Communication Request - PTR Raid Testing Times

#1 - Nov. 21, 2022, 8:42 p.m.
Blizzard Post

To Kaivax and the powers that be,

Please consider actually letting us know when the PTR will be available for raid testing (Start and End times) so teams we can plan around these events, especially during a schedule-heavy season. Our raiders have holiday travel, final exams, EOY projects and deadlines for work on top of every guild having its own schedule for raiding. Higher-end guilds will also be planning specific weeks for speed clears and parses that this would help with as well.

In the past, there have been flimsy excuses about the ptr being for bugs and not guild practice however ignoring the reality of what your player base does with the PTR and willfully obfuscating the start and end times only makes things extremely difficult for your most dedicated demographic of players.

Soon* isn’t good enough with so many confounding variables and I’m hoping beyond hope this pretty severe problem for guild masters and raid leaders is alleviated with better communication this time around

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WoW Classic Game Producer
#3 - Nov. 22, 2022, 1:47 a.m.
Blizzard Post

Hi Zclap,

This is a totally reasonable request, especially due to the holidays. There’s a lot of reasons why we hesitate to announce dates around PTR testing too far in advance, but the main reason is is that new, in-development content tends to bring issues and delays that are sometimes hard to predict and plan around. We often times will have a date scheduled internally for testing, and then just prior to that date we end up finding a showstopper bug or other major issue and then are forced to delay at the last minute, which feels bad for everyone involved if we’ve already announced our plans.

All that being said, I also totally sympathize with the struggle behind this request. We are going to aim for the early afternoon (US time) of December 8th to enable Ulduar raid testing, and we are likely to leave the raid available through the weekend and will likely end the first round of testing on the morning of December 12th

The caveat here is that something may arise that causes us to delay or shift these dates, and we may not know that until we get very close to that date. So this isn’t an announcement, but a goal. I also cannot promise that we’ll always be able to provide our target dates for raid testing this far in advance either, but I’d certainly like to try and give more notice in the future.

Just please try and be understanding if something unforeseen pops up and we have to delay a bit for some reason :slight_smile:

Thank you!

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WoW Classic Game Producer
#15 - Dec. 7, 2022, 5:49 a.m.
Blizzard Post

Hello, just popping in for a quick update.

First off, wanted to let everyone know that barring us finding any major blocking bugs internally over the 24 hours, we are still planning to begin Ulduar Raid testing on Thursday Dec 8th. To help everyone prepare for this we plan to turn character copy back on tomorrow December 7th at or around 12 p.m. PDT.

Additionally, we plan to leave the raid available for an few extra days, likely letting it run until Wednesday Dec 14th so that guilds that raid earlier in the week have a chance to participate as well if they wish to do so.

As always, this could all change if something unforeseen pops up, but we are fairly confident that we’ll be in a good state for Ulduar testing on Thursday. We’ll post a more detailed update with build notes and known issues on Thursday shortly before the raid unlocks.

Thanks all and looking forward to seeing you on the PTR!

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WoW Classic Game Producer
#17 - Dec. 7, 2022, 7:35 a.m.
Blizzard Post

Whoops. That’s a typo. Fixed the post above :slight_smile:

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WoW Classic Game Producer
#45 - Dec. 14, 2022, 11:03 p.m.
Blizzard Post

Quick update; we’ll go ahead and leave this up tonight and officially close it tomorrow morning Thursday, Dec 15th on or shortly after 10:00 A.M. PDT. There won’t be any further extensions or delays after today, however.

We are going to make additional bug fixes and adjustments and may potentially bring Ulduar back for another brief round of testing sometime in the coming weeks, so please keep an eye out for details on that.

Thanks to everyone who participated in helping us get this tested! Your bug reports and feedback have been super helpful :slight_smile:

Thank you!

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WoW Classic Game Producer
#55 - Jan. 4, 2023, 6:55 p.m.
Blizzard Post

Greetings,

We’d like to again thank everyone for all of the bug reports and other data we got from the last round of testing in Ulduar. Over the past few weeks we’ve fixed many issues and made a few other adjustments to the raid, and as a result we are going to go ahead and enable Ulduar Raid testing on PTR again this coming weekend from 12:00 p.m. PST on Friday January 6th to 10:00 a.m. PST on Monday January 9th.

Thank you again for your feedback and bug reports so far! Hopefully we can see you back on PTR with us again this weekend :slight_smile: