When a game "goes gold," then you can actually count on a game's release within a month's time. A game can't be produced, boxed, and shipped in record time just because you want it to come out very badly. :P. January is not likely.
True, but that assumes they would announce the release date the moment they started producing, boxing, and shipping. Not exactly a great assumption.
I think someone else showed that Vanilla WoW was released 19 says after they announced it.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Do you want to get scammed? Perhaps a nice keylogger?
"Just google "diablo 3 gold guide" and magical rainbow covered demons will assault your eyes."
When a game "goes gold," then you can actually count on a game's release within a month's time. A game can't be produced, boxed, and shipped in record time just because you want it to come out very badly. :P. January is not likely.
True, but that assumes they would announce the release date the moment they started producing, boxing, and shipping. Not exactly a great assumption.
I think someone else showed that Vanilla WoW was released 19 says after they announced it.
+1 for reading other comments. all this "game isnt gold" "code isnt locked" bla bla "impossible in a month bla". the 19 days before announcement of WoW completely destroys all these arguments.
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"once the pretty hardcore gamers we had testing inferno found it fairly difficult, we then we doubled it" -trolololol jay wilson
Here's a couple more things that I've considered in making a hopeful March, more likely April prediction.. Again, these are just the opinions and insights of a software engineer who has worked both inside the gaming industry and out. Opinions are based on incomplete information, I cannot be held liable for correctness, heartache, rage, sadness, glee, or any other associated emotions or intimations. Peace be with you. And also with you.
First, how is the Beta going? I answer this a couple of ways:
1. There still seems to be a non-trivial number of severe/catastrophic bug reports coming in from beta players. This is based on my lurking the bug forums on bnet. These kinds of problems require a dev to:
a. reproduce
b. debug
c. troubleshoot
d. think up a fix
e. code the fix
f. code review the fix
g. unit test the fix
h. do a new build to smoke test the fix internally
i. release the fix in a new beta build
That process typically takes about 3 days minimum to a week or more (depending on severity and complexity).
I'd be surprised if all of those bugs have already been fixed internally, and simply haven't been patched into the beta yet. I can't be certain where they are in that process, but you can take rough guesses at bug backlog based on how many bugs are being filed. I'd say they're at least a month out on bugs, give or take. I'd be shocked if they could resolve all bugs in less than a month.
Now, as some of you have rightly pointed out, beta builds aren't necessarily representative of current dev build progress, but different companies handle this differently, and usually, the latest code is the most stable (assuming there is good sanity/smoke testing to handle bad code fixes). This may not be the case with Bliz, as it seems they have many parallel builds running simultaneously in order to test specific components individually.. but that means they still have to do integration test, which can shake out some serious issues.
2. They have been dealing with battle.net crashes, which might be minor, but are usually more serious infrastructure problems that can be difficult to root cause and troubleshoot.
3. They still haven't done very large scale/stress tests (from what I can tell) of their public game infrastructure (refer to the SW:TOR stress tests they did in their beta recently), which they stated as one of the primary reasons for the beta. So that tells me either they're having trouble getting the scale numbers they want, or they're dealing with lots of severe, system-test level bugs of high complexity, which take a while to fix, and may be blocking said boundary/stress tests.
Second, how much more time did they need when they pushed back the DEC 2011 date? This is different across companies. The company I work for has to push back internal dates all the time, but we very rarely push back external dates. (By the way, most software companies have internal deadlines that are weeks before the actual, committed external deadlines). When we push back internals, they are on the order of days or weeks, and on rare occasions, months. But when we have to push back external dates, it's usually because something major shifted (resources, change in business strategy, workforce reduction, etc) ORsomething fairly major is needed (i.e. re-writes, need to integrate more features for competitive reasons that aren't complete, etc).
In my view, Blizzard was going to have to make a lot of concessions on major features in order to meet a Dec 2011 deadline. When they finally said "No, let's get it right the first time and push the date back," that means they chose to really take the time to iterate, focus on quality, get the necessary re-writes done correctly, and get the product super-solid, so they wouldn't waste the first month of release patching an inferior product, all the while alienating a fan-base who's waited years for the game.
I think they made the right choice. I also think that making this choice bought them additional months, not additional days, from the original Dec 2011 push.
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"Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions."
-Thomas Jefferson
3. They still haven't done very large scale/stress tests (from what I can tell) of their public game infrastructure (refer to the SW:TOR stress tests they did in their beta recently), which they stated as one of the primary reasons for the beta. So that tells me they're having trouble getting the scale numbers they want, or they're dealing with lots of severe, system-test level bugs of high complexity.
SWTOR is about to release on the 20th... i have early game access and will be able to play on the 13th.. <_< games do massive stress tests RIGHT before release. so this really doesnt say anything. if we dont get a release date by the end of dec then i doubt a january release is going to happen, but its still POSSIBLE. but id say if big stress tests arent happening by the first week in january then its obviously not going to happen. only time will tell
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"once the pretty hardcore gamers we had testing inferno found it fairly difficult, we then we doubled it" -trolololol jay wilson
3. They still haven't done very large scale/stress tests (from what I can tell) of their public game infrastructure (refer to the SW:TOR stress tests they did in their beta recently), which they stated as one of the primary reasons for the beta. So that tells me they're having trouble getting the scale numbers they want, or they're dealing with lots of severe, system-test level bugs of high complexity.
SWTOR is about to release on the 20th... i have early game access and will be able to play on the 13th.. <_< games do massive stress tests RIGHT before release. so this really doesnt say anything. if we dont get a release date by the end of dec then i doubt a january release is going to happen, but its still POSSIBLE. but id say if big stress tests arent happening by the first week in january then its obviously not going to happen. only time will tell
Good point..
I will say, usually companies want to scale/stress test as far away from release as possible, to give them adequate reaction time to prepare for or fix scale issues that come out of the test.. but in reality that rarely happens.
As an aside, you'd be amazed how difficult it can be to get developers to even recognize the importance of scale testing. As a long-time QA lead, after more than one yelling match, the thing I learned was this: As a tester, you're breaking someone's brainchild. It's like telling a father that his son sucks at sports.. I've done both development and test.. as a developer, once my code was working at small scale, I was so stoked it was running, it's kind of like finishing a house of cards: you don't want anyone to blow on it for fear it'll collapse. But I always had this sinking feeling my code wouldn't hold up at scale, so subconsciously I just didn't want to see what the scale results even were. This kind of psychology is pretty common in the field.. I mean, most engineers tend to resemble angsty teenagers with something to prove
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions."
-Thomas Jefferson
I think they made the right choice. I also think that making this choice bought them additional months, not additional days, from the original Dec 2011 push.
I though they did not announce a December release, but a pre-2012 release. Depending on this internal date, Jan 17 could have been months away.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Do you want to get scammed? Perhaps a nice keylogger?
"Just google "diablo 3 gold guide" and magical rainbow covered demons will assault your eyes."
I think they made the right choice. I also think that making this choice bought them additional months, not additional days, from the original Dec 2011 push.
I though they did not announce a December release, but a pre-2012 release. Depending on this internal date, Jan 17 could have been months away.
That's certainly a possibility, but I just can't see Blizzard saying "You know guys, if there were 17 additional days in 2011, we could release a D3 that meets our standards." 17 days doesn't make the kind of difference that warrants an external release-date delay. More likely, what they said was this:
"Well guys, we can either pull the trigger and release now, patch all the bugfixes in our backlog, and really hope the runestone deal works out.. or we can take another 2 months, really be sure, and confidently release a great product that will blow people away."
Here's what we have to remember: When Blizzard releases a title, they want to blow the entire gaming industry's mind all over their face. They want to build games that last for a decade, not a year. They look at Dice, Bethesda, Bioware, Infinity Ward, etc.. and say "That's not us."
Battlefield 3 knew that the timing of their release (i.e. beating MW3 to the punch) was just as important as the quality of their release. Blizzard just doesn't operate on the same planet.
When you're looking at product that will probably live for 10 years, adding fun to the lives of millions, what's another 2 months? I say do your thing Blizzard. I believe in you, and it's worth the wait. In their history they've never let me down. If I've been disappointed and frustrated throughout this process (believe me I have), it's the fault of my own expecations.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions."
-Thomas Jefferson
"Well guys, we can either pull the trigger and release now, patch all the bugfixes in our backlog, and really hope the runestone deal works out.. or we can take another 2 months, really be sure, and confidently release a great product that will blow people away."
so now you think the release date is in february or early march? lol
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"once the pretty hardcore gamers we had testing inferno found it fairly difficult, we then we doubled it" -trolololol jay wilson
3. They still haven't done very large scale/stress tests (from what I can tell) of their public game infrastructure...
SWTOR is about to release on the 20th... i have early game access and will be able to play on the 13th.. <_< games do massive stress tests RIGHT before release. so this really doesnt say anything. if we dont get a release date by the end of dec then i doubt a january release is going to happen, but its still POSSIBLE. but id say if big stress tests arent happening by the first week in january then its obviously not going to happen. only time will tell
@Dolaiim:
This is something people outside of Blizz could know for sure. How many beta players is needed online playing at the same time for the test to be considered "large"?? This is actually not rhetorical...I'm asking anyone who might be educated in server stress/Blizz's servers ect. One can then deduce how many keys have been sent out to date and just compare or something.
Damn can't find the chart showing the current beta players online in public games (you'll probably know which one I'm talking about)...anyway if I remember correctly, the most people online was like 300? (kinda totally guessing, but I know it's definitely less than 500 [I think], or was it just the numbers of one specific server?). That's just not correct. And there's a thread made by Omnimon?? about beta player (to lazy to search) and he stated, with good deduction that there must be more than 20 000 beta players (again don't remember the exact amount) and that thread was like a 2 months ago. [Sorry for all the unsupported info].
@WishedHeHadBeta:
Well Blizz is sending out beta keys in waves (sweepstakes [weekly] and "normal" [when ever Blizz feel like it]), so there will definitely be more players in the future. The FB sweepstakes end on Des 12th with a total of 2000 keys and the beta is goin on indefinitely, cause it depends on Blizz how many and when they'll send out keys. So one might assume that the stress is quite high by this time or if they announce the release date this Saturday.
"Well guys, we can either pull the trigger and release now, patch all the bugfixes in our backlog, and really hope the runestone deal works out.. or we can take another 2 months, really be sure, and confidently release a great product that will blow people away."
so now you think the release date is in february or early march? lol
hehehe. you almost got me
But you and I both know the reality of the matter.. Blizzard will be like "Hey we need another 2 months" ... But they need 2 "Blizzard months" which are represented by this simple formula:
1 unit Blizzard time == 1.82 units real human time
60 days * 1.82 == 111.6 days ~= 3 months and 22 days from an estimated Dec 15th 2011 release date == April 5th
Disclaimer: I neither endorse nor deny the release date estimate of April 5th, 2012. However, if the game is actually released on April 5th, get ready for the biggest shit-storm of I-told-you-so's in the history of human language.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions."
-Thomas Jefferson
"Well guys, we can either pull the trigger and release now, patch all the bugfixes in our backlog, and really hope the runestone deal works out.. or we can take another 2 months, really be sure, and confidently release a great product that will blow people away."
so now you think the release date is in february or early march? lol
hehehe. you almost got me
But you and I both know the reality of the matter.. Blizzard will be like "Hey we need another 2 months" ... But they need 2 "Blizzard months" which are represented by this simple formula:
1 unit Blizzard time == 1.82 units real human time
60 days * 1.82 == 111.6 days ~= 3 months and 22 days from an estimated Dec 15th 2011 release date == April 5th
Disclaimer: I neither endorse nor deny the release date estimate of April 5th, 2012. However, if the game is actually released on April 5th, get ready for the biggest shit-storm of I-told-you-so's in the history of human language.
im certain you'll get far more "i told you so's" in your inbox if its announced this weekend AND if for anytime before march. lol
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"once the pretty hardcore gamers we had testing inferno found it fairly difficult, we then we doubled it" -trolololol jay wilson
Disclaimer: I neither endorse nor deny the release date estimate of April 5th, 2012. However, if the game is actually released on April 5th, get ready for the biggest shit-storm of I-told-you-so's in the history of human language.
Dolaiim - LOL!
I used that phrase earlier today when talking to my Boss about an issue at our studio: "When your idea doesn't work - get ready for the biggest shit storm of 'I-told-you-so' in the history of human language!"
She told me to take the rest of the day off and pull my head out of my ass.
At this point... I can see January.. but I dont see the 17th at all tbh. I'm still thinking FEB atm. I just see nothing strong for such a date..when its already getting later and later by the day.
I really hope it is January. Been waiting for Diablo 3 for about five years. But when the Cataclysm opening cinematic was revealed, the game came out about two months later. Which would be about mid February if the same happens for Diablo 3. But hears to a January release.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
I don't always burn. But when I do, I use hellfire.
True, but that assumes they would announce the release date the moment they started producing, boxing, and shipping. Not exactly a great assumption.
I think someone else showed that Vanilla WoW was released 19 says after they announced it.
"Just google "diablo 3 gold guide" and magical rainbow covered demons will assault your eyes."
+1 for reading other comments. all this "game isnt gold" "code isnt locked" bla bla "impossible in a month bla". the 19 days before announcement of WoW completely destroys all these arguments.
First, how is the Beta going? I answer this a couple of ways:
1. There still seems to be a non-trivial number of severe/catastrophic bug reports coming in from beta players. This is based on my lurking the bug forums on bnet. These kinds of problems require a dev to:
a. reproduce
b. debug
c. troubleshoot
d. think up a fix
e. code the fix
f. code review the fix
g. unit test the fix
h. do a new build to smoke test the fix internally
i. release the fix in a new beta build
That process typically takes about 3 days minimum to a week or more (depending on severity and complexity).
I'd be surprised if all of those bugs have already been fixed internally, and simply haven't been patched into the beta yet. I can't be certain where they are in that process, but you can take rough guesses at bug backlog based on how many bugs are being filed. I'd say they're at least a month out on bugs, give or take. I'd be shocked if they could resolve all bugs in less than a month.
Now, as some of you have rightly pointed out, beta builds aren't necessarily representative of current dev build progress, but different companies handle this differently, and usually, the latest code is the most stable (assuming there is good sanity/smoke testing to handle bad code fixes). This may not be the case with Bliz, as it seems they have many parallel builds running simultaneously in order to test specific components individually.. but that means they still have to do integration test, which can shake out some serious issues.
2. They have been dealing with battle.net crashes, which might be minor, but are usually more serious infrastructure problems that can be difficult to root cause and troubleshoot.
3. They still haven't done very large scale/stress tests (from what I can tell) of their public game infrastructure (refer to the SW:TOR stress tests they did in their beta recently), which they stated as one of the primary reasons for the beta. So that tells me either they're having trouble getting the scale numbers they want, or they're dealing with lots of severe, system-test level bugs of high complexity, which take a while to fix, and may be blocking said boundary/stress tests.
Second, how much more time did they need when they pushed back the DEC 2011 date? This is different across companies. The company I work for has to push back internal dates all the time, but we very rarely push back external dates. (By the way, most software companies have internal deadlines that are weeks before the actual, committed external deadlines). When we push back internals, they are on the order of days or weeks, and on rare occasions, months. But when we have to push back external dates, it's usually because something major shifted (resources, change in business strategy, workforce reduction, etc) OR something fairly major is needed (i.e. re-writes, need to integrate more features for competitive reasons that aren't complete, etc).
In my view, Blizzard was going to have to make a lot of concessions on major features in order to meet a Dec 2011 deadline. When they finally said "No, let's get it right the first time and push the date back," that means they chose to really take the time to iterate, focus on quality, get the necessary re-writes done correctly, and get the product super-solid, so they wouldn't waste the first month of release patching an inferior product, all the while alienating a fan-base who's waited years for the game.
I think they made the right choice. I also think that making this choice bought them additional months, not additional days, from the original Dec 2011 push.
-Thomas Jefferson
SWTOR is about to release on the 20th... i have early game access and will be able to play on the 13th.. <_< games do massive stress tests RIGHT before release. so this really doesnt say anything. if we dont get a release date by the end of dec then i doubt a january release is going to happen, but its still POSSIBLE. but id say if big stress tests arent happening by the first week in january then its obviously not going to happen. only time will tell
Good point..
I will say, usually companies want to scale/stress test as far away from release as possible, to give them adequate reaction time to prepare for or fix scale issues that come out of the test.. but in reality that rarely happens.
As an aside, you'd be amazed how difficult it can be to get developers to even recognize the importance of scale testing. As a long-time QA lead, after more than one yelling match, the thing I learned was this: As a tester, you're breaking someone's brainchild. It's like telling a father that his son sucks at sports.. I've done both development and test.. as a developer, once my code was working at small scale, I was so stoked it was running, it's kind of like finishing a house of cards: you don't want anyone to blow on it for fear it'll collapse. But I always had this sinking feeling my code wouldn't hold up at scale, so subconsciously I just didn't want to see what the scale results even were. This kind of psychology is pretty common in the field.. I mean, most engineers tend to resemble angsty teenagers with something to prove
-Thomas Jefferson
"Just google "diablo 3 gold guide" and magical rainbow covered demons will assault your eyes."
That's certainly a possibility, but I just can't see Blizzard saying "You know guys, if there were 17 additional days in 2011, we could release a D3 that meets our standards." 17 days doesn't make the kind of difference that warrants an external release-date delay. More likely, what they said was this:
"Well guys, we can either pull the trigger and release now, patch all the bugfixes in our backlog, and really hope the runestone deal works out.. or we can take another 2 months, really be sure, and confidently release a great product that will blow people away."
Here's what we have to remember: When Blizzard releases a title, they want to blow the entire gaming industry's mind all over their face. They want to build games that last for a decade, not a year. They look at Dice, Bethesda, Bioware, Infinity Ward, etc.. and say "That's not us."
Battlefield 3 knew that the timing of their release (i.e. beating MW3 to the punch) was just as important as the quality of their release. Blizzard just doesn't operate on the same planet.
When you're looking at product that will probably live for 10 years, adding fun to the lives of millions, what's another 2 months? I say do your thing Blizzard. I believe in you, and it's worth the wait. In their history they've never let me down. If I've been disappointed and frustrated throughout this process (believe me I have), it's the fault of my own expecations.
-Thomas Jefferson
so now you think the release date is in february or early march? lol
This is something people outside of Blizz could know for sure. How many beta players is needed online playing at the same time for the test to be considered "large"?? This is actually not rhetorical...I'm asking anyone who might be educated in server stress/Blizz's servers ect. One can then deduce how many keys have been sent out to date and just compare or something.
Damn can't find the chart showing the current beta players online in public games (you'll probably know which one I'm talking about)...anyway if I remember correctly, the most people online was like 300? (kinda totally guessing, but I know it's definitely less than 500 [I think], or was it just the numbers of one specific server?). That's just not correct. And there's a thread made by Omnimon?? about beta player (to lazy to search) and he stated, with good deduction that there must be more than 20 000 beta players (again don't remember the exact amount) and that thread was like a 2 months ago. [Sorry for all the unsupported info].
@WishedHeHadBeta:
Well Blizz is sending out beta keys in waves (sweepstakes [weekly] and "normal" [when ever Blizz feel like it]), so there will definitely be more players in the future. The FB sweepstakes end on Des 12th with a total of 2000 keys and the beta is goin on indefinitely, cause it depends on Blizz how many and when they'll send out keys. So one might assume that the stress is quite high by this time or if they announce the release date this Saturday.
hehehe. you almost got me
But you and I both know the reality of the matter.. Blizzard will be like "Hey we need another 2 months" ... But they need 2 "Blizzard months" which are represented by this simple formula:
1 unit Blizzard time == 1.82 units real human time
60 days * 1.82 == 111.6 days ~= 3 months and 22 days from an estimated Dec 15th 2011 release date == April 5th
Disclaimer: I neither endorse nor deny the release date estimate of April 5th, 2012. However, if the game is actually released on April 5th, get ready for the biggest shit-storm of I-told-you-so's in the history of human language.
-Thomas Jefferson
im certain you'll get far more "i told you so's" in your inbox if its announced this weekend AND if for anytime before march. lol
I can only hope
-Thomas Jefferson
Dolaiim - LOL!
I used that phrase earlier today when talking to my Boss about an issue at our studio: "When your idea doesn't work - get ready for the biggest shit storm of 'I-told-you-so' in the history of human language!"
She told me to take the rest of the day off and pull my head out of my ass.
Monkalicious: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/OptimusPrime-12194/hero/79139477
"If long post with no kittens, me no read".
"Just google "diablo 3 gold guide" and magical rainbow covered demons will assault your eyes."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQFWGC_wSvs
But OT: Tomorrow I can honestly say, if they dont say a date, it is NOT jan 17th (and I really dont think we will get a date)
[I hope im wrong]
once its less then 19 days before january 17th THEN you can 100% posatively say that. lolol