Blizzard shouldn’t push code to production without testing, and the fact that they can’t give an update or ETA after 10hrs on a critical bug (users are losing major functionality, they can access a product they paid for) talks a lot of the level of engineering going on at blizzard.
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I agree, to a degree.
They need to get word of it first, then investigate (which is multiple steps), then as a plan is formed, put out a statement. All of that isn’t always going to be quick.
It’s not that general. A current, actively developed game is monitored far more closely than a retired game. There are far less resources alloted to watch WC3R, which is retired along with a handful of other games.
Thus it’s not a level of engineering at Blizzard situation. It’s the intentional decision to divert away from older, retired games toward current, modern games.
the topic is so lively, but in the end, all players wisdom is summed up in these two words; “wait” and “hope”
Not something that explicitly or implicitly suggests a real life threat.
(You deleted your post so I can’t quote the next part)
As I pointed out above, it’s not Battlenet having the problem. No other games are having this issue. In fact, no other game is having any widespread issues at all right now. This problem is with WC3R itself.
nail on the head. just leave it at that.
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Even when a code gets put on a maintenance level it should have an appropriate test swipe. You can’t just push patches that block users of Mac from accessing the product, that should have been done on a pretty standard test swipe. That’s where the bad engineering practices come up.
Also, I think is ok for people to be outraged when a product they paid for stops being available to them because of these poor testing standards. I do agree with you that in the heat of anger, I may have hyperbolized, but still, this level of critical issue can’t not be seen as a simple bug, there is a bigger issue with their developing practices for these things to happen.
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I agree. I’m not defending the patch, or lack of testing of it. I was just replying to the general criticism of all of Blizzard.
A few months ago, there was an exploit in SC2 (which is also retired) that allowed the perps to crash people’s clients. That was pretty serious, but it took almost a month to fix. This bug in WC3R already has a team working on it.
So, I don’t think this is being veiwed as a simple bug. Once discovered, they got actively working on it due to the large impact.
I hope so, a rollback strategy to hotfix a major issue like this should also be a standard deployment practice.
If this is the case here, I think they should provide Mac users a refund on their game, since people can’t access a product they pay for because of their bad deployment practice. Also, I think better customer support goes a long way, small updates on the state of the issue or the plan to fix it may go a long way with clients. Telling people “Oh yes we screw up but it will get fixed when it gets fixed” is a pretty mediocre customer relationship approach in my opinion.
I also want to point out that agree with you in other comments on this thread that there is no need to threaten anyone with violence over a software bug.
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That I agree with completely when it’s a major impact (such as this).
That would remove the game from the player’s account, meaning even after it was fixed, it wouldn’t be playable. If that’s what someone wanted, sure. But I suspect that most would want to play again after it was fixed.
Yes for sure. Even then people would have the option to rebuy it later. On my end, I would rather spend this money on another game since I don’t trust WC3 quality standards anymore, and now I know when a major issue like this comes up their response is not up to what I expect as a customer.
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That’s reasonable. I refunded the Reforged portion a while back for similar reasons as you.
The game was being released as a new product, but at the same time it was immediately being given a back seat in terms of development, maintenance, staff, time, etc. That didn’t sit with me.
I’m a programmer, and in my company this is a P0 issue regards to its impact and severity. Such an issue should be fixed within HOURS.
Furthermore, I am quite sure war3 dev team did not even test on Mac before release, this is UNACCEPTABLE!
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Nothing says it’s not analogous to Bliz’s prioritization.
Again, no matter who you are or who you work for (unless it’s specifically the team in Bliz that’s working on this), you aren’t privy to what’s involved, hence you can’t impose timelines on anything.
There is no WC3R dev team. There hasn’t been for years.
There are no excuses. No matter if we call it the dev, ops, or any other team, they should take every release seriously. Otherwise, it is unprofessional.
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Yes there are, one of which is, humans are fallible. So, no, it’s not automatically unprofessional everytime something doesn’t go as intended.
As a programmer, I’ve made bugs too. However, I would never release an untested version and then say, ‘Hey man, humans are fallible.’
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Not testing would be part of human error.
If you are a programmer, you know full well that anything can go wrong with code, often times out of control of the developer, often times from human error (not testing is included in that human error).
The fact that you are making all these claims that contradict your assertion of being a programmer has me doubting you.
failing to test software isn’t simply a ‘human error’—it’s a neglect of basic professional responsibility. Testing is a critical part of the development process, and omitting it can lead to serious consequences, and then, made this thread happen.
I don’t care whether you doubt me or not, just with my advise as above.
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Where you are wrong is in assuming that someone consciously chose not to test something. However, that’s not the only possibility of how it played out.
Again, you have no idea of the internal events that lead to this issue, none.
That narrowmindedness would have any reasonable person doubting you.
I don’t understand the logic behind your agitation. No customer knows what happens internally at a company, but does that mean they can’t give feedback? Every software release must follow the proper process—why should Blizzard be an exception? I feel like I’m talking to someone without common sense.
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