Blizz, do NOT make Ulduar available on PTR

#0 - Jan. 1, 2009, 4:02 p.m.

Blizzard, don't do it.

Let the raiders either put up or shut up.

IT'S TOO EASY WAHWAHWHAHWAWH. Let's see how easy it'll be when they haven't had 2 months prior to release to test it to hell and back.

Use your elite dev team for balancing. Just do it.

Daelo

#8 - Jan. 1, 2009, 5 p.m.

Ulduar will be on PTR in the future, but we're going to have tight controls in place on what can be tested at any given time. Ulduar will also not be up permanently like Naxxramas was in the WotLK Beta. If we have something to test, we'll make the zone and encounter available. If we don't, we'll disable the zone.

That being said, there's going to be a LOT of encounters to test in both 10 and 25 player modes. There will also be a whole lot of "hard modes" and achievements to test. We're shooting for most all of the encounters to have "hard modes" that allow raids to increase the challenge and reward level if they're up to it. We're pretty pleased with how Sartharion and his drakes worked, and we're going to expand on that idea extensively in Ulduar and future raids.

Daelo

#77 - Jan. 2, 2009, 8:57 p.m.

Followup time!

The reward for completing the hard modes are not going to be just achievement points, titles, or mounts, but improved, additional item rewards.

I think it's safe to say that Ulduar will be a bit more difficult overall than Naxxramas, even without the hard modes. We're still going to tune the zone for accessibility(*), but a raid group that's done Naxxramas, Malygos, and Sartharion and obtained the gear from those encounters should be well prepared for Ulduar. Not only is the raid's gear better, but players should now have some raiding experience under their belts. We also have a much more accurate picture of what guilds are capable of from a healing, damage, and tanking perspective then when WotLK first went live. If Naxxramas was the introduction to raiding 101 class for players who have never raided before, think of Ulduar as the second year class.

* There will be one optional encounter that is only tuned as a "hard mode" encounter.

I don't think you have to worry about spoilers from Achievements, to be honest. Seeing achievement text before you fight a boss is like seeing a single piece of a large jigsaw puzzle. Sure, it's something, but it's nothing really without seeing the context of the encounter as a whole. I also expect achievements to be something tested late in the PTR process. Implementing them is one of the last parts of the development pipeline.