[Rejected] release of T4 raids and current problems

[flosr1]

I heard this topic many times the last few days and i felt that i want to talk about it.
first of all: i do not want to critizise the primal/true wow staff at all. i am totally aware of the fact that you spend your free time with stuff like fixing bugs, scripting, managing the forum, doing GM duties etc. And you probaly do this for free, so that most of the players on this server can play for free. that is a great think and i think 99% of the players appreciate that.

Unfortunately, atm we kinda feel like beta testers and it is kinda frustrating that so many dungeons/heroics are not working properly. it is not only the boss mechanics, whole dungeons (like shadowlabs, underbog, i could name many more) have their trash on wrong positions, trash is missing, trash is patroling where it shouldn't, trash is standing around when it should patrol, casters are not running in melee range when silenced or interrupted, mobs are not running to melee range when tank pulls them behind a wall. no they are just casting through the wall or running through the wall. I know you lacked testers for the TBC content for launch and your ressources, like for example time and man/girlpower are limited and i am pretty sure you are doing the best you can.

my suggestion would be: delay the release of T4 raids on one more month.

i know some people are already farming heroics like crazy and cannot wait to raid, but i would rather have properly working heroics now (or soon) and a properly working karazhan on release.
i don't think delaying it would be so much of an issue, because many people are still very busy atm. they are farming materials for their pre raid BIS gear, a lot of people are still leveling or getting the reputation for their heroic gears.
my char can go dungeons as tank/melee dps and healer and still i need to wait quite long for heroics to pop.

delaying the release of raids will give you much needed time to fix the current content and to work on properly working raids. i am pretty sure this would be the lesser evil and less frustrating. it is always better to admit you need more time than having even more frustrated players. some are already talking about leaving the server.

i collected a list of stuff that kinda should be fixed before t4 raids release, i did not write it on the bugtracker because it is kinda too much.

- various recipes are missing at faction vendors (for example earthen elixir CE)
- trash in many dungeons is not standing or patrolling where it is supposed to be (shattered halls rogues, underbog mobs), trash mobs are completely missing and some groups of trash are too big where others are too small (like for example underbog, shattered halls rogues)
- bosses are using abilties wrong, like nderbog 2nd boss is poisoning whole grp even if they stand behind him
- casters are not going into melee range when silenced/interrupted, they are not running around a corner when pulled there by a tank
itemlvl 110 badge of justice items are missing, like the heads for example (those are supposed to be there from the start, not on a later patch)
- leatherworkers have problems skinnning mobs because they despawn too fast (not sure if this has been fixed yet)
- some quest achievments do not count for the whole grp (like releasing the prisoned kids in terrokar forest). there are more but i do not remember now
- trash in normal dungeons dropped (or drops not sure) too much cloth and greens, while heroics drop way to less now. overall a dungeon or heroic should give at least 1 stack of cloth and 3-5 greens per player in my opinion
- shadowlabs key chest despawns after some1 looted the key (no this is not blizzlike, i reported it on the bugtracker with a proof, but i cannot find it anymore. must have been deleted)

[Kailen]

Could not agree more, I think everyone would rather have fun and not frustrating experience with TBC content. I do not really see a point in rushing things, most likely we will end up with problems simialr to moving to the new core. I guess a lot of work is put into those raids already but im affraid lots of people wont even see that work, because they could not stand all those problems server currently has, working heroics is a big selling point for a lot of players.

[flosr1]

herocis actually is the most important stuff to fix now and people will still need gear and recipes there when they start raiding so it will kinda stay important for the rest of the expansion when people are playing their alts

[arsa992]

I agree. I'm new to this server and this way of emulating tbc on 3.3.5, i like it so far, still leveling, but yeh, dungeons and hcs are too important for this expansion to be ignored.Also if casters dont react the way they should, that means either movemaps or vmaps are broken, could be both afaik and thats pretty big thing. You don't wanna release raids with those problems.

[Nyeriah]

I agree completely. The issues are being worked on, core transition has added an extreme workload on us.

For further indepth discussions, follow up the tester forums. It's there for a reason.

[Flooded]

You're assuming that developement or bug fixes for T4 content impacts how bugged other content is. This is not how development works. We have pending fixes from testing done on the PTR months before TBC was released, but we're waiting on other fixes before implementing. Most of our fixes for T4 content are already complete. Delaying the raids from releasing an additional month wont make patrols get fixed.

If you want developers to fix issues the most important thing you can do is submit detail reports on the bug tracker. We have people working every day to fix issues. Its simply a matter of players submiting bug reports and developers submitting fixes. Developers do not have time to read threads like these, they are focused on getting fixes out.

Issues like what happened with Ramparts pathing/evading yesterday were directly related to other fixes and their unintended consequences. We cannot implement all fixes at one because we don't know how they'll be have on the new core - its an iterative process.

If you want to prepare future content for release, please utilize the PTR and check for bugs inside T4, T5, and T6 raids.

[flosr1]

the reason why i did not post this on the tester forum is, because it is totally pointless to talk about things like that when 99% of the players are excluded from it. this discussion is primary about the delay of t4 raids in order to get stuff done by staff

[Nyeriah]

It doesn't do any better to have 30 people telling us that there are issues and they need to be addressed more than 10 people would. More people discussing and complaining won't get anything solved faster. More so, we won't take or discuss any strategic decisions without first consulting testers and the staff, so basically it'll still be returned to testers.

[Fitzpatrick]

You have a short memory, I think, Elarim. There were lots of issues with vanilla dungeons, and I will point out that the vast majority of them got fixed by the dev crew while raid content was being released through. Just to point out a few: The Father Flame event in UBRS was fixed a while back, but the scripting on the first room was fixed during early Naxx progression. Dire Maul was fully populated during Naxx and IIRC the DM East scripting was done during AQ40 progression. Scholo fast-runs and Baron Rivendale pet-pulling were fixed during BWL progression. I could keep going...

As to the Beta Testing issue - that's also been true for the entirety of the Vanilla phase. PTR testing can only do so much. I'm sure you noted all the fixes and tuning that went on during the last few months, but lets not kid ourselves that PW is like retail who can afford to send in whole teams to iron out everything before release. On any private server, if you're doing things early you're going to be testing, to some extent. How many fights in the Vanilla phase were totally borked upon first engagement (think Nefarion in BWL) and were quickly fixed by the dev staff. I understand your point, but I disagree with the conclusion.

Finally, I would argue that having 0 raiding content is not healthy for a PVE server. The dungeons and rep grind are keeping people occupied for the moment, but people need something to work towards. If you want extra time spent on the dungeons, I would suggest that maybe that time should be between T4 and T5 content. Quite a few of my guildies are already exalted to multiple reputations. People aren't going to keep logging in if theres no Kara (at least) to work on, for months.

[flosr1]

i disagree, quality is more important than quantity. people will stay on the server if the staff delivers quality but they will get boredand frustrated if the same things happen like with aq40 and naxx release.

btw. our guild tested some things in karazhan today on the PTR. as things looked there, i doubt that "most of karazhan" will work in 9 days....
i won't go into details now, it would just be a bit.... embrassing

[Gehere]

i disagree, quality is more important than quantity. people will stay on the server if the staff delivers quality but they will get boredand frustrated if the same things happen like with aq40 and naxx release.

btw. our guild tested some things in karazhan today on the PTR. as things looked there, i doubt that "most of karazhan" will work in 9 days....
i won't go into details now, it would just be a bit.... embrassing

Incredible..

So basically, what you're saying is: Throw everything in your hands. Stay home from your RL jobs. Leave your wife and kids alone. Your real life is not important - but this free WoW server, where *you* play, and they code, on a volunteer level.. must be the one priority in their lives?

Wow.. just wow.

[Tirionfordri]

Seems nice suggestion to me - better to wait one month and get quality Kara than get it now and sit and wait till bugs get fixed - its more frustration expirience in my point of view.

[flosr1]

Gehere, obviously you did not read my first post and obviously you did not read it properly. I do not expect anything like that, neither do i demand it. What i SUGGEST is, to delay the release of karazhan, so that we will have proper working heroics AND proper working T4 raids.

Because atm. a lot of stuff is not working in Karazhan (i don't even mention chess event, because that is kinda understandable).
not working: attumen, aran, illhoof, curator (trash mobs before kurator). we did not go to netherspite, nightbane and we did not test big bad wolf or OZ. but i doubt that those work.

I mean, i know this is a private server and staff has other things to do. But by considering all that i read here, it seems to be more important for the staff to release a lot of unfinished content, than focusing on going slowly and giving us working quality content. and that worries me....

Incredible..

So basically, what you're saying is: Throw everything in your hands. Stay home from your RL jobs. Leave your wife and kids alone. Your real life is not important - but this free WoW server, where *you* play, and they code, on a volunteer level.. must be the one priority in their lives?

Wow.. just wow.

But by exaggerating, denying the facts and whiteknighting you are just exposing yourself to ridicule.

[Kailen]

The issues in vanilla dungeon were mostly small things that people were rather ok with not having, like ubrs and dm not taking an hour, you can also pass a lot of things on staff not being sure how to handle the content.
At this point keeping the deadline over making sure content is more or less doable (no-one is asking or expecting blizzlike scripting just fyi) will only benefit old guilds that will hang around no matter what happens, but tbc brought and will keep on attracting new people who wont just brush unclearable content off as "just a primal thing".

[Mizzeeh]

not working: attumen, aran, illhoof, curator (trash mobs before kurator). we did not go to netherspite, nightbane and we did not test big bad wolf or OZ. but i doubt that those work.

Hi, I raid lead weekly raid testing on the PTR for several weeks leading up to the release of TBC; I believe we did 4 Kara runs as well as a HKM/Gruul/Mag run in total. We tested all T4 bosses except Nightbane and most of them several times over several runs.

Things I can confirm are not working based off our tests are: Shade of Aran, a few trash packs and maybe 25-man bosses. Attumen, Illhoof, Curator, Netherspite, BBW and Wizard of Oz are all in solid, working condition, with maybe a few bugs that are not gamebreaking in any way as far as we could tell.

If you disagree then I hope you reported every bug you found because that's the only way it'll get fixed.