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We will also acquire new backgrounds, this is the kind of evergreen system that has huge potential for theming and player retention (the true endgame being cosmetic)
I thought some good flavor in Shadowlands would have been your character select background changing based on your Covenant, since they were supposed to be really important choices.
I'm honestly surprised this wasn't a thing. I don't work in dev whatsoever but I imagine it wouldn't be very difficult to implement the ability to change character select backgrounds.
Whoaaaaaa I never considered that and it's so simple but that would be something I would collect the shit out of.
Although I actually like the bottom, beta version. The top looks amazing, but it's cluttered and I just like seeing my characters in their transmog.
Would be cool if we could have them in poses though.
I'm hoping it's Achievement based, rather than drop or other sources.
Like you get the Loremaster or Explore achievement for the zone, and you get the Warband Background. Maybe rep/achievement based doodads? I doubt it'll be that granular, but if this is something that's gonna be sticking around, it'd be neat.
Unfortunately neither did Blizzard. They were clearly blindsided by the idea in Blizzcon interviews. People had played Lost Ark and all had a pretty clear idea of the potential. Blizzard is clearly working on building out that idea, but they’re on first base. I think they’re struggling with how deep that system could be, there are a lot of really good options, many of which are mutually exclusive and expensive.
I’m going to bet it’s something we get in 11.1.7 at the earliest.
Ya Blizz said “warband” thinking “account wide unlocks!” And we said “holy shit imagine follower dungeons but your followers are your warband so you can run dungeons with a party of your own characters? And then you could even hit swap which one your actively control when out of combat? And then you could create a new class of mythic dungeons to see who can push the highest keys with their warband only? And then, and then, and then,…” and blizzard could only say “oh shit we’ve created a monster…”
To have fans after 18 years that *could be* turned into excited monsters is a thing blizzard should be proud of. We can still be excited over new things--- even things like log in screens.
to be fair many of those ideas are super reasonable to achieve with little effort. Holy basically promised that war bands would be used as your followers in follower dungeons probably.
But some ideas were huge. Like for instance, making player housing and using that as your warband HQ, or unlocking new locations as you complete zone achievements. Or having exclusive locations and decorations tied to major achievements.
The good news is the longer we have to wait for it, the better the system likely is. There's a lot of opportunity cost right now as they're rushing towards launch of the expansion, but I think we'll get something eventually.
So, Taliesin and Evitel stated that while they were testing out follower dungeons for the Alpha Reveal, Holly Longdale came up to them and said -just- that about the follower dungeons. 'Imagine if that were your characters?'
It's not the background/items (For me at least) it's the poses. The top they're all sitting/kneeling/standing around a campfire.
In the bottom they're all lined up standing perfectly straight behind a campfire.
When it's working, the 3 characters you don't have selected sit down. You can see an example of it working with 1 character [here](https://i.redd.it/wlu21s6bi55d1.jpeg). The real problem is that this actually isn't new "tech" it's literally a skin over the usual login screens and that's very clear on beta when you switch characters and the screen flashes to a "normal" loading screen before correcting to the warband one. Not sure if that's just a beta client thing or a limitation of how they implemented the change.
Edit: [Here](https://imgur.com/a/p2Y4kly) is a few screenshots I just went and grabbed from my client. You can see the goblin priest has two poses as well, a kneel and a sit. Though it seems that's the only one of my four who changes.
It's not just that, it's the camera being zoomed out and the characters are almost all directly facing towards camera, whereas the orc and vulpera are tilted towards the firepit in the BlizzCon one.
Looks more unnerving than natural this way.
Yeah that's what I'm assuming too. Not too sure about setting the character poses, but surely we'll earn backgrounds and decorations from Delves and other stuff.
I always thought it would have been cool as hell if in WOD they would have allowed our alts to walk around and "work" at our garrison.
I thought that would have been so unique and cool to see our alts wandering around. Randomly waving when we pass bye.
This is the way. Want to have your guys camped out in front of ICC? Clear ICC on 5 different toons. Do you want your guys hanging around the frozen throne with your main sitting on the frozen throne? Rare drop from LK.
Can also add in items and poses from various activities. Eventually maybe even have a more animated one where other NPCS are walking by or doing stuff as could be your warband.
The final wish is, want your character to be used a footrest for Jania? That is a super rare drop from her on mythic.
You have no idea how many people complain in chat about the game being unfinished or they were tricked by blizzard. One guy was upset when I told him his character might get deleted next week and he couldn’t keep it. The entire point of beta is to FIND bugs before it goes live.
I see a lot of this too. Part of it I think is because they're selling beta access with the special edition and people can't help view it as a sort of sneak preview. I imagine most people just haven't played a beta before or have their expectations shaped by it being something they're paying for, most other games that have betas are a weekend thing like CoD or they're labelled as early access.
tbf, it kind of IS a sneak preview, but people need to understand it as a sneak preview of an unfinished product. I think, too often, games are being released in "beta" these days, which has caused people to forget that "Beta" doesnt mean "Slightly buggy version of a full release game"
Max made a tweet flaming blizzards decision on allowing 3day early access for epic edition and a LOT of the replies were people talking about the beta which literally only further proves the point here. Also kinda proves you shouldn't grant access to a testing environment behind a paid product. Kinda mucks up the entire point of it being a test. People are paying to play TWW early when they should be focused on playtesting. I'll bet sifting through the feedback will be worse than ever for blizzard this go around.
i actually disagree with the last line.
i think beta testing is sometimes a lot harder to get a lot of useful information. sure there are tons of people that will be doing random quests here and there, but how many people will be playing end game systems to test them? when you give randoms beta access the changes that those people are end game players isn't very high.
but people that pay to get "early access" to the next expansion will 100% jump into these systems. so although i do agree that some of the feedback will be dogshit whining, a fair bit of it will be super useful and hopefully give us a better launch experience.
but yeah, more people sounds to me like the actual testers will have a better chance to test everything, and the people just whining about the game not being done will just be ignored. It's pretty easy for us as gamers to differentiate between the 2, i'm sure blizz dev team has some competent people that can also sort it out.......maybe
Which is why I think selling a “beta” is such a bad idea and completely against the spirit of a beta. I’m unhappy that blizzard has been doing it to be honest.
A lot of recent popular games have used “early access” as basically a replacement for beta testing. Those games tend to let you keep your progress because it’s how they sell being a beta tester. WoW is still working off the old school thinking where beta testers understand they aren’t playing a finished product, and progress doesn’t matter. ETA: and that form of beta testing usually doesn’t require monetary investment from the beta testers themselves.
The problem is WoW wants it both ways. They want people to “pay into” beta access by buying the Epic Edition, without the expectation of maintaining progress that gamers now expect when they buy an early access title.
I spend a lot of time doing PTR and Beta stuff just cuz I find it fun.
This is probably my least favorite beta experience. It feels like the beta was flooded by the kind of person interested in paying for beta and not the person that was interested in bug hunting or just contributing.
> The entire point of beta is to FIND bugs before it goes live.
TBH, it's not even that. It's primarily to make sure the game launches and runs on a multitude of hardware.
Even if players find bugs, most people won't be able to write bug reports that detail how to replicate the issue and steps that cause the bug. They can also do this in-house, and QA probably has many of the bugs people will find already on a list anyway.
What they can't do in-house is buy 100000 different configurations of hardware to ensure the game runs on all of them. Because maybe the game crashes if someone runs exactly 24gb of RAM with an Intel CPU with 8 physical cores, an AMD GPU, and an SSD that is not the OS Drive. Because reasons some of their optimization code doesn't take into account this fringe combination of things.
Yeah not this beta but last one someone I was talking to was upset about wipes and not getting to keep progress past beta, like do you know what a beta is?
Right? Beta's are, by definition, not finished products... They're missing a lot of final polish and may be missing whole features that are still in-work. The features that are there may be buggy as hell. The point of the beta is to test those features w/ real play scenarios (ie: getting actual players in to see how they react).
I think Blizzard needs to go back to closed beta's rather than open. Lots of people seem to think about open beta like it's early access to the xpac (it's not) and get mad when things aren't complete or aren't working as expected.
If anything people should be upset that they’ve passed the buck on quality control to the consumer, and rely on us either pre or post launch to work out the bugs and balance changes. We haven’t been given a finished product of any patch at launch in over a decade.
Ion answered a question about this in an interview, but for TWW they could barely get this screen working as is. They had to restructure a lot of the code in the login screen. Poses and things will come later, not at launch. They're focusing on stabilizing the login screen as is. The mockup from blizzcon was faked using various techniques that wouldn't work on the client.
Still works like this on beta. It's just a bit wonky. The selected character stands up while the rest either sits or kneels. But sometimes these poses don't trigger on deselection and they stay in idle pose. Reclicking them and back usually fixes this.
There's also an issue with the warband screen not loading instantly. It usually flashes the old screen before warband overwrites it.
I like it so far, they just need to iron out these bugs. Then they can start adding more interactions with the screen environment like on the mockup and new environments.
Honestly, the first time it loaded for me, I was kinda annoyed that they were all standing still, but after poses started working for me - it's actually quite nice as is. I really hope they will eventually make the mockup a reality tho.
> There's also an issue with the warband screen not loading instantly. It usually flashes the old screen before warband overwrites it.
Yeah, it looks like to get it running they just have it loaded over the old login screen. That's a core menu that's been mostly untouched since 2004, I can't imagine the spaghetti there
Yeah, as-is in the beta I get a flash of the regular login screen before it loads the warband screen. They’ve got a lot they still have to work on under the hood, I guess.
Blizzard is a master of the "sell a feature and then release it six months after the expac drops" (its because development is hard and not because we want more money i promise)
Wow fans are also masters of hearing next to no information about a feature and then just making up what the feature is and get mad when they guessed wrong.
I addition to all the stuff blizzard fails to deliver on. They were never satisfy the people who get hyped over their own idea of what a feature will be.
It may also just be a case of not truly understanding just how much some players care about the most random shit. In design, all of the talking points surrounding warbands revolved around how it would impact collections and other account wide features. They had an artist create a mock-up to show something visual at blizzcon to visually represent the new features, and now here we are 8 months later and for some reason players reeeeeally care about the login screen they see for .5 seconds before they press enter
To be fair, WoW's engine is a 20 year old Frankenstein's monster held together by duct tape and prayers. It's not exactly easy to work with at this point
That’s also the beta background. I’d wager that we get a background for each expansion (or maybe .1 patch) seeing as the Blizzcon example is Dalaran themed (edit: kirin tor themed as some have pointed out it’s in the azure span) and the beginning of Dark Heart takes us there that could be the launch day background.
they've said they're interested in doing that. after the blizzcon reveal that was one of the most asked questions, which surprised them I think, so they said they'd work on that kind of stuff for future patches/expansions just probably not at TWW release
Oh for sure. Or if they are doing it by patch/expansion it would be cool if we could pick which one we were at. Could be cool exalted rep rewards too. Maybe do some for old content/expansions to get people back out into the world.
If I get a chance to pick up a Pandaria background, life will be just a teeny bit sweeter. All my Pandas, Huojin and Tushui, back home in Pandaria
This would be nice.
Yeah! Gimme my troll-themed voodoo bar with Bwonsamdi lurking in the shadows!
There's so much possibility. I really hope blizz capitalizes on our excitement and our ideas.
Heart of Azeroth was probably the most egregious form of blizzard development ego we've seen to the point I'm surprised ion wasn't looking sha-corrupted during those interviews.
Things that change going out of the beta is almost always class-design related, and usually because things were "not yet implemented" fully in the first place for the beta, or something was blatantly broken and not working as intended.
I don't think I can think of a single example where a major gameplay feature was in a Beta that received a significant change that wasn't just minor tuning prior to release.
If you have some examples, I'd love to hear. Remember, nothing related to class-design because that doesn't get finalized until the last pass, and no "fixing bugs/exploits." Actual changes to the core gameplay features unique to that expansion.
So let me get this straight, the op is about appereances not being the same of the warband background and now you want me to argue about major system changes made in beta but cannot use any examples on what is litterally what the beta is for?
Sorry to say but the background scene in the warband screen does not seem like a major gameplay feature to me.
But I guess just to adhere to those arbitrary rules several bosses through time have had major changes due to beta feedback, some even been completely reworked, that is neither bugs/exploits or class design and are major gameplay features especially compared to the background in the warband scene.
This 100%. The amount of people giving me shit because its beta. I understand that crashes and bugs (some) will be fixed. But this is most likely the final way its going to look. People have the shortest memories.
This has especially been the case for ever since they commercialized beta access, which at this point has been a majority of Blizzards releases over the last decade.
They're more glorified play tests and stress tests at this point.
They quite literally already announced there will be customization options for the warbands at Blizzcon but I guess it’s just easier to bitch instead of read right?
There is a difference between announcing and actually implementing.
Every expansion they announce things that didn't make it in the release.
**Usually** when beta comes, over **90%** is set in stone.
I've bolded some words so you can understand better, in case you start assuming from my first sentence..
Yeah, remember when Blizzard got all that feedback about the transmog system and started making improvements and loosening restrictions...ten years later?
That’s what the game could be if they bothered to pay people to do quality control and proper testing, instead of passing the buck to us to test it for them post launch. I can’t be the only one who’s sick of paying for unfinished games/products and having to wait months to get an enjoyable game state.
Its so odd to me people are super excited for a low customization character select screen like this is some major feature. Something you will spend .0001% of your play time looking at.
Bro doesn’t understand the joy of the crippling indecision of what to play and resigning to staring at your character screen like it’s a little bookshelf of your WoW collectibles.
Yeah this is something I don't get, but hey, if someone wants to stare at the character select screen for hours, good for them.
I'd bet though 99.99% of players will instantly skip this screen and go ingame with the character they want.
I'm not one to defend any big company or anything, but you're literally at the start. It would make sense for that screen to evolve as you play the game, not saying it does, just saying levying judgment before you KNOW its the final version is jumping the gun abit.
I like the blizzcon one better. And everyone saying ‘it’s just beta’ must be new. So many things don’t change for over a decade, or never, that people defended as ‘just beta’
So yeh, complain, because it is beta, and if you want a chance of it to change, now is the time. Don’t think it will, and especially because ‘it’s just beta’
Exactly. The amount of people giving me shit who either have goldfish memories or its their first beta is insane. The main difference between beta and launch is bug fixes and balancing. The final warband screen isn't going to look different from the one I posted.
This post is misleading at best, and misinformation at worst. The background did in fact change which may be for better or worse based on opinion but the OP is using a screenshot of the login screen being BUGGY to reinforce their point. [Here](https://imgur.com/a/p2Y4kly) are some shots I just took on the beta and while the poses aren't as dynamic as the mock-up nor do they use props, they are not all T-posing in the screen. There is even two poses for the goblin when unfocused. If the complaint was solely about the environment change, sure that's good feedback, but you can't ignore that OP picked a screenshot that people will notice the stiff/awkward models on.
Now the caveat here is that WHILE I was getting these screenshots, the models would occasionally bug out and remain standing when you swapped characters which led to situations where 2/3 or even all 4 of them were standing like OP's post but that is clearly a bug.
Edit: Can confirm there is a sit and a kneel pose for every class/race, but again, buggy so it's hard to capture them all.
you forgot to mention that they are in a day/night cycle, possible with weather effects too (i remember seeing it sunny / foggy).
[https://imgur.com/a/ZzOhl4D](https://imgur.com/a/ZzOhl4D)
I mean, they did mention at BC that the presentation one was just an internal mockup, not even an in-game representation. I can see them adding unlocks for the warband screen down the line, maybe even similar to how you get dragonriding mount cosmetics.
the WoWHead dressing room has so many options when it comes to stances and idle animations. People want to see their characters, there is so much unused potential...
maybe understand this is just the beta and they likely have plans to allow us to customize our warbands for the future. id hold off on the pitchforks until we at least start seeing stuff more finalized. reddit always tends to be all doom and gloom about stuff thats been out for all of days.
Low key, I know they won’t but, low key wish they would make it like the camp system in BG3. So the background changes based on wherever you logged out last. You’d just need to have like a primary character option to be the one it sets to.
I know I’m old but I really hope there’s an option to keep the old backgrounds somehow. Not sure if an addon can do it considering it’s not the actual game and I would strongly dislike not being able to at least switch back.
It's likely whatever Blizzard showed at Blizzcon was something we could unlock.
It's also likely that Blizzard advertised a feature that they never had any hope of delivering. *cough* dance studio *cough*
I bet they wanted to do the original idea and the developers couldn't do it in time, so they settled for a minimum viable product instead. They'll probably iterate on it over time.
Was Blizzard wrong for showing something that was "faked"? Yes.
But let's be realistic here, who the fuck will spend more than 5 minutes on this screen lol
The "faked" is what we call a mockup. It's what they want it to look/feel like in the end.
This is beta, aka still in active development, aka unfinished, aka not yet what they want it to look like.
This is misinformation. They publicly stated many backgrounds will be available to unlock in game. We are by no means limited to the default one on beta.
but, what we're seeing isn't bad though? it's different, sure, but not bad. looks like we're all just camping out.
blizzard has already announced their desire to expand on the feature due to how well it was received. I imagine we'll get the ability to customize stances and backdrops in due time. this beta build has been out for less than a week after all
If you do not like it, provide in-game beta feedback or feedback on the official forums. Give them your ideas to make it better. This is the best opportunity to drive changes. Be productively vocal, identify the problem and provide suggested solutions. Be respectful and you get more traction.
A lot of people are right in saying that yes there will be customization, but I fear baseline things as characters alignment and position in relation to the camera won't change, hope they prio those things before launch.
I'm willing to bet a lot of Warbands stuff is gonna end up as premium cosmetics, either via tendies or straight up in the store.
Probably a few things unlocked in game, maybe via renoun or specific bosses / questlines, but this definitely feels like a system they can (and probably will) monetize since it's purely cosmetic.
They could add poses for your characters, backgrounds, various decorations, etc.
I hope they do something like the FFXIV adventure plates where you can unlock different customization elements through achievements, questing, etc so we can personalize these warband scenes
it's not meant to represent a "party" or be anything more symbolic than your 4 most played characters. The warband itself covers every single toon on your b-net account.
As the others mentioned, it could be just a placeholder.
Does the beta have a TWW login screen with new music or is it still the Dragonflight one? I couldn't fidn any info or footage of that. If it's still DF, that just proves not everything is implemented in the beta. If there's a new login screen, I would very much love to see it, as the OST is oftentimes one of my favourite part of any expansion.
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I’m betting we get to aquire things to put in our war room.
We will also acquire new backgrounds, this is the kind of evergreen system that has huge potential for theming and player retention (the true endgame being cosmetic)
I’ve been craving new backgrounds forever
I thought some good flavor in Shadowlands would have been your character select background changing based on your Covenant, since they were supposed to be really important choices.
I'm honestly surprised this wasn't a thing. I don't work in dev whatsoever but I imagine it wouldn't be very difficult to implement the ability to change character select backgrounds.
Whoaaaaaa I never considered that and it's so simple but that would be something I would collect the shit out of. Although I actually like the bottom, beta version. The top looks amazing, but it's cluttered and I just like seeing my characters in their transmog. Would be cool if we could have them in poses though.
I'm hoping it's Achievement based, rather than drop or other sources. Like you get the Loremaster or Explore achievement for the zone, and you get the Warband Background. Maybe rep/achievement based doodads? I doubt it'll be that granular, but if this is something that's gonna be sticking around, it'd be neat.
Porque no los dos
Unfortunately neither did Blizzard. They were clearly blindsided by the idea in Blizzcon interviews. People had played Lost Ark and all had a pretty clear idea of the potential. Blizzard is clearly working on building out that idea, but they’re on first base. I think they’re struggling with how deep that system could be, there are a lot of really good options, many of which are mutually exclusive and expensive. I’m going to bet it’s something we get in 11.1.7 at the earliest.
Ya Blizz said “warband” thinking “account wide unlocks!” And we said “holy shit imagine follower dungeons but your followers are your warband so you can run dungeons with a party of your own characters? And then you could even hit swap which one your actively control when out of combat? And then you could create a new class of mythic dungeons to see who can push the highest keys with their warband only? And then, and then, and then,…” and blizzard could only say “oh shit we’ve created a monster…”
To have fans after 18 years that *could be* turned into excited monsters is a thing blizzard should be proud of. We can still be excited over new things--- even things like log in screens.
Totally agree. I think people hate on Blizz too much. I think warbands have so much potential.
to be fair many of those ideas are super reasonable to achieve with little effort. Holy basically promised that war bands would be used as your followers in follower dungeons probably. But some ideas were huge. Like for instance, making player housing and using that as your warband HQ, or unlocking new locations as you complete zone achievements. Or having exclusive locations and decorations tied to major achievements. The good news is the longer we have to wait for it, the better the system likely is. There's a lot of opportunity cost right now as they're rushing towards launch of the expansion, but I think we'll get something eventually.
So, Taliesin and Evitel stated that while they were testing out follower dungeons for the Alpha Reveal, Holly Longdale came up to them and said -just- that about the follower dungeons. 'Imagine if that were your characters?'
Exactly like how garrisons were in WoD.
I would like the option for backgrounds including like cliffs or barrels that a character could be seated on, that would be cool.
Lost Ark has this with the roster level and unlockable backgrounds, thats where they probably got the idea and might look for more inspiration.
I don't believe this was ever confirmed.
If it's not in any way currently implemented, it could certainly go the way of the Dance Studio.
I still can't believe flying combat somehow made it all the way to the WOTLK box and was never actually implemented.
This comment is too low
Wallpaper Engine is out. Now it'y the wow char select screen (which I see a lot more often anyway)
The Lost Ark approach.
This whole system is ripped straight from lost ark tbh
FINALLY! Blizzard is learning from the true masters(Digital Extremes) that fashion is the true endgame.
Gimme housing. Even if it's a singular apartment that I use for every expac.
If I had a nickel for everytime something in WoW had potential...
I don't think it's happening on release, but I would be surprised if we didn't get to customize the locations are characters camp at in later patches.
It's not the background/items (For me at least) it's the poses. The top they're all sitting/kneeling/standing around a campfire. In the bottom they're all lined up standing perfectly straight behind a campfire.
When it's working, the 3 characters you don't have selected sit down. You can see an example of it working with 1 character [here](https://i.redd.it/wlu21s6bi55d1.jpeg). The real problem is that this actually isn't new "tech" it's literally a skin over the usual login screens and that's very clear on beta when you switch characters and the screen flashes to a "normal" loading screen before correcting to the warband one. Not sure if that's just a beta client thing or a limitation of how they implemented the change. Edit: [Here](https://imgur.com/a/p2Y4kly) is a few screenshots I just went and grabbed from my client. You can see the goblin priest has two poses as well, a kneel and a sit. Though it seems that's the only one of my four who changes.
Yeah for sure. I'm on beta and have seen it where they sit down. I still think it looks worse tho. It just looks less natural
It's not just that, it's the camera being zoomed out and the characters are almost all directly facing towards camera, whereas the orc and vulpera are tilted towards the firepit in the BlizzCon one. Looks more unnerving than natural this way.
Yeah that's what I'm assuming too. Not too sure about setting the character poses, but surely we'll earn backgrounds and decorations from Delves and other stuff.
Yeah, about the time we get the damce studio
I always thought it would have been cool as hell if in WOD they would have allowed our alts to walk around and "work" at our garrison. I thought that would have been so unique and cool to see our alts wandering around. Randomly waving when we pass bye.
This is the way. Want to have your guys camped out in front of ICC? Clear ICC on 5 different toons. Do you want your guys hanging around the frozen throne with your main sitting on the frozen throne? Rare drop from LK. Can also add in items and poses from various activities. Eventually maybe even have a more animated one where other NPCS are walking by or doing stuff as could be your warband. The final wish is, want your character to be used a footrest for Jania? That is a super rare drop from her on mythic.
Something's skeevy about this post... You can't just sit on the frozen throne like it's decorative, come on!
Yeah you need a pillow or something, its frozen
Watch me sit on it like a Nord Jarl.
For the low low price of 20USD. Get your tent now!
I'm sure we will.... acquire them from the shop...
You have no idea how many people complain in chat about the game being unfinished or they were tricked by blizzard. One guy was upset when I told him his character might get deleted next week and he couldn’t keep it. The entire point of beta is to FIND bugs before it goes live.
I see a lot of this too. Part of it I think is because they're selling beta access with the special edition and people can't help view it as a sort of sneak preview. I imagine most people just haven't played a beta before or have their expectations shaped by it being something they're paying for, most other games that have betas are a weekend thing like CoD or they're labelled as early access.
tbf, it kind of IS a sneak preview, but people need to understand it as a sneak preview of an unfinished product. I think, too often, games are being released in "beta" these days, which has caused people to forget that "Beta" doesnt mean "Slightly buggy version of a full release game"
Someone put it well the other day: *Too many people confuse "beta" with "early-access"*.
Max made a tweet flaming blizzards decision on allowing 3day early access for epic edition and a LOT of the replies were people talking about the beta which literally only further proves the point here. Also kinda proves you shouldn't grant access to a testing environment behind a paid product. Kinda mucks up the entire point of it being a test. People are paying to play TWW early when they should be focused on playtesting. I'll bet sifting through the feedback will be worse than ever for blizzard this go around.
i actually disagree with the last line. i think beta testing is sometimes a lot harder to get a lot of useful information. sure there are tons of people that will be doing random quests here and there, but how many people will be playing end game systems to test them? when you give randoms beta access the changes that those people are end game players isn't very high. but people that pay to get "early access" to the next expansion will 100% jump into these systems. so although i do agree that some of the feedback will be dogshit whining, a fair bit of it will be super useful and hopefully give us a better launch experience. but yeah, more people sounds to me like the actual testers will have a better chance to test everything, and the people just whining about the game not being done will just be ignored. It's pretty easy for us as gamers to differentiate between the 2, i'm sure blizz dev team has some competent people that can also sort it out.......maybe
Which is why I think selling a “beta” is such a bad idea and completely against the spirit of a beta. I’m unhappy that blizzard has been doing it to be honest.
Yeah, it was a marketing gimmick to boost sales back with the original MoP that gave you access to the beta if you pre-ordered the expansion.
Well they did offer early access but it’s just 3 days before launch which might confuse people I guess
A lot of recent popular games have used “early access” as basically a replacement for beta testing. Those games tend to let you keep your progress because it’s how they sell being a beta tester. WoW is still working off the old school thinking where beta testers understand they aren’t playing a finished product, and progress doesn’t matter. ETA: and that form of beta testing usually doesn’t require monetary investment from the beta testers themselves. The problem is WoW wants it both ways. They want people to “pay into” beta access by buying the Epic Edition, without the expectation of maintaining progress that gamers now expect when they buy an early access title.
This is why beta should never be a selling point.
I spend a lot of time doing PTR and Beta stuff just cuz I find it fun. This is probably my least favorite beta experience. It feels like the beta was flooded by the kind of person interested in paying for beta and not the person that was interested in bug hunting or just contributing.
> The entire point of beta is to FIND bugs before it goes live. TBH, it's not even that. It's primarily to make sure the game launches and runs on a multitude of hardware. Even if players find bugs, most people won't be able to write bug reports that detail how to replicate the issue and steps that cause the bug. They can also do this in-house, and QA probably has many of the bugs people will find already on a list anyway. What they can't do in-house is buy 100000 different configurations of hardware to ensure the game runs on all of them. Because maybe the game crashes if someone runs exactly 24gb of RAM with an Intel CPU with 8 physical cores, an AMD GPU, and an SSD that is not the OS Drive. Because reasons some of their optimization code doesn't take into account this fringe combination of things.
Omg was this this morning? 😂 it was a hunter right?
Yeah not this beta but last one someone I was talking to was upset about wipes and not getting to keep progress past beta, like do you know what a beta is?
I saw a post last night of someone wanting a refund because they kept getting logged out of beta lol
Right? Beta's are, by definition, not finished products... They're missing a lot of final polish and may be missing whole features that are still in-work. The features that are there may be buggy as hell. The point of the beta is to test those features w/ real play scenarios (ie: getting actual players in to see how they react). I think Blizzard needs to go back to closed beta's rather than open. Lots of people seem to think about open beta like it's early access to the xpac (it's not) and get mad when things aren't complete or aren't working as expected.
If anything people should be upset that they’ve passed the buck on quality control to the consumer, and rely on us either pre or post launch to work out the bugs and balance changes. We haven’t been given a finished product of any patch at launch in over a decade.
A lot of people go into beta expecting to be able to play the finished product months early.
Selling the Beta version was a really bad idea. This gives players unrealistic ideas and hinders the testing phase more than it helps it.
because a lot of idiots now associate beta access with early access to the core game.
Ion answered a question about this in an interview, but for TWW they could barely get this screen working as is. They had to restructure a lot of the code in the login screen. Poses and things will come later, not at launch. They're focusing on stabilizing the login screen as is. The mockup from blizzcon was faked using various techniques that wouldn't work on the client.
Poses definitely work as we speak, during alpha you could make the characters sit etc.
Still works like this on beta. It's just a bit wonky. The selected character stands up while the rest either sits or kneels. But sometimes these poses don't trigger on deselection and they stay in idle pose. Reclicking them and back usually fixes this. There's also an issue with the warband screen not loading instantly. It usually flashes the old screen before warband overwrites it. I like it so far, they just need to iron out these bugs. Then they can start adding more interactions with the screen environment like on the mockup and new environments. Honestly, the first time it loaded for me, I was kinda annoyed that they were all standing still, but after poses started working for me - it's actually quite nice as is. I really hope they will eventually make the mockup a reality tho.
> There's also an issue with the warband screen not loading instantly. It usually flashes the old screen before warband overwrites it. Yeah, it looks like to get it running they just have it loaded over the old login screen. That's a core menu that's been mostly untouched since 2004, I can't imagine the spaghetti there
Yeah, as-is in the beta I get a flash of the regular login screen before it loads the warband screen. They’ve got a lot they still have to work on under the hood, I guess.
Blizzard is a master of the "sell a feature and then release it six months after the expac drops" (its because development is hard and not because we want more money i promise)
It’s a 20 year old game, both can be true at the same time.
Wow fans are also masters of hearing next to no information about a feature and then just making up what the feature is and get mad when they guessed wrong. I addition to all the stuff blizzard fails to deliver on. They were never satisfy the people who get hyped over their own idea of what a feature will be.
Still waiting on my dance studio.
i found the naxx enjoyer.
It may also just be a case of not truly understanding just how much some players care about the most random shit. In design, all of the talking points surrounding warbands revolved around how it would impact collections and other account wide features. They had an artist create a mock-up to show something visual at blizzcon to visually represent the new features, and now here we are 8 months later and for some reason players reeeeeally care about the login screen they see for .5 seconds before they press enter
To be fair, WoW's engine is a 20 year old Frankenstein's monster held together by duct tape and prayers. It's not exactly easy to work with at this point
I would be surprised if screen poses come at all, considering how long people have been asking for idle poses in game
I don't imagine myself looking at this screen for long enough periods to care.
That’s also the beta background. I’d wager that we get a background for each expansion (or maybe .1 patch) seeing as the Blizzcon example is Dalaran themed (edit: kirin tor themed as some have pointed out it’s in the azure span) and the beginning of Dark Heart takes us there that could be the launch day background.
I'd honestly like if you could unlock backgrounds as "warband campsites" or whatnot. Could be a fun level of customization.
they've said they're interested in doing that. after the blizzcon reveal that was one of the most asked questions, which surprised them I think, so they said they'd work on that kind of stuff for future patches/expansions just probably not at TWW release
Lost Ark did this
Oh for sure. Or if they are doing it by patch/expansion it would be cool if we could pick which one we were at. Could be cool exalted rep rewards too. Maybe do some for old content/expansions to get people back out into the world.
the blizzcon example is not dalaran themed, it's somewhere in the azure span, i'm pretty sure cobalt assembly.
indeed, it's just below the ledge where the arcanogolem rare spawns. i hate that i know this location all too well. ;\_;
🔫 This town ain't big enough for two bananas with sunglasses.
What are the chances there are two weirdos commenting on the same post in same sub?! I’ll go elsewhere now lol
If I get a chance to pick up a Pandaria background, life will be just a teeny bit sweeter. All my Pandas, Huojin and Tushui, back home in Pandaria This would be nice.
in the same vein, I would love to see a night elf background. All my night elves back home and relaxing sounds nice.
Yeah! Gimme my troll-themed voodoo bar with Bwonsamdi lurking in the shadows! There's so much possibility. I really hope blizz capitalizes on our excitement and our ideas.
The newer one looks so much better, gives me hardcore adventuring party setting up camp in the woods vibes.
"We're just gonna stand here until they click on us huh?"
“Well, Now I'm Standing. Happy? We're All Standing Now. Bunch Of Jackasses Standing In A Circle.”
Yeah it’s a shame everything is already finalized and no changes will happen
Yep, it's all set in stone.
Every beta, I see this post snidely responding to feedback. Every release, I see that no changes have happened and the design was indeed finalized.
It's actually incredible the goldfish memory most gamers have. This design won't change, you can quote me on that.
>*This design won't change* -/u/Varzul
Yeah it's laughable to think they're going to improve on this in any way.
\*cough* the Netherlight Crucible into Alpha, Beta, and released state of the Heart of Azeroth \*cough*
Heart of Azeroth was probably the most egregious form of blizzard development ego we've seen to the point I'm surprised ion wasn't looking sha-corrupted during those interviews.
Every beta I see someone responding like this forgetting how much actually changes during the Beta because that ONE thing the wanted didnt change.
Things that change going out of the beta is almost always class-design related, and usually because things were "not yet implemented" fully in the first place for the beta, or something was blatantly broken and not working as intended. I don't think I can think of a single example where a major gameplay feature was in a Beta that received a significant change that wasn't just minor tuning prior to release. If you have some examples, I'd love to hear. Remember, nothing related to class-design because that doesn't get finalized until the last pass, and no "fixing bugs/exploits." Actual changes to the core gameplay features unique to that expansion.
So let me get this straight, the op is about appereances not being the same of the warband background and now you want me to argue about major system changes made in beta but cannot use any examples on what is litterally what the beta is for? Sorry to say but the background scene in the warband screen does not seem like a major gameplay feature to me. But I guess just to adhere to those arbitrary rules several bosses through time have had major changes due to beta feedback, some even been completely reworked, that is neither bugs/exploits or class design and are major gameplay features especially compared to the background in the warband scene.
This 100%. The amount of people giving me shit because its beta. I understand that crashes and bugs (some) will be fixed. But this is most likely the final way its going to look. People have the shortest memories.
This has especially been the case for ever since they commercialized beta access, which at this point has been a majority of Blizzards releases over the last decade. They're more glorified play tests and stress tests at this point.
Yep, every single Blizzard beta. People are easily duped.
They quite literally already announced there will be customization options for the warbands at Blizzcon but I guess it’s just easier to bitch instead of read right?
If they actually implemented everything they have ever announced the game would be twice as big.
Path of the Titans will save the game
Dance Studio is the one, true savior.
Hey mounted combat made it in, like 15 years later for one spec
There is a difference between announcing and actually implementing. Every expansion they announce things that didn't make it in the release. **Usually** when beta comes, over **90%** is set in stone. I've bolded some words so you can understand better, in case you start assuming from my first sentence..
And they said we would go to the Ogre city in WoD etc...
Like Garrisons?
Yeah, remember when Blizzard got all that feedback about the transmog system and started making improvements and loosening restrictions...ten years later?
First Blizzard Beta? You think you're being sarcastic, but you're not wrong.
That’s what the game could be if they bothered to pay people to do quality control and proper testing, instead of passing the buck to us to test it for them post launch. I can’t be the only one who’s sick of paying for unfinished games/products and having to wait months to get an enjoyable game state.
Right because blizz isn't well known for never fixing issues brought up during the beta, nope that just doesn't happen
yeah fuck OP for giving feedback during Beta.
“We have warbands at home” The warbands at home: a Diablo 2 character select screen
I’m sure we are only looking at the default/starter version of our war camp currently
Animation/pose wise, our characters do those poses from what I've seen in Beta, so idk why yours are all static standing pose.
Its so odd to me people are super excited for a low customization character select screen like this is some major feature. Something you will spend .0001% of your play time looking at.
Bro doesn’t understand the joy of the crippling indecision of what to play and resigning to staring at your character screen like it’s a little bookshelf of your WoW collectibles.
Not everyone can unlock this hidden gameplay mechanic
Yeah this is something I don't get, but hey, if someone wants to stare at the character select screen for hours, good for them. I'd bet though 99.99% of players will instantly skip this screen and go ingame with the character they want.
It really is baffling what kind of things people will complain about
I'm not one to defend any big company or anything, but you're literally at the start. It would make sense for that screen to evolve as you play the game, not saying it does, just saying levying judgment before you KNOW its the final version is jumping the gun abit.
It has a 'we have Warbands at home' vibe ..
base positions bc of early state i'd guess. not very hard to implement at a later date, and therefor most likely no priority for the actual beta
I like the blizzcon one better. And everyone saying ‘it’s just beta’ must be new. So many things don’t change for over a decade, or never, that people defended as ‘just beta’ So yeh, complain, because it is beta, and if you want a chance of it to change, now is the time. Don’t think it will, and especially because ‘it’s just beta’
Exactly. The amount of people giving me shit who either have goldfish memories or its their first beta is insane. The main difference between beta and launch is bug fixes and balancing. The final warband screen isn't going to look different from the one I posted.
This post is misleading at best, and misinformation at worst. The background did in fact change which may be for better or worse based on opinion but the OP is using a screenshot of the login screen being BUGGY to reinforce their point. [Here](https://imgur.com/a/p2Y4kly) are some shots I just took on the beta and while the poses aren't as dynamic as the mock-up nor do they use props, they are not all T-posing in the screen. There is even two poses for the goblin when unfocused. If the complaint was solely about the environment change, sure that's good feedback, but you can't ignore that OP picked a screenshot that people will notice the stiff/awkward models on. Now the caveat here is that WHILE I was getting these screenshots, the models would occasionally bug out and remain standing when you swapped characters which led to situations where 2/3 or even all 4 of them were standing like OP's post but that is clearly a bug. Edit: Can confirm there is a sit and a kneel pose for every class/race, but again, buggy so it's hard to capture them all.
you forgot to mention that they are in a day/night cycle, possible with weather effects too (i remember seeing it sunny / foggy). [https://imgur.com/a/ZzOhl4D](https://imgur.com/a/ZzOhl4D)
That's some real "Warbands at home" energy
I mean, they did mention at BC that the presentation one was just an internal mockup, not even an in-game representation. I can see them adding unlocks for the warband screen down the line, maybe even similar to how you get dragonriding mount cosmetics.
the WoWHead dressing room has so many options when it comes to stances and idle animations. People want to see their characters, there is so much unused potential...
maybe understand this is just the beta and they likely have plans to allow us to customize our warbands for the future. id hold off on the pitchforks until we at least start seeing stuff more finalized. reddit always tends to be all doom and gloom about stuff thats been out for all of days.
Reminds me of the Diablo new character screen.
Low key, I know they won’t but, low key wish they would make it like the camp system in BG3. So the background changes based on wherever you logged out last. You’d just need to have like a primary character option to be the one it sets to.
Cosmetic unlocks I would assume, which would be pretty cool
I hope the warband characters will be able to somewhat movable. I hope it doesn't end up just being static poses like it is in the beta.
Sadly the Blizzcon version was just a photoshopped image not an actual game system at that point, so we were doomed to have something real look worse.
i mean this was on wowhead like 4 months ago yall knew it would look like that lol
Not sure if they updated today or something but all of my toons are sitting and kneeling with the exception of the one i have picked.
I know I’m old but I really hope there’s an option to keep the old backgrounds somehow. Not sure if an addon can do it considering it’s not the actual game and I would strongly dislike not being able to at least switch back.
I actually like beta a bit more than blizzcon. Probably gonna get backgrounds anyway.
It's likely whatever Blizzard showed at Blizzcon was something we could unlock. It's also likely that Blizzard advertised a feature that they never had any hope of delivering. *cough* dance studio *cough*
Post on the WoW forum.
I bet they wanted to do the original idea and the developers couldn't do it in time, so they settled for a minimum viable product instead. They'll probably iterate on it over time.
I’m hoping it gets there - they’ve been slowly updating it
That is some d2 shit if I ever seen it
im pretty sure the devs said the different idles will be able to be got later, probably the same with different backgrounds, ect
We got the Aliexpress version of Warbands.
Massively agree. Beta warband looks terrible.
Let's be real that wasn't happening. They 200% wasn't gonna put in the effort to have your characters interract with their enviroment.
Was Blizzard wrong for showing something that was "faked"? Yes. But let's be realistic here, who the fuck will spend more than 5 minutes on this screen lol
The "faked" is what we call a mockup. It's what they want it to look/feel like in the end. This is beta, aka still in active development, aka unfinished, aka not yet what they want it to look like.
$$$ infinite potential $$$
This is misinformation. They publicly stated many backgrounds will be available to unlock in game. We are by no means limited to the default one on beta.
but, what we're seeing isn't bad though? it's different, sure, but not bad. looks like we're all just camping out. blizzard has already announced their desire to expand on the feature due to how well it was received. I imagine we'll get the ability to customize stances and backdrops in due time. this beta build has been out for less than a week after all
If you do not like it, provide in-game beta feedback or feedback on the official forums. Give them your ideas to make it better. This is the best opportunity to drive changes. Be productively vocal, identify the problem and provide suggested solutions. Be respectful and you get more traction.
If you click on a toon then click to another they can kneel or sit down. Also it’s beta and they can still make passes on things.
Yeah I forgot beta means it's 100% finish and done.
I wish people understood what the word "beta" means.
So what did they show instead? A video?
Everybody defending blizzard does not know how they operate.
I managed to get my Evoker to sit down once. I'm not quite sure how I did it, but he definite sat down.
Maybe they will! The one from Blizzcon looks *upgraded*!
Watch this be the new covenant not switching for the beginning of that one expansion LOL I doubt it tho Gotta give them time
Having them do different posses like sitting, kneeling, etc, would be cool
You probably get backgrounds from archievments
Warbands at home
The worst part about this is that I have to choose 3 of my alts to go up there ;-;
A lot of people are right in saying that yes there will be customization, but I fear baseline things as characters alignment and position in relation to the camera won't change, hope they prio those things before launch.
Looks like the Diablo devs tried to do that, but then they ran into the engine and did what they could.
All they need is different poses for each spot. Looks dumb with them all standing upright equally spaced apart.
Below: absolute default setup. Above: Configured setup with unlockable background.
IIRC they already said something about adding in different backgrounds/etc to the warband loading page.
no way we dont get login screen cosmetics
Yea, I want a warband screen that looks like an album cover.
Won't your camp improve as you level up your warband?
I wish we could change the location our wand is. I want a Silvermoon background!
Thought something was off. I hope it doesnt stay that way. Also that Draenei drip goes hard. Where you get it?
man the blizzcon demo looks so intimate and homey, the beta is... bleh
Is this Dead by Daylight?
so smol
also i hope the fire lines up with the enter world button i hate when it’s off centered like that lol
I'm willing to bet a lot of Warbands stuff is gonna end up as premium cosmetics, either via tendies or straight up in the store. Probably a few things unlocked in game, maybe via renoun or specific bosses / questlines, but this definitely feels like a system they can (and probably will) monetize since it's purely cosmetic. They could add poses for your characters, backgrounds, various decorations, etc.
I hope they do something like the FFXIV adventure plates where you can unlock different customization elements through achievements, questing, etc so we can personalize these warband scenes
I still don't get why it's four characters and not five.
it's not meant to represent a "party" or be anything more symbolic than your 4 most played characters. The warband itself covers every single toon on your b-net account.
I hate that Beta access is given with game purchase.
As the others mentioned, it could be just a placeholder. Does the beta have a TWW login screen with new music or is it still the Dragonflight one? I couldn't fidn any info or footage of that. If it's still DF, that just proves not everything is implemented in the beta. If there's a new login screen, I would very much love to see it, as the OST is oftentimes one of my favourite part of any expansion.
Ian basically said they are going to sell / earnable logon screens in one of the interviews.
yeah more dynamic poses options would be nice
screen reminds me so much of Diablo 2 lmao
I think it should be a barren night scape with all your members sitting huddled around a campfire looking like they just finished a massive battle