Morrighan’s Mists of Pandaria Crib Sheet

Everything you actually need to know about the upcoming expansion:

• The beta will start Soon (TM).
• The expansion will be released When Its Ready (TM).
• AoE loot has been stolen from SWTOR, to much applause.
• LFR looting system in a nutshell:  Boss dies and you have a random chance to get loot that is completely unrelated to anyone else’s chance to get loot.  If the boss has loot for your current spec, and regardless of whether or not you already have said loot.  Items brought from factions will enable to you get another shot at loot on a boss of your choice.
• It will take a long time to get to exalted with factions, apparently.  And the previous point assures me you will actually try.
• PokeWoW is still coming …
• … and so is Farmville
• There will be lots more daily quests.  Lots.
• There will be lots of jokes involving beer.  Think of MoP as the Brewfest expansion.
• Garrosh is a war criminal and you will bring him to justice (assuming Russia and China don’t veto you of course).
• Hidden Gem: As well as Scenarios, there will be something called Proving Grounds.  Target dummy + lore + solo instance + achievements = Proving Grounds.  More achievements you can solo are good.
• There will be three raids with 14 bosses between them at launch.  There will also be two world bosses.
• There are two new battlegrounds.  This time, they are actually new and not a new map with an old mechanic.  Neither of them are DotA.
• The “intention” is for a raid tier to last 4 months with another content patch halfway through. If you have expressive eyebrows, please now raise them skeptically.
• Valor points won’t buy gear.  They will allow you to upgrade your current gear by increasing its ilevel and stats.  So when your next tier has a lousy bonus/makes you look like a giant banana, you can skip it.
• There will be a Glyph that reduces the cast time of your Hearthstone while Divine Shield is active.  Bubble-hearth is back!

Why ask the devs takes time

A lot of the morons people who post on the official forums clearly don’t work.  Instead they flame the forums with crap they don’t understand.  Heres an example of what probably happens with the Ask the Devs posts.

Day 1: the question goes up in America and people start posting.  Lets say this is a Monday.
Day 2: by the time all of the different regions have had a chance to post its probably at least 24 hours later.
Day 3: By the time all the translations are done back into English and the questions are collated its probably another 24 hours.
Day 4: The developers meet today and write up some answers.  They get typed up and send them to the PR people to check through.
Day 5: The answers are checked.  They’re all good.  They get sent to the regions.

Day 6+7: Its the weekend!

Day 8: The regions get them and translate them.
Day 9: Answers start to get posted.

Working across time zones if very hard.  In my job I work with people in the far east.  I have 30 minutes in the morning after I get into work and before they go home.  Taking that into account, the above is an ideal world. What actually happened was this:

Day 4: The development team could not meet today as they had a meeting arranged with another team.  It took 2 months to get everyone in one room and they aren’t going to rearrange it now!
Day 5: Today key members of the development team are doing interviews with a magazine, arranged a month ago.

Day 6+7: Its the weekend!

Day 8: Today key members of the development team are at a training session demonstrating a new technology.  It turns out to be rubbish but it sounded good on paper.
Day 9: The developers meet today and write up some answers.  They get typed up and send them to the PR people to check through.
Day 10: The answers are checked.  They’re all good.  They get sent to the regions.
Day 11: The regions get them and translate them.
Day 12: Answers start to get posted.

Only its not that simple.  What really happened was this:

Day 10: The answers are checked.  Someone in PR thinks one of them could be misinterpreted.  They get sent back to Ghostcrawler.  Only he has about 1000 emails and only finds it late in the day after the person he needs to talk to has already gone home.
Day 12: The person he needs to talk to is in a meeting all morning.  GC grabs him at lunchtime to get an answer and rushes things back to the PR team who are all out to a long lunch.  It all gets confirmed by the PR team late in the day after several frantic phone calls.

Day 13+14: Its the weekend!

Day 15: The regions get them.
Day 16: Answers start to get posted.

But of course it never goes like that.  What probably happened was:

Day 15: The regions get them.  The translation teams are still working on the latest patch notes, the announcement of the new feature and the new Trading Card game announcement.
Day 16: Most of the teams get to their translations.  Only its a public holiday somewhere!
Day 17: Its still a public holiday.
Day 18: Everyone is back at work.  Final translations are done.
Day 19: It turns out one team was meant to have an away day today to consider how to make better use of new communications technologies.  They make a special arrangement to step out half way through in order to ensure they can post the answers.  So nearly 3 weeks later, answers get posted.

Does that sound familiar to anyone working in a large and complex organization that does business in different time zones?