Many players criticize the number of bugs in the current addon of World of Warcraft. The Game Director is trying to relativize this. He refers to the many bugs in Legion.
Even though the launch of Battle for Azeroth went nearly perfectly, the current addon of World of Warcraft is far from it.
Especially in the forums and on Reddit, complaints about issues are piling up, whether small or large. While Blizzard is relatively quick at fixing the bugs, many players believe it should never have come to this point.
Ion Hazzikostas, the Game Director of WoW, has now commented on this.
What did Hazzikostas say? In the AMA (“Ask me Anything”) on Reddit, Hazzikostas answered several questions. Regarding the state of the many bugs, he made a comparison with Legion:
“More than 30,000 bugs were found during the alpha, beta, and release of Battle for Azeroth. 95% of these bugs have been fixed and most of the current problems are those that have been reported recently. These bugs will be fixed either right now or with the next major patch. By the way, Legion had similar numbers as a comparison.”
Low reproducibility of the bugs: A major problem is also bugs that developers simply cannot reproduce, Hazzikostas explains further. If, for instance, an NPC gets stuck during a quest and only data from two or three players is available (for example, in the beta), then the problem cannot always be traced back. Such bugs are initially marked as “Not reproducible” while developers work on other bugs.
Later, in the live version, not just a few players are affected, but several thousand. This results in more data, and such bugs can be fixed more easily when there is more information available.
Why is the outcry so large this time?
If the bugs were already so numerous earlier, the question arises as to why there is such a large outcry from the community this time. Several reasons could contribute to this.
Bugs are more noticeable: The biggest difference this time may lie in the visibility of the bugs. While in Legion, mostly small bugs only affected a minority of players, this time, larger masses are affected, and the impact is significantly felt.
Especially on the US realms, which are often confronted with bugs first, issues – like the undeserved super loot – cause anger and frustration.
Dissatisfaction as a catalyst: Additionally, there is the fact that many players are dissatisfied with the mechanics in Battle for Azeroth. Farming reputation, grinding artifact power, and the features of the Azerite armor are met with little favor. This increases players’ irritability and thus the perception of game bugs.
It is clear that a completely bug-free game of the size of World of Warcraft will probably never exist. However, the question is whether the state at launch was acceptable, or whether they should have taken another 1-2 months for testing.
Hazzikostas has already commented on Warfronts. He explains why the Alliance had to wait so long.
