of the imagination.

They are saints in comparison to what some of us have experienced, that is the point. IE, to say BWL was released broken admits not having ever stepped foot in Vex Thal. You'll be in for an eye opener on the next mmorpg you play, there's about an 80% chance it will have twice the bugs WoW has.

 

[NeoV]

I'm so sick and tired of people that do nothing but bitch about Blizzard - if it's that bad, play another game!

 

[Genx87]

If you want game breaking, how about the negative noteriety Origin introduced by accident with a patch to Ultima Online. Oh sure you think killing ogres and trolls is making you a good person. But when running back into town the guards kill you instantly for your deeds.

Now a dread lord you are unable to get a rez from anybody but a human played player.

Or the infamous magic arrow bug that allowed n00b characters cast a level 1 spell and 3 shot any player within the game. Oh the fun we had with that one.

Now that is game breaking, 1 talent point is not.