wow Blizzard Addresses Race to World First and Untested Bosses

[Staff 1,488]

 

In a rare commentary on the Race to World First (aside from congratulating winners and competitors), Blizzard have posted about the upcoming Sepulcher of the First ones race, how this one will be different due to the untested bosses, potentially removing even dungeon journal entries for bosses like these in the future, and more. 

RWF (Source)

Hey, remember this thread? We do! A new raid is an effort that spans months of work for us, so we often capture feedback like this earlier in the process, and then later we can see how some of your feedback had a positive impact.

I think it goes without saying, but I’ll say anyway that the Race for World First is a super exciting time for our team as well. When we were still in the office pre-pandemic, we had a big TV on the wall where we’d have streams going so we could watch and share in the fun (and occasionally panic when something weird happened). These days we watch on a group call, but the excitement is just as real and we’re very much looking forward to this next race.

To address the main point here (saving more surprises for race day), I’ll start by stating the obvious: there are upsides to testing things on the PTR and good historical reasons for doing so. We want players to have the best experience possible, and PTR testing allows us to cast a wider net for both bugs and feedback. That being said, the points brought up here are also valid - it really is cool to have surprises after the race begins, and this is a big reason why we’ve traditionally avoided testing the Mythic version of the final boss.

In light of player feedback and given the structure of Sepulcher, we saw an opportunity to try an experiment and take this concept a bit further by skipping PTR tests for the final 3 bosses entirely. Doing this isn’t without risk, but we want to see how it plays out. It’s genuinely cool that nobody will have fought these 3 bosses before tomorrow, and that even with the dungeon journal they don’t quite know what to expect.

Letholas

But, would it really be such a bad thing to keep the Mythic Dungeon Journal locked until after the race? Or open it until X number of guilds kill the Mythic encounter?

The honest answer is that for as much work as that would entail, the dungeon journal doesn’t really give away the most important details of a fight. It might tell you that Painsmith has Spikes and that Spikes will kill you, but it won’t tell you what the patterns are, how often they come, or how to deal with them. Nobody knew there was a gapless row of Spikes until guilds actually got in there.

Of course, we’re always open to feedback on the dungeon journal and ways it could be better, and I don’t want to close the door on further changes to how we do things in the future.

We’re looking forward to an exciting race and we wish the best of luck to all competitors. It’s sure to be full of memorable moments and we’ll doubtless learn things that will help us make better raids in the future. Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts!

[Lac 4]

Curious as how it will turn out, always loved these 2 weeks of RWF and hey! At least they aknowledged it and addressed it in advance.

[SidonisAntares 290]

So RWF might actually last beyond a single raid lockout this time?

[Wolft 1]

Russian servers are still running and Russian players are still not informed about the war in Ukraine. Blizzard, when are you finally going to show some composure!

 

[SidonisAntares 290]

11 minutes ago, Wolft said:

Russian servers are still running and Russian players are still not informed about the war in Ukraine. Blizzard, when are you finally going to show some composure!

 

Not everyone who plays on Russian dominant servers lives in Russia, cutting off new purchases (including subscription renewals) originating from Russia lets them act without punishing Russian speaking players living outside Russia, who may not even be Russian citizens.

[Prophet001 598]

Jailer Mythic phase confirmed 100%

[Nym85 72]

1 hour ago, SidonisAntares said:

Not everyone who plays on Russian dominant servers lives in Russia, cutting off new purchases (including subscription renewals) originating from Russia lets them act without punishing Russian speaking players living outside Russia, who may not even be Russian citizens.

Honestly I'd think it has more to do with the currency being worthless than punishing anyone. Sure they might say otherwise but the actual financial concern would probably be the former.

[Migol 433]

Problem I see here is that no testing makes it much more likely that the final boss will fall over and die to a strategy Blizzard didn't foresee which trivilizes the encounter.   Then Blizzard fixes it and other guilds are stuck for days.   Dilutes the excitement/victory a lot.     Same if there are major bugs, or if Blizzard hard-changes encounters during progression for guilds.

[Mishmish 65]

10 hours ago, Wolft said:

Russian servers are still running and Russian players are still not informed about the war in Ukraine. Blizzard, when are you finally going to show some composure!

 

This won't inform them, it will just hurt citizens in a totalitarian regime. Sometimes thats inevitable, but this seems pointlessly petty. 

Edited March 8, 2022 by Mishmish

[Mishmish 65]

Its a decent experiment. Sometimes it will work out, sometimes not, but i think its worth the shot at least on occasion. 

[Dronsipal 1]

23 hours ago, Mishmish said:

This won't inform them, it will just hurt citizens in a totalitarian regime. Sometimes thats inevitable, but this seems pointlessly petty. 

No-one is saying punish ordinary Russians, although they will be the ones suffering from sanctions. What's inevitable is that the Russians are not being informed about what's really happening in Ukraine , so anything Blizz does to even mention the war is a good thing.