WoW 12.0.5 Patch Disaster — Full Breakdown & Transcript

[00:03] time cuz this video is sure going to be something. Okay, I'm going to start us off with a bit of a quote to set the tone. Here it is. We've had regular 8-week content updates all along the way. No corners cut, no compromises in

[00:17] terms of what we're delivering, [music] and no sacrifices to quality. Hazzikostas, game director, World of Warcraft. He was speaking with the GamesBeat about 3 months ago. And of course, by the time he said those words,

[00:33] alarm about World of Warcraft's day one patch quality for years now. So, when that was said 3 months ago, it sounded completely unhinged. It just did not match up with the actual game experience. But more

[00:46] importantly, with that quote in mind, well, tell me, Ion, if you're not sacrificing quality, then what exactly is 12.0.5? Because this is being called one of the worst patches of all time. And that

[01:00] really is sad because on paper, this patch should be great. It actually is great on paper. It has a stack of fantastic features that I think are welcome injections to Midnight. But instead, for many people, it's been

[01:13] a downgrade. And no matter how bad you think it is, I actually promise you it is worse cuz this isn't one-off. This is a pattern and it's been a pattern since Dragonflight. Now, the good news is that this is actually so bad that Blizzard

[01:29] are genuinely and visibly rattled. They've actually responded to things and I'll get to that later in this video. But for a taste, here's just some of The new Keystone Master achievement added in this patch was immediately

[01:43] disabled. Picking up a mirror in Shadow Enclave breaks strafing until you relog. impossible. The new Void Core bonus rolls shipped without the absolutely

[01:56] vital anti-dupe protection working. Housing was turned off in North America because of a critical bug. Unholy DK got buffs that actually were massive nerfs because, well, their talents are now bugged. Demonology's talents are bugged,

[02:11] and Devourer's talents aren't bugged, but it got buffs even though it's already at the top of like the meta DPS pack. Pretty weird. Then Marksmanship Hunter's rework is causing a bit of furor on the forums because it feels

[02:25] worse to play. PvPers are being disconnected and even crashing during matches. And when housing was finally re-enabled, players were finding their floors changing randomly. And then there's a little fun thing of the hide

[02:38] art bar option disabling itself sometimes, so you'll just get randomly sometimes, so you'll just get randomly griffins on your UI. A little bit weird. jewel, which was actually made completely pointless because

[02:51] completely pointless because track humanoids works inside it. Kind of insane. But it gets worse because even if there isn't a hunter in your group, staying still for too long, and by the way, a game of hide and seek, flags you

[03:04] way, a game of hide and seek, flags you as being AFK and disqualifies you. Then parts of this patch. They weren't working properly and barely anyone even know this. They're supposed to come in two parts. The strikes, which are the

[03:19] small ones, and then the incursions, which are the big one that builds up and happens later. But for at least the day, maybe longer, the incursion part just wasn't showing up at all. There's wild stuff happening and there almost seems

[03:32] to be no logic to it whatsoever. It's a baffling, busted patch, and it's also a baffling, busted patch, and it's also a bit of a dangerous one. thousand cuts. And you know what? We personally felt it this week. You see,

[03:47] our raid night was on Thursday. Now that's normally good because, hey, North America servers, you know, they they get their patch a bit earlier and that means testers. Didn't really work for us this time

[04:00] though, did it? Because man, it was a buggy raid. Our Unholy DK had to swap to damage than our tanks. Then during Dragons, half the raid had Lua errors spam their screen during the intermission. I was one of them. It

[04:14] really wasn't fun. And our raid frames were actually covered by having multiple copies of the same mechanic. Then on our Lura progression, more Lua errors happened mid-fight. Specifically, they happened in the bit where you are

[04:28] dropping the light crystals in the intermission phase. So very much not the time that you want most of your visible screen area being a Lua error. And turns out that this is basically because of how Blizzard changed private auras. Cuz

[04:43] yeah, it wasn't all caused by add-ons. Now bugs aren't the only problem. There is also the lack of an obvious lead into the new Void Forge system. And that meant that few of our guildies had any bonus rolls ready. Not that of course we

[04:55] would have used them anyway because Blizzard's hotfix was immediately reported as being broken as well. Now thankfully, the bug that made Lura unkillable was actually fixed. We managed to get ahead of the curve. And

[05:07] you know what? It was kind of funny. I think we all had a great raid night. But you know what? That's the kind of funny that is only funny once. It was close to disaster. I mean, if we had both of our Unholy players, we'd I don't know, have

[05:21] doesn't feel good. If either of our healers were getting those Lua errors or were impacted by bugs, then we would have been hard stuck. Our healers were mad enough anyway because their cheap and readily available mana food actually

[05:35] got stealth worked to only restore health. Bit fun, bit weird. And the thing is that's just our experience. PvPers basically can't play the game at all between the disconnects and the MM hunters that are suddenly

[05:48] just no scoping everybody and taking over arena. Outlaw and sub rogues are massively buffed with a new talent, but it leaves a smoke screen that makes seeing ground effects much harder for the entire group. And it's also broken.

[06:02] Their main cool down proc the smoke, but only if they have 30 energy free. If that could be fine. That could be a mechanic. Just that none of this is actually documented and it doesn't appear to be intended, either, because

[06:16] it's actually hooked up to also use another ability called distract that costs 30 energy at the same time. So, basically, they cobbled that thing together on the back end real quick and it just went live the way that it did.

[06:32] But, hey, all of this will be fixed eventually, right? Yeah, sure. But, the damage is already done and I think it's far more insidious than the majority of far more insidious than the majority of people know.

[06:49] early, exploit often." You hear it a lot and actually today is another instance of that being correct. You see, Blizzard has now fixed the problem where the bonus roll bad luck protection for dupes wasn't working. They explained how it

[07:04] big old [music] post where they revealed that it's pretty much what we all suspected, that the live game environment is very different to their led to them storing the list of already rolled loot in the wrong database. So,

[07:18] it worked in testing, but didn't work as intended on live. And if you were impacted by the bug, good news, you actually got free loot. You see, over the next few days, they're refunding any void cores used before the

[07:32] bug fix happened. That means that if you got any loot, GG, you'll get to keep it and you'll get a bonus roll. Now, that's an okay fix, but it's an example of Blizzard having no philosophy for how to handle issues. This time it's free bonus

[07:46] loot, but not for the people who actively decided to be, you know, good Warcraft citizens and avoid the bug. Little bit weird, right? But, what's weirder is that sometimes Blizzard punishes people who act early. You know,

[07:59] sometimes you can say abuse renown bugs and just get away with it. Now, players are being rewarded for playing fast and loose with the system. Now, I do appreciate Blizzard's candor. It's really good to read, but it's a rushed

[08:13] response that creates a bit of a schism in player reactions. Cuz man, as homo sapiens, we are hardwired to get really angry over issues of fairness. That's something every game developer has got to watch out for. Well, let's get to the

[08:27] difference between the test environment and the live environment. [music] Blizzard ended that post saying this, quote, "We apologize for all of this. understanding of a potential design pitfall that we will ensure we avoid in

[08:40] the future, we regret disrupting the game for you. Thank you for your passionate feedback the last couple of days. We really appreciate it." Well, what can I say? You're welcome. Okay, now look, I'm not going to pretend

[08:53] that I know all of the ins and outs of what running wild is like. A game like this is extremely complex, but it does seem like those differences are be aware of. I mean, not knowing where your data is actually going to be saved

[09:07] does scream to me like a pretty major red flag. And they've issues that seem to fall under this same category. Like, as an example, the wrong transmog colors on the warband screen that still is not fixed. There's the art bar showing up

[09:22] again. Maybe that's an issue of how edit mode's data is stored. Then, of course, recaps that have been doing really weird things lately, too. Like, as an example, telling all of our raiders that our blood death knight's purgatory is what

[09:36] killed them. So, um yeah, screw you. It's your fault. You cast the wrong Now, all of these bugs range from annoying to kind of game-breaking. The problem is that every single patch is now expected by all of us to break. We

[09:52] basically on this channel now warn people against playing on patch day. So, when Ian says they're not compromising, it's honestly hard to not take it as him it's honestly hard to not take it as him brazenly lying. Because we know how

[10:05] buggy these patches are. He definitely knows how buggy these patches are. He's the goddamn game director. I'm sure he has some big old dashboard he can pull up that on patch day probably makes him feel quite sad. And look, on a

[10:18] man-to-man level, I do empathize. Dude's got a hard, hard goddamn job and a lot of responsibility. But, the thing is they keep saying they'll improve their processes, and it does just look to us like it's all getting worse. And there's

[10:32] one big potential reason for this, the 8-week patch cadence. Releasing a build is too much for their server team to to firefight and to problem-solve, and too much for the designers and

[10:47] developers to release bug-free, typo-free work that is actually good, which, you know, is really the thing that matters. Because if I'm honest with you here, these bugs are not even what worry me. They're not the main thing I'm

[11:01] concerned about. They are bad, but at least most of them will get fixed, probably within a week. What worries me, maybe even angers me, is that the game's quality is suffering as well. The speed at which these developers have got to

[11:13] work, despite what Ian says about, quote, "a marathon, not a sprint," just Game Business that there are, quote, "no corners cut in the 8-week pace." That is

[11:25] clearly not true. Last year, he said something that I do believe, though, and that is that they aren't, quote, consciously compromising quality. I'm willing to believe them on that. I'm willing to believe that their plan does

[11:39] not consciously compromise quality, but the problem is the gap between their plan and what they [music] can do. Something that we actually call the execution gap. And that's basically Blizzard's biggest

[11:52] problem. That's why this is actually worse than most people think. not always a conscious thing. Sometimes it happens without you noticing. And you

[12:06] I think we can all hold up a bit of a mirror to ourselves in our own personal areas where we may have compromised. But getting back to wow, here's an example. If you like doing the new ritual sites or void assaults, you'll get plenty of

[12:20] field accolades. Those will let you buy the new transmog set. Or, of course, you could also spend them on champion or even hero gear. Yeah, player power and cosmetics are sharing a single currency. That's generally considered to be a

[12:32] mistake, and it's one that Blizzard have avoided for the last while. And they have, by the way, improved [music] things greatly since the earlier days of the PTR. But still, while I understand the logic behind what they're doing

[12:44] here, it is still a bit of a sacrifice. Except, of course, that wow has found tons of success moving towards cosmetic-only currencies as a thing. I voidlight brawl. And it feels better

[12:57] decision between the thing that they want, the transmog, and the thing that they feel they need, the player power, the gear. So that's one thing. But another lesson that wow has learned is that players like determinism. You see,

[13:10] for the last few years, cosmetics have either been random drops from content or Vendors have been offering sets [music] and individual pieces for a flat price for ages. But that suddenly stopped because the accolades are basically

[13:25] blind boxes. You get a chance at the item that you want, and a low enough chance. You see, what they are are these void-touched recolors of the anniversary tier two sets. Loads of them look sweet, but the thing is, it means you've got a

[13:39] that you want. Now, thankfully, you can't get any dupes, so you are guaranteed to get what you want eventually. You'll just have to farm out a lot of accolades and burn through a lot of voidlight moral to get it all.

[13:52] time and clicks into it because the actual experience of opening those goddamn boxes is a nightmare. That's cuz it's a six-step process. You have to confirm, open your bag, open the bag, then learn the individual item, and then

[14:07] you got to just do it all over again, 13 times a slot. Now, you can't buy the boxes or the sets in bulk, and look, there's probably a good reason for that. The game checks to see if you have, you know, eligible drops left before letting

[14:22] you buy. That's fair enough. But, that doesn't change the fact that the basic ergonomics of this is a terrible experience for a player. And that kind of thing matters. And that's what leads me to the real thing I want to ram home.

[14:34] This has all the signs of something the developers did not have time to think about. They probably made it, tested it that it works, and then had to ship it. It is very much a first draft-looking system. Now, with time to make a second

[14:48] buying in bulk sucks. Maybe added some fixes, like full set boxes. They could have remembered that this gacha-like system hasn't been used in ages, and for good reason. Wow has moved away from the excitement of gambling for cosmetics,

[15:04] and for good reason. Yet, here they are again, accidentally repeating mistakes of the past and forgetting lessons that they've learned. That tells me that institutional knowledge is walking out the door. That's quite worrying. Now,

[15:18] another example of this is the void assaults. There's nothing really wrong with them, but there's so much low-hanging fruit the devs just did not great example. One of Midnight's quirks

[15:30] is that leveling alts is actually kind of boring. The fastest source of XP is just to clear each delve quest once and then do the campaign and some side quests again. To go fast, you just have to zoom through the same thing over and

[15:42] assault feature could have helped a lot here. You can do them below level 90. They give you XP, but it's barely any XP. And worst yet, they don't give you

[15:54] field accolades below level 90. So, if you're trying to spice up your leveling by doing those, doesn't feel great at all, does it? Now, if Blizzard had the time to, you know, think [music] and come up with solutions to community

[16:07] content drops, then they might have seen the opportunity here. Maybe increase the XP per strike to roughly match the rate of full-speed questing and maybe make sure that the accolades drop for characters at level 80 plus because that

[16:21] could be a new way to level up your character and get a bunch of cool while you do it. That would feel brilliant. Suddenly, people would have stacking reasons to play the game. Now, yeah, you could be cynical about it and

[16:34] say it's just the new flavor of mindless fill the bar event stuff. But, look, let people level through it and I can guarantee you'll have players keeping each strike and each incursion populated for weeks, which is good for the health

[16:48] But, by prioritizing quantity over quality, Blizzard are accidentally, but obviously, making huge compromises with the quality of the game. They're leaving so much on the table and in ways they aren't even focused enough to notice.

[17:05] All because they've got to move on to whatever the next thing is instead of reflecting. But, hey, at least they responded. So, let's hop into the responded. So, let's hop into the response.

[17:18] themselves. The first line is pretty direct. It says the 1205 patch launch was not up to our standards and we know this disrupted your time and caused justified frustration. Now, before I continue with the things that are

[17:31] continue with the things that are planned for me to say in this video, little thing because actually my response to that quote is Q, I basically think you're lying. Your standards are

[17:45] They've been for [ __ ] years. Get your together and have some accountability. Like seriously, god damn. Um Dragonflight's minor patches were really ropy. The War Within's minor patches were really,

[18:00] really, really ropy. To the point where they had full features like what was it completely broken for like a week. And by the time Blizzard actually got them just kind of they were depopulated. The damage was done. So, whenever Blizzard

[18:15] says the patch launch was not up to our standards, I say, "Well, you, where are your standards? I have not god damn seen them." I mean, to be a standard, it has to be consistent. So, you can't just point to, "Oh, well, you know, the

[18:27] Karazhan patch went pretty fairly well." and say, "Oh, that's our standard. No, your standard is what your standard is and that standard has been a god damn mess, especially for minor patches. Here's the thing, I'm not saying this to

[18:41] beat devs, to bludgeon devs. I actually think that the devs are the prime victims here. I mean, can you imagine getting into game develop for the sheer love of the game and being forced to ship sub par quality that frustrates the

[18:56] players you are trying to serve, that undercuts the hard work you are doing, that undercuts your designs such that you get things like was it dynamic duos, dastardly duos, whatever it was called um back in the last expansion that

[19:10] analyzed the design side of things, we we just thought, "Oh, you know what? I can actually see how they were cooking." Not that any player really felt that because it was still half-baked by the time that it came out. And so, look,

[19:24] done some interviews with each other. I know that's not like an IRL friendship, but I will say, I like you guys. You're fun to talk to. You're warm. You're nice. I'm not saying this to mess you guys around, but I just don't believe

[19:38] this. I mean, whenever I see "The 12.0.5 patch launch was not up to our standards." Guys, the 12.0.5 launch is your standard. It's like the difference between, say, stated preference and revealed preference. This is not up to

[19:54] your stated standards, but it is absolutely in line with your revealed standards. But, I'll continue with their message and uh I'll go back on script. >> [music] >> around the clock to sort things out. I

[20:10] for the fact that message was posted about 8:00 p.m. on a Thursday in California. That's not super late, but it is out of hours. Anyway, the real meat comes after that. They say they're,

[20:22] quote, "taking lessons learned to stop this sort of thing from happening again." Of course, they are. But, the question is if they can actually do that well enough. They say they'll work harder to communicate openly, early, and

[20:35] often in cases like these. And yeah, in cases like these, all it takes is an acknowledgement to ease player fears. Look, we kind of know the game is going to have bugs. It's a 20-year-old game with an enormous team working on it.

[20:48] But, the part that pushes users away is pretending that everything is fine. And I know the Blizzard's response post is absolutely not doing that. But, through years of patches that have been similarly bugged to this one, they kind

[21:02] of have just not really acknowledged it properly. I mean, saying, quote, "No corners cut" to a journalist well, 3 months ago, that's wishful thinking at best and ignoring reality at worst. I think Ian would be surprised how far a

[21:18] little honesty goes compared to meeting promises that we know they mean, but that we also know they're obviously not able to keep. And the post ends in a way I'm not too sure I like. It says quote "We care deeply about this game and we

[21:33] play it right alongside you." "We will do better. Thanks for sticking with us, get me wrong. Whoever wrote that definitely meant it. Anyone working in game development is there with passion. Seriously, if you just want dolla, you

[21:47] can go to many other industries. No, whenever people go to game dev, whenever people go to game dev, honestly, it it is to do like what we all love, right? I know they love the game. I will never doubt that, but I

[21:59] don't like it in this context because it forgets what our relationship is. I wish I could live in a world where it was us and the developers, but that's just not true. We pay Blizzard Entertainment for a product. One that people in three

[22:13] regions were sharply reminded of this week because the same day the patch went out, Blizzard announced regional price increases. Um it was for no specific And that means that WoW is more

[22:25] expensive for some. In the UK, it is up from £10 a month to £11. In [music] Kazakhstan, Georgia, Turkey, Mexico, Chile, and Brazil, um well, they're also getting price hikes. And in Brazil, it specifically stings. They were hit with

[22:39] specifically stings. They were hit with a massive 35% increase. And uh the Brazilian servers, I believe, are in Miami. Servers aren't in Brazil. Their region is forced to play in servers located in the US with 150-plus ping.

[22:53] That's wild. The price rises are a can of worms for another time, but the point is here, we are not Blizzard's friends. We are Blizzard's customers. Now, look, I have compassion for them trying their hardest, but at the end of the day, they

[23:07] have to provide a game that is worth paying for. And what I hate is when the needs of the corporate entity get in the way of that, and when it breaks up the developers. That's what I think is really going on here. Because if we did

[23:24] not have this insane eight-week patch cycle, then maybe the developers would get enough time to actually ship work that they're proud of, that they can stand behind, and that I guess they, you know, don't have to go to bed the night

[23:39] before patch day terrified of how the thing's going to blow up, and how the next four or five work days, maybe working the weekend, whatever, is just going to be a massive nightmare. Because their company, once again, has forced

[23:51] them to ship that is not just isn't ready. And we know it's not ready because so many of these bugs are documented in PTR for a long long ass time. And it hurts all the more because they really are trying. And Midnight has

[24:06] got so many great things. It really does. I mean, hell, even the ritual sites. Man, I think those are awesome. They remind me of doing a quest like back in the day on a newbie character where I had to worry about patrol paths

[24:19] and stuff. It's great. Now, obviously, writing issues is maybe something we can But if we ignore the writing issues, Midnight has been more or less fantastic in a bunch of ways. Except for these cracks showing in the very first patch.

[24:35] So, they, Blizzard Entertainment wing of the Xbox division of Microsoft, really need to ask themselves something. How sustainable is this release cadence? What levers can they pull to stop every patch getting closer and closer to just

[24:50] actively making the game feel worse? We'll just have to see. It's a frustrating situation, and we won't really know how this stuff's going to go least seem this has been escalated to

[25:03] taking it seriously. A response this direct is actually unprecedented, which is by the way a really disappointing thing because they should have been apologizing for I don't know, about half of the patches that have came

[25:17] should be apologizing for the launch quality, designs that should have been broken. So, you know, it's a little bit weird that it took this long, but I'm glad, I guess. And the best way I can put a

[25:31] positive spin on this is that I hope that this has taken them to some form of internal rock bottom. I hope the last few days have been really horrible and painful because you know what? Sometimes you need to hit rock bottom to actually

[25:47] make improvements. And I'm sure that's something that we've all kind of felt in compromises, you get less and less happy, you kind of hit rock bottom, and it's from hitting rock bottom that you're able to assess what the hell am I

[26:00] doing with all of this, and then move on in a positive way with proper conviction. That's what they need to do. And I hope this is rock bottom because there's nothing that will hurt someone's ability to [music] go into work, give a

[26:15] and make brilliant stuff from situations like this undercutting them. And [music] I am more concerned for the developers than the actual players. Because look, to each of us, so what? Maybe we'll regret spending a few quid,

[26:29] right? But to the devs, this is their god damn career. This is what they've specialized in, right? And for many of them, they're probably working on a dream game. And I know on the grapevine of so many instances where

[26:41] found that it's not been what they thought it would be. And that that's been quite, you know, damaging, depressing, etc., etc. The thing that I really worry about then is team quality, team health, and there's an insidious

[26:54] thing here. The jobs market within games is in such a dire state right now. And of course, over in tech, we're seeing I mean just about everybody do a 10% cut. So, job market is absolutely flooded with people. That means that if you're

[27:07] in a job, you're probably not going to want to leave that job. Now, that's people talk about, you know, in a team you might have your A players, your B players, and your C players. Now, the thing is, if you don't fire your C

[27:20] well, they'll turn your B players into uh more C players. And if you're not able to retain your A players, then who's going to raise up the B players into being A players, right? So, the thing that's worrying to me is that team

[27:34] health could degrade and degrade and degrade over time, but they would still see really good team retention numbers because quite literally in today's job market, people don't actually have a better place to go. And that could be

[27:48] damaging to the game for extremely obvious goddamn reasons. If I was in a Blizzard, I would be terrified of this specific problem, and I would not [music] trust any employee retention data that I see

[28:02] they're unhappy with their job at Blizzard, and they're unhappy that they or that their pet feature that they really enjoyed making just, you know, broke or whatever it is, well, they may

[28:16] not have a choice but to stay at the company. We all know that that's a very, very unhealthy thing. So, I don't know. Ian, Holly, co-people making decisions, remember that while the double-blind placebo-controlled whatever test is like

[28:31] the best type of, you know, science whatever you can get, and we shouldn't put all of our stock into anecdotes. Seeing a case like this, believe the anecdotes. Because by the time it shows up in whatever data you see, it will be

[28:44] history, and you will have already borne the cost of that history. That is it for this video. This build needs to stop. It really does. And you know what? If it does stop, we could be going into a bit of a golden age for World of Warcraft as

[28:57] a gameplay experience. Certainly not in terms of world building. That's a discussion for another day. But between ritual sites, pray, all the stuff that they're doing, I think that the end game of World of

[29:09] way that could be quite beautiful. They just need to solve this problem. That is it for this video. Now, if the rushed ending of this sort of 12.0 campaign situation has left you feeling a bit like confused about the story, don't

[29:24] really kind of know how things connect together. Good news is, I made this next video specifically for you. You may have missed it. We published it late last >> go check it out. It'll connect all the dots and you'll see what's up.