Patches? We don’t need no stinking patches…..
Whoops, wrong topic. Well, movie. Well, anyway… Did anyone else wonder what happened to Patch 3.0.4? 3.0.5? 3.0.6? 3.0.7?
I mean, I’m all for updates to keep the game operating properly (even if they make changes we aren’t necessarily happy with). But what happened to those other patches? I mean, I’m no psychic well, most of the time I’m not. But here’s my guess on what happened with all the patches:
0 This updated the platform to be compatible with Wrath
1 They obviously made errors in 0, so this was to fix that
2 Well, 1 didn’t go like we planned, so this fixes 1
3 Finaly! A (mostly) stable platform. Let’s keep the players on this one for a little while
4 Dangit, they’re grumbling. Let’s buff everyone and nerf the bosses
5 Oops, guess that wasn’t gonna work. Don’t tell the players, let’s just work on 6
6 Ahhh, now we’re getting there. Now let’s work on our general theory – overdo it first, then reign it back in.
7 Ok, reigning in now.
8 Whoops, too far. Pendulum time! Got it! Ok, let’s put this one on the PTR and give it a go. Sure, gonna make some people mad, some happy, but that’s ok. It’s normal, lol. Crap, we’re running out of numbers! We better start on a content patch… Oh yeah, we can do 3.0.10… hahaha, that gives us another like 90 versions to work on until then. Everyone good? K, great. Lunch break!
Ok, probably didn’t quite happen like that, but it’s fun to speculate.
2 comments:
Thats..... Kinda totally how it happened. Gotta understand that patches are iterative? (they go through iterations.)
Giving something a patch number doesent mean its stable, or supposed to be, or whatever.
Could they realease 3.0.4? Sure, but it would be a fraction of what 3.0.8 ends up being, and in fact, some changes from 3.0.4 may well be reverted in 3.0.8.
Now, thats SUPPOSED to be how it is, but as AOL will tell you, once they give marketing ANY sayso in the patch numbers, they quickly turn meaningless.
Developer: "Okay, 1.3.4.927324 is GTG, send it on up."
Legal: "I APPROVE IN ALL CAPS!"
Operations: "Legal, your a retard"
Marketing: "1.3.whathah? Look shooter, our research shows that people dont like fractions, and decimals are like, fractions, but worse. Lets call it version 2."
Developer: Uh, we cant, we are WORKING on version 2...
Marketing: Well thats why Im paid to think, and your just paid to type shit, sport, we will call version 2 version 3.
Developer: Whatever.
Marketing: Glad to hear it, guy. Now, let me talk to you about another marketing research task that was farmed out to us... You see, consumers like BIG numbers.... Do you think we can call it WoW 4000?
Developer: What?
Lol.
See, If I were them (which I'm obviously not), I'd do the following:
A.B.C.D
A = Expansion Version
B = Content Version
C = Patch Version
D = Development Version
And no one (other than developers) would see D. Thus we as users would go chronologically on patches and not skip any. So when 3.0.4 is on the PTR, it's actually 3.0.4.1 and then they make changes and its 3.0.4.2 and so on. So when we get the update, we get 3.0.4. Instead of going from 3.0.3 to 3.0.8.
But then, no one other than us and a few coders here and there really notice, care, or analyze it, lol.
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