Thursday, May 6, 2010

Children's Week: bugs are annoying

Well, while most people are talking about the alpha Cataclysm leaks, I've been trying to get my pets for Children's week on as many toons as possible.  And I ran headfirst into an annoying (but not game-breaking) bug.  My hunter (and first 80 and former main) did the Northrend Orphan quests when they were first made available last year.  Sadly this means she CANNOT repeat them  for the other faction.  Heck, she can't do the quests for the faction she chose either. Now, I thought at first that this was because she's revered with the Oracles so the Frenzyheart Orphan not being available makes sense.  But after picking these quests up on Lyllea and Adowa, neither of whom has ever heard of either faction, I got rather frustrated.  So I went and killed Timbermaw (wtb Diplomat before Cat).

I had decided that tomorrow I was going to switch factions and try again, when lo and behold, wow.com posted on the subject complete with a couple blue posts, which I am reproducing in full...



We are aware of the issue that is currently affecting the Children's Week quest line in Dalaran which does not allow players who have completed the quest line last year to take part in it again this year. We do not currently have a fix planned to address this issue at this point in time.



 Bashlok -- Dalaran Children's Week Quest Line Issue
To clarify, this issue won't be able to be resolved for Children's Week this year. If you completed the quest previously you won't be able to complete it again for the other pet this year.



Now, I understand bad bugs. I accept that my hunter will not be able to get a Frenzyheart orphan. That's okay. BUT, this could have been handled better from the beginning. If you're not meant to repeat the Northrend Orphan quests, having the questgiver say so CLEARLY would have been nice. Or, having a blue post or log in post to that effect. Instead, we get no info for several days and then get told the issue cannot be resolved before the end of the week. While I find that annoying, I'm not going to quit over it. I am annoyed though.

So, if I were in charge of Q&A (or whatever department tries to find bugs) at Blizzard, what would I have done?
Tested the Northrend Orphan quests prior to release with a toon that had done them when they were available last year. Given that the Cat Alpha is ongoing (and most of my manpower's dealing with that) and most of the rest are working with bugs on live servers, it would probably be difficult to find the time. But an hour or two spent testing before this event started would have saved a great deal of player aggravation, GM time, and bad PR now. Plus, if the bug had been found ahead of time, other measures could have been put in place and there would have been more time to fix it. If the bug is something very complicated, Children's Week could have been extended or split. You could have two Children's Weeks, one for Old World and Outlands, and one for Northrend. I'd be like Greek Orthodox Easter and regular/Protestant/Catholic Easter. Two traditions celebrating the same thing, just at slightly different times. After all, given Northrend's relative isolation until recently, there's no reason their calendar and the Old World one would sync.

Just a bit of QQ and armchair quarterbacking on my part, but I really do feel that this should have been handled differently.

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