AT World of Warcraft Thread (Mists, Where do you play, General BS and all that)

[ewdotson]

This is necessary to give a feeling of power gains between tiers. I expect it's the way of the future, with a squish after each xpack (maybe 2).

Out of curiosity, anyone know what the mythic raid boss health pools are looking like in the first WoD raid tier? I haven't been paying all that much attention to beta. But my impression is that despite what Blizzard may have said about doing the stat squish because big numbers are scary, the real impetus was that by SoO, balance was calling for raid bosses with health pools larger than the 32-bit integer they were storing them in. They were able to kludge around it with things like refilling health pools, but (again, this is just my impression) they wanted a longer-term solution. So I don't *think* they should need to do another squish until raid bosses start needing more than 4.7b health again.

 

[Phoenix86]

Out of curiosity, anyone know what the mythic raid boss health pools are looking like in the first WoD raid tier? I haven't been paying all that much attention to beta. But my impression is that despite what Blizzard may have said about doing the stat squish because big numbers are scary, the real impetus was that by SoO, balance was calling for raid bosses with health pools larger than the 32-bit integer they were storing them in. They were able to kludge around it with things like refilling health pools, but (again, this is just my impression) they wanted a longer-term solution. So I don't *think* they should need to do another squish until raid bosses start needing more than 4.7b health again.

I'm getting 16-18K dps at 90, they didn't buy much room. I kind of expected those number at tier-1 at lvl 100 when they discussed the squish.

 

[lupi]

I'm almost certain that the 32 bit hardcoded limit has benn discussed by blizz at some point.

 

[artemicion]

Out of curiosity, anyone know what the mythic raid boss health pools are looking like in the first WoD raid tier? I haven't been paying all that much attention to beta. But my impression is that despite what Blizzard may have said about doing the stat squish because big numbers are scary, the real impetus was that by SoO, balance was calling for raid bosses with health pools larger than the 32-bit integer they were storing them in. They were able to kludge around it with things like refilling health pools, but (again, this is just my impression) they wanted a longer-term solution. So I don't *think* they should need to do another squish until raid bosses start needing more than 4.7b health again.

If that's the case, Blizzard has some pretty retarded coders. Easy way to break the 4.7b health ceiling: divide all incoming damage/healing numbers by some constant factor behind the scenes (10, 100, 1000, etc.). Looks like boss has 100 kajillion health, but the calculations behind the scenes are crunching much smaller numbers.

 

[BoberFett]

I'm surprised that the squish didn't do more at 90. There's still a pretty vast difference in power levels at 90, with fresh 90s in greens and blues doing 1k-3k DPS, while my ~550 mage is doing 7k-9k, and heroic 90s are doing double that. Makes me think that things will have the same ramp up in WoD and we'll be right back where we were by the end of WoD raids. As someone else mentioned, there may be a squish after each expansion now.

 

[Phoenix86]

I'm almost certain that the 32 bit hardcoded limit has benn discussed by blizz at some point.

It has, I'm sure it was one of their reasons. I recall a dev explaining why Garrosh was done the way he was because of it, but it might have been a twitter post or something off the beaten path.

 

[Phoenix86]

If that's the case, Blizzard has some pretty retarded coders. Easy way to break the 4.7b health ceiling: divide all incoming damage/healing numbers by some constant factor behind the scenes (10, 100, 1000, etc.). Looks like boss has 100 kajillion health, but the calculations behind the scenes are crunching much smaller numbers.

And how exactly do you store that 100 kjillion health number given the problem is you can't store it?

To take your approach, you'd give the boss 1B health, and reduce each hit to 10%. That gives you 10x the boss heath without using a number 10x large.

 

[artemicion]

And how exactly do you store that 100 kjillion health number given the problem is you can't store it?

To take your approach, you'd give the boss 1B health, and reduce each hit to 10%. That gives you 10x the boss heath without using a number 10x large.

Exactly? I don't think WoW ever displays boss health numbers with every significant digit, so it doesn't matter if some detail in the least significant digits is lost. If the numbers that pop up on your screen for your character remains the same while smaller numbers are processed in the background, you're effectively creating the illusion that a boss has more than 4.7 billion health.

Second, the idea that WoW programmers can be stumped by the 32-bit integer limit is laughable. How about . . . not storing boss health in a 32-bit positive integer? Create a damn class/object capable of storing and manipulating > 32-bit positive integers. It's not hard. Most programming languages have support for Long, which expands 32-bit integers to 64-bit (or more?). If you need something beyond Long, create your own.

Third, I mean, if Blizzard wanted to implement a really shitty and inelegant way to break the 32-bit ceiling, they could just program boss health into phases. After you burn through 4.7 health, it automatically jumps to the next "phase" of health without any visible indication to the players. Boss' health bar is programmed to display a percentage based upon how many 4.7 billion health phases are left + percentage left in the current phase. Again, not hard. Not an elegant solution at all, it gives you the idea that there's *several* ways to effectively break the 32-bit limit other than the stat squish.

I actually like the stat squish for other reasons, but if Blizzard actually admitted in a post that they made boss design decisions because they couldn't figure out how to give bosses more than 4.7 billion health . . . that's just . . . wow. I haven't done anything programming related for 15 years but maybe I should send them my resume...

 

[Phoenix86]

Exactly? I don't think WoW ever displays boss health numbers with every significant digit, so it doesn't matter if some detail in the least significant digits is lost.

I said store, not display. The storage is kind of important for a calculation (taking damage).

Second, the idea that WoW programmers can be stumped by the 32-bit integer limit is laughable. How about . . . not storing boss health in a 32-bit positive integer? Create a damn class/object capable of storing and manipulating > 32-bit positive integers. It's not hard. Most programming languages have support for Long, which expands 32-bit integers to 64-bit (or more?). If you need something beyond Long, create your own.

I'm going to assume from the ways they worked around this, it was not a possibility. They have tons of talented programmers over there, such a simple problem would not stump them. These were hard limits for whatever reason.

Third, I mean, if Blizzard wanted to implement a really shitty and inelegant way to break the 32-bit ceiling, they could just program boss health into phases. After you burn through 4.7 health, it automatically jumps to the next "phase" of health without any visible indication to the players. Boss' health bar is programmed to display a percentage based upon how many 4.7 billion health phases are left + percentage left in the current phase. Again, not hard. Not an elegant solution at all, it gives you the idea that there's *several* ways to effectively break the 32-bit limit other than the stat squish.

That's exactly what they did.

I actually like the stat squish for other reasons, but if Blizzard actually admitted in a post that they made boss design decisions because they couldn't figure out how to give bosses more than 4.7 billion health . . . that's just . . . wow. I haven't done anything programming related for 15 years but maybe I should send them my resume...

You're writing a lot for not following the issue. The main reason for the squish is so people can comprehend the numbers. It's really that simple, the boss health was secondary.

http://wowpedia.org/Stat_squish

Over the course of five expansions, the power level jumps between tiers within an expansion have far outpaced character level. At the time, this made sense, as moving to a new tier of content should mean a jump in player power level commensurate with the creature power level in the new tier. In other words, a new tier of loot should always feel like an upgrade to the previous tier. Blizzard approves of large jumps between tiers, as they can tune raid encounters to be extremely punishing for cutting-edge raiders (still mostly geared from the previous tier) yet still accessible for other players who may not see the later fights or higher difficulty levels until they have grown much more powerful by obtaining current gear.

This is all well and good, but nearly a decade has passed since the release of the game. The power level jump between Molten Core (tier 1) and Blackwing Lair (tier 2), or even between Wrath of the Lich King and Cataclysm is utterly inconsequential in the era of Throne of Thunder (tier 15) and Siege of Orgrimmar (tier 16). As a result of the successive power jumps, currently near the end of Mists of Pandaria, the average damage-specialized raider has more than 600,000 health (more than most bosses in Molten Core) and is individually dealing more than 240,000 damage per second (nearly as much as an entire 25-player raid attempting heroic Al'Akir).

Additionally, bosses have run into issues where their maximum health has grown too high. WoW stores health values in signed 32-bit integers, which have a maximum value of 2^31 - 1, or 2,147,483,647. Ra-den, the heroic-only boss of Throne of Thunder, starts at roughly 1,500,000,000 health in 25-player mode. As part of the fight, if players make mistakes his health could increase to the point where it would overflow. In order to avoid repeating the problem, Garrosh Hellscream must heal (from 10% to full) several times with a smaller maximum health pool than would otherwise be necessary.

 

[artemicion]

Storage is important. *Precise* storage is NOT important. If boss has 1 billion health and all incoming damage and heals is divided by 100, boss EFFECTIVELY has 100 billion health. You only have to store and manipulate the 1 billion number.

The numbers that pop up on your screen are the same (100k+ hits and such) but the number processed behind the scenes are squished. Players have no idea that the squish is happening in the background. The loss of the two least significant digits would be practically imperceptible.

Edit: and yes, I appreciate the primary reasons for the squish. Like I said in my last post, I like the squish. I'm only commenting on the purported secondary reasons for the squish.

 

[robvp]

Any idea of how the guild or grouping thing works cross server?
I was under the impression that it was between servers on the same battle group, but in the dungeons i've been running lately i've seen a lot of people from the Latin American server where 2 of my 90s are located, figured if it was possible to put them in my current guild and able to group with my friends on spirestone i could give those 90s some use and save me the server transfer

 

[Gryz]

You can play with others cross-server. But I don't think you can do cross-server guilds (yet). I also don't think you can do cross-server chat (unless they are your battlenet friends). I think those are technical limitations. The only intentional non-technical limitiation I know of is that mythic raiding will not be cross-server in WoD.

 

[lupi]

except it's not just changing one value in the program to allow bosses to have larger health pools. It's a storage variable that would have wide and possibly unknown affects all across the game. Just look at all the things they've been hot fixing with what they have done now.

 

[Gryz]

Artemicion, yes, the technical details are stupid. But your suggestion is just as ineffective (imho).

Even if you solve the problem by making real health and displayed health different by a factor of 10, the problem will come back soon (probably the next expansion pack).

One thing Blizz could do is redefine all health-related variables as 64-bit and not 32-bit. However, there is a whole API between the engine and customer-made addons. I bet a lot of addons will break if they change the API.

Having real health 10x larger than shown health is fine at level 90. But what at level 1 ? If a bat in Tirisfal Glades has only 10 health, what are you gonna display ? Some (low-level) mobs must have normal health, others (high-level) must have squashed health. Where are you gonna put the line ? Are you gonna mark every mob as "real health" or "squashed health" ? You could just as well go fronm 32-bit health to 64-bit health then.

"Smart tricks" like you suggest are the major reason for problems and bugs. Doing stuff the complicated way, in stead of the straight-forward way is always gonna come back and bite you in the arse. I've heard that the current WoW-engine is still based on the old Warcraft-3 engine. And I bet it has a crappy editor that has such a huge history as well. For me, that would explain why Blizzard has such unbelievable problems producing content. All that "it takes time because of polish" is a load of BS. When amateurs can churn out whole levels in the Unreal Editor/Engine in a matter of days, why does it take years for Blizzard to create their low-poly, low-res crappy content ? Anyway, I'm drifting off the subject. 🙂

The most remarkable thing is that the squash doesn't do anything relevant.
I would have expected them to lower health numbers to the order of a few thousands. Now we're back only 1 expansion.
I also had expected them to take out the weird bumps in health/dmg/item-level at 60, 70, 80 and 85. They haven't done that either.
They seem to have acted like headless chickens here.

 

[lupi]

seems all dungeon instances are borked at the moment.

 

[lupi]

Because UBRS now a max level dungeon, the bwl attunement has been removed.

Blizz has sent out an email to most accounts, if you go into account management by the 5th you can register a free week to your account.


Saw some of the details on the errors with the low level stat squish. Seems some of the mobs in the starting area still hitting for a couple hundred damage each hit. Normally that wouldn't be noticed except post squish a starting player only has a hundred something health, so new chars getting one shotted like you were playing diablo before the difficulty level revamp.

 

[Gryz]

Blizz has sent out an email to most accounts, if you go into account management by the 5th you can register a free week to your account.

Do you have a link with more information ?

Edit: http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/1616400-7-Days-Free!-WoD-Marketing-move

Edit 2: oh, I just read it's out on US servers, but not on EU servers yet. Guess I need to have a little patience. Anyway, thanks for the heads-up.

Edit 3: It seems the offer is open till November 5th. So it seems you can play 5th till 12th at the latest. On the 13th, WoD will start. The anniversary is much later, starting November 20th. It seems I can get 4 pets in my free week, but not the anniversary pet.

===
I stopped playing 3 weeks ago. I'm not sure I will play again. (But as always, I'm not sure I will manage to stay away from the game either).

There's a few pets I'd like to gather. Two from the Blasted-lands quests. Two from Hallow's End. One from WoW's upcoming anniversary. It feels silly to pay 13 euros, just for a handful of pets. I won't do that. (I refuse to pay for anything outside the standard monthly subscription). But if I get a free week, and I can time it right, I might pick up a bunch of pets.

 

[Xonim]

Saw some of the details on the errors with the low level stat squish. Seems some of the mobs in the starting area still hitting for a couple hundred damage each hit. Normally that wouldn't be noticed except post squish a starting player only has a hundred something health, so new chars getting one shotted like you were playing diablo before the difficulty level revamp.

I would think some of the lower level dungeons are going to be fine-tuned also. It could be that I was just getting used to the ability prune and stat squish, but healing some of the dungeons in level 30s and 40s seemed a lot more "difficult" than it should be -- as in, I know how to play a damn priest (already have one at 90, just leveling a new one on a different server) and am having difficulty with certain dungeons.

It happened a few times in the level 30-42/44 range, and by ZF/ST/BRD range it seemed to go away, but now some of the TBC dungeons (HF Ramparts sections w/ mortal strike mobs and Setthek Halls in general) seem to also need a re-tune. Yes, I know mortal strike has a healing reduction, but I think either the reduction is too much or the mob damage is still too high on those parts. Setthek Halls gave me problems, but that could've been the way our tank was pulling. It just seemed like damage was maybe a bit high. Blood Furnace, Crypts, Escape from Durnholde, and Mana Tombs were fine.

And it's not like the tanks in groups I had trouble with were poorly geared ... every tank I remember running with has had full heirlooms. So....either disc priests are really bad, my life is a lie and I secretly suck at WoW, or further tuning is needed.

 

[JujuFish]

My level 49 rogue had the 300% elixir buff before the patch. Just got on him last night and the buff is gone. I opened a ticket, but I'm not holding my breath.

Forgot about this. GM gave me a new elixir. Hooray!

 

[Rhezuss]

It's pretty weird what happened a coulpe days ago. I just started a BE Pally to try tanking for the first time since WoW released.

Sure i'm only level 22 but tell me if that's something to expect along the road.

I tanked Deadmines and Wailing Caverns easily. Nobody could get aggro from mobs. All was well and fine, it's was fun.

Couple days ago I LFG into Shadowfang Keep. I couldn't keep aggro for more than a few seconds...was annoying...

What is going on? 😛

 

[artemicion]

Artemicion, yes, the technical details are stupid. But your suggestion is just as ineffective (imho).

Even if you solve the problem by making real health and displayed health different by a factor of 10, the problem will come back soon (probably the next expansion pack).

One thing Blizz could do is redefine all health-related variables as 64-bit and not 32-bit. However, there is a whole API between the engine and customer-made addons. I bet a lot of addons will break if they change the API.

Having real health 10x larger than shown health is fine at level 90. But what at level 1 ? If a bat in Tirisfal Glades has only 10 health, what are you gonna display ? Some (low-level) mobs must have normal health, others (high-level) must have squashed health. Where are you gonna put the line ? Are you gonna mark every mob as "real health" or "squashed health" ? You could just as well go fronm 32-bit health to 64-bit health then.

"Smart tricks" like you suggest are the major reason for problems and bugs. Doing stuff the complicated way, in stead of the straight-forward way is always gonna come back and bite you in the arse. I've heard that the current WoW-engine is still based on the old Warcraft-3 engine. And I bet it has a crappy editor that has such a huge history as well. For me, that would explain why Blizzard has such unbelievable problems producing content. All that "it takes time because of polish" is a load of BS. When amateurs can churn out whole levels in the Unreal Editor/Engine in a matter of days, why does it take years for Blizzard to create their low-poly, low-res crappy content ? Anyway, I'm drifting off the subject. 🙂

The most remarkable thing is that the squash doesn't do anything relevant.
I would have expected them to lower health numbers to the order of a few thousands. Now we're back only 1 expansion.
I also had expected them to take out the weird bumps in health/dmg/item-level at 60, 70, 80 and 85. They haven't done that either.
They seem to have acted like headless chickens here.

You wouldn't apply my trick to level 1 mobs. It'd purely be a function that's only invoked in boss counters where it's needed (to push their apparent health above the limit). And it's arguably less prone to bugs and such since it's limited to a select few encounters that therefore would be subject to more focused debugging. And yeah, it's not an ideal long term solution, but it could've been applied to boss encounters prior to the squish instead of giving them incremental heals.

Whatever, it was just an idea. They didn't implement it so who cares.

 

[BoberFett]

It's pretty weird what happened a coulpe days ago. I just started a BE Pally to try tanking for the first time since WoW released.

Sure i'm only level 22 but tell me if that's something to expect along the road.

I tanked Deadmines and Wailing Caverns easily. Nobody could get aggro from mobs. All was well and fine, it's was fun.

Couple days ago I LFG into Shadowfang Keep. I couldn't keep aggro for more than a few seconds...was annoying...

What is going on? 😛

Who knows what to expect right now, everything is pretty wonky at the moment. I have a BE Prot Pally as well *fist bump* and while leveling through vanilla zones and dungeons, I was not only holding aggro, I was doing 50-70% of the groups damage according to Recount.

Edit: I did have several heirloom pieces.

 

[Chaotic42]

After the first 90 i was completly sick of pandaria, worst leveling experience in the game, i finished the second one after the exp squish with dungeons only

Other than the actual zone designs, Pandaria was a complete bust. I didn't like the pandas, the lore, the mobs, or the quests.

I just resubscribed and started a horde character. I wanted to see what their quests are like. So far they're not bad.

 

[BoberFett]

Other than the actual zone designs, Pandaria was a complete bust. I didn't like the pandas, the lore, the mobs, or the quests.

I just resubscribed and started a horde character. I wanted to see what their quests are like. So far they're not bad.

Make sure you do Silverpine and into Southshore. The hands down best quests of the game are in that area.

 

[MagickMan]

I'm surprised that the squish didn't do more at 90. There's still a pretty vast difference in power levels at 90, with fresh 90s in greens and blues doing 1k-3k DPS, while my ~550 mage is doing 7k-9k, and heroic 90s are doing double that. Makes me think that things will have the same ramp up in WoD and we'll be right back where we were by the end of WoD raids. As someone else mentioned, there may be a squish after each expansion now.

Yeah, it'll be odd, my 566 cat is doing >20k, and from what the devs said that shouldn't be happening at all right now.