Forum post of the day: Don't be bothered by bugs
by Amanda Dean 
Jan 22nd 2009 at 2:00PM
I don't really need to tell you that WoW has been a little rocky since patch 3.0.8 launched. The forums are filled with players who are angry and threatening to cancel their accounts. There are some that think we need to give a Blizz a break.Snagger of Quel'dorei pointed out that there are risks involved in launching new programming. The PTR cannot quite grasp the effect of millions of users. I've experienced bugs in new software releases in many areas. Everything from the Windows XP security bug in service pack three to software developed for my employer that regularly crashes the computer. We come up with work-arounds and the the developers work to resolve the issue. What we're experiencing is not unique to WoW. If you're missing out on your favorite WoW activity, try something else: run battlegrounds, work on reputation, help some lowbies, roll a healer.
Others refuted this point by saying that Blizzard makes enough money produce a quality product. The OP argued that not all problems can bee solved by throwing money at them. Aquinas of Feathermoon pointed out that his issue is not with the bugs, but with Blizzard's promises that releases will come out when they're done. This patch met Blizz's standards of quality, bugs and all. He suggested that Blizzard should reassess their patching process.
I have faith that Blizzard is working diligently to resolve the issue as quickly as possible. Remember that we were quick to forgive the pain inflicted at Wrath's launch. In due time we will be enjoying a mostly smooth gaming experience once again. When the next patch is released, it will take some time to work out the bugs again. Such is the nature of software patching.
Filed under: Patches, Analysis / Opinion, Bugs, Blizzard, Forums
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
WoWie Zowie Jan 22nd 2009 2:05PM
i hope this doesn't mean bliz is saying let them eat cake, coz i like pizza
Trilynne Jan 22nd 2009 2:06PM
Whaddaya know, Azeroth has something else in common with the real world: sometimes things don't go as planned. :P Give Blizz a break, remember the glitches, and laugh about them later. They reimburse time lost, so perhaps we'll get a bit from this. :P
peagle Jan 22nd 2009 2:09PM
Bugs are part of the game, some of them (the old doodad door) are even beloved, most are tolerated, some despised.
Patch bugs are inevitable, and the people who scream about cancelling accounts are, for the most part, all bark and no bite.
That said, there are bugs... and there are bugs. Quests that are near impossible to complete are annoying but not game breaking. The fact that heroic raids have been all but unplayable since the release of WolK and continue to be so, is not cool at all. It is larger issues such as this, which appear almost ignored in the context of the relatively minor bugs brought on with 3.0.8 which I find disheartening, and truly will lead to canceled accounts.
Firestride Jan 22nd 2009 3:05PM
I believe that this is happening to you. But we've had two nights of 25-man raids, clearing out Naxx and Sarth+1. We have not had unusual connection issues. That's something that strikes me as weird, that some servers have bad connections and others don't.
kalatash Jan 23rd 2009 1:39AM
I have heard this before, but... what IS 'the old doodad door'?
negativegirl0 Jan 22nd 2009 2:10PM
Like cancelling your account or quitting is going to fix the problems. People are stupid. Makes me wonder if people like that go through life whining and bitching when they don't get their way.
Sharkhunt Jan 22nd 2009 2:56PM
Blizzard is a business. Money talks. The forums are there for people to vent, but the only real way to effectively show Blizzard that their service isn't worth the monthly fee is to stop paying it.
Personally, I think that the service is still worth the fee despite the bugs so I'm not threatening to do anything. Despite that, I can understand why someone would want to vote with their subscription fee.
Hicks Jan 22nd 2009 2:11PM
Yah, some of this stuff was not quirks due to the variety of system specs and OS's out there. Were talking about releasing a new Arena ranking system with no testing what so ever done by PTR members. That kind of lax in testing is due to incompetence and we have a right to be a little peeved over the fact that arena's are shut down because of that lax.
The Wintergrasp bug is something I can understand getting through, the Arena debacle is something that deserves compensation to players.
Bannanas Jan 22nd 2009 2:15PM
...and after that we'll have and interview with a whiny little douchebag who bitches and moans when things don't exactly his way all the time. His name's TonyMotorola, and his story's at 12, stick around...
Siona Jan 22nd 2009 2:28PM
People who are angry every time we have bugs in a patch -- AND WE ALWAYS DO -- make me sick. You're all unthankful little ingrates who have nothing better to do than bitch and moan. Last time I checked, Blizzard didn't HAVE to update their content. They don't HAVE to give out a game like this. And if you're still gonna cancel your account over it? Do it, we could play happier without you. -_-
Jasperwind Jan 22nd 2009 2:51PM
We pay them to update their content, so yes they HAVE to. And we also pay for the game, so they aren't giving it out at all.
Reaps Jan 22nd 2009 2:58PM
I have never actually felt compelled to post before, but something in your rant struck me. You are correct, Blizzard does not have to update their content or "give out" a game like this. But, you seem a tad misguided as to why they do. It is not out of the goodness of their hearts or some amazing sense of generosity. It is because they are running a business (and a profitable one at that). By updating and "giving out" (which I might note that they certainly didn't give me the game... I paid for it) the game, they maintain their customer base. Personally, I do not get overly upset about patch bugs or the problems that arise, but to call people that don't like to see their monthly fees go down the drain "unthankful little ingrates" misses the point that this is not a free service that they are volunteering.
Amaxe Jan 22nd 2009 3:04PM
@Siona
Blizzard did not create WoW out of the goodness of their hearts. It is a business. As such, they can either meet the needs of the consumers or the consumers will go elsewhere.
The real reason for the expansions was again, not done out of the goodness of Blizzard's hearts but to maintain and expand their player base for profit.
Now whether anger at Blizzard is justified depends on what they could do and what was out of their control. Things they were aware of and did not fix, or things they should have been aware of... these are things they are responsible for.
Things they had no way of knowing about? Those are not Blizzard's fault.
For example, while it may not be Blizzard's fault that WG crashed at the end of every game, it seems Blizzard can indeed be blamed for the failure to shut down WG when it was a known issue. The bug was not the problem. It was a poor response to a reported issue.
Blizzard has some responsibilities:
1) 11.5 million people +/- are paying Blizzard $15/month in exchange for a product.
2) This product is access to an online game.
3) In order for Blizzard to earn the money they make from the subscriptions, they need to maintain a constant level of server uptime. Failure to maintain this is a failure to provide the promised access in exchange for the money received.
Now when Blizzard fails to maintain the promised access, there are two possibilities: Either it is something they did or could have known about had they investigated, or it is not.
In the first case, Blizzard is to blame and customer anger is reasonable. In the second, it is something out of their control and customer anger is unreasonable.
So a blanket statement about those who are upset is just as unreasonable as a statement blaming blizzard for everything
Xigageshi Jan 22nd 2009 2:17PM
phew! glad to see some sense in these parts again!
ghostcrawler mentioned the other day on the forums 'the game has like 50,000 spells in it'
and after laughing at the absurdly high number for a moment, I thought about it, went to wowhead and looked it up. according to wowhead there are 42155
just think about that a second. if you ever fiddled with world edit, the warcraft III editor. each spell had an easy 50-80 lines of statistics and data. now multiply that by 42155... and remember thats just SPELLS in the game, doesn't count items, which has to be in the hundred thousands if not millions.
this is far and away the biggest game ever made, and its got the biggest playerbase anyone has seen for a game.
the fact that the servers are functioning at all after a patch is a testament to how well they do their jobs up at blizzard.
bugs will sneak through, its the nature of programs. but a bug that effects 10% of users is only a couple hundred or thousand people with a regular run of the mill aplication, but that would be over 1 million players with WoW.
mind bending
Adam R Jan 22nd 2009 2:48PM
Hear, hear!
Jamesisgreat Jan 22nd 2009 3:33PM
I agree - but to a point. I understand that these are really just temporary bugs that will be fixed asap. While they're annoying to a fair few people, it'll be business as usual soon enough.
What I don't really agree with though, and I see it time and again in the comments here, is the idea that 'there's a billion lines of code and of course there's gonna be mistakes and unless you've ever written a billion lines of codes then stfu'. Just because something is complex does not mean that you should expect it to fail first time - if so then flying a newly built plane would be a very risky prospect! It does mean, however, that more rigorous testing should be done before the finished product is released. This patch obviously needed ALOT more testing.
Xigageshi Jan 22nd 2009 3:42PM
well Jamesisgreat, you're comparing planes to programs, which any programmer or plane designer would tell you is incredibly goofy. however imagine that you were building a plane that, when released, had to transform into a car while it was covered in people hanging from every available surface.
i'm not saying programming is easier, nor is one more complex than the other, my point is that its apples to oranges because one moves people from continent to continent, and the other entertains 11.6 million people daily. they're completely different.
Varne Jan 22nd 2009 2:22PM
I guess writers at WoWinsider don't check what they've written *sigh*
Amaxe Jan 22nd 2009 2:22PM
Not sure if they got everything fixed. In Icecrown I started crashing every 5 minutes until I left the zone.
JoeHelfrich Jan 22nd 2009 2:22PM
Speaking as someone that tests software for a living, there is always a missed bug. You just have to react to it as quickly as possible.
Some of this stuff is frankly untestable in the PTR. Opening arenas on the PTR wouldn't have helped; there's no way that there could be enough traffic on a standard PTR to adequately test that code. Opening an arena specific PTR might have, if you found some way to convince the hard core players that they should go play with stuff that isn't going to get them rating points. Probably they took a sample of teams, reduced them to their applicable characteristics, fed them into a model of the new matching system, and decided they liked the results. Somewhere along the line someone screwed up that process--the model wasn't right, an attribute was misset or discarded, whatever.
Life goes on. You suck it up, patch the immediate problem if possible, fix the underlying problem as fast as you can, and improve your testing procedure for next time.
Honestly, I am constantly in awe of Blizzard's ability to keep such a complex system running with as few problems as they do. However hard you think it is to do stuff like this, if you haven't done it, you're underestimating it.