Patch 6.0.3 Hotfixes - January 8
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker
/ Official Forums
)
Garrisons, Followers, and Outposts
- Garrison Buildings
- Barn
- [Requires a realm restart] Increased the spawn rate and number of spawn points for Direfang Alpha, Ironhide Bull, and Wetland Trampler. This hotfix will be deployed in combination with the hotfix from January 7 to increase spawn rates slightly.
- Barn
Classes
- Abilities that heal based on a percentage of total/maximum health should now be able to be correctly modified by healing debuff modifiers.
Hunter (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
- General
- [Currently in testing] Freezing Trap now has a trigger radius of 3 yards (down from 5 yards).
- General
- Paladin (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
- Armor Sets
- Hotfix to change the PvP 4-piece set bonus for Retribution Paladins announced from January 5 has been deployed.
- Armor Sets
- Priest (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
- Glyphs
- Glyph of Reflective Shield should now correctly only reflect damage on self-cast Power Word: Shields and not when it's cast on other players.
- Glyphs
Quests
- Gorgrond
- Reagents from Rakthoth: This quest can now be completed if another quest, Plant Pruning has already been completed.
- Seeking the Scout: This quest can now be completed if another quest, Plant Pruning has already been completed.
- [Requires a realm restart] The Giant Cauldron: Players should now be able to reacquire or complete the quest if they disconnect or log out during the flight after speaking with Choluna.
Raids and Dungeons
- Highmaul
- Kargath Bladefist: Defeating Iron Grunts before the start of the encounter no longer grants favor with Roar of the Crowd on Mythic difficulty.
- The Butcher: Pale Vitriol should now correctly be reapplied to Hunters under the effects of Deterrence on Mythic difficulty.
PvP
- Ashran
- Bonus Objectives in Ashran now restart every 30-40 minutes after completion (up from 20-30 minutes).
Battlegrounds and Arenas
- Capturing a point in Arathi Basin, The Battle for Gilneas City, and the Rated Battlegrounds version for Eye of the Storm should now take 7 seconds (down from 8 seconds). This change restores time to capture a point back to what it was for these Battlegrounds in pre-6.0.2.
Items
- All Follower contracts are now bind-on-pickup.
Tier 18 Armor Set Art
We got our first look at what could be Tier 18 armor set art when some textures slipped in to a Warlords of Draenor beta build.
Keep in mind that this is missing textures and models, things can change, this could be used for another set, or scrapped altogether.
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker
/ Official Forums
)
Now, honestly? I've not been super crazy about many of the Armor-sets since Wrath of the Lich King.
I'm really interested to see how people react to T18. To me it's kind of a big change in direction. Our focus for quite a while has been to look at the bosses and materials of a raid environment, or iconic expansion imagery, and play off those. It's going to be a big departure, where the artists are taking a step back and really looking at the classes themselves, and looking at more classical fantasy materials--as well as just pushing the detail and quality level. I think it's kind of a cool new direction, even though it's almost like going back to a more classic look.
Patch 6.1 Daily Quests
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker
/ Official Forums
)
We don't think dailies are innately evil or anything, and we don't think most people think they're evil either, there are obviously some in the game now, and they CAN be a force for good. Like anything it's really just about using them as one of many tools in our toolbox. We can do lots of things in lots of different ways, and it's just about trying to be smart about how to best use each piece of content or type of mechanic in the best ways possible.
Lots of people play WoW, and there are lots of different types of players, with different amounts of time to play, and different tastes for the content and difficulty and time commitment they want to give to any of those pieces of content. The person that plays for an hour or so a few times a week is playing the same game as the person that plays five hours every night, and so that requires a lot of different types of content with lots of different types of players in-mind, and really trying to make sure we're giving everyone something they enjoy. It's hard!
Reminds me of a quote from a recent interview with Neil Peart--certainly one of the greatest living drummers, if not of all time--and his mom wondering why he doesn't smile more while he plays drums, and his answer: "It's hard!" Being talented, or even being the best, doesn't save anyone from the requirement of determination and a herculean effort to get it done well.
Anyway, in 6.1 (as announced) we have a new series of quests--tasks, if you will--that will be daily, and also be randomized among you and your friends. So people will be able to coordinate, and visit each others Garrisons, and get these tasks. There's a variety of quest types, and then multiple missions within each type, and so you can just do yours, or really make sure you do all of the types each day by coordinating with friends/guild mates. Rewards vary but they're all very opt-in in nature. There are a bunch of achievements, some fun rewards, and some interactions with professions and crafting materials.
We think it'll be a fun addition that is daily but not... OH NO IT'S DAILY, and as always we'll be looking for feedback and testing once the PTR spins up.
I don't think it sounds very fun having to visit 10 other ppl's garrisons to pick up quests I want to do. Stop developing this horrible sounding system now Blizzard. It'll only end in many complaints.
You don't have to, you can just do the one you got if you like. It's a social game, so encouraging social experiences is sort of a goal, even if it's as small as "Anyone have an enchanting building that can invite me?" Those small interactions have the possibility to become much bigger ones, so they're still important.
And that's especially true if/when these daily tasks require more than one player to complete.
"Interactions with professions and crafting materials" though makes it sound like it'll be like "I need x hexweave" or something like that, which I pray isn't.
Probably more as a way to put those stacks of mats to better use, and speed up some of the crafting cooldowns. Still in-development of course.
Riot Building Network to Improve LoL Network Performance
Riot recently announced a fairly large project to build out a network and create peering agreements with ISPs to improve League of Legends network performance in North America.
Originally Posted by Riot Ahab (Source)
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Riot Ahab here again to share more updates on what we're doing to address East Coast ping problems. By now, you may be familiar with the NA Server Roadmap, which outlines our approach to addressing ping disparity across the US and Canada. You can check it out here.
Today, I want to introduce Riot WizardOTL (formerly Riot WizardoftheLake), who has been busy leading the charge on Phase 2 of the Roadmap: building a dedicated network for League of Legends traffic.
Why are we doing this? Currently, ISPs focus primarily on moving large volumes of data in seconds or minutes, which is good for buffered applications like YouTube or Netflix but not so good for real-time games, which need to move very small amounts of data in milliseconds. On top of that, your internet connection might bounce all over the country instead of running directly to where it needs to go, which can impact your network quality and ping whether the game server is across the country or right down the street.
This is why we’re in the process of creating our own direct network for League traffic and working with ISPs across the US and Canada to connect players to this network.
I suppose I'll ask: "If this all gets done in the most ideal way possible, what will this make gameplay like? Will ping improve? Will gameplay improve even if ping doesn't with the "less data faster" approach? Will people on the west coast notice a change?"
Many players should see improvements in network quality as our new North American network rolls out. These improvements could be less ping time, less network packet loss, and more stable connections (less disconnects). Ping, packet loss, and stability may not all move in the same direction for all players depending on location within North America, their ISP (how their ISP connects to Riot's network).
Ping, packet loss, and stability are not always tied together and can be affected by many things. When it comes to network quality we prioritize stability, reduced packet loss, and ping time pretty much in this order. You can't play the game if you are not connected, you will see more lag with more packet loss, and ping can become a problem when it gets significantly high or is unstable (shooting up and down all the time in the middle of the game).
The game client only reports ping time to players but it also tracks stability and packet loss to Riot (and in client log files) on a near real time basis (though it can take us a day to crunch all the data from all the game clients before we see a troubling trend developing so we are not yet at real time detection of some network problems). Sometimes packet loss will show up in your ping time, usually you will see it jump up and down quickly which often indicates packet loss is happening or if severe packet loss will show up as lag in the game.
Faster ping time is often reported by players to "feel" better and is often something that is reported to be more meaningful the better you are at playing a game. How fast ping is before you feel the difference is likely dependent on the individual but it is generally thought the lower the better (diminishing returns apply, going from 160 ping to 90 ping is more impactful than going from 110 ping to 40). Lower ping time can also help mitigate packet loss since the game can recover missing packets faster. Because the Internet is a loose collection of various private and public networks, ping time is something that will constantly change for players. Some players could see slight increases in ping times while others can see significant reductions as our new network comes online. Our goal is benefit the most players and then troubleshoot ISPs that still have players with poor network quality.
Based on their other posts this is exactly what they are doing. It won't be going across a congested line if it's a line that Riot owns dedicated to League traffic.
Correct, we are going to have dedicated Internet links for just Riot running through the biggest metro areas of the LoL North America region. Key benefits are the elimination of congestion and optimize the distance packets travel (instead of random hops around the Internet). Some of these links are already online in some of the metro areas but players won't see most of the benefit until we also hook up dedicated links in the metro areas to the ISPs players use. We expect a few hiccups along the way, its a lot of network configuration changes being planned. (Doing the same thing in Europe pretty much at the same time, though we have to deal with lot of country issues versus just companies so some things move a bit slower in Europe).
When will this be finished by?
The full network is slated to be built by the end of March this year.
Does this mean that it will be up and fully functional, or just that the network itself will be ready?
The hardware will be functional -- the agreements may take a little extra time (since contracts always do), and there will be extra work hammering out individual hiccups and making sure as many players as possible have their connections pathing correctly to this network.
So basically, the hardware itself is on schedule, but we'll still have to wait a bit while the ISP negotiations go on. So it mostly depends on the ISPs?
The March goal should include getting the agreements done (and we are currently on schedule in that regard), but the back-and-forth on contracts never fails to amaze me on how long it can take!
Am I reading this correctly in that you are setting up what is your own Tier 2 or 1 network?
Exactly, we're focused on peering directly -- technically we may not meet the classification of a Tier 1 network, but you've got the idea.
How do you see what you're doing impacting gaming as a whole? By the sound of it, what you're working on sounds mostly LoL exclusive...but the same principles would hold true for all/most online games. Is this the sort of thing you could then sell/rent to other game companies? Or would this pave the way with ISPs for other companies to get similar systems in place? Is none of that really being considered yet because just getting this in place is more than enough work?
Great question - and the honest answer is, "we don't know." Every game's architecture is different, however we are working with other gaming companies to try and improve stability and make playing games more fun. I hope that helps.
Can you explain why NA servers have not be moved to a more centralized location? More importantly, you recently upgraded your servers, why not take that opportunity to move the servers to central US?
Network quality is the foundational thing in any online service (online being the key word). Once we have a handle on being able to firmly control the quality of the Internet between player ISPs and LoL data centers we can tackle the issue of what is the best location for the servers. With the big changes in the Internet business model going on since 2013 (net neutrality, rise in huge DDoS attacks, popularity of online video exploding which has created unprecedented Internet congestion, etc.) we have had to take a step back and really think about the foundation first. Network first is the right long term strategy for players throughout North America.
Is there a list of ISP's you have gotten confirmation of their assistance in this current course of action?
We now peer with Comcast, Charter, Shaw, Telus, and we are in negotiations with Time Warner Cable, Verizon, Cox Communications, CenturyLink, and many other ISPs. We're targeting those that carry most of our players, so odds are your ISP is already on the list of folks we are talking to!
What exactly does "peering" with an ISP accomplish? Specifically, what does the ISP do for you, and vice-versa?
Peering is when you connect directly to each ISP instead of just throwing packets out from one location. This allows us to make sure player traffic takes the best path to the game servers and allows us better control the connection quality for players. So your connection gets faster and you have less packet loss and disconnects.
Are you having trouble finding T1/T2 lines in various parts of the country? Do you use an ISPs internal T1/T2 network to transport the data around the country, or are you financing your own and asking the ISPs to forward the data through that?
No, we have our own all optical network and we are asking the ISPs to send League traffic through that.
(This kind of links to 1.) Will you manage the network yourselves or let an outside company do that? Although on-site maintenance for each line presumably would be handled by the provider, how about overall network management? I know as a company you're constantly hiring, but do you think you'll have the manpower to handle it alone?
We manage it internally. We have a great core team and we are actively recruiting to grow that group.
How did you as a company react when an employee suggested doing this? It's a pretty crazy thing to do and I can't imagine you (as a company) agreed immediately. What made you decide that this was indeed the way to go? (I agree, for what that is worth!)
Honestly, it took us a while to digest and wrap our heads around it. We had to meet with outside groups, and recruit people that have dealt with "service provider" networks versus data center networks. And then we ran some tests and found that this was the right path.
How long do you think it will take for the investment this will require to pay off?
We don't really look at it that way, this is the best for the players, so it is just something we need to do.
I saw in another comment you mentioned how you hope to work with other games companies so that this isn't such a one of thing. A followup question I have to that is why do you think no one has done this already?
I think there was a huge gap for software developers and data center network engineers to get over to understand this problem, and most games don't have the requirements that LoL has. So it really didn't manifest until now. As more games need this type of performance, you may see more companies doing this now.
Reddit Q&A
What does "building a dedicated network" even mean? You can't expect me to believe Riot is going to run dedicated lines across the continent, so what are they going to do? Build a giant VPN? Not to mention that phase three of this plan seems pretty familiar, since Riot said they were relocating the servers before and ended moving them further up the coast. Is the new phase three going to move them to Alaska?
So building a network is exactly what we are doing. We have leased circuits from Level3, Zayo, and CenturyLink, we have bought Routers from Juniper and Alcatel-Lucent, and we built and are operating POPs (Point of Presence) Equinix and Zayo locations across the country. The backbone is up in New York, Chicago, Seattle and San Jose. And we are bringing on LAX, Dallas, Atlanta and DC in the next month or two.
The Backbone is actually up, the hard part is the peering with the ISPs and route balancing. We now peer with Comcast, Charter, Shaw, Telus, and we are in negotiations with Time Warner Cable, Verizon, Cox Communications, CenturyLink, and many other ISPs.
The holidays have slowed us down a bit, but we are working to have the whole infrastructure finished by March 31st of this year.
The take away is that this is real, and we are moving as fast as we can.
Just to let you guys know, we are building a Tier 1 network. Just to give you some context, we have data that shows that some players in the bay area are getting 90ms ping, and they live less than 15ms from the servers! This is because some ISPs are sending the bay area traffic to LA, then to Denver, and then to Seattle and then to the servers. Putting a network in and peering is the only way to fix that. In another instance, Charter ended its contract with Zayo and that made Michigan players take a much longer path to the servers. None of this can be fixed unless we have the network in place.
This is a big project with a ton of people working on it and we are Really excited to see it come on line and see it be a huge win for the players.
Is what you're doing something Blizzard didn't have to do or is different than what Blizzard had to do to stabilize WoW at it's height?
I can't talk to what other game companies are doing, but I can say this is the first venture of this size and scope I have ever heard of.
What I'm afraid of is the ISPs charging a premium to the customer in order to have their traffic routed to Riots Private Network.
Blaaki - we are working with them, and the services that we getting from them do not allow them to do that. We are very aware of this concern and will work as hard as we can to make sure this is not something that can happen.
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