Testing on the live server before release

[littlewierdo]

Im well aware of things changing between PTR and release, however, for two days, I have been unable to use the addon for thunderking. We'll see if you got them working for tomorrow.

Wondering why I use Dugi occasionally? This is it. Yes, his guide had a few issues and not as complete as it needs to be, but it was at least serviceable enough to use.

Zygor? Well, lets start with the travel system which lead me to Jade Forest and stopped there (once in Jade Forest, the guide no longer recognized my location). The very first quest I was instructed to pick up? Not at all the first quest in the chain. Skipping ahead? Not possible, the guide would jump back to step one once at step two. Thus, useless.

This is really simple. Im going to be rude and to the point, test the damn addon ON THE LIVE SERVER!

A new patch goes live? How about logging in and attempting to run the new additions on the live server BEFORE you post an update to the mod.

If you had, you may have realized the entire mod was completely broken as far as the thunderking dailies (which was the main point of the changes).

Test your work guys. You want to charge a premium? Do the work.

Word of mouth is your best business model and right now, here is what I would say about Zygor. Its overpriced, great when it works, but when they or Blizzard add anything new, dont expect to be able to use it for 3 days or more because they dont believe in testing on THE LIVE SERVER. I could give two shits about how well it works on the PTR, Im not playing there and nor is that what Im paying for the Zygor addon to work on.

Better in my mind to release a few hours later after patch releases than to release something completely broken in my mind.

[Cartman]

The problem with the Isle of Thunder was that Blizzard tested the different stages, it was no "here's all the new content at once" thing on the PTR.
Creating and testing a guide takes some time. As we don't know how the Zygor team works we cannot say how long they need. But my custom guides took quite some time to create and test.
I agree, a few days of testing would be better than having a guide that is not working flawlessly. But then we had to deal with hundreds of threads where the guide is. Those threads always start to appear about one minute after the servers are back online.

The problem with the waypoint arrow not updating properly seems to have been fixed, there's something in the patchnotes about a fix for the arrow after changing the zone.
Rightclicking the arrow and selecting re-check route also solves the problem, just in case you experience such a thing again (it sometimes happens after hearthing).

[littlewierdo]

Again, my response to this is really simple.

Step 1: Write said guide on PTR.
Step 2: Official patch moves from PTR to public. Test mod on PUBLIC server.
Step 3: Realize, Oh, wait, our addon is completely broken (or the additions/changes we made are not working / broken). FIX ADDON

Note about Step 3, notice I said not working. NOT partially working or somewhat functional, I said BROKEN.

Step 4: Repeat step 2. This may mean doing a dry run, aka, run to where the arrow directs you to and 'pretend' youve accepted / completed the quest and manually skip past everything.

Theres a theme here. Let me spell it out in giant caps.

THE NEW CONTENT WAS COMPLETELY BROKEN!

Not partially functional, not serviceable, it was broken. Not usable. No point in having installed. I might add, for the entire day, I could not do any MoP content using the guide because, the pointer arrow was broken.

As I stated before, I used another product (Dugi) which yes, had some problems. It was far from perfect. But it at least partially worked.

I have stated this before, QC aka Quality Control. Test your product before you put it out on the market.

What you guys are doing here is like a car mechanic fixing the starter in my car but never actually starting the car to make sure it worked.

Or if you prefer, a PC repair person that receives a computer to fix that the browser wont launch. So, the pc manufacturer makes a bunch of changes and tweaks but never actually tests to see if everything he changed is working!!

This isnt the first time either, I feel it important to point this out.

Again, Im not expecting perfection. Im asking for something serviceable when it is pushed out.

Test your product. Id much rather wait two or three hours after release of a new patch to get something that works than download something the day before that not only doesnt work for whatever new content features were added but also adversely affects other portions of the addon that currently function and I do use.

[littlewierdo]

After stepping through the portal from SW to Pandaria, after a long 45 second 'my PC is frozen', the arrow works. Look at that, only two days later.

But, the guide has me picking up quests from Proudmore who is actually currently on the boat but the guide is instructing me to the far north of the island.

Very first step. Day #3 now.

BETA TEST YOUR ADDON!

Log in and see where the addon is instructing you to go. Look at that, its not leading me to the right location. Hmm, something is wrong, lets fix that.

Im running 6031 by the way.

[toltec]

I just ran through the Thunderking dailies on 2 toons using Zygors and had NO problems at all using 6031 version

[Cartman]

If there were issues with the guide viewer in general they have been solved the next day.
I was able to use the guides yesterday right after the patch hit the EU servers.
The only issue I ran into was the arrow not updating when changing the zone. But again, this could be solved by rightclicking the arrow and selecting re-check route. And according to the patch notes this has been solved today.

I did not carefully check the Thunder Isle guide, sure there are many things that can be improved. But it was working yesterday. I only got a bit confused by all those accept quest steps where no quest NPCs were. But this may be bacuse of random quests or NPC locations.

I am sure you would have been one of those screaming for the new guides when their release had been delayed for testing.
Lets pick up your example. Testing a not properly working PC can take several days. But if you yell every 5 minutes "is it working now" don't complain if you get it back and it crashes again after some hours.

And apart from that, many problems are caused by other addons not being up to date. So make sure to not only constantly update the guides but also update your other addons.

[littlewierdo]

I was not one of the ones screaming for new guides. I did at one point ask when there would be a release to cover the main quest line related to the offensive faction that was brought in with 5.1 (not the dailies but the 1 time quests you unlock as you progress through the faction rep) but this was nearly two weeks AFTER 5.1 had dropped when many of the quests could have been added as they were unlocked by the staff.

So, I dunno what exactly is going on, I just ran all of the dailies again today and was directed to Proudmore on the north end of the island instead of the boat and the quest I was instructed to pick up was not the quest being offered. My guide is loading on step 21 so I dunno, this by the way when I logged in, loaded a cooking guide, then reloaded the kirin-tor offensive.

I also stated which version I am running, check the last sentence of the post just above.

Lets pick up your example. Testing a not properly working PC can take several days. But if you yell every 5 minutes "is it working now" don't complain if you get it back and it crashes again after some hours.

I have no idea what this means.

Im not asking 'is it working' every 5 minutes.

Im asking the staff to check their work before they put out an update. There is a huge difference.

Im not asking for anything I wouldnt ask for from someone providing a service or a product, make sure it works before you put it out. I dunno why this is so controversial. Its pretty straight forward, makes logical sense.

Im getting some work done on my car today and you better believe that after they finish the work, Im going to ask them whether they test drove it when they were done because if I get in the car after paying them and something is wrong, Im going to call them on it.

This is no different.

I will stipulate for purposes of this discussion that everything is working now (it isnt for me but that may be my issue which Ill deal with).

This doesnt change the fact that day 1, with four updates, this guide was broken. In fact, all of Pandaria was broken, until sometime during day 2. If it had been playtested, it would have (or should not have) never been released.

Again, not perfection but at least make sure everything is working.

[cabby]

One thing to try to keep in mind is that there are often problems that are reported with something that we can't reproduce. An example of this is there have been reports from people that the arrow does not point to their corpse when they die. Everyone one of us on the team has tried going to various places and killing ourselves trying to reproduce this and not a single one of us has any problems with the arrow pointing to our corpse. The same thing happens often when someone reports problems with the guides and locations. There was just a post yesterday saying that we needed to change the coordinates for Thrall for a quest turn in and the poster even provided the coordinates for where to find Thrall. Open up the guide file to make the change and we already had those exact coordinates in the guide file. So for that customer something was wrong and it wasn't working but our files were already correct. Does that mean we didn't test stuff? No, it means that sometimes things don't work for some individuals and it works for others. We do the best we can to produce the guides and test them while at the same time meeting the requests of the majority of our customers who want the new guides available when a patch goes live. It's a catch-22 because if we push the guides right away then people will complain about the bugs that are still present but if we wait a day or two to QC the guides on the live server then people will complain because the guides aren't finished.

[Cartman]

Im getting some work done on my car today and you better believe that after they finish the work, Im going to ask them whether they test drove it when they were done because if I get in the car after paying them and something is wrong, Im going to call them on it.

The difference is that you give them time to fix the problem and test everything.
But if there's new WoW content out and after 5 minutes there's no guide available the forum will be flooded by threads complaining about a missing guide.
Just take a look at what happens with the seasonal events. Even hours before they go live people are afraid of not having a guide for a few hours.

So there's either some guide that has been quickly put together, may contain bugs but that arrives in time.
Or you would have no guide for 1-2 days.

If you are afraid of bugs ina guide you don't need to load them up.
About the other thing you mentioned, that all Pandaria daily guides were broken. I only had a LUA error pop up when first trying to open a daily guide. But opening the guide a second time worked.
And this happened before 5.2 went live.
However I don't know if something else was wrong on tuesday as I did not update my guides then because we did not have the patch on the EU servers and I did not want a guide viewer only working on 5.2 but not on 5.1.
But all the recent problems got sorted out shortly after they were reported.

I just did the whole Thunder Isle dailies with the 6034 guides and they worked flawlessly, all locations were correct.

[littlewierdo]

Again, I feel like Im going round in circles and I cannot be any more clear than what I have stated.

Not one person that I know of was able to use the guide day one of 5.2.

For me personally, the waypoint arrow was broken for everything in Pandaria so the comment "If you are afraid of bugs ina guide you don't need to load them up" is irrelevant as everything in Pandaria was broken until the last patch yesterday.

The message you are sending out to people is, dont update your guides day one of a patch because we cant be bothered to even load up the guide and do a dry run.

The difference is that you give them time to fix the problem and test everything.

Yea, I do. And I expect nothing different here. We arent talking about massive delays here. You guys are competent enough to fix your issues pretty quickly, two-six hours after the launch of new content to make sure it at least is functional is better than claiming you have the new content in but having it not functional (and by the way, break every other MoP guide).