Please actually test SL

Community General Discussion
1

I know that Beta tests have become more and more valuable as a marketing tool with streamers and content creators being involved. I’m not going to say that it’s “all” they’re used for now, but I do believe that the actual testing process and the value of a beta outside of the marketing has declined… A large part of this could be due to staffing changes at blizzard. I’m not here to whine, complain, or accuse.

I’m here to ask that you put a little more focus on testing.

Open it up to more people than usual. Get a large sample size for this expansion.
Get players from all walks, casual, hardcore, raiders, collectors, PVPers, etc.

Get people who are active and communicate. Look for people who’ve reported Wise Mari not rotating anymore or other random bugs in 8.3. Not people who use the bug report tool to complain, but the ones that actually take that little bit of extra time to report a bug. I’m sure it’s a metric you can pull out of your endless data. These are people who aren’t going to just power past a bug or attempt to exploit it, they actually care a little bit.

Still definitely bring in your content creators and influencers, that matters, get the ones that are going to actually test and provide real feedback, even if it’s feedback you don’t like. But get a variety. Just off the top of my head, you’ve got Taliesin and Evitel, Preach, Bellular, Hazelnuttygames, etc. Those actually represent a decent spread of player interests and “intensities” they also word their feedback pretty well and seem to actually care about the game outside of content creation and their ‘livelihood’. There are many more I could list.

But most importantly… players, and lots of them. beat your system up. I think a lot is riding on Shadowlands being a success and it being a runaway success would be a massive benefit to Blizzard and WoW in general.

So please… please test SL appropriately and put some real effort into it. A lot of us are willing to BE your missing QA department, give the people who want to help a chance.

*disclaimer, this has nothing to do with my own personal interest to be in the Beta, I’m probably not the best choice for a beta tester anyway, I’m mostly an alt junky and lore nut. I just care about the game and want it to improve.

14 Likes
2

This is a mistake…

Testing isn’t about features blizzard decides that themselves regardless of feedback as can be seen from past expansions of late.

Testing really should be reserved for the best of the best of raiders and arena players with exceptions being made for theorycrafters.

3

The important changes and decisions occur during (and largely before) alpha.

Once beta hits and they’re letting in the unwashed masses, they’re just working out kinks. Making sure quests can be completed and trying to head off major exploits, stuff like that.

If you think they’re going to redesign classes or major expansion systems based on beta feedback, you’re confused.

9 Likes
4

Now that would be a huge mistake. Raids and Arenas would be tested but nothing else would.

8 Likes
5

This.

Blizz decided the mechanics long ago. They spent the last two years building the mechanics. You’re basically being asked to test a building and find broken door handles and cracked tiles. They’re not going to tear the building down and rebuild it because you don’t like it. For whatever reason that is.

7 Likes
6

It is mostly all that needs to be tested. Quests will be done while leveling. Unless its a stress test bllizzard shouldn’t flood the servers if players are unable to give the same quality of feedback as others.

A lot of people over estimate what they actually can contribute.

7

lolwut? I literally can’t come up with a better reponse to how wrong this is. You do realize an expansion includes more than raids and arenas, right?

9 Likes
8

Beta is mostly for marketing and small bug fixes. By Beta, the design is set in stone

6 Likes
9

I do but there is a vastly different level of complexity between other forms of content.

A quest can break but not to the same degree as other content. It also offers no useful feedback in terms of balancing.

10

That isn’t the problem. The problem is that when Blizz does get feedback, they just ignore it.

1 Like
11

This is how you get problems like the Alliance starting quest in Pandaria that held up the whole faction for several hours.

4 Likes
12

That’s ridicules. All the quests including the ones in old zones due to the level squish all old raids. All covenants all classes and specs all professions. There’s so much more than Raids and Arenas.

5 Likes
13

Too bad this will never happen… or maybe I mean it is great this will never happen…

2 Likes
14

Outside of the scaling system for old raids and quests everything else is tested by its proximity to end game content.

There really,really is very little that all levels of players can bring compared to the best of the best and theorycrafters. It just isn’t something that is beneficial. Later on when things need to be stress tested sure but not during alpha.

15

When feedback doesn’t line up with game design goals (time played metric), then they ignore it.

16

Oh, I don’t think that at all. But I do think that we can test the systems they put in place and if there are issues like balance, or them not working as intended, etc, we provide feedback to get them balanced and adjusted.

They have the ability to float mechanics and adjust things to make something better, that’s what testing is supposed to be for. Having more people actively playing the beta means you’ve got more datapoints floating out there to find bugs and you’ve got a larger sample size to look at balance issues. If they go a month into a test and pull logs for X dungeon and see that a class is dramatically underperforming DPS wise with a small pool of data that could be a statistical anomaly, with a larger sample size you can start to actually see trends and have actionable data.

Not implying that at all. What I’m saying is, you need a decent data set. You need people who WILL actually test things and WILL provide feedback that’s viable. You also just need a lot of people in there, doing all the various content in order to get your own internal data from logs. If 5 groups run a dungeon and you pull that data it’s no where near as viable as if 50 groups run a dungeon.

I agree that we’re not going to get massive changes to things like mechanics or systems, but with solid testing you can balance those things. I can go into a number of scenarios where things made it to live because of poor testing / follow up practices and balance issues that ‘could’ have been resolved in beta / ptr. If they go hard, heavy, and early, we can skip a lot of stuff hitting Live because they’ll have time to actually take actions on the data with a larger pool of information, earlier.

Again… I’m not trying to be rude, but I feel like you really have no idea what you’re talking about here. There are a LOT of things that go into an expansion, especially an expansion that’s adding entirely new systems and mechanics, squishing our levels, adding a new leveling process/area with 2 different ‘versions’ of scaling for every expansion, and who knows what else. That’s just from the limited information we have from Blizzcon and a couple of Q&As/Interviews.

Given how well BFAs gone, I’d hope they adjust a little moving forward… I’m tryin to stay optimistic still.

What this guy said.

4 Likes
17

The more people you have testing the more bugs will be found and reported. Now those bugs actually being fixed is another matter. So you are simply wrong.

But I just realized who I’m responding to so never mind.

2 Likes
18

This actual scenario happened during MoP and it was seen as such a bad idea they stated they never would make pre ordering a expansion grounds for getting test access that early…

The fact im generally right about things before they come true later really shouldn’t be seen as a black mark against me.

19

Except, nowhere did I say “Give beta to people who pre-order” That’s buying a ticket to ride. I specifically said to pick good testers and get a lot of them.

So, no, this “actual scenario” didn’t happen in MoP.

4 Likes
20

Yeah, going to need some source on this… LOL!

2 Likes