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Bluetracker

Tracks Blizzard employees across various accounts.

Parts of this community are already toxic and entitled as hell-and the game isn't even out yet.

I am so sick of people complaining about waiting to play, complaining that there is no closed beta for them to play super early, complaining that riot is pointlessly hyping up the game without payoff etc. It's like it's the first game they've ever gotten excited about before it released.

To put it into perspective, the first trailer and preview were on October 15th. Which means between the first trailer and everyone getting access, that's 4 and a half months. That is very quick turnaround. On the extreme end of things, we got an Elder Scrolls 6 trailer in 2018-and the earliest we can expect it out is 2021, or realistically 2022. For a more common example, Borderlands 3 was announced in March and dropped in September-6 months. And if you want a CCG comparison, there was 5 months between Hearthstone's announcement and the first closed beta, with another 5 until open beta.

Not to mention the fact that we have had two preview patches, one of which started on the day the game was released. We are incredibly fortunate to have gotten access to the game so early-just think about all the people hyped as hell for Project A.

Furthermore, if you complain about their decision to skip closed beta because that's 2 weeks more you have to wait than if they just dropped the closed beta today, you are the worst type of person. Tons of people were not able to play the preview patches, and it is incredibly forward-thinking of riot to recognize this interest and try to accommodate as many people as soon as possible. Even if it is a sound business decision for them, it's also tons more work on their end.

I know this is just a rant, but I had to get it out as I have been repeatedly blown away by the speed and efficacy riot has rolled out this game, just to have people on this sub shit all over it because they've apparently never waited for a game in their life.

  • maxfields2000
    Posted 5 years, 11 months ago (Source)

    1/ It's not hard to understand at all. In many ways, gameplay, interface etc. are the easy parts, it's managing server load and other backend issues that are the real challenges (and balancing).

    2/ The game is far from complete-ideally, you want to present the most polished version you can when rolling out to a wider audience. This avoids people complaining about obviously lacking social features, any blatant balance issues, draft etc.

    3/ It is harder to actively develop the game if you are running around putting out fires/dealing with maintenance and operation.

    4/ They needed to implement cosmetics/monetization before going to an open beta. It would be a waste of money not to capitalize on the open beta hype by not having anything to actually purchase.

    Even given the level of polish, I thought the timeline was very reasonable. That said, yours is by far the most reasonable cause for frustration I've seen, as opposed to 'I want to play now and it's been aaages'.

    There's a lot of good analysis/assumptions here. I don't work in the product decision making spaces but let's just say we wanted to make sure when we open to everyone we have the best possible experience for them. I do however work on the server side of things and we've been working nonstop since the preview events to make sure we can scale to meet expected demand.

    Without getting to into the weeds, those preview releases were unbelievably valuable in validating our internal load tests and giving us key insight into what we need to do. We've been chasing bottlenecks and making a lot of scaling adjustments.

    On a personal level the last thing I want to do is ship you a game that can't be there for you when you want to play it. As a player, I'm happy we're going out with ranked, friends and a bunch of personalization features ya'll haven't seen yet.

    Come the 24th, my job switches from "get it ready" to "keep it running" which, if you've ever worked on a major project before, you know changes how you prioritize and get work done. I'm so stoked to be a part of bring a new experience to you folks. Can't wait for the 24th!

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