Hi all, this motive, the lead QA tester for WoW. I have some information regarding the Hunter spell cooldown bug that will hopefully set the record straight once and for all. I will basically provide information regarding how the spell worked in 1.4.2 (and previously), how it worked in 0.5.0 (in its broken state) and how it is going to work now.

As you all undoubtedly know, the special Hunter shots all have cooldowns associated with them that are displayed in their tooltips. I will refer to this value as C below.
As you also undoubtedly know, every ranged weapon has a unique weapon speed. I will refer to this value as S below.

How cooldown was calculated and displayed in 1.4.2
In 1.4.2, the client displayed a different cooldown than the server actually enforces. This is a bug, and the calculations were as follows:

The client pulls its displayed cooldown as exactly C, the cooldown of the spell as listed in its tooltip.
The server calculates the actual enforced cooldown with the formula: (C + S) – 500ms. (The extra 500ms is subtracted from C + S to account for latency and is done with all spells, not just Hunter spells)

For Example, Aimed Shot with an advertised cooldown of 6 seconds using a 2.0 attack speed weapon was calculated as follows:

Client Displayed Cooldown = 6.0 seconds
Server Enforced Cooldown = 6.0 + 2.0 – 0.5 = 7.5 seconds

This may explain why a lot of people noticed that hunter shots used to sometimes display a “Spell not ready yet” error if they were attempted to be used again before this “invisible” 1.5 seconds of extra cooldown time had not passed on the server.

How cooldown was calculated and displayed in 0.5.0 (broken)
In 0.5.0, the client was told to match its cooldown display to what the server was actually enforcing:

The client calculates its displayed cooldown with the formula: C + S.
The server still calculates the actual enforced cooldown with the formula: C + S – 500ms.

For Example, Aimed Shot with an advertised cooldown of 6 seconds using a 2.0 attack speed weapon was calculated as follows:

Client Displayed Cooldown = 6.0 + 2.0 = 8.0 seconds
Server Enforced Cooldown = 6.0 + 2.0 – 0.5 = 7.5 seconds

The problem here was that even though the server did not actually enforce any change to the cooldown time, adding the weapon speed to the cooldown time caused the client to not allow the user to cast the spell again, even though, if it had, the server would have let them do so. Not only did this change make the cooldown timers FEEL a lot worse because they were now visible on the client instead of just server-side, on top of this, the lack of the 500ms latency grace period made Hunters actually fire slower than they should, and decreased DPS. This was obviously a bug that will be fixed in the following manner.

How cooldown will be calculated and displayed in 1.5.0 Release
We are fixing both issues described above. In short, we are removing the weapon speed addition to the cooldown on both the server and the client.

The client pulls its displayed cooldown as exactly C, the cooldown of the spell as listed in its tooltip.
The server calculates the actual enforced cooldown with the formula: C – 500ms.

For Example, Aimed Shot with an advertised cooldown of 6 seconds using a 2.0 attack speed weapon will be calculated as follows:

Client Displayed Cooldown = 6.0 seconds
Server Enforced Cooldown = 6.0 = 5.5 seconds

In other words, Hunter DPS will increase slightly as a result of the cooldowns of all of their special shots actually decreasing by their attack speed. The fact that weapon speed was added to these cooldowns was never intended behavior. We designed the abilities around the cooldown being what the tooltips have always claimed. The only spell that will still display the weapon speed in its cooldown is Auto Shot.

The last calculation above looks incorrect, but it is important to note that the fact that the server enforced cooldown is less than the client displayed cooldown is irrelevant. The user is still not able to actually cast the spell until the client-side cooldown has elapsed.

As an additional note, none of the information above takes quiver/ammo pouch weapon speed adjustment into consideration, but for those of you who want to know, that information is subtracted in the following manner (using the same terminology as above and assuming we’re still adding S to C in the original bugged system):

(C + S) * (1 – RangedHaste%)

Assuming a 6 second Arcane Shot cooldown, a 3.5 speed weapon and a 15% ranged haste quiver the cooldown would be:

(6.0 + 3.5) * (1.0 – 0.15) = 8.075

I hope this clears up any confusion that the last few days have caused. Feel free to post any questions you might have about anything that I have outlined above.

I archive here the game “manifesto” that Brad McQuaid posted on FoH boards.

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When we’re looking at revenue forecasts as well as when we’re designing the game we’re looking at long term customer retention with the realization that the majority of money made from MMOGs is from subscriptions not box sales. 250,000 I think is conservative… 500,000 would be just fine… both look pretty good though when doing the math and planning on players playing months and even years.

If the ‘core’ gamer is running out of things to do now (and I say ‘core’, not hard core, because I’m not just reading posts and talking to people who are part of that minority of gamers who play like madmen), then how much longer will the ‘casual’ gamer be entertained?

I’m not here to criticize Blizzard’s plan (nor am I even privy to it), but I can say what ours is, and it’s to keep the average MMOG gamer around for a long time. And we realize this likely means we won’t see sales in the millions. But we took EQ 1 up to 400,000+ for three years with very few cancellations, and I know the game continued with those numbers for quite a while after I left. And that’s the kind of success we’re looking for again with Vanguard.

I know the counter-argument, that those players won’t tolerate another EQ 1 and its advancement pace — that MMOGs have to be designed differently now, targeting the more casual gamer and also the gamer who allegedly has less time to play than he or she did in the past, or who just won’t tolerate anything even resembling a “grind”.

But I don’t buy it. Sure, some people are burned out. But we also hear from a LOT of old school MMOG gamers who want that longer term game again… who want a home again. And if we combine those people with even a small percentage of new MMOG gamers, who were probably exposed to persistent worlds by games like WoW, then it’s simply not that crazy to assume we can get the numbers I’m talking about for Vanguard.

Only time will tell, and I know people will disagree with me. But we really need to be right — not just for Vanguard, but for the genre in general. We can’t just give up, throw our hands into the air, and say EQ 1s were a fluke and that core gamers have somehow fundamentally changed since then such that they won’t or can’t subscribe for years ever again. Were that true, we’d never see the virtual worlds of the scope and scale we all dream about developed. Maybe we are old school, maybe past successes were a fluke, maybe we’re dinosaurs. But I’m betting not.

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Btw, I just wanted to be extra clear here and state that I have nothing but respect for Blizzard. I am concerned that they might not be ready to put out new content fast enough, but time will tell.

My post was more to explain Vanguard’s plan and philosophy and how it differs from WoW’s. I think choices are good and am glad MMOG gamers have more choices now in terms of what style and pace of gameplay suits them.

I’m also very happy in a selfish way I suppose that Blizzard showed that the MMOG gamespace is far from saturated as many people were claiming before its release. And, as I alluded to, because of their name cache and their ability to attract gamers who probably would never have tried an MMOG (due to their other fine games and consistent quality they produce) they’ve done us all a huge favor.

Vanguard and WoW have different target audiences and different philosophies behind them, but I also think that a significant percentage of people who tried WoW as their first MMOG are going to finish playing it and find themselves wanting more… and that’s perfect for Vanguard. No, not every casual gamer is going to be converted into a core or hard core gamer, but IMHO enough will that when combined with the old school MMOG gamers Vanguard will have plenty of people interested in it.

Plus, this was a good opportunity to let everyone know that going after millions in the short term as a business strategy doesn’t mean that going after hundreds of thousands in the long term isn’t still viable.

I also think they had/have a vision too, and that they stuck with it (again, who their target audience was, their use of lower tech as opposed to pushing the limits of graphics cards, etc.) And while our vision is obviously different, they at least have one whereas I fear some other more recent games don’t know what they want or where they want to go… being reactive instead of proactive isn’t a good plan when making and maintaining an MMOG at this time.