News Realms Remove Ads - Go Premium! Sign In or Register

Bluetracker

Tracks Blizzard employees across various accounts.

Quick behind-the-scenes info about our release process and the timing of bugfixes. Re: "X has been broken for months!" comments and the like. Bug suck, we try to catch them all before they go live, but occasionally some slip through.

Quick behind-the-scenes info about our release process and the timing of bugfixes. Re: "X has been broken for months!" comments and the like. Bug suck, we try to catch them all before they go live, but occasionally some slip through.

  • Chadd Nervigg
    Posted 2 years, 10 months ago (Source)
    Quick behind-the-scenes info about our release process and the timing of bugfixes. Re: "X has been broken for months!" comments and the like. Bug suck, we try to catch them all before they go live, but occasionally some slip through.

    • Chadd Nervigg
      Posted 2 years, 10 months ago (Source)
      Not an excuse, not saying this is great, but here's how it works: We release a major patch (.0 .2 .4 .6) roughly every month. But the process for making those builds is many months long, so we have multiple 'branches' of the game in progress at every moment.

      • Chadd Nervigg
        Posted 2 years, 10 months ago (Source)
        Getting a build out on every platform, smoothly, is a big task. Every change we put into a branch has risk associated with it. A fix to one thing could break something else.

        • Chadd Nervigg
          Posted 2 years, 10 months ago (Source)
          So each branch goes through several steps: there's a date where we require all *new* development to be done (only bugfixes past this point), and then a later date where we really lock things down (only *critical* bugfixes past this point).

          • Chadd Nervigg
            Posted 2 years, 10 months ago (Source)
            When a patch goes live, that's right about the time that we reach the 'critical fixes only' stage for the *next* patch. So if a bug is found on live shortly after a .0, it's already too late to fix it in .2, unless it's critical.

            • Chadd Nervigg
              Posted 2 years, 10 months ago (Source)
              So non-critical bugs are usually fixed in the patch-after-next, even if they're quick and easy to fix. If they're not an easy fix, and will take some time, may be another patch after that.

              • Chadd Nervigg
                Posted 2 years, 10 months ago (Source)
                Again, not saying that this response time is great. Just giving a bit of background, and maybe help set expectations, so that you don't think we've forgotten about bugs if they aren't fixed in the patch after you run into them. We want a polished game as much as you do. :)

    • BitBeaker
      Posted 2 years, 10 months ago (Source)
      @Celestalon Thanks for the insight. I remember going through the process of implementing a new electronic medical record for a couple different facilities I worked at. Every time we fixed something it broke something else!!!

      • huntthesnark
        Posted 2 years, 10 months ago (Source)
        @BitBeaker @Celestalon We have a huge library of unit tests, even more regression tests to try to make sure all changes are intended, but even in our setting, we can't cover all possible interactions, and in Hearthstone that number is way, way larger. I'm surprised more doesn't slip through.

        • TitoSantanaHS
          Posted 2 years, 10 months ago (Source)
          @huntthesnark @BitBeaker @Celestalon The ones I'm more curious about are the ones like the "!" that never went away, or the volume being too loud on some of the new skins. Do those just get Triaged as non-critical and we can fix next time?

          • Chadd Nervigg
            Posted 2 years, 10 months ago (Source)
            @TitoSantanaHS @huntthesnark @BitBeaker Yeah, those are great examples of non-critical bugs. They’re annoying, but don’t prevent you from playing, don’t cause any long-term data issues that will require cleanup, don’t affect the functionality of a feature, etc.
Tweet