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Features \ Blog: The Patch Failing at First Sight

Blog: The Patch Failing at First Sight

» Cameron "famsy" Carson

4th April 2008 - 4619 hits, 57 coms

GosuGamers feature blogger Cameron "fams" Carson airs his first opinions on the long awaited 1.22 patch.

After playing the patch for about 30 minutes. My first impressions are not even close to what I wanted. The new patch has failed on so many levels I would rather not play the game at all. Personally I am an UD player, and I was eager to see the 5 armor on the Zigurats. I had a few ideas in my mind as to how I would use this to my advantage, same with the Necropolis having a build time of only 100 seconds.

In the game that I played vs a NightElf player from Russia I was able to stop his expo easily and set up my own, the build time of the Necropolis may have been 100 seconds, but I couldn’t notice a difference. As well the armor on the Zigurats, I was disappointed as my 4 Zigurats fell faster then they did before the patch. I don’t understand how that is even possible, but it happened.

The Russian kept complaining about LAG, which was a legitimate complaint as the game was stalled twice on his behalf as the LAG status popped up.

Part way through the game he inquired if I was AFK, I was curious as to why he asked seeing as how I thought I was microing, but to my surprise my units were standing still just dying one after another to his bears and dryads. I noticed that I had a fiend still Burrowed in the ground and thought to myself; “I already told it to uproot, this will be the third time telling it to do so” Finally it uprooted, and I told it to attack an archer close by to gain some easy experience for my Lich (seeing as how my DK would not TP) . I figured the fiend had done as I requested, I was surprised to find out it was just sitting there. Just short of the battle but far enough that it would not automatically engage. It then took me 3 attempts to gain movement with the unit. I noticed that all of my fiends either had a large delay on them or were just not responding to my commands.

At this point I was thoroughly frustrated with the game. However with the game already lost I said to myself, I might as well test the weekend Venom Orb of the NightElf. (Conveniently his Demon Hunter had one, and for quite some time) It attacked my Lich and I told my Lich to run (It had boots of speed so it was able to get away) and the poison time was nurfed properly, my Lich was able to escape when regularly it would not have been able to.

I will continue to test the patch, and update my findings here. I will take a safe assumption and say that the patch is not the problem for my fiends not responding and that maybe it was the server lagging, or maybe my computer/mouse glitching out as this has happened before.

EDIT 1:

I played another 1v1 just so I could test if the Zigurat was indeed stronger and if the build time of the Necropolis was shorter.

Both of these seem to be fine. The Necropolis was build in exactly 100 seconds, and the Zigurat was indeed harder to take down as it took over 8 Raider hits (1-0 ) and a couple strikes from a Blade Master (level 4 with 4 claws of attack + 6).

I am going to test out the Human Race next and see what I can find out there.

EDIT 2:

I am in the middle of my game right now, my opponent has complied with me giving him a free win in order for me to check the patch notes and compare with the game.

I tested the new features. All of which work perfectly. If you have the Health bars on however, it is the complete opposite of having them off. They never go away, until you press ALT. I personally do not like it. They get in the way and cover up battles.

The replays save, and that is a function I will like, becuase I always forget to save my replays after.

EDIT 3:

All of the Human updates are accurate. The knights are buffed, and do a heck of a lot of damage and their attack speed is much faster.

As for the Tower nurf, it isn't much of a nurf seeing as how you are able to upgrade the armor and it still upgrades the Hit points on the Tower. But the repair rate is noticabley slower then previously.

I am now moving on to NightElf.

After I complete each race, I will try and find bugs etc.

EDIT 4:

Ok, I finished testing the fixes as well as the NightElf side of the patch.
As I mentioned earlier, the Orb of Venom' effects wear off faster.
Now onto the Dryads experience gain. If a Dryad dies to a hero, it gives 69 experience. If a Dryad dies to a hero and one unit, it gives 69 experience. And finally if a Dryad dies to just units, it gains 69 experience.

In conclusion their patch notes are true.

In Conlusion

I do however feel that there are a lot of things that the developement team did not even look at (as far as we are told) such as some sort of anti-cheat. I have already played against multiple hackers on the patch server. I find this rather discouraging that Blizzard does not feel the need to stop people from cheating at one of their own games.

As well, the Human race is still buffed compared to the others even with the reduced Tower repair speed. Because with one nurf, they still gained a rather buffed unit; the knight.

Orc was not even touched, I find this rather disappointing as well seeing as how this race just won the recent 'PPLive Race Wars' competition, and it shows a complete dominance over the Undead race.

Undead was buffed a little, but not enough. Ghouls are still walking pockets of experience waiting to be picked up by the other players hero(s). As well the fiends are still awkward to move, it feels like you are controlling two grunts that are tied together at the hip and one wishes to go left when the other wishes to go right. But I cannot complain that with the patch, Undead is able to exo quicker then before which might make matches against Orc a little easier. However I doubt this.

Nightelf is the only race I was completely satisified with. The over used Dryads now have a backlash to them by giving their opponents more experience then before. And finally you are able to run away from that pesky Demon Hunter that chases you around the map with his Venom Orb. This nurf I was so happy about I even smiled a little. My Lich was actually able to run away from it (albeit with boots of speed).

There are a few other things I wish the developers at Blizzard would touch. For instance I mentioned before no anti-cheat, as well they need to balance the Humans Macenary upgrade.

Maybe an introduction of a new unit? (preferabley 1 per race) and maybe a few new items would be nice as well to spice up gameplay for a while. We waited over a year for this patch and it was terrible. If this is the result of a years+ worth of work, I am seriously considering not buying Starcraft II if this is how they treat games now adays.

A special thanks goes to: AllGoodMagic and PanchoPistolas who were kind enough to allow me to test certain things in our games.

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fridginators

Happy because his Lich can run away from the DH... sure makes it even easier for UD to win vs NE.. as if it wasn't bad already.

GpZ)Zork( (GosuCrew)

why all the elves want to win easy vs EVERY race? ^^

DarkLord(TB)

LOL maybe they are working on SC II a hell of a lot and treating it a lot better than the new patch on WC so honestly it is probably worth buying

#5 acknowledge now ;)

Whos is this "fams" guy? He sounds like a regualar 50/50 RT Azeroth noob tbh. I don't know why you sounded surprised by the fact that the patch notes did what they said, lol.

edit- hmmk, satisfactory =].

#7 If you would like my qualifications:
Kode5 Qualies (1st year)
Americups (both 1 and 2)
Digital life Qualies (3 times)
ESWC/WCG qualies (past 4 years)

I am currently the head of team fnatics American Host division.
I used to play for Reborn Gaming (competitive American team)
and last and least- First at 3 lesser LANs accross Ontario.

I hope that satisfies you, and Yes I do have an RT account on Azeroth. As well as a solo/2s AT account (fnatic.fams) and a solo account on Kalimdor (fams)

Hope that helps you out. And yes I am surprised the patch notes were correct seeing as how they came out on April Fools and Blizzard is notorious for making Jokes on April Fools. Not to mention they seemed very 'un-real' to me, as well as a lot of professional players I have spoken with.

craftmatic2

Good luck getting a new unit.

That will be called "Warcraft 4" and will be for sale at a store near you in about 5-10 years.

Fnatic.FoCuS

fams is not a noob : o

"Orc was not even touched, I find this rather disappointing as well seeing as how this race just won the recent 'PPLive Race Wars' competition, and it shows a complete dominance over the Undead race."

pathetic undead whiner , orc need buff

TheConqError

nice one!

From my experience, I must say I´m very disapointed with this test server. There´s something about units (or even items) not responding properly.

Only thing i want to buff as an orc player are burrows. They should have fortified armor as every food-giving building in the game. Its ridiculous how easy kills them elf with talons or undead with destroyers. The burrows should work as base defence but everytime they are under attack they fall so fast that u must repair them with all peons = no defense, and that just sucks.

psycho.hatred

The are so few that the patch couldve been done in just 1 month. Why wouldn't people get upset about this? They've been for more than a year, and they get this. this patch is fucked up, releasing it just for the purpose of saying they released something, not to really to balance the game.

#14 and take away from UD only chance to win vs orc lol? :P
(well you can also have players that are 2x skill of an orc and win but let's say everyone is at even lvl)

FuckingCasual

I did not like this blog.

Do not you relize that the Ziggurat was edited so that you could not abuse them with sappers ? Now you can not kill 2 Ziggurats with one Sapper! Good Patch!

#16 yeah thats true...but killing orc burrows shouldn't be the only way to beat orc (and patch could change that but did not -.-)

Burrows are suppose to be orcs weakness, god so much whining from people who suck and are bad at the game. You still need to work for wins, you won't get an auto-win button, do us all a favor and play dota or wow and shut it.

i agree with #19

If this is all the changes they might as well stick to 1.21 . That way we can still check all the replays o this patch :)

pointless blog... Dev team and Pros already tested the patch before us, so what's up with all the 'verifications' to the changes that were specifically LISTED in the patch note? The writer seems actually surprised that new changes actually took place, and he's so skeptical about the patch that he cannot even tell if zuggarats die faster or slower even though they clearly have 5 defense now... and You would think an UD player wouldn't make a mistake about this...
as for not being able to notice whether necropolis builds faster or not until actually counting the time, well obviously the change is from 120 sec to 100 sec, not from 120 sec to 30 sec. The writer seems to suggest that the changes for UD are useless and of little use, but seriously, were you expecting 20 defense on zig and 30sec build time for necropolis? And why mention about your 'Russian' opponent who complains about lag? What does that do with the patch at all? Maybe you were making the point about the beta server latency, but you didn't clarify that and as of now the blog seems like a work of a middle school student who strays off from the main topic of the essay. And it's also hilarious that there is a part in the article called ' Personal Opinions' when the main body of the article is already filled with personal opinions

I just played a game on Westfall as Undead versus a Human. The Knights were kicking some serious fiend-ass, they were definetly doing more damage. As for the Ziggurats, I played with DL first and expanded quickly on GW. The Ziggs were surprisingly strong actually, even against a large number of footies in defend mode.

#19 Why are burrows supposed to be orcs weakness when Blizzard specifically says they're base defense?

"Protective Burrows
The Orcish food supply building is the Orc Burrow; however, it also doubles as a defensive structure. When garrisoned with Peons, it can provide defense against land and air units in the form of a ranged attack."

FuckingCasual

#22 Could not agree more. This blog is so juvenile and pointless.

Next time write sentences like this

"Maybe an introduction of a new unit? (preferabley 1 per race) and maybe a few new items would be nice as well to spice up gameplay for a while"

in the beginning. If you had done so, I would have known that i shouldn't take you seriously, and I didn't need to waste 5 mins hoping this was well written and thought through.

itsRaining-

some good changes, but i dont think the patch made it anyless unbalanced as it is now..

not bad,I am NE player

omg and America have to be, #22 please reserved ur comments thats not matter and i dont think we came here to read a stupid moron post. if u dont like the post why dont u stop reading it.
Yea i apreciate ure work i would not even wanned to see if the changes were done correctly, and its good to know that.

#22 #25

If you read my comment you will realize why I am so surprised as to why the changes were accurate. As well this is a TEST server. There are bugs, that is why we are testing it in the first place, that means things can go wrong and maybe just because it says it does something does not always mean it does do it.

As well, no professional players tested the Patch, so don't spread false rumors please.

I will concede the point that I didn't need to say "personal opinion" I will fix that.

As for the 'whiner' comments. Yes I am complaining, and that is because I am an UD player. But last night after speaking with a few professional players about the patch I realized that these changes have little effect on the game and it doesn't even matter.

fuk...makes me think abt massing dryads lol...

GloomyVision

This patch absolutely needs more changes. It sux now.

mephiztopheles

Not enough, just not enough. Oh well, gotta wait a bit more for some real changes...

Well how do you really know the patch wasn't tested by any professional players? Blizzard probably have a ton of "pros" working on their internal balance team.

Anyway, that's beside the point. Supposedly the 1.22 patch is merely in place to address a few issues before another patch is released, which hopefully will contain more content balance changes. I'm annoyed that we can't even test out the new maps on the test server yet, as we really should be testing the maps. Personally I think the game could use a huge overhaul, as while you could argue that professional play is interesting the way the game currently stands, it doesn't seem complete in my eyes, just based on the fact that there are so many potentiall interesting strategies that aren't ever coming into play the way they are supposed to, due to balance issues.

I did have a go with them in singleplayer, and the two 1v1 maps seem pretty cool and decently balanced, but only time will tell as to whether or not they're balanced for professional play. I really hope they are, as pro wc3 desperately needs some new maps.

As for the blog, it provided no real insight on the new patch. Everything said by fams was almost brutally obvious, but such is the nature of a lot of blogs these days lol.

I was really hoping for a new hero in the tavern, perhaps a Draenai hero, as you'd think with their role in WoW that they could certainly find a place in WC3. Ever since WC3 came out I've been hoping for some official maps that featured a few islands and the naval ships, but I guess they never really worked with the game, as you can lose WAY too much if your transports get destroyed. I suppose Twisted Meadows and LT are pretty good sometimes as at least you can expand with Zeplins, however I want to see more emphasis on this type of exciting game mechanic. Just because ships don't work the way they are now, it doesn't mean they could never work within the context of WC3's immense potential.

However more than anything, a better balance patch would have sufficed. This patch simply should not have come out, as all it has done is add fuel to the fire that burns Blizzard's WC3 community.

#34
I know no professionals tested it because every single professional Ive spoken to hasn't tested it and has assured me that no other professionals have tested it either. If you honestly need a name drop, go ask Yoan 'ToD' Merlo or Eom 'FoCuS' Hyo Sub. I was speaking to Eom about the patch yesterday and he said he hasn't even tried the test server.

Does blizzard and that Karune really forgot about expo tanks?!?!?!

powerofwallis

I don't honestly need a name drop at all, you just misunderstood my comment. fams, again you're making the assumption that Blizzard's balance team are a bunch of retards, which they clearly are not. They don't need professional players to tell them what to do, as they have more than enough money to employ people who know better than professional gamers, which is a sad truth that many hot heads need to get over so that they have show a little bit more respect towards Blizzard, who know what they're doing better than anyone else in the game industry. When Karune said that the patch was being tested by professional warcraft 3 players, he was probably just referring to Blizzard's balance team which probably includes a few people who used to be professional players no doubt.

However, the patch is still pretty much a rushed product, that shouldn't have come out yet. I mean we can't even test the new maps online. They pretty much botched this patch, and hopefully 1.23 comes out fairly soon. You can't really blame them, as SC2 is obviously the priority of Blizzard's RTS division, who are pressing for a 2008 release. Heaven knows, they probably won't make that deadline, but who cares. As long as we get something eventually, which we will, I'm content with waiting, as Blizzard's track record indicates that the wait is worth it EVERY time. I mean look at Diablo 2 LoD and how long 1.10 took to come out. YEARS! but that patch was absolutly amazing as it pretty much changed the entire game. WC3 will get a similar treatment somewhere down the line.

pSy-ion.yalla

i see things different. the patch is far away from doing all balancing fixes, needed. and zig armor should be 3, but not 5.
fams, your solo acc on kali sux

@ #38

they will not spend too much money on wc3, that's for sure. and professional gamers know best about balance, they work much more on wc3 tft ingame than any blizzard employee.

#38

You pretty much contradicted what you said so I dont need to say anything. First you say Blizzard is amazing, then you say they totally botched the patch.

#39
Canada to Asia = 300 + ping. I can even screen shot that for you. As well the amount of skilled players is a lot higher. And that account is old. I have proven my skill to a lot of people, sure im not professional but a lot of people trust what I have to say, pro gamers included.

Rofl, people will start denying dryads now :D

i think destroyers need to be nerfed or atleast they shouldnt be able to be healed from DK

So I see that the topic is drifting from the actual patch/blog to whether pros or developers know wc3 the best.. In that case, let me just say this. Fams, you're criticizing the patch and one of your main support for doing so is that you are acquainted with many pros and they haven't tried out the new patch yet. Well first of all, Karune specifically stated in wc3 forum that the new patch has been pre-tested by pros before the public. You are claiming that's not true because neither ToD nor Focus was one of the pros who were included. But you are missing the obvious point. Think about this. These 'pros' you were referring to are people who currently make money off wc3. So why should developers listen to active professionals who may intentionally or not intentionally tell them biased opinions? Also, it should be considered that, because of the extreme competitiveness, most pros play only one race.
That being said, it's most likely that the 'pros' Karune referred to are probably people who work for Blizzard. And yes, they could be more reliable than ToD or Focus. Why? Because having godly micro doesn't necessarily guarantee godly accurate observations. Blizzard can easily gather statistics from major wc3 tournaments/leagues and also from Battle.net if needed and analyze the data. They made the game in the first place, so obviously they know enough about the game to accurately analyze the data from a fair perspective and decide on what changes are needed to make the game more balanced. #38 is right in the sense that you are treating Blizzard like a bunch of retards. It's a scary thought but they probably have a statistician working for them just to analyze thousands of recently played games, and in my opinion that beats listening to ToD who whines about NE, Orc, UD, and HU, It's true that lately he's been claiming that there is no imbalance....but even that makes him unreliable because he changes his opinions so frequently... speaking of biased opinions, did I mention that ToD made a really really really long blog about his 'unfair' loss to Moon in PGL season 1 when both were put under severe hot, and afterward he claimed Moon had an advantage because he's asian and asians don't sweat and caucasians do? That's ToD for you guys, I'm glad players like ToD and Focus aren't working for Blizzard, although I have no doubt they are great players, they are just "players," not game makers. Just because Michael Jordan is so good at basketball doesn't mean he will be the best coach.....

i think that 1.22 not so good, as blizzard told... there is little changes and i think that most of players wanna see new heroes for example...it's sad :(

#43

I never once said that was my reasoning for not thinking the patch was as poor as it is.

When Blizzard refers to 'professional gamers' they are referring to players like ToD and Eom. Its how they always have done it, you think now because I said so you can change that fact?

I understand Blizzard is the best company in e-sports, hands down. That doesn't mean they are above doing a crappy job once in a while, its this mentality of giving Blizzard props when they don't deserve it that sends bad messages to the rest of the community and the dev team.

They get paid to do their jobs, and yet they still do lousy work. Its been over a year and they made close to 20 changes, and most of them could have been done in a weekend. They made maybe 10 changes to actual game play and it looks like a ten year old came up with them by "just looking at stats". I don't understand why people are so adamant about defending a poor job.

Its like you honestly expected such a bad patch, and that on a TEST SERVER everything would be perfect. I don’t know of a TEST SERVER to date that has not had bugs. As well I don’t know of a patch that took over a year that had so few changes.

My reasoning for being upset over the patch is because this was like a giant April fools joke, yet they are serious about it. Half of these changes don’t effect game play and on top of that they didn’t do anything to deter hackers or cheaters. It baffles me that they would continue to let people cheat in one of their games. I don’t care how old it is, just because a game gets older does not mean it is any less fun to play or that there are any less people playing. It is still intellectual property of Blizzard and they should treat as this.

Patch is not bad finally ELF ORB is nerfed and dryad exp higher.Human have nerfed tower repair rate and buffed knights(maybe cuse fiend + destro own them so hard)and tank dont need higher exp per kill.Just add new maps and it will awesome(SC as a example every tour has some new maps so SC community and pros dont get borred of same maps) :).ORC maybe need higher armor for burrow not changing armor 2 fortified.
EDIT:Bnet fix for better ping and anti-cheat -_-

Sp1ralArch1tect

Play SC then you dont have to worry about patches! Last time they gave us the no cd program, and the time before that they made it so our names reflect our colors.....

GJ BTW Famsy poo, and yes you are a newb cuz you play wc3 all wc3 players are noobs. Switch to SC or eternally become a newb.

What a useless whine post. At the very least, you could've suggested what changes you wanted to see if you were disappointed, instead of just complaining. This reminds me of why I moved to SC, the W3 community is pathetically immature.

#48

You should read the comments I provided after the fact. Please don't insult me or the community if you are far to ignorant to even read the comments following the article.

#49 I read all of the comments before posting, but still fail to see any of your suggestions of what balance changes SHOULD be in the patch. Asking for new units is completely unrealistic.

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