The Public Test Realm is there for any players with a current subscription to check out and test the upcoming changes for the new patches. You download the "test" client and then transfer a character or start a new one. Have you ever done it before? Do you feel it's worth it or would you rather wait for the content to go live? Do you lurk on the PTR Discussion Forum to see what people are saying about the changes?


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Yes, I jump on the PTR once in a while to check out arena's before they go live with class changes. What usually happens though is something like this:

Some class 1 shots other classes with some OP ability and people bring it up on long threads on the PTR forums. It goes live anyway and then gets hotfixed 2 weeks later after said class has reached the top of the ladder and is sitting on the rating.

 

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No, I never touch the PTR. I might if it weren't for the fact that my mods and UI break 90% of the time on the PTR.

I've used the same heavily modified UI for more than 3 years, and it's just ridiculously hard for me to play without. I have a ton of action bars, more than the default game uses, with nearly every button having it's own keybind combination. That just doesn't transfer to PTRs, and I'm not going to spend the hours it'd take to rebuild it there.

 

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Yep. Raid testing

 

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Considering all the damned obvious bugs that make it through to the live servers, they ought to just call the PTR, the EPR (Early Preview Realm), because all of the people that I know who go there, don't do it to help find bugs or streamline things, but instead just to see content before other people. That way when it goes live they can just ROFLSTOMP it and then bitch endlessly that they are bored again and there is nothing to do.

Incorrect.

The PTR is useless for one reason, GC and his goons don't listen to anyone, regardless of proof. This can be demonstrated by the need to hotfix things months later that a monkey could see 5 seconds in on the PTR.

PTR in a nutshell is this, "come test our stuff but we won't listen to anything that isn't a glowing testimony to our perfect game and consummate skill at game development"

Essentially, the PTR is the official forums.

 

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I keep up on the PTR notes to see what's coming but I have no desire to preview it, test it, or fling poo with the subhumans that post on the official forums. Content comes too slowly for WoW and previewing it would just crush the 2 weeks or so of feast vs months of famine factor even more.

Not to mention I can barely motivate myself to log in at all outside of raid times. You have to understand that I love WoW and consider it the best MMORPG period, and amongst the best PC games ever - but - the content just comes out too slowly and cata is too fast and easy outside of raids. I have 9 raid capable 85's and my last toon is 84 and levels idiotically fast just doing instances occasionally (will hit 85 having done maybe 1/3 of hyjal and enough highlands to unlock the portal - otherwise all rested xp from instances). I can't stomach more heroics or zuls to get the one or two pieces that are marginal upgrades per toon (so very sick of RNG and loot tables in heroics and raids), my interest in pvp comes, goes, and is currently gone, crushing old content for achievements makes me wanna punch a kitten, etc.

Fast expac, slow release of new content...not much to do no matter how much you love the game. New content is the only thing worth doing these days. Give me some more character slots so I can roll a nub to enjoy the revised leveling zones (on the server where all my friends play).

So my point is, if you can barely get yourself to log in to the live servers, why would you screw around on the PTR?

If bliz' moronic GC and the stooges crew insist on continually mutilating and dumbing down the game, they need to speed up new content production by about 500% because we're well beyond the more typical content digestion syndrome in WoW these days.





Agreed and also agree with Peo...GC and the stooges don't listen to anyone...they're too busy developing by feel (we felt this need to be gutted and mutilated, enjoy suckers) or coming up with garbage nobody wants (cross server realid grouping for a fee for the 3 people that might use it).

 

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I'm a gentle, quiet person in real-life. However, I wouldn't hesitate a second to throat-punch Ghostcrawler if I ever met him.

 

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Just think, there is a moron out there who thinks it is a good idea to keep GC employed, and that guy makes even more money than GC. Now if anyone needs a throat punch...

 

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This.

On a related note, there's a concept in software/hardware development called "dog-fooding," or basically using your own product. If Blizzard had the entire company play on the PTR two nights a week or something and report bugs back to a coordinator, they'd catch a ton more than they do in QA. This isn't really a failing in the QA team itself, it's more a resource problem and an environment/integration problem in that the controlled environment that QA normally tests in just can't accurately simulate a production environment.

Then there's the whole problem where the PTR is only up sometimes, which means unlike other games I've played you don't have a regular population that plays on the PTR and is used to reporting bugs and looking for them.

 

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