Why the Warlords of Draenor beta is taking longer than expected to arrive
by JR Cook - 10 years ago show comments
Ever since Blizzard made the Warlords of Draenor Alpha announcement at the beginning of April, fans have been anxiously awaiting for when it would transition into Beta phase so that players can begin testing out the new leveling experience, the new stat squish – and of course, garrisons. There was a glimmer of hope when PAX East attendees received beta invite keys, and inevitably began selling those keys on eBay, but over a month has passed with still no word.
Since eager fans are still waiting to get some hands-on time in Warlords of Draenor, especially with all the juicy announcements and datamining going on, Zarhym has addressed the delay, detailing why the delay is longer than expected and why they decided to make WoD announcements so far in advance of the beta.
@Tryvia We had hoped to start inviting people sooner. We knew our internal alpha build would be datamined & wanted to let people know why.
— Zarhym (@CM_Zarhym) May 15, 2014
Knowing how upset players can get when they see a datamine change to a class ability, or an ability being removed all together, it does make sense that Blizzard started releasing details, knowing they would be immediately datamined and then announced without context and more importantly, without Blizzard’s commentary of why they made the specific changes they did. While it might not stop the QQing, it would help alleviate some anxieties about the changes.
Garrisons have also been named as a cause for the release date delay.
@leobolin Kind of. I mean that has been the plan for a while, but we wanted to get in zone integration before non-employees started testing.
— Zarhym (@CM_Zarhym) May 16, 2014
Now that we know Garrisons will be more tied to the leveling experience than previously planned, it makes sense that they are also delaying it to ensure that the Garrisons feature is working when they launch beta, as many of us will be setting up shop with our Garrisons as soon as they become available.
Questing is also another reason for the delay, as they are working on some of the quest flow experience. As one of the early beta testers from Mists of Pandaria who quest leveled to 90 in the beta, it does make a lot of sense for them to want to fix some of these issues their employees are finding before it goes to beta, as there were quite a few areas in MoP beta where a single bugged quest could bring leveling in the entire zone to a complete stop (Ranger Rescue, I’m looking at you!)
@Borgratz @Tryvia No, but there have been some quest flow revamps and such we wanted to get done before people started really digging in.
— Zarhym (@CM_Zarhym) May 16, 2014
Zarhym did emphatically deny that the beta release date is tied to the release of any other game, including Wildstar which many MMO players are looking forward to.
@V3rtige @leobolin Flat out: our production schedule & milestones are far more important than whatever else is happening in the industry.
— Zarhym (@CM_Zarhym) May 17, 2014
But one thing is true, while people might not like the long wait for beta, having some information without a release date is far better than having absolutely no information about the new expansion coming out of Blizzard at all. And we will still eat up all the details, regardless of whether there is a release date or not.
@Nerador_EU @Tryvia You underestimate how hard it is to announce set dates for tests. Doubt people would agree on preferring radio silence.
— Zarhym (@CM_Zarhym) May 15, 2014
But there is hope – Zarhym says they hope to send out invites, you guessed it, soon. And it also hints that it might be restricted to only certain zones, similar with how they did MoP beta, when they first release it.
@Tryvia Because we're not ready to start inviting the public yet. Doing extra polish on the first few zones & will get a build going soon.
— Zarhym (@CM_Zarhym) May 15, 2014
But what I think is even more important than when they release it will be how they decide who gets to access the beta first. Will it be PAX keys? Will it be pre-orders? Or maybe they will flag accounts that actually leveled toons from 85-90 on the MoP beta first. However they decide, we will all be anxiously awaiting for SoonTM