So the patch is out. It doesn’t matter if it’s only on the (invite-only) test server, what is important is that now we can understand what happened in the last two months and set better expectations on how this game will develop through the months and years.

The first remark is that, maybe, my prediction wasn’t that wrong. I was right about the battlegrounds delayed and we are still in the first week of March. The patch is out but only on the test server.

But what about the patch itself? What about the expectations? We waited too much. I’m not one of those with no memory who goes all happy after two months of grumbling and attacks. This patch is late and considering that it’s the result of more than two months of work, not that impressive.

But.

The changes go in the right direction. There are many, many usability fixes that will do good to the game. This patch is mostly a collection of serious bugfixes. So it’s a “level up” for the game no matter what. If there aren’t programming errors (I hope the test server will nail this down because I remember the trainwrecks at patch release during beta), the patch shouldn’t have side effects. They addressed the problems directly without dodging the main issues and without adding band aids and workarounds. So the development can still be judged as painfully slow but at least heading in a good direction. This is something to underline.

The doubts about the “meeting stones” are still there since they didn’t release details about them:

We still don’t know how they designed them but they sound weaker than the current system.

An LFG system just needs one requirement that defines directly it’s quality: how many players it is able to reach. Right now I can use a channel visible to a whole zone. What will these stones add?

We still have to see but, supposedly, you’ll have to walk till that point to flag yourself and beg the randomized system to not build a group full of tards. It’s rather obvious that the “pool” of players from where it will draw will be the two other guys that ARE JUST SITTING NEXT TO YOU, waiting from two hours at a stone that noone uses.

At best these stones will be an altar of sacrifice for high level players to raid and laugh about.

What the game needs is a server-wide system. The “LFG” flag visible on /who lists worked in beta and was removed for unknown reasons. Same for the useful “grouped or not” flag.

In general all the comments I wrote till now still apply. Same for the concerns expressed by others. The leet speak seems addressed but there’s no word about its serious exploit. The most important parts of the game, the battlegrounds and honor system, are still shady. They are supposed to “close the circle” and transform this game in something that feels more like a “world” and less like an infinite treadmill. But we cannot know how this will go since they haven’t disclosed the details. I believe they’ll become a fun digression but I don’t see them really providing a depth and a serious endgame purpose.

The introduction of better PvP systems and goals integrated with the whole game-world would help a lot more and build a better community but the honor system can still be seen as a danger instead of a positive evolution. In the case it’s kill-based and not goal-based.

The conclusion is that to form more outright opinions I’ll have to wait some more time. In general it seems that they are adjusting and preparing a base. But they still need something concrete to build there. That isn’t simply limited to “more stuff” that will just enlarge the game without adding any real depth.

So I’m still in a “observing and waiting” mode.

Some of the most important changes (like the caps to the instances) are still too late now. And I was hoping to see more quests added and fixed. I’m still waiting the Uldum line of quests to be delivered. It sucks greatly to go through a long (and awesome) cycle to just discover that it ends abruptly with no reward.

I’m also looking forward to Dire Maul. With a cap of five players and an upper cap due to the maximum level it will introduce something new in World of Warcraft: the challenge.
I hope it will be HARD. I also hope it will be worth it.

Wait… It’s not!

The US forums are back with some of the news I anticipated below. Plus the patchnotes. Here the highlights:

Main stuff

– Numbers and punctuation will not be passed through chat communication to members of the opposing faction. OMGWTFBBQ!!!!!!111!!11
– The bridges in northern Stranglethorn Vale are now fixed so they will not dismount you when you ride across them.

Instances – Raid

– Dire Maul open. Level 55+. Player cap of 5.

– Two outdoor raid bosses. Azuregos, a monstrous blue dragon, has landed in Azshara, while Lord Kazzak the demon can be found in the Tainted Scar of the Blasted Lands.

– Meeting Stones (still no word on how they will work)

– Player caps to instances. All dungeons now have a cap on group size to limit the number of players that may enter the dungeon. It was necessary to add this cap as raiding these dungeons trivialized much of the content. Because of this change we can now look to adding better loot to them during future content patches.

– If you enter an instance in a group, and then leave that group, you will not be able to complete quest objectives until you rejoin the group.

– “Raid lockout” is fixed. If the leader of your raid group is saved in a different instance than you would otherwise go to, you are added to your leader’s instance.

– Added /raidinfo command showing remaining time on saved raid instances.

– Extended the decay time of boss corpses in dungeons.

– Lengthened the respawn time of many of the creatures in Ragefire Chasm, Gnomeregan, Uldaman, Razorfen Downs, Scholomance, and Stratholme.

– If more than one player ties a loot roll, a random player will receive the loot.

Interface

– More action bars.
– Chat bubbles.
– Shift click on a quest will show completition criteria under the minimap.
– The tooltip will show who in the same group has the same quest.
– An option has been added to display the time remaining on your buffs all the time.
– Targeting with the tab key has been fixed so hitting tab will acquire creatures in a cone up to 30 yards in front of you or a circle 10 yards around you. It no longer only hits targets off to your left.
– You can now lock your action bar so spells cannot be dragged out of it while it is locked.
– Added a right-click menu to the social pane for whispering and inviting players into groups.
– Increased the quest share distance to 10 yards.
– Added the “date” and “time” functions to the UI scripting system.
– The auction interface now displays the gold, silver, and copper values for all items, even if those values are zero. This should make it more difficult to “hide” an item that costs several gold among items that only cost several silver, for example.
– The /bug and /suggest commands have been removed from the game. (No, really?)

Minor stuff

– The Drunk effect has been greatly enhanced.
– Added /golfclap.
– Spells in PvP now have a slight increase in range and area of effect when targets are moving. This should improve the overall usability of spells and ranged attacks.
– Fixes to the behaviour of mobs with parries, blocks and dodges.
– Mounts now are Horde or Alliance restricted in the tooltip. We do not intend to allow Horde players to ride Alliance vendor-purchased mounts and vice versa.
– If a player is under the effects of mind control by another player, then reputation adjustments for killing creatures go to the controlling player.
– The loss of overall reputation when a player loses reputation at the higher tiers of a faction (Friendly, Honored, Revered, Exalted) has been substantially reduced.
– Ogres in Azeroth have undergone a visual upgrade.
– Fixed several places throughout the world where monsters and profession nodes were spawning underground, floating or inside of objects.
– This one is great: A new engineering recipe is available in Blackrock Depths for a repair robot. This robot acts as a repair vendor for 10 minutes and will repair and purchase items for normal cost. This will allow dungeon groups and raids to get items repaired and sold without returning to town.
– A few flight paths added, some tweaked to reduce the time of the flight.
– Creatures that are quickly respawning to repopulate an area will often wait a few seconds after they spawn before attacking players.

What happened to the 8-effects limit on the mobs? I remember it was flagged as one of the main issues to solve in the patch.
What happened to the boat between Menethil and Southshore?

The scene couldn’t be more boring. It’s from Saturday that I want to take various hours just to catch up with what’s happening in the blogosphere because I’ve still old stuff to comment and discussions to push forward (instead I played WoW full time and I’ll write an update to my “guide to instances” soon). Maybe today I’ll write more of the stuff noone wants to read.

In the meantime there’s “news” about World of Warcraft. But they appeared on the wrong (european) website while the american forums died again, so maybe you didn’t see them.

The first news is a preview from an upcoming instance, “Dire Maul“. It’s for level 55+, in Feralas and it will offer a different type of content. Or at least it’s what they state:

– Dire Maul consists of three separate wings ranging in difficulty from level 56 to 60.

– There are many ways to complete the quests located in Dire Maul, and the decisions a party makes along the way will directly influence the potential rewards.

– In recent years, rumors have surfaced of an ancient arena within Dire Maul’s courtyard where unique creatures were once fought for sport.

– Adventurers will find that the occupants of Dire Maul possess many rare and epic weapons, armors, and profession recipes never before seen on Azeroth.

I’m happy to see that if “more content” has to be, at least it will offer something different. I hope the game will keep going in this direction.

The second news is about two test servers entering the US realms:

Two new public test realms are being introduced in the U.S. to help us test future changes that are going into World of Warcraft. These realms will supplement the ongoing QA process already in place internally. We are deploying these test realms so that we can gather valuable feedback on various test issues in a closed environment without having these issues adversely affect our general audience.

No other details about them. I was hoping to see something different even on this aspect. At least incentives for the players to be helpful and a better relationship between devs and testers.

More specific news:

However, this initial testing phase requires characters between the levels of 55 and 60 in order to properly test the content and functionality for the next patch. Email invitations have been sent out to a random set of players who meet these qualifications. Their level 55 to 60 characters have been copied to the test realm and will be waiting for them when they log in for the first time.

I’m still only level 51. I guess I’m not enough catass :)

(This idea to write the news about the US on the european site and vice versa is really awesome. Keep going)

I’ve repeated various times on this site that Caydiem is doing her work as a community manager in a wonderful way. I really believe that nothing more could be done. Not only she deals with problems, rants, attacks and legitimate issues way better than the rest of the community guys working at Blizzard, but what she’s doing is head and shoulders above everything on the market. She is able to understand directly why the players are ranting about something, she demonstrated to know and understand this genre, she gave proof of being intelligent and, in particular, she doesn’t offend the players.

Too often the community managers love to lead the situation, answering what they want to answer, making fun of legitimate complaints, avoiding to tackle directly the most “inconvenient” issues that are brought up. It’s a cynic and sly way to use the communication for your own purposes. Because too often the “communication” is just seen as a method and theory to master so you can control and convince. Dismissing and suffocating the problems. Forgetting completely that what you have to FEAR isn’t the community, but just your own ignorance and proud ego. The ivory tower. “Hey, do you really believe I’m here to listen you?”

Again I also repeated various times my point of view on all this and I want to link again a comment of Jessica Mulligan to demonstrate that I’m not just a fool with no contact with the reality.

Now I quote here a recent message of Caydiem. What is important isn’t the informations that you may deduce, what is important is the tone she uses. A type of respect that isn’t about “being polite” or “professional”. It’s instead sincere and direct. Understanding and admitting the faults and underlining the intention to address them. She doesn’t throw or dodge the critics, she doesn’t glide or hide. Instead she is interested into understanding the issues because it’s valuable. She doesn’t spit on the community as everyone else working on this genre. Noone excluded.

Well, the core problem is that we have not significantly patched in over two months. This would not be nearly as large a concern as it is now if patches were coming out in a regular and efficient manner.

Hotfixes take time to compile, test, and deploy, just as patches do. In addition, not everything can be fixed with a hotfix. If it requires any change to the client whatsoever, a change cannot be properly fixed with a hotfix and must instead be patched.

Instead of slapping a band-aid on the problem, hotfixing the biggest bugs that can be hotfixed at all, and hoping the clamor will cease, we are working on fixing the root problem. The fact of the matter is we need to bring game changes to you more quickly so you do not languish with these challenging problems. These issues are such a concern not only because they make the game more difficult and frustrating to play but because you’ve had to deal with them for a long period of time without seeing any considerable chunk of fixes brought in at all.

We realize that what has been happening with this lack of updates is unacceptable for our customers. The infamous content patch is on its way, and once it comes we are committed to patching more frequently. We will update the game regularly with fixes, balance changes, and new content. We will deliver more comprehensive patch notes than have been given in the past.

I know that these are just empty words to you right now and the proof is in the pudding. If I could hand you a patch today, I would. Sadly, I cannot do that. But we have been working on certain aspects of this process that should reveal themselves to you soon and affirm that we are indeed committed to delivering the service for which you pay.

Communication-wise we are going to respond to these issues as they come up, as we’ll have more information with this process. You should be better informed as far as what’s coming.

There have been a variety of issues holding back this patch that I cannot go into, but this is not the trend we want to set in updating the game. Our new process should bring you patches more quickly.

Just to explain better. These “praises” I’m writing don’t come from one message. It’s something I’m observing from when she started her work and I wanted to use this as an occasion to underline what I believe it’s good, in the same way I underline what is awful.

The problems at Blizzard are somewhere else. I believe they are doing a wonderful work with the communication. What doesn’t work is about something that Caydiem cannot solve. I’d like to see more direct involvement of the developers with the community. To start and participate in the discussions in a way that cannot be substitute with a community manager. So the problem goes deeper. It isn’t the communication alone. It’s instead the communication and its concrete consequences. Too often these “community managers” are supposed to fill roles that aren’t their responsibilities.

Again Caydiem does her best as you can see in every single answer she wrotes. I have a very good memory and a good spirit of observation. If I’m writing all this it’s because I’m sure of it. I’m sure that I won’t need to contradict myself.

I’m sure that I’ll never regret what I’m stating here.

EDIT: There’s a voice about Caydiem real name: Kristen De Meza. She was working for Horizon (ouch…).

The client is in the hands of the enemy

This is another update about the language barrier broken in World of Warcraft. It’s obvious to everyone that this rule is constantly exploited everywhere with the leet speak that isn’t properly masked. I also knew already that someone was able to build an UI mod to write and autotranslate stuff again by parsing leet speak. The limit was that both parts had to agree in the use of the mod or at least were good enough to read quickly that sort of crap.

What I didn’t know is that this language barrier can be completely wiped with a very simple hack to the client. You just need to open with a proper program the dbc.MPQ file, extract the “LanguageWords.dbc” file, remove its content, reintegrate it in the .MPQ file and save it.

Now, how can be Blizzard completely retarded? How they even IMAGINED about masking the language in the client instead that on the server?

Goons.

(Disclaimer: this hack is illegal. If you are a player and you plan to try it not only you are breaking the rules but you are also a loser. Exploiting a multiplayer game is an act of cowardice. No matter what. Play fair and have fun with what the game offers.)

One of the most abused (and tolerated by Blizzard) bugs-exploits in World of Warcraft may get fixed when the next patch will be out (see? My previsions suck. But I got the delay on the battlegrounds, so it was only half a failure):

The original poster is referring to an exploit that should be fixed in the next patch.

This is Tigole commenting the popular bug which allows the players to complete quests with raid groups when, instead, they are supposed to be restricted to one group only.

Concretely the exploit consists into disbanding quickly to get credit of the kill and get invited back into the group before the timeout that would kick the character directly out of the instance.

On FoH’s boards, as always, the best one line, sum up consideration:

In my opinion its frankly too late to put the genie back in the bottle.

This is also what they have to say about peoples that actually try to play the game “how it is supposed to”:

Everybody zergs these instances.

If you ask your guild if they wanna 5man this shit you get laughed at.

Another guy points out what really matters:

The whole concept is fucking dumb. If I have to kill some guy who the fuck cares how many people I bring with me. It’s a retarded rule and theyre fucking dumb for changing it 5 months later.

This comment is interesting because I discussed already the design implications here. The arguments are still valid.

(it was also discussed on Q23)

Now, maybe, they can move to enforce the communication barrier between the two factions exploited through leet speak? Or it’s about asking too much?