All praise the TH-cam gods! That said, I've been having a blast with prepatch. Back in actual BC when I was a teenager, I felt like I was missing out and falling behind in the expansion if I tried to level one of the new races. I could take my 42 human mage and try to catch up and get into Outlands, or I could start all over. In the end, I did a bit of both and didn't hit 70 until Wrath prepatch. This time I'm ready! As of today my blood elf paladin is level 59, Jewelcrafting is up to 270. I'm gonna hit the expansion running! I'm so excited!
I'd like to argue that pre-patch are not only good to have, but even necesary, and to do so, i'm gonna explain it from both points of view: Devs and Players Dev PoV: The prepatch window help find and iron out all the possible bugs. The prepatch is the deploy of all the new systems, while the expansion launch is the deploy of the actual content. Many systems get changed, improved and even completely overwritten in the prepatch. There's always a big possibility that lots of those changes cause problems, and the devs then get time to fix them in order to get a smooth actual launch. And while this makes it seem like some sort of paid beta, we need to consider next the player point of view. Player PoV: The prepatch usualy brings lots of changes, to systems, and more importantly, classes. And you don't want to find yourself in the launch day trying to figure out your new talents, or if you are changing professions, etc... The prepatch works as a preparation time, so when the actual launch comes, you can start stright up doing the new content, having your character more or less set and ready. I still remember quite vividly the TBC prepatch: My first character and main was a warlock, and for the big last part of the vanilla i had been playing a hybrid spec, focused on PVP. I was at 1 week to reach rank 13 when they took down the old honor system (sad pepe) And when the prepatch arrived, i wanted to go demo to play with the felguard. I used that time to find the best talents for me, train my new spec, and even get a couple last pieces of gear so i didn't need to change everything for greens in Hellfire Peninsula... and it worked great! My first item i actualy changed was my Grand Marshal Spelldagger at lvl 68 from one from Shatttered Halls iirc. I also had a lvl 60 paladin, which while i played every spec, i was mostly ret because i did not like how shitty prot was back then, even with the best tanking gear, your aggro was always an issue and you had no taunt button... come prepatch they fixed and changed the specs quite a lot. I tried the new prot spec and found out it was now great, i used also the time to grab a few more prot and ret pieces to start TBC strong. Honestly, like with any trip, you want to take some time to prepare for it. Make sure everything is ready before your leave. You make sure your vehicle is working fine, that whatever you need to take with you is packaged and ready, that you have an idea which route you gonna take, etc... And is the same here. Is not FOMO. Is the fact that you wanna start the new content knowing you did your homework and you will be able to enjoy the new quests, the new dungeons, the new zones, without having to stop every 2 minutes to readjust everything, or having to fly back to Stormwind or Orgrimmar to re-do your talents :)
This was a good read. I really appreciate the thought behind this. Though I think it's about more than preparation. I mentioned FOMO for all of the people who don't care about preparing. To use the same analogy of going on a trip, imagine the kid who doesn't want to go on the camping trip initially. Though as time gets closer and closer the thought of missing out on a fun time with their friends can drive them to last minute decide to go anyway just to give it a shot. My friend I used in the video is the exact example of that. Thank you again for the discussion. I love when people put some real thought and elaboration behind their viewpoints.
@@ZerbraxiWoW You are welcome. And you are right on the FOMO people. Yes there will be people like that too! In which case, is a good thing there's this small gap for them to make up their mind. However, i think, more then the prepatch, things like the character boost are the tools the company uses to take advantage of those with FOMO.
YEEEES! Anticipation is the best seasoning for the meal of hunger or whatnot! Any time you can have players excited and moving and talking and busy and HYPED and streaming is a time to be encouraged and nurtured, not cut short, ugh. I think pre-patches must also be my favorite time of the game, or maybe just slightly behind the releases themselves.
Hey Zerbraxi, although I agree with your points I think the major point of the release is less to do with the players but more so to do with Blizzard getting the chance to deploy their new full product early so there is less hiccups on the actual launch day. Imagine the saltiness of players if Blizzard had that 18 hours of down time on the actual TBC release date. It's essentially a 'beta' for the new core of the game before the expansion is even released.
Overall, you're right. There is definitely a technical element to this as well. The reason I dodged discussing that part specifically is because Blizzard also has the PTR and beta tests for that exact reason. While testing never truly matches the live environment they do tend to get the overwhelming majority of issues wrapped up before the pre patch goes live.
2 weeks is the equivalent of 4 weeks if you do some really bad math lol. For real though, I do wish there was more time to goof around during this pre patch. It's been fun.
Interesting. Maintenance windows might just be one of those relative issues. I do have to give props to a game like Guild Wars 1 and 2 though, for I don't think I recall a long maintenance window at all. I'm sure it happened but the fact I can't remember is the best compliment I can give. Maybe when Endwalker drops and I wanna give the game another try I might experience this day long downtime for myself :)
Waste of time?! I don't think it's enough! I really want a 1 month long pre-patch, just to finish all the business in classic, and level up another character, gear him up, pvp, test new builds...... God damn it, pre patch is half way done and I haven't finished any of it!!!!
Personally, I am bored of prepatches after the first day or 2. Then I usually take a break and sometimes the break means i miss a launch. Prepatch just feels like the same old but without the need or want of actual progression. I feel more like I am in purgatory without any will to do anything. So I wait until something meaningful comes along. I would be fine with a prepatch that lasts 1 week tops.
This is an interesting perspective, and a bit of a tough one. If you don't enjoy a pre patch, taking a break is almost a good thing as it can reinvigorate your excitement about the actual "playing" of the game. Unfortunately, as you described, the risk is that people's breaks become long if they find something else they enjoy more, or just forget. This is a tough one, but I think if I was to weigh the risk vs reward on the spectrum of no pre patch to 6 week pre patch, I think I'd still land somewhere in the 3-4 week range overall. Though this is a discussion I'd love to see more viewpoints on, so thank you for your comment on this!
Really? I'm not gonna bust my friend's name on this one, but I've had a close friend discord streaming his AFK antics in AV for the last week or so. That's so surprising to hear. On the bright side, you won't be tempted to log in on patch day which will be a guaranteed mess lol.
@@ZerbraxiWoW really really, I got banned yesterday though so the ban expires right before launch, but yeah it's insane, I was building a guild, 3 Kara groups etc, and farming mats for our guild to raid asap, and I did a few bgs for easy helmet then this happened, I literally afk'd at the end of ONE alterac valley. I put in a ticket and got slapped with a " you agreed to the eula when making your account, so enjoy your ban" copy paste Also I took off vacation days for prepatch and launch :/
That's awesome! Unfortunately I can't recall if the whole shirt shows, but it's a fun little mix between Zelda and Doctor who and says "Hero of Space and Time". I love both series a lot.
LOL!! What actually happened is I actually spent some time playing the game over the weekend for pleasure. It was super weird playing WoW and not making content on it for a couple days but I was REALLY behind on my TBC prep.
Not too bad! That's awesome. You're right around the realistic half way mark which means you're still on track to 60 before TBC. Don't forget that dungeon quests are some seriously insane XP right now as well with TBC.
@@ZerbraxiWoW i was going off the basis of leveling being better now. But i met a great pally tank whos cleaving his way up so I'll try to stick with him for now. Leveling is definitely faster now but i still dont think all the travel time beats the constant XP in dungeon.
As always, thanks for the video
Thank you for the comment. I'm glad you enjoyed.
For many gamers Classic and/or TBC are the prepatch to their favourite expansion.
Guess I have to throw myself in that camp as well.
Cant wait for WOTLK!
Yup. You deserve more views. Keep it going. Your content is not clickbait like a lot of creators.
I try not to bait people. Seems like a bad long term move to me.
All praise the TH-cam gods! That said, I've been having a blast with prepatch. Back in actual BC when I was a teenager, I felt like I was missing out and falling behind in the expansion if I tried to level one of the new races. I could take my 42 human mage and try to catch up and get into Outlands, or I could start all over. In the end, I did a bit of both and didn't hit 70 until Wrath prepatch. This time I'm ready! As of today my blood elf paladin is level 59, Jewelcrafting is up to 270. I'm gonna hit the expansion running! I'm so excited!
I'm super excited for you as well! I really hope you enjoy all that Outland has to offer.
You did a great job in the podcast Warcraft reloaded! was fun lisning to your talking points :)
Thank you! It was really fun to be on the show. Thanks for listening to it.
I'd like to argue that pre-patch are not only good to have, but even necesary, and to do so, i'm gonna explain it from both points of view: Devs and Players
Dev PoV: The prepatch window help find and iron out all the possible bugs. The prepatch is the deploy of all the new systems, while the expansion launch is the deploy of the actual content. Many systems get changed, improved and even completely overwritten in the prepatch. There's always a big possibility that lots of those changes cause problems, and the devs then get time to fix them in order to get a smooth actual launch. And while this makes it seem like some sort of paid beta, we need to consider next the player point of view.
Player PoV: The prepatch usualy brings lots of changes, to systems, and more importantly, classes. And you don't want to find yourself in the launch day trying to figure out your new talents, or if you are changing professions, etc... The prepatch works as a preparation time, so when the actual launch comes, you can start stright up doing the new content, having your character more or less set and ready.
I still remember quite vividly the TBC prepatch: My first character and main was a warlock, and for the big last part of the vanilla i had been playing a hybrid spec, focused on PVP. I was at 1 week to reach rank 13 when they took down the old honor system (sad pepe) And when the prepatch arrived, i wanted to go demo to play with the felguard. I used that time to find the best talents for me, train my new spec, and even get a couple last pieces of gear so i didn't need to change everything for greens in Hellfire Peninsula... and it worked great! My first item i actualy changed was my Grand Marshal Spelldagger at lvl 68 from one from Shatttered Halls iirc. I also had a lvl 60 paladin, which while i played every spec, i was mostly ret because i did not like how shitty prot was back then, even with the best tanking gear, your aggro was always an issue and you had no taunt button... come prepatch they fixed and changed the specs quite a lot. I tried the new prot spec and found out it was now great, i used also the time to grab a few more prot and ret pieces to start TBC strong.
Honestly, like with any trip, you want to take some time to prepare for it. Make sure everything is ready before your leave. You make sure your vehicle is working fine, that whatever you need to take with you is packaged and ready, that you have an idea which route you gonna take, etc... And is the same here. Is not FOMO. Is the fact that you wanna start the new content knowing you did your homework and you will be able to enjoy the new quests, the new dungeons, the new zones, without having to stop every 2 minutes to readjust everything, or having to fly back to Stormwind or Orgrimmar to re-do your talents :)
This was a good read. I really appreciate the thought behind this. Though I think it's about more than preparation. I mentioned FOMO for all of the people who don't care about preparing. To use the same analogy of going on a trip, imagine the kid who doesn't want to go on the camping trip initially. Though as time gets closer and closer the thought of missing out on a fun time with their friends can drive them to last minute decide to go anyway just to give it a shot. My friend I used in the video is the exact example of that.
Thank you again for the discussion. I love when people put some real thought and elaboration behind their viewpoints.
@@ZerbraxiWoW You are welcome. And you are right on the FOMO people. Yes there will be people like that too! In which case, is a good thing there's this small gap for them to make up their mind. However, i think, more then the prepatch, things like the character boost are the tools the company uses to take advantage of those with FOMO.
TBC 👉LET'S GOOO💯🔥😂
Ps : World Chat has never been Spergier than this time right now.
dude IKR! reminds me of classic launch
It's been completely off the rails!! I love it.
YEEEES! Anticipation is the best seasoning for the meal of hunger or whatnot! Any time you can have players excited and moving and talking and busy and HYPED and streaming is a time to be encouraged and nurtured, not cut short, ugh. I think pre-patches must also be my favorite time of the game, or maybe just slightly behind the releases themselves.
Ya, that pre launch window is something very special for sure.
nice content,keep it up dude
Thank you so much!
I got my warlock and priest to 60 and 300 tailoring/alch. I dropped alch on my druid and picked up tailoring. I got a TON done in prepatch so far.
That is DEFINITELY a very productive pre patch!
I’m not gonna play TBC. I still enjoy your videos.
Wow! This means a lot to me.
Great videos 👍
Thank you so much! Great comment.
We should probably hope for a new path down the Warcraft History through Classic
That would be pretty cool.
Hey Zerbraxi, although I agree with your points I think the major point of the release is less to do with the players but more so to do with Blizzard getting the chance to deploy their new full product early so there is less hiccups on the actual launch day. Imagine the saltiness of players if Blizzard had that 18 hours of down time on the actual TBC release date. It's essentially a 'beta' for the new core of the game before the expansion is even released.
Overall, you're right. There is definitely a technical element to this as well. The reason I dodged discussing that part specifically is because Blizzard also has the PTR and beta tests for that exact reason. While testing never truly matches the live environment they do tend to get the overwhelming majority of issues wrapped up before the pre patch goes live.
Yeah blizzard really allowed us to prepare with this short prepatch and honor gain nerf ....
2 weeks is the equivalent of 4 weeks if you do some really bad math lol. For real though, I do wish there was more time to goof around during this pre patch. It's been fun.
16hr maintenance is short lol.
Over on ffxiv we usually have a 24hr maintenance before the drop of a new expansion
Interesting. Maintenance windows might just be one of those relative issues.
I do have to give props to a game like Guild Wars 1 and 2 though, for I don't think I recall a long maintenance window at all. I'm sure it happened but the fact I can't remember is the best compliment I can give.
Maybe when Endwalker drops and I wanna give the game another try I might experience this day long downtime for myself :)
As we can clearly see in Classic servers, prepatch is not for players. It's for developers to fix all those bugs that emerged :P
LOL For real.
Waste of time?! I don't think it's enough! I really want a 1 month long pre-patch, just to finish all the business in classic, and level up another character, gear him up, pvp, test new builds...... God damn it, pre patch is half way done and I haven't finished any of it!!!!
Trust me, that's the same position I'm in! From making videos I actually haven't really had a good chance to really play much so I'm SUPER behind.
Personally, I am bored of prepatches after the first day or 2. Then I usually take a break and sometimes the break means i miss a launch.
Prepatch just feels like the same old but without the need or want of actual progression. I feel more like I am in purgatory without any will to do anything. So I wait until something meaningful comes along.
I would be fine with a prepatch that lasts 1 week tops.
This is an interesting perspective, and a bit of a tough one. If you don't enjoy a pre patch, taking a break is almost a good thing as it can reinvigorate your excitement about the actual "playing" of the game. Unfortunately, as you described, the risk is that people's breaks become long if they find something else they enjoy more, or just forget.
This is a tough one, but I think if I was to weigh the risk vs reward on the spectrum of no pre patch to 6 week pre patch, I think I'd still land somewhere in the 3-4 week range overall. Though this is a discussion I'd love to see more viewpoints on, so thank you for your comment on this!
How in the fuck does this channel still only have 5k subscribers?
Great vids! here to comment to gain you some traffic :)
Farm those peaceblooms for the powerchuggers (;
Some of those lower to mid level materials are selling for FAR too much on my server.
I think you are mistaking social activity with WTS MARA BOOST 290+mobs, summons available, FFA loot, 200g 5 runs!
Entire civilizations have risen and fallen because of MARA boosts! That's a lot of social activity :P
I find it moderately amusing that we went from prepatch is too short to should there be one at all.
LOL you're so right. Part of the reason I made this video is because I was surprised by this shift as well.
prePatch FTW!
!!!
I ‘memba when you just hit 1K subs. You’re blowing up man! Best content on YT
Thank you! It's definitely been a very interesting year for me thus far. Never expected people to enjoy my ramblings about a 14 year old game.
World of BoostCraft
One of my legit favorite things about WoW is how much you can meme it's name.
@@ZerbraxiWoW My favorite is World of Store Mounts. While they won't release content, you can bet they'll keep new mounts rolling out.
All of mmos are a time waste. that's the point.
Now imagine making videos and streaming ever week about that waste of time. That's the real meta waste.
I went afk at the end of an AV and got banned for 7 days lmao..
dude wtf! no way LOL
Really? I'm not gonna bust my friend's name on this one, but I've had a close friend discord streaming his AFK antics in AV for the last week or so. That's so surprising to hear.
On the bright side, you won't be tempted to log in on patch day which will be a guaranteed mess lol.
@@ZerbraxiWoW really really, I got banned yesterday though so the ban expires right before launch, but yeah it's insane, I was building a guild, 3 Kara groups etc, and farming mats for our guild to raid asap, and I did a few bgs for easy helmet then this happened, I literally afk'd at the end of ONE alterac valley.
I put in a ticket and got slapped with a " you agreed to the eula when making your account, so enjoy your ban" copy paste
Also I took off vacation days for prepatch and launch :/
I’m not gonna lie… I only watch your content because I think you’re cute
I'm blushing too much.
Like your shirt, my locks name is Dotctorwho 👌
That's awesome! Unfortunately I can't recall if the whole shirt shows, but it's a fun little mix between Zelda and Doctor who and says "Hero of Space and Time". I love both series a lot.
I was starting to get worried! I thought you had got lost in red ridge mountains!!
LOL!! What actually happened is I actually spent some time playing the game over the weekend for pleasure. It was super weird playing WoW and not making content on it for a couple days but I was REALLY behind on my TBC prep.
@@ZerbraxiWoW it’s good to play off stream once in a while. I did it for a couple days too. More focus. Totally understand!
My belf pally is level 43 and theres a week left. How'd i do? 43 levels in a week is insane for me
Pretty decent. You're about halfway there.
Not too bad! That's awesome. You're right around the realistic half way mark which means you're still on track to 60 before TBC. Don't forget that dungeon quests are some seriously insane XP right now as well with TBC.
@@ZerbraxiWoW i was going off the basis of leveling being better now. But i met a great pally tank whos cleaving his way up so I'll try to stick with him for now.
Leveling is definitely faster now but i still dont think all the travel time beats the constant XP in dungeon.
@@n7revan829 I'm with ya on this. I personally prefer dungeon grinding.
Mankrik has def picked up on instance grouping. Though, lots of unguilded 58 mages in strath hahahahahahahahhah
Totally legit players I bet....
@@ZerbraxiWoW Indeed hahahah
I think pre patches are good.
Sweet! So do I.
Have a thumb and a comment
I always enjoy your thumb...wait....
Yee
Nee
BUH-BYE!
BUH-BY....Wait...No come back!
Waste of time
How dare you!