PTR... so let me get this straight...

[Slickrock]

So, to get into the firelands daily area.. I have to do 3 or more days of the dailies to get into the zone?..

I updated my download of the PTR, and got in expecting to be able to take a look. Not gonna do 3 days of dailies just to have a look at a ptr that will close in another 4.. yikes..

It's bad enough without all my addons and keybinds. sigh...

[Sukurachi]

I think the whole point of the PTR is not to give you a sneak peek at upcoming material, but rather to help Blizzard's staff work through any last minute glitches in the new material. PTR = public TEST realm.

[Slickrock]

I think the whole point of the PTR is not to give you a sneak peek at upcoming material, but rather to help Blizzard's staff work through any last minute glitches in the new material. PTR = public TEST realm.

True.. but... if people are required to come back each day for dailies to open up content, that does limit testing, doesn't it?..

So say premades, that have none of the required rep. Sorry, I don't have the time to do the whole hyjal zone to start testing new content. Hats' off you to if you have time to do that.

[TygerDarkstorm]

I think the whole point of the PTR is not to give you a sneak peek at upcoming material, but rather to help Blizzard's staff work through any last minute glitches in the new material. PTR = public TEST realm.

True.. but... if people are required to come back each day for dailies to open up content, that does limit testing, doesn't it?..

So say premades, that have none of the required rep. Sorry, I don't have the time to do the whole hyjal zone to start testing new content. Hats' off you to if you have time to do that.

To be honest, that's entirely why I didn't continue on the PTR. I didn't feel like questing the entirety of Hyjal just to see what I wanted to see.

[Ryannie]

I think the whole point of the PTR is not to give you a sneak peek at upcoming material, but rather to help Blizzard's staff work through any last minute glitches in the new material. PTR = public TEST realm.

True.. but... if people are required to come back each day for dailies to open up content, that does limit testing, doesn't it?..

So say premades, that have none of the required rep. Sorry, I don't have the time to do the whole hyjal zone to start testing new content. Hats' off you to if you have time to do that.

To be honest, that's entirely why I didn't continue on the PTR. I didn't feel like questing the entirety of Hyjal just to see what I wanted to see.

As a Marksman hunter, getting to the area when you start the dailies only took two hours. It wasn't that bad considering I was one shooting everything.

[TygerDarkstorm]

I just didn't see the point in doing the entire zone of Hyjal on the PTR just to get to the dailies to see the new rares. If I'm going to do that, I might as well do it on live where the benefits feel more real to me.

[Slickrock]

yeah, I'm too busy with live WoW AH stuff and all.. I just wanted to practice some of the taming techniques..

[Idoru]

I just didn't see the point in doing the entire zone of Hyjal on the PTR just to get to the dailies to see the new rares. If I'm going to do that, I might as well do it on live where the benefits feel more real to me.

Well, instead of using a premade you could just copy your live character.

[TygerDarkstorm]

None of my live characters are high enough or have enough of Hyjal unlocked for the new stuff anyways.

Personally, I feel that the premades should have come with the zone unlocked. They are premades for a reason.

[CrystalKitten]

The point of the test realm is to test stuff, not as a free trial. Also, they have to allow testing for ALL the way up from nothing. What if there's some bug that causes characters that have never quested in hyjal before to start further ahead than they should, or be unable to get to the new area?

That's my own personal opinion though. You should only join the test/betas if you're willing to play as all other people would from scratch, and actually help in working through the content as intended in live servers to ensure that it is bug free.

It's probably important that they test the content progression for both those who have already completed hyjal, AND those that haven't.

If you don't wanna beta test, and run through content as intended just to "see the new stuff" then you should probably just wait for it to come to the live servers. I ran a browser based web game for a while, but I had to shut it down as people just didn't seem to understand the concept of "beta testing"... It seems that most people have the idea that "beta" simply means they get to see it first...

[TygerDarkstorm]

I'm well aware that "beta" means testing. I was in the beta for Cataclysm and I made my fair share of reports while I was in there.

However, it's kind of frustrating to test content on a premade character when I have to waste time going through the entirety of Hyjal just so I can see the new stuff. By the way, for what it's worth, seeing can mean testing too. And what of all the others who have gone out there and sit out there daily just to tame the new pets? I didn't realize it was so wrong to want to see these pets and dailies in action and test them out while getting a feel of how I would want to do them in live.

I, personally, don't see the point in clearing the zone on a premade to test that stuff, especially consdering how buggy the Thrall questline was when I went to try it. I couldn't complete it and, sadly, I forgot to ticket it. But if I'm going to spend the time clearing the whole damn zone, I may as well do it on live where the benefits/results are more real. Just my two cents.

[GormanGhaste]

If I'm going to spend the time clearing the whole damn zone, I may as well do it on live where the benefits/results are more real.

No time like the present. From what I hear, it's going to be live in a week anyway.

[TygerDarkstorm]

Exactly. I'm just waiting for it to come out on live after I decided I didn't want to do it on the PTR.
I also figure that works out better for me in the long run since most of the new pets I would like anyway won't be getting homed until their respective hunters level up. I just wanted to get a feel for the zones/taming methods but I'll just wait until next week for it.

[Slickrock]

I would also argue that the PTR isn't real beta testing. It's more like a free preview. The only real user beta testing is with the raiding guilds that actively test with the developers watching. The rest is testing, but if it was a real beta program, they wouldn't have 2 million people download the client.

At least the premades should come with the rep to test the new content.

[CrystalKitten]

The rest is testing, but if it was a real beta program, they wouldn't have 2 million people download the client.

Just a note on that there... the more people you have testing something, the more chance there is of catching and repairing every bug, expecially those which may be more prevalent on certain systems (hardware, drivers, OS, etc.) It's also not Blizzard's fault if people download the PTR client just for a free preview. It's there for mass testing, for finding the bugs that just plain won't be found until you have people on many different systems, who don't know how things are SUPPOSED to work are going through it.

The raiders testing with devs watching are more likely for play flow, style, difficulty, and that type of thing. But testing DOES also involve bug finding. And there can be bugs and glitches in quest lines as well as in everything else.

Their idea with the premades is probably to ensure that some people are testing "from the ground up" so to speak. Making sure they have the gear so they don't have to farm, but still requiring them to test everything else. After all, what if some development with the new daily hub ended up in a minor bug somewhere earlier in Hyjal which made the hub impossible to unlock? If they made it so that all premade characters automatically had everything unlocked, that would never be discovered (you can say how unlikely it is, but it's still possible. Afterall, the previous 4.1 patch pretty much completely messed up ALL aoe/ground targetted spells, which had worked fine before.)

Now, I do kind of understand you want to see the new stuff, try them out, and all that. But I'm just trying to speak from the point of view of someone who has done development that required similar testing. I've seen the things I've talked about... People joining a beta with no intention of testing, bugs which were absolutely absent with my system setup or because I knew how things were SUPPOSED to work and didn't do anything even remotely "unexpected", etc. And that was just with a small php based browser game.. I can't even begin to imagine all the complexities involved in something like WoW.

I'll admit I haven't done the PTR. So I'm not sure if they could have at least made it easier. However, if any of their code had any slightest bit of impact on the previous questing/rep path, they have to ensure that it's getting tested be enough people. You can say "oh, but it didn't" but unless you work for blizz, you don't know for sure


Note: I'm just trying to play devil's advocate and try and help explain why Blizz might have set up the PTR this way, using my own experience testing and developing as a reference. I do understand the arguments being stated here, but thought I might try and offer a possible explanation.