Mists of Pandaria sooner than expected?

[Belloc]

Expecting an early release is counterproductive, to say the least. To the current date, every single expansion was rushed. Unsurprisingly, they all sucked at launch. From balancing issues to content issues to mere bugs, those initial iterations needed a clusterfuck of hotfixes just to get the shit rolling. The serious underlying issues... to be fixed at a later date (/patch), evidently. Yeah, no.

The public beta needs to be extended to at very least six months. The 4-5 months betas should be a thing of the past, as they undoubtedly failed to "polish" the upcoming expansions.

I've played every expansion at launch and I fully disagree. Aside from some minor tuning problems and the odd noticeable bug, all of the expansions have been pretty well polished at release. If you're going to make claims like that, you might want to mention what you're talking about.

Hell, the only problem with WotLK, at launch, that I can remember is Malygos' breath attack hitting pets. Cataclysm had some heroic 10-man tuning issues which were fixed relatively quickly. BC was the worst of the launches and it was incredibly enjoyable anyway.

So, got any examples?

[tlitp]

TBC :

• crappy haste scaling (particularly spell haste)
• crappy scaling of Glancing Blows (after the removal of weapon skill)
• Mana Tombs and (particularly) the dungeons from the Coilfang Reservoir were a mess
• Karazhan was a mess (both tuning-wise and loot-wise)
• the profession-based crafts were a mess
• the arena-based purchasable items were a mess
• the rage normalization was a mess (Druids/Warriors)
• killing blows done by pets were a mess (Hunters/Warlocks)
• the Forge Camps were a mess (particularly Anger)
• pre-2.1 SSC/TK were... interesting, to say the least
• pre-2.1 heroics were, again, interesting (nevermind the countless straight-up nerfs, in the lines of -X% HP or damage output, they've also addressed stuff that radically changed the encounters; "A should be immune to CC, B shouldn't", 360° Cleaves)

WotLK : I won't even bother with a more detailed listing, I'll simply mention the shitty lag issues (WG, Naxx 2.0) and the overall state of pre-3.1 DKs.

Cataclysm : again, I think it's enough to mention that 1) they've injected more than 500 hotfixes in the first two months (closer to 1000, really), 2) it shipped without addressing core class/spec issues (Paladins, for instance : block capping/mastery scaling, granularity of Holy Power, the inherent rigidity of the 3-secs framework, nonsensical HoPow scaling for finishers). Speaking of Paladins, what they've done with HotR in an otherwise short interval (October-January) is hilarious beyond redemption.


Minor tuning problems and odd bugs.

[Flex]

"were a mess" is vague enough to mean "completely broken" to "less than perfect but fully functional and working properly."

For example your Karazhan loot "mess" was fully functional and working properly since the initial design of Heroic 5 mans was to be inbetween Karazhan and 25 man raid progression thus the Blue loot from heroics were to be of higher quality than Karazhan loot. However butthurt raiders were upset that lowly 5 man loot was better than raid epics and Blizzard ultimately agreed and changed the progression path they intended to the one that has stuck with us since.

[poptart]

TBC :
[*]crappy scaling of Glancing Blows (after the removal of weapon skill)

Hmmmm, I don't know that I agree with much of your list but this one I am calling BS on.

I clearly remember my Paladin picking up a couple of fast, low level white weapons in Dalaran, heading to the south-east portion of Crystalsong Forest and finding one of the self-healing Treants to beat on for an hour or two with Seal of Light up in order to max out weapons skills.

Weapon Skill was in the game, far beyond TBC and was not removed until Cata if I remember correctly (but, perhaps, it was at some point in Wrath).

Cheers,

[Senador]

The weapon skill he is referring to is when it was on gear. This stat was eventually replaced with Expertise, and happened sometime near the end of Tier 5 early Tier 6.

[tlitp]

For example your Karazhan loot "mess" was fully functional and working properly since the initial design of Heroic 5 mans was to be inbetween Karazhan and 25 man raid progression thus the Blue loot from heroics were to be of higher quality than Karazhan loot. However butthurt raiders were upset that lowly 5 man loot was better than raid epics and Blizzard ultimately agreed and changed the progression path they intended to the one that has stuck with us since.

That issue aside (although it should have been ironed out during the beta, in my opinion), you seem to have forgotten that quite a few T4 set bonuses were only fixed in 2.1.0. Fully functional, eh ?

[Fivelives]

The 4-5 months betas should be a thing of the past, as they undoubtedly failed to "polish" the upcoming expansions.

The length of the beta doesn't have much to do with how "polished" the final product is. People treat beta clients as playable versions of the game that they got early access to, rather than buggy software that they're expected to test and report*.

Unless, that is, it's a gamebreaking bug like crashes to desktop. Those are usually caught during alpha testing, though, and the public beta clients are usually pretty well formed.

* Most bug reports in beta tests are usually something along the lines of "<X> is broken fix it now!" which is unhelpful. A good bug report would be "<X> is having <Y> issue. I checked it again, and the issue is/is not reproducible - here are the steps I took: <list>." How many of you have participated in beta tests and given that kind of bug report?

[halabar]

The 4-5 months betas should be a thing of the past, as they undoubtedly failed to "polish" the upcoming expansions.

The length of the beta doesn't have much to do with how "polished" the final product is. People treat beta clients as playable versions of the game that they got early access to, rather than buggy software that they're expected to test and report*.

Unless, that is, it's a gamebreaking bug like crashes to desktop. Those are usually caught during alpha testing, though, and the public beta clients are usually pretty well formed.

* Most bug reports in beta tests are usually something along the lines of "<X> is broken fix it now!" which is unhelpful. A good bug report would be "<X> is having <Y> issue. I checked it again, and the issue is/is not reproducible - here are the steps I took: <list>." How many of you have participated in beta tests and given that kind of bug report?

Not to mention that there are many "bugs" that players sit on, hoping they will go live.

A lot of the complaints about "bugs" here are really balance issues, and not software bugs, that would be hard to discover in beta. If they are, it's likely by the class that wants to abuse them.

[bldavis]

when i was in the public beta test for world of tanks, a few clanmates and i discovered a hole in the terrain, and we put together that kind of bug report, including a video of how we could get into the hole and which sizes of tanks could do so

but i can see this being very rare esp for the average player who just views beta as just a trial and not testing

[Klaudandus]

Not to mention that there are many "bugs" that players sit on, hoping they will go live.

A lot of the complaints about "bugs" here are really balance issues, and not software bugs, that would be hard to discover in beta. If they are, it's likely by the class that wants to abuse them.

Oh snap~

[halabar]

And to be fair, I'll be spending most of my time in beta looking for rarespawns to tame, and exploring. Once Pandaclysm goes live, it's all about leveling via mining and max profits..

[Skye1013]

I generally don't see a lot of bugs. The two I noticed for Cata were:

1) Worgen starting quest chain was incompletable unless you happened to be there right after a reset (the townspeople you're supposed to rescue weren't respawning properly, so you had a ton of lvl 7ish Worgen sitting there, waiting for a fix.)

2) Within the Goblin starting area, when you're supposed to kill Candy (or her BF, I forget which) there was a pathing issue with pets in that the platform wasn't entirely connected. I could walk across and resummon my pet, but the pet otherwise had no way to reach them.

I started a report for the Goblin issue, but the server crashed/reset/whatever before I was able to complete it, and forgot about it by the time I got back on. The Worgen issue was reported by just about everyone and their mother that wasn't able to make it through.

[Teranoid]

The only thing I remember about it was when Cataclysm officially launched on server we went almost an hour before Blizz remembered to turn xp gains on and the whole thing with half the Vashj'ir quests not giving Earthen Ring rep like they were supposed to. Cata's launch wasn't that bad at all comparing it to other expansions with maybe the exception of the Dark Simulacrum/Sinestra bug which was pretty amusing.