The Queue: When is the MoP beta starting?
by Adam Holisky 
Feb 23rd 2012 at 11:00AM
Today's Queue has a question for you, as well as some of my thoughts on the issue. When is the Mists of Pandaria beta starting?
A press tour is happening next month. Some sort of internal alpha testing is going on now, and assuming a mid- to late-summer release, my guess is that the beta test will happen some time in April, which would give three to four months of testing before it's released (July or August).
And that leads directly to the first question in The Queue today ...
Skozz asked:
Any chance that the press event might be the time that Blizzard says, "Hey, it's Mists of Pandaria Beta time!"? Seems like a decent enough reason to not leak information. Something like how, at E3, companies go, "And you can download it TODAY!"
I doubt it. We know Blizzard's got an internal alpha going on that's most likely only accessible within Blizzard HQ, and we know that Mists was in a nicely polished state at BlizzCon 2011. However, that's a long way off from a public beta, especially one that more than 1 million players from the Annual Pass are going to be playing. As I said above, I'd think April (or May at the high end).
Puntable asked:
Why can't all loot be deposited directly into your bags, like it does with loot from bosses?
There are a couple of good reasons.
First, it stops gold farmers and botters from easily farming massive piles of mobs. Of course, computer-aided clicking gets around this, but that kind of behavior is detected a lot easier than one click to loot everything would be.
Second, it provides a natural pause in the gameplay. While you might not like such breaks, the pauses are necessary in order to have a good flow. You want action, then a break, then some action, then a break, and so on ... Without it, you'll get constant killing and play, and that will lead to burnout both in the short and long term. It's to Blizzard's advantage to have some natural low points in the action, and this is one of them. (So are turning in quests, transportation, selling grays.)
Saikoujin asked:
Whatever happened to WoW x64? I know there was a big hullabaloo about it when the patch dropped a few weeks ago, but was it ever *actually* released? I seem to recall it being pulled. Or is it there, but only as a 'use at your own discretion, not yet fully supported' feature? I'd love to use the x64 version, but only once it's been fully vetted.
It's out, but it's just in a beta state. Take a look at our post for the download links. I've been running it constantly, and I'm having no problem. In fact, I've noticed a frame rate increase and overall faster loading times. Quite nice for my raids.
Puntable also asked:
Do you think the portals to the Cata zones will be removed from Stormwind and Orgrimmar when MoP launches?
No. They're necessary to get to the places without having to pull your hair out. Think of trying to get to Vashj'ir on your own, without a portal. I'd rather not, in a big way.
Blizzard removed the other portals from Shat and Dalaran so players wouldn't use them as their home cities anymore. Players are never going to use Vashj'ir as their home base, so there's no real reason to remove them. They'll end up being used in MoP in the same way the portal to the Dark Portal is used now.
Have questions about the World of Warcraft? The WoW Insider crew is here with The Queue, our daily Q&A column. Leave your questions in the comments, and we'll do our best to answer 'em!Filed under: The Queue
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 8)
brian Feb 23rd 2012 11:07AM
Will bliz ever have evolving enviroments that change due to your server's actions? Sort of like the sunwell event where we all did quests there and we unlocked more and more over time. I think bliz could do something really cool with this.
RGSmith Feb 23rd 2012 11:13AM
I think that would be amazing. I also thought all new mmos should design their worlds with this in mind.
Grovinofdarkhour Feb 23rd 2012 11:24AM
In Skyrim, without giving too much away, there's a questline in which, if you pick a side in the wider conflict, you are on the battlefield and actively participate in the taking of a city held by the other side. The game world is changed politically and socially by your actions in a permanent way.
I would LOVE to see stuff like that in WoW - raze enemy cities, take control of zones for your faction - but I assume, on the off-chance it ever happened (which I have no real hopes of, but still), for gameplay reasons they'd restrict it to PVP servers, and probably not even all of those. And then when rolling a new toon you could choose your server based on a new criteria: its current geopolitical landscape. :P
Aalokor Feb 23rd 2012 11:31AM
I think we're more likely to see repeated events like the elemental invasions than the big one-time events of old. Blizzard has been moving away from doing things that only a small portion of the player base will see.
Imnick Feb 23rd 2012 11:34AM
I'm not sure if they'll be effected by player actions but from some of the maps they displayed at Blizzcon it looks like Pandaria is going to evolve with every major patch, starting out as an almost untouched Pandaren continent and with increasing Horde and Alliance military presence and fighting every time more raids are released
brian Feb 23rd 2012 11:39AM
@grovinofdarkhour, that is the idea im going for, something that would make all the servers different after a certain ammount of time but I can understand this would go horribly on 90% hord 10% alliance servers or vice versa, but this would go well with if bliz plans to fix population problems
Edymnion Feb 23rd 2012 12:59PM
This would also present a real issue with server population control.
Right now, all servers are equal in terms of what the core game offers. The only differences between any two given servers tends to be the number of people on it, and the things directly related to the number of people (pug raiding is easier on high pop servers, usually a better economy on high pop servers, etc). However, there is no "Server X is better for Horde because it controls 3 more zones than server Y does" for good reason. Once a server gets "good", people will want to move to it. The more people that try to move to it, the faster it hits capacity and the dreaded login queues begin.
On the flip side, "bad" servers would just get worse as people started a mass exodus away from them. Soon there could be 50 servers up, but only 5 that people actually want to play on while dozens are barren wastelands. After all, whats the incentive for the masses to spread out evenly across realms to help with Blizz's server load if there is active reason to not go to them?
Sure, some people would go just because its a blank slate they could mold, but most people wouldn't.
So yeah, I don't think we will ever see a time where you can just log into a random server and be able to tell which one you were on because of how different it was.
Smashbolt Feb 23rd 2012 1:00PM
All it would take, even on a balanced server, is for one side to get a foothold on changing the mutable portions of the world and slowly tilt that server to their faction's "advantage" and people from the "fail" side will jump ship.
Just like people sick of losing BGs with their main faction will transfer servers to one in the battlegroup where Horde has an 85% win rate or whatever.
evoxpisces Feb 23rd 2012 1:13PM
I doubt it would happen but that's a really cool idea! It's a better way to make each server unique. But seeing as Blizz is trying to make each server less unique, a la multi-server dungeons and raids and what have you, I don't see it ever happening. It would still be really cool though.
Twill Feb 23rd 2012 1:13PM
A lot of the new 1-60 quests function like that. It all started in Icecrown when you help the death knights take over a base. Now, go quest as Alliance in Swamp of Sorrows, or Horde in Stonetalon Mountains.
You DEFINITELY participate in some major battles that cause the end result to be different than the beginning.
Side-note: Blizz, give mages a new portal location when Theramore is removed >.>
eel5pe Feb 23rd 2012 1:29PM
I feel like they're unlikely to do a faction v faction event for the reasons listed above, but also because of what they learned from the AQ gate events. The two factions weren't in direct competition to open the gates, but each side had to contribute a certain amount of turn-ins. Servers with extremely imbalanced factions would often have one side impatiently waiting on the other, to the point where dedicated raiders would open second accounts to re-roll toons of the other faction (this was before faction transfers and the ability to roll as both factions on a PvP server), or farm mats just to sell really cheap on the cross-faction AH. It was a huge mess.
Of course the problems that come with realm imbalance go much deeper than an inability to implement world events...
@Smashbolt: battlegroups don't matter, and haven't mattered in a LONG time. This applies to RDF, LFR, BGs, and rated BGs, with the sole exception being arenas.
brian Feb 23rd 2012 2:36PM
I think in alot of ways dungeon finder and lfr are a blessing but also a curse. Sure you get into groups much faster but you lose touch with your server. Id like to see things you could do on your own server that reward greatly and aren't contained in a small quest hub. Something that could potentialy get us into other cities to hang out in. Because of dungeon finder, when im out and about playing an alt and questing, every zone is a barren wasteland, its so much easier to click a button, kill stuff, and get rewards, and repeat until your 85. I miss the days where no matter where I went people would be there. I like dungeon finder but I miss the days where we had to travel to the instance.
fudge Feb 23rd 2012 4:19PM
@twill
Interestingly, questing as Alliance in the Swamp of Sorrows will show you how your actions have no effect on the political landscape whatsoever.
celtspatssox Feb 23rd 2012 5:28PM
@ Grovinofdarkhour thats so much harder to do in an mmo because of the player base that isn't doing exactly what you're doing. in skyrim you're the only one experiences that. there would need to be massive phasing if wow tried to to this.
Grovinofdarkhour Feb 23rd 2012 11:09AM
The other thing to remember about the annual pass is that it wasn't a million people signing up for the beta; it was a million people signing up for a mount, another game entirely free, and oh yeah, a beta key. Having been in the Wrath beta - in which I leveled my test DK about two levels, said "nifty", realized I didn't want the live experience to be ruined, and never went back again - it's a real safe bet only a fraction of that million spend more than a couple hours in the beta.
Nick Feb 23rd 2012 11:38AM
For me it depends when the beta comes, if it comes tomorrow then I'll still be failing on pretty much every heroic DS boss (only heroic kill is Morchok, but I'm proud of that one!) and so won't care about the beta. If we're 8/8 or have given up, then I'll be in MoP beta rather than live.
Also remember those of us with the pass only have a promise to get access. Beta could run March-May, and 1/3 of sign ups get access in March, another 1/3 in April and so on, they never said how long we'd get access for, so although 1 million people will get to experience the beta, it may be that only a couple of hundred thousand of us get it at any given time.
Luotian Feb 23rd 2012 11:56AM
I think I'm in the minority-- I signed up specifically for beta. I loved the one time I got to spend on the PTR, trying out new things and figuring out mechanics before anyone else. It was more relaxed about death and a blast. I can't wait to get my hands on all this new stuff and try every single bit of it out (even though I have no intention of playing a monk on live)
arixian Feb 23rd 2012 11:58AM
Grovin,
You are probably right about that; however, from a planning and prep perspective Blizzard has to expect them all to actively participate throughout the course of the Beta or plan for a tiered entrance into the Beta because if they go by your assumption and then the opposite happens it would be a nightmare of complaints and bad press etc.
Bapo Feb 23rd 2012 12:07PM
Not only ruining the experience for live, but quite a few people will be deterred by all the resets to characters, re-downloading of the beta itself, and all the bugs.
I was in the cata beta, it was fun, but I think that may have been the cause of me never rolling a goblin. I enjoyed Kazan, but HATED WITH A BURNING PASSION the jungle part (town in a box never really worked).
Favorite thing for me was the bug with Crusader Aura and Aura Mastery :P
Also having a whale shark chasing me on land, which was actually pretty terrifying when you just see the fin start to pop out of the water and the rest of it slowly rising and you're like "huh what the... OH MY GOD I NEED TO GET OUT OF HERE RIGHT NOW OH CRAP OH CRAP"
Narayana Feb 23rd 2012 12:13PM
@Nick
Although it's true that Blizzard never really said how much beta time we'd be getting, they'd be skating on pretty thin ice if annual pass users got a distinctly different beta experience than what we saw in the WotLK and Cata open betas. I am not talking about legal issues, here, of course. The Annual Pass agreement is vague enough that they're protected there.
However, when you have a million people signing up with a certain set of (generally reasonable based on experience) expectations and those expectations are not met, you're asking for trouble. Someone will complain and someone will report on it and that creates a PR problem that Blizzard would rather not have.
I think Blizz is essentially banking on exactly what Grovin says. There will be some people who jump at the chance to actually test the beta, but they've probably got numbers that tell them only a certain percentage of players who enroll in a beta actually spend any real time in it.