So blizz, I am hoping the title brought you in so you could explain something. You are taking the time to target an addon that you believe makes things easier. Yet here we are several years into the game and you don't seem to have time to fix the numerous bugs that abound. You don't even seem to have time to fix the ones in wrath. How can you really justify putting time into breaking something when you won't take the time to fix stuff?

tldr: How can blizz justify taking the time to break something when they don't seem to have the time to fix the bugs that have been around for years. It gets worse when you consider they are about to release yet another expansion.

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tldr: How can blizz justify taking the time to break something when they don't seem to have the time to fix the bugs that have been around for years. It gets worse when you consider they are about to release yet another expansion.

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The question is a bit too generalized to really formulate a response you might consider helpful. In truth, many bugs and gameplay issues are addressed every single patch. We have a full internal system for documenting and prioritizing bugs within the game, as well as milestones for when they need to be addressed.

The issue with your question is that a lot of bugs to which you're probably referring relate to gameplay. The functionality fix to prevent third party addons like AVR from working the way they currently do is deployed by our user interface developers. They are responsible for all UI changes and fixing UI bugs. The structure of our quality assurance and development teams is more complicated than it seems you recognize, so there isn't really a clear answer to such a blanket question like, "how do you intentionally break stuff before fixing other stuff that shouldn't be broken?"

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Thank you Blizzard for such an amazing Anniversary contest!

Right when I clicked on the homepage and saw that glorious contest, I knew that it was going to be a big one. After all, with several million subscribers, the potential for a good contest was amazing.

LET ME JUST SAY THAT I WAS NOT DISAPPOINTED!

Who could deny the majesty of TWO $100 gift certificates given away per day for a WHOLE WEEK. I'm really just shaking in my boots here imagining the resources that you guys must have siphoned into a contest of such EPIC proportions. How did Vivendi agree to such a flamboyant and wasteful throwing around of funds?

I can't wait to see what other prizes are awarded in the coming weeks- if they can exceed the incredible prize value of $1,400 set by the first week (NOT LIKELY) this could be the most crazy, off the hook contest since the time when they raffled off a mountain bike at my dentist's office when I was 13.

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I'm so glad you're excited about the contest! No need to wait to see what's coming in the next weeks. I'll post it here from the rules. http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/contests/anniversary06/rules.xml

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World of Warcraft 2nd Year Anniversary Main Sweepstakes. Potential winners will be chosen at random as follows:

Each business day during the first week of the Sweepstakes Period (October 30, 2006 through November 5, 2006 ), two (2) potential winner will be chosen at random from all eligible entrants to receive a Jinx Gift Certificate with an approximate retail value of $100.00.

Each business day during the second week of the Sweepstakes Period (November 6, 2006 through November 12, 2006), two (2) potential winner will be chosen at random from all remaining eligible individuals to receive (1) "Razer Copperheadâ„¢ Precision mouse, (1) Razer Mantisâ„¢ Control / Speed Mat and (1) Barracuda HP-1 Headset with an approximate retail value of $250.00.

Each business day during the third week of the Sweepstakes Period (November 13, 2006 through November 19, 2006), one (1) potential winner will be chosen at random from all remaining eligible individuals to receive a Apple 80 GB iPod with Video Playback and (1) $100.00 JINX Gift Certificate with an approximate retail value of $500.00.

Each business day during the fourth week of the Sweepstakes Period (November 20, 2006 through November 26, 2006), one (1) potential winners will be chosen at random from all remaining eligible individuals to receive a 1GB NVIDIA® GeForce® 7950 graphics card and (1) $100.00 JINX Gift Certificate with an approximate retail value of $1,000.00.

The approximate retail value of all prizes awarded during the Sweepstakes is $11,000.00
World of Warcraft 2nd Year Anniversary Legacy Players Sweepstakes. Potential winners will be chosen at random to receive a prize as follows:

Each business day during the fifth week of the Sweepstakes Period (November 27, 2006 through December 2, 2006), one (1) potential winner will be chosen at random from among all eligible individuals to receive an XPS Gaming Laptop (1) $100.00 JINX Gift Certificate and 2-year World of Warcraft subscription with an approximate retail value of $2,500.00.

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It's players like you that make these contests all worth it! Thanks!

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Neth, do you have a link to the list of winners so far? I see it started yesterday, and wasn't able to come up with a list of the current winners.

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You would need to send in for it using the below information-

Winners List, Rules Request.
For a copy of the winners list, send a stamped, self-addressed, business-size envelope after January 10, 2007 and before June 30, 2007 to Sponsor at the following address: "World of Warcraft 2nd Year Anniversary Sweepstakes -Winners List," c/o Blizzard Entertainment, P.O. Box 18979, CA 92612. To obtain a copy of these rules, send a stamped, self-addressed business-size envelope to Sponsor at the following address: World of Warcraft 2nd Year Anniversary Sweepstakes -Rules Request, c/o Blizzard Entertainment, P.O. Box 18979, Irvine CA 92612. Residents of WA and VT may omit return postage on rules requests.


I have a feeling it's a tad short as of yet. :) (No I'm not irritated. I'm having a good day so far and find humor in this thread.) Please just enjoy the contest. Everyone has the chance to win something and I wish you all the best of luck!

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Yet somehow that is more important than fixing the bugs that people experience numerous times each day. Well I got my answer, they are two separate teams. So yeah, it doesn't matter. I just hope that maybe with the new expansion blizz can devote some of it's ui people to fixing bugs. They seem to be much more efficient.

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It's a lot more than two separate teams. There are content teams which include everything from encounter design to quest design. There are systems teams which include things like UI, class and items design. There are several development leads with several employees reporting to each of them. Each of these teams of employees are very busy working on their specialty. It's not as easy as pulling the UI lead and his team over to focus on gameplay bugs. That's not their specialty and they're not going to be able to address those bugs appropriately, not to mention the fact that it means UI features and fixes would fall behind.

In addition to the many developers we have sectioned off into specific specialties for creating, fixing and improving content, we have teams of producers managing projects for each of the development teams to ensure appropriate priorities are placed on every task that comes through the pipeline. Believe me, a lot of tasks come through the pipeline and all of these guys are working very long hours these days.

The functionality of AVR is much more impacting on gameplay than some of the bugs you mentioned as examples earlier. Sure, some of the bugs you listed can be very frustrating when encountered, but the majority of players tend not to encounter those bugs on a regular basis. For instance, getting stuck in a wall when feared really sucks, however, it's extremely rare. It's also extremely difficult to implement an absolute fix so that it never happens again. That one specific example of a bug might actually be hundreds of smaller bugs which fit into the category of a larger bug you happen to notice. Random fear pathing maybe the cause, but the bug might actually exist solely within extremely specific portions of terrain in numerous places throughout the world. Sometimes it's difficult to even reproduce a good number of the bugs reported. Our quality assurance teams work tirelessly to try and verify every bug which gets documented, but some are so quirky we might not be able to replicate the specific situation which caused it to happen.

A bug that affects maybe 100 people a month, even if it's a bug which causes the game to crash under very specific conditions, will be considered a lower priority than fixing something which allows third-party addons to trivialize raid encounters way more than we would like for tens of thousands of players a week.

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The other part to this, is while bugs can be a pain in the ass to track down and find, breaking AVR should have been a relatively quick and easy fix, even if the whole UI team was one person.

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This is correct. There are at least seven guys on the UI team that I can think of off the top of my head, plus a producer or two to track and prioritize their work.

The size and scope of this game, and the amount of time and number of staff members it takes to maintain and improve it go beyond what a lot of people can fathom.

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My question is has anyone from blizzard that is working to destroy this or had the say in to destroy this accually progressed to the top level of ICC , IE heroic 25 LK?

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Yes.

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While not using premade characters with superGM buffs ?

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The creators of this game play it too. News at 11!

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Funny then how bugs like the one on Cthun or other countless endwing boss's seem to magically slip by the watchfull eyes of the blizzard employs who play this game.

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You're using a frustrating bait-and-switch tactic. You were complaining that the AVR mod is being broken in the next patch and asking if the people working here who want it broken even participate in endgame raiding. I said "yes." Now you're arguing this mustn't be possible because bugs (like one three years ago) got past internal testing before a specific encounter went live.

Totally different topic dude.

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Actually Neth, the only thing I'm concerned about is having the player send out an official mailed request for the winnners of the contest. Is that normal for a sweepstakes? So basically if I win, I won't know about it if I don't mail out a request to you guys to be notified of it. Wouldn't it be easier just to post the winners on the site? Or better yet, just e-mail the winners. I dunno, just seemed kind of odd.

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It's normal for people to have to mail in for a list of contest winners if they aren't a winner. Winners will be notified. If it says we are going to post winners on the website (which someone pointed out it does) then I'm sure we will be doing that too. :)

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Screw you all. How about a florida only contest. I'm sick of getting screwed.

Damn discrimination.

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From a prior post of mine today-

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Unfortunately there are laws in place in some states and regions that make running contests difficult in them. The best thing you can do in this case is to get in touch with the Attorney General in your state/region and voice your complaint about it. Perhaps if enough people let them know it's a problem, they may change the laws that hinder these sorts of contests.

Unfortunately there isn't anything more we can do on our end.

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The point im trying to make here is, For you to break a mod becuase a select group of people complain about how easy and how it shouldnt be allowed it is without using the mod on these endwing boss's in heroic mode themselves and seeing the usefull information they put out is rediculus. High end raiders qqing about it makeing it to easy for other guilds to kill boss's is absurd, iv seen first hand a entire guild freshly equiped with this mod and still wipe to people getting hit by goo and other things. The addon isnt gona make the raider, the raider makes the raider. This addon just puts out information that should have been available to have been made visible long ago. Wit the exception of rangefinder we have no real way to judge distances except with guessing and using a class to gain min distance or max distance and then call it out. The ability to do a john madden in the game in the enviroment is amazing and like i said should have been brought in long ago to a further extent than that of smoke flares and Moonbeams.

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We're breaking it because we didn't intend for addons to be able to use the 3D space to automate spacial relations for players. It comes a little closer to "do everything and go everywhere this mod tells you" than anything like it before. The decision wasn't made because there were complaints about it. The decision was made because we don't like that functionality.

With all of the complaints about the game being too easy, I'd expect endgame raiders like yourself to respect the fact that we don't want addon authors visually telling you exactly where to be and when at all times.

If you think some sort of spacial recognition feature should be incorporated into the default user interface, it's worth noting on our Suggestions forum.

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So Neth a quick question.

If I cancel my account for the first 2 weeks but come back in say the last 3 weeks am I still eligible for the contest?

I would really rather avoid the possibility of winning the Jinx gear (No offense to them some interesting things but being 36 and a Business professional I was really hoping to save wearing a big yellow question mark on my head until I retired and contracted Alzheimer's) I suppose I could always give it away...

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I guess it depends on the business you are in. It might come in handy for some clients to know you are the one they go to when they need to. It might make you even stand out a bit to the boss (if you aren't the boss) ;) Besides, nothing says you'd have to wear it to work OR even choose a hat. They have many goodies to choose from.

From the wording you would need to be in good standing from the point of October 29th with an active account to participate in any of the contests.

People can also contact us at the following email for more information or to send us questions- contestquestions@blizzard.com

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And as always Blizzard leaves international players out of yet another contest... cant they undesrtand that the comunity is not only in the states? that a lot of us r overseas?

DIVERSITY

L2notBRacist Blizzard

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World of Warcraft Europe runs their own seperate contests for fans in their region.

http://www.wow-europe.com/en/index.xml;jsessionid=C3F77F5B7F3DFA8EFBAD9B30AAFB9BFE.app14

Also, it wouldn't be racism. It would be nationalism of which still wouldn't apply. We cover many regions and each does many things for their community. :)

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I Understand now how you dont want it to draw on the 3d environment , But instead of breaking it or shutting it down, couldnt you work out a medium with the Dev to where the addon can be used but change the way things are displayed through the addon? Saying you dont like addons that tell you were to move and when to move and how to move is pretty much counter to all the hundreds of addons that exist that tell you these things, from bossmods that tell you when you should move becuase somthing is happening on you to Power Aura mods and such that tell you when you have somthing on you. The only time that i think that addons played up to your standards was durring MC and BWL days becuase people just hadnt develed to much into the LUA codeing.

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Just to be clear, there's a difference between a mod telling you what needs to happen versus showing you. AVR takes the pitch, yaw and roll (if you will) of your character to visually represent where you need to be and when. That's very distinct compared to a tool like DBM playing a "run away little girl" sound file when you're in a danger spot. It's not visually showing you in the 3D game space where to run to get out of danger.

In case anyone notices, I was removing a post that had no purpose in this thread (political and innapropriate) and accidentally removed the originating post. :( Sorry about that.

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help! help! we're being opressed! :D

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Bloody peasant!