Wed
15
Oct '08
Cheers for small patches
Rog posted in Warhammer Online · World of Warcraft
I'm a big fan of patching often, especially when players need to download the patches to continue playing. I'd much rather get this stuff in small bite-sized nibblets than that gargantuan 1.2 gig patch for WoW this week. Ouch.
Granted, I think Blizzard is packing in a lot of their WotLK stuff prior to the actual expansion release. That's not a bad idea, get it on the servers and live-tested before the deluge of returning players. I won't be one of those by the way.
WAR's 1.03 patch today took less than a minute to download and apply on my PC. It doesn't have nearly as much, but it hasn't been a long wait for it either.
(1:47 pm)
Oct 17, 2008 1:00am
you really can't honestly compare WoW's most recent patch to WAR's with a straight face, though.
I'd happily download a 7gb patch for warhammer if it made the game even half as smooth as WoW in terms of combat fluidity and fixed things like the outstanding casting animation bugs (see: http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=rizauc00RPA). Hell, i'd download a 9gb patch that did nothing more than made the mailbox and auction house functional.
granted, i AM playing WAR, becasue wow is just been done to death, but WAR is hardly a flawless example of polished retail product.
Oct 17, 2008 1:34am
True. I like their patching methods, but that doesn't mean they're clear of bugs. Not even close. That video demonstrates well some of the animation-related issues that have been driving me nuts.
Although WoW had more than its share of bugs and stability issues when it launched, much moreso than WAR by my reckoning. So more correctly, I'd compare this to Blizzard's patching in 2004, not that anyone cares in 2008 though.
The point is that WoW's patches have always been large with Blizzard's tendency to hold on even important fixes for the next big patch. Hotfixes have been rare for WoW and that's not because it has run so well.
I wouldn't call any current PC game a flawless example of retail product unfortunately. =(
Oct 23, 2008 5:00pm
The more familiar I get with the gaming industry (thanks to my new "EA Widow" status) the more I'm starting to understand why... hell, I'm amazed ANY games get released, bugs or not.
Oct 23, 2008 5:35pm
@Donna: It's true. Game development is crazy and stressful, there's so much that goes into it. There are many elements involved, it's unlike other software development (which tends to be much more focused and directed at singular purposes). Crunch time in particular for most game developers is just insane. I don't know if people quite understand what goes into these games unless they see it / experience it first-hand.
After all these years, I'm pretty tolerant of bugs, especially if they're going to get fixed sooner or later. I'm actually more critical of game design flaws.
All that said, a product is a product, if it doesn't do what it's supposed to do, all the effort is just wasted.