Is PTR healthy for the game?

Community General Discussion
1

Soon as PTR is out all it seems to benefit is content creators and haters.

Day after it’s released you got 100s of Youtube videos showing absolutely everything available. Writing up guides ,allowing data miners to find everything they can.

Props to their effort they put into that. But personally , when a patch comes out before I log in , I already know everything and where to go ,what I should start doing. Also know best sources to make some insane gold etc.

Before 9.1.5 came out , I already had a plan to farm research , how to obtain the new mounts etc I know the strats for the new Mega dungeon. It was a google search or Youtube search away.

It ruins the enjoyment of figuring out things , speaking with other players. Doing things together … you know like you’re supposed to in a MMO right ?

No guides, no PTR , no Data mining would enforced that aspect of socialising and community. What made Vanilla so good was that everyone was clueless and you asked in guild for help. I remember asking where Mankrik’s wife was first time in the barrens chat. I remember helping other players in turn who asked the same question in the zone chat.

I know you’re going to say in the comments " But Hamuut no one is FORCING you to look this up so why do you come to the forums crying about it" My response is ,why wouldn’t I look it up ? Why would I purposely disadvantage myself when that source material is free and accessible to all. I love WoW of course I’m anticipating the What next question. That’s human nature.

But how do you feel about it ? Going into a patch blind , with only a Blizz trailer for the patch to give you a small taste of what is to come. Get’s the imagination going. Get’s my lore taste buds frothing.

I feel WoW is losing it’s definition of an MMO . People joke about Oribos is just a dungeon finder waiting room. But that’s so true for most. Now imagine 9.2 had no ptr , no guides ,no youtube vids on it.

Tell me as a player how would you go by doing things differently ? Is PTR a good thing or do you think is taints a patch ?

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2

I think too many people treat the PTR as current content and that affects the game.

i.e. those who use the PTR to practise new dungeons and raids to get a head start on when it goes live… but then I suppose that’s all part of the testing experience, and I’d rather those people ironed out the bugs before it got to me on the live server.

On the other hand, I have always gotten excited seeing the Datamines on Wowhead, lets me know what I’ve got to look forward to.

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3

Guides would come out pretty fast after a patch launch , but just for the first month.

No gold guides , no gear guides , how rep up fast guides.

Just let players go out and ask people hey guys how do I do this ? Where did you get that mount from ? How Do I beat this pet battle trainer ? People talking between each other. Hey you’re fun to play with mind If I add you on bnet, my guild sadly has gone quiet mind If I join yours. This player saw me struggling theyhelped me out , asked if I needed to do this quest. I said yes ,we grouped up. Positive player experience.

I find it disheartening when a new player asks a question on trade chat . Immediate response is " there is a thing called Google use it " /sigh

1 Like
4

it would definitely make the game more of an adventure… but I think it would probably put a lot of players as well.

Unfortunately, most people want an easy life, and when new content is out, they want to know how to all of it as soon as possible.

5

Not having PTR and datamining would not attract the “wow tourists” back. Hype attracts people, so Blizzard wants more people to know about what content their patch brings.

And it is not like we know everything when a patch launches. Just look at how many secrets the secret finding discord were looking into during BFA and Legion. Finding Baa’l, the lucid nightmare, the riddler’s mind worm and so on. Even the legion artifact hidden skins remain hidden for quite a long time.

I prefer to have readily available access to all this information, but that is because my main interest in WoW comes from raiding. I explore the world once when an expansion/patch launches, and after that I look up anything out of place I find to see if it is connected to some sort of secret mini-game you have to do for rewards.

Eventhough I have a generous amount of time to play the game, for me it isn’t fun to figure out how dungeon bosses work and make a run last 1 and a half hours instead of 45 minutes.

Time is precious, so I can understand if people want to do their research before jumping into any sort of content. That said many of my casual guildies do not look into every little thing that comes out of the PTR and they are still doing fine.

6

I agree. It made everything that bit more social. I mean there were still people who’d bite your head off for asking a question or who sneered because you didn’t know but, in general, it made a better game.

No one is forcing you, but try being in the forums, looking something up on Wowhead, going to Reddit and not getting every single new thing reported, commented on and (usually) rejected. It’s impossible to avoid.
I try to avoid all data-mining and reporting on what’s to come. I like it to be a surprise and to find things out for myself. I did the beta once and it ruined the expansion as I’d played most of it before release. I never go on the PTR. In the ‘old days’ World of Warcraft was a thing of wonder because you never knew what or who you’d find round the corner when exploring somewhere new.

1 Like
7

Read my second response, you would still have your guides within 1-2 weeks of launch. So don’t panic at the disco.

8

I think this is not a wow issue. The age we live in promotes consumer mentality so people want to get the stuff they want fast , without a effort ; treating games like a job , not a hobby.

9

WoW has lost alot of it’s magic due to the flood of information. Content creators perception of “what’s best” , in turn that perception becomes the players perception of how that is the only path to go down. If you are not a balance druid and you’re playing a feral druid in PVE you’re playing druid wrong etc.

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10

I remember first day of BFA i decided to queue random dungeon, and we got Atal. So i went downstairs stopped there and wrote in chat: ok guys which way shall we try ?

One player responded: Hmm,let’s try right side first?
Two more agreed
THEN!
Fifth player: you trash tank, and rest of you noobs, haven’t you played PTR or atleast watched videos, you … …
:rofl: :joy:

Almost felt from chair laughing :rofl:

11

It taints everything.

Ideally I wouldn’t even want the patch notes to contain more than the raw balance changes and nothing else.

I feel that the utopia to strive toward in a game like WoW is for the content to be a mystery. Something unknown that you have to find and figure out yourself. Not something that’s written in patch notes, covered in previews, talked about in interviews, and datamined on fansites.

Imagine if Blizzard snuck a secret content patch in during night whilst everyone was sleeping. You’d wake up, log into WoW and notice some things being different and an adventure would emerge from trying to figure out what and where and how.

That mystery is really something that’s completely lost these days.

I don’t think the current way of having a PTR and showing and testing everything completely before release will change. It’s precious Q&A and feedback for Blizzard.

But I don’t like it.

Patches should be like presents. Wrapped and mysterious until the moment you get it and open it.

1 Like
12

On one hand I agree that data mining often spoils things (like story), but on the other hand I can understand why it’s so necessary and helpful (like when it’s gonna take you a minimum of five weeks to earn some mandatory thing, you need to know how to get it asap or you’re immediately behind other players).

I had a lot of fun doing Tazavesh for the first time because our group deliberately went in blind and figured it out as we went. Sure, it took hours but we had a blast. If we hadn’t been a premade group, I can’t imagine that going in blind would have been a good idea.

On the night Shadowlands launched, my husband and I levelled through Bastion and got to Necrotic Wake. The expansion had been out for a few hours at most. And yet, on Stitchflesh, the healer was raging at the group for not knowing the mechanics. He of course didn’t explain them, just complained about us doing them wrong. I hate that kind of attitude where you absolutely must know every little thing - that’s fine for preparing for a mythic raid, but not for a normal levelling dungeon.

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13

Might be healthy for the minority who use PTR but it is not for me. Yes I know no one is forcing me to use the guides etc. but there is a lot of social pressure to use them. If there is an advantage how ever small players will feel the pressure of using the advantage. Look at covenants. Classes are “forced” into BIS covenants even if they feel like thematically or whatever reason another covenant would serve them better.
PTR kills the adventure for me.

14

You could, perhaps (and this is just a suggestion), just maybe don’t watch the videos…

15

Even though I did try the mage tower on PTR not too long ago I dislike both it and data-mining in general. If it was up to me Blizzard would just properly test their own game and do something to stop all the data-mining.

I hate that even when you try to not spoil yourself you inevitably see/read things before anything new comes out or people act like you’re supposed to know everything before even getting to try it…

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16

It’d be solved within six hours of being launched and there’d be guides two hours after that.

17

Yeah, but those 6 hours of mystery would be 6 hours more than the game has provided in total over the past 10 years.

I mean, the total mystery that Blizzard have provided in Shadowlands so far is a couple of cinematics. That’s it.

It sort of takes the excitement out of the game experience when it’s so heavily spoiled beforehand.

3 Likes
18

I can very easily restrain myself from finding things out if I find the enjoyment will be compromised. It really depends on if you have to see things in the narrow view of ‘disadvantage’ because you think you have to ‘game’ everything.

Every time one opens a book, the temptation is there to skip to the last page.

I don’t care with World of Warcraft because the story is a complete and utter feeble joke. They don’t seem to indicate they want to make this a proper MMORPG now so I’m quite happy to look on Wowhead and look up every tiny new thing coming to the game.

I never look up guides of any kind for any decent RPG.

It doesn’t directly match but when I’m in Blasted Lands levelling up at 38 I purposely don’t use flying-- because I couldn’t care less about efficient. I do not play games to be efficient, I play them for my own personal idea of fun, and I find the world is far easier to be immersed in when on the ground.

19

ptr is bad. only select grou of peopl should be able to do it with N.D.As signed

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20

I’d say it’s the other way around.
Dataminers is the first step and it starts as soon as any patch is deployed, be it to ptr or live clients.
You can’t really hide anything once it’s out and the only solution would be to not do any pre releases of any kind but that would mean no community testing or pre-launch preparations.