Heads up: patch 5.4: Siege of Orgrimmar replys and comments

Post by **bringoutyourdead** » Sat Jul 13, 2013 4:13 pm

See announcement here: http://www.warcraftrealms.com/forum/vie ... php?t=5053

Any and all replies to this thread please.

Post by **bringoutyourdead** » Sat Jul 13, 2013 4:47 pm

sigh latest build breaks things even more interestingly

Quote from Driz "local fullname = GetUnitName(unit,showServerName) behavior changed again (not sure if intended)
showServerName = true -> 'name-realm' in all cases, showServerName = nil/false -> 'name' for same realm and virtual realm (no more (#) appended) and 'name (*)' for x-realm (same as now)"

That API call is very important for CensusPlus

Post by **bringoutyourdead** » Sun Jul 14, 2013 3:37 pm

Changes for 5.4

Goals
Continue with the best census tracking in the most efficient manor possible.
The ideal census covers every realm at least once an hour. More frequent census runs is nice in that it provides overlap but the website isn't set up to display data at any higher frequency.

Issues and conflicts
Nothing lasts forever yet the financial stock market demand that fact must be wrong.
As has been reported and as we have seen with our Census tracking, WoW activity has retracted back from the peak (of a reported 12 million)
At this time there are more realms (virtual server images) then are currently needed to support the current continuing WoW player base.

Assumptions: The game developers wanting to improve player experience (and thereby retain and maybe grow the player base) wants to consolidate the realms.
The legal and financial leadership at Blizzard said something like this "Hell no.. no way will you admit to needing fewer realms (aka servers)"
The compromise.. CONvince the players they have a solution called "Virtual realms".. The same old realms only better in that they can interact with other realms as if they were one...
but they aren't (we aren't decreasing the realms, see the names are still there!)

CensusPlus the addon vs. www.warcraftrealm.com the website
In any battle between the needs of the addon vs. the needs of the website.. the website wins every time. (pretty much the case)

If we were only interested in current data then Metalbeast could slice and dice the site making it much easier to maintain... and making the addon easier to modify.
But one of the advantages of WarcraftRealms.com is that we do keep track of history in the game, in fact we keep track of information about characters that we don't tell any one about..
We don't want to know this info.. but it is there, we just ignore it.
(note this information is only available to the database if there are enough frequent uploads to provide the data... no need to worry we aren't from the Government)

Problems and opportunities of Patch 5.4
When doing a census run in 5.4 we will not only get our login realm but all of the other realms associated within the "Virtual Realm".
Either we continue doing our login realm and treat all other data as lucky capture foreign realms,
or we find a way to determine what realms are in the associated "Virtual Realm" then break out the data into each of the associated realms,
in effect we would be doing multiple realms in a single run.
The latter approach is better but requires either fore knowledge of the "Virtual Realm membership" or determining the membership during the census run and reporting/saving the data for the user.

If Blizzard publishes the "Virtual Realm membership table" then I can just point that info to the user and leave it up to them to not do unnecessary census runs.
If Blizzard doesn't make this info available until the player base (and fan sites) figure out the relationships, then I need to display the Realm membership at the end of the census run.
This becomes unreasonable if the membership numbers go too high. (Wall of Text data... something like this message)

A possible solution is to create and save a table in the addon with the following info:

Virtual realm pseudo ID, associated member realm, time of last census completion

There would be an entry for each associated member realm, Virtual realm and last census time would be the same for all members.
I can then help prevent too rapid duplication of effort for the user, by checking the current time of the next census run start against the last time completed and the delay timer as set with /census timer xx,
if an attempt is made on a realm that was already recently completed, the run would be stopped and a note provided that census data was already current.

The other major change in the addon is that I would need to create a temporary table to store data as the census run was processing,
and then at the end of the run move the table into the normal saved data area and build multiple TimesPlus entries for that one run.
Better idea
modify the program flow to build multiple TimesPlus entries on the fly as data is collected... currently that part of the data is built at the end.. the time between seeing your census character census and the final display of totals for the run.

This is a major design change and will slow down the apparent speed of the addon, but in the end we gain speed since instead of only one realm done we will have x number of realms done.
Sure the run will be longer but we save lots of wasted time logging in and out of realms.

Of course since we haven't any real data on how Blizzard will implement 5.4 for real.. all of this is just stuff I need to be prepared for .. hoping that they don't go off on a completely different tangent when they go live. The last major change was stressful enough as it was.

superxdude · Post by **superxdude** » Sun Jul 14, 2013 7:42 pm

Seems like its always a challenge. I wish I could help but I am better at breaking things and/or reverse engineering machines/weapons/guns.

I plan on catching Pandafain this month if I can.

Padanfain · Post by **Padanfain** » Sun Jul 14, 2013 9:25 pm

It's never easy bringoutyourdead. Not from the government , fah, lol. I see now.

This is command center for SI:7!

superxdude wrote:I plan on catching Pandafain this month if I can.

Woot! The race is on hehehe

superxdude · Post by **superxdude** » Sun Jul 14, 2013 11:14 pm

Taking a semi-break from wow this week, really feeling burned out. I don't mind doing census though as I use trail accounts and my real ID/Battletag friends can't pester me for stupid stuff.

On a side note, I love trial (troll) accounts. I can reply back to guild spammers and not care too much if the account gets a ban.

Padafain, I might catch you, it just depends how much Minecraft I want to play. If anything, it's good for the site as there is more data coming in.

Post by **metalbeast** » Mon Jul 15, 2013 9:13 am

Excellent information bringoutyourdead. I think as the roll for 5.4 approaches, we should get a better idea of what the in game data will look like and then we can figure out the best way to update the web site for Virtual Realms.

I hope the Virtual Realms do have some sort of lookup based on the Battlegroup. It will be tricky when we have battlegroups with 8 realms and 3 of them are in one Virtual Realm and 5 are in another.

We will have to wait and see what kind of API or other means to actually figure out which realm belongs to which Virtual Realm.

I am unsure how Blizz will handle name overlapping situations with different realms having characters of the same name. It would seem that Blizz needs to maintain the originator realm or home realm or whatever they plan to call it

The site will make whatever changes are needed to accommodate the 5.4 imports.

Padanfain · Post by **Padanfain** » Tue Jul 16, 2013 12:55 am

superxdude wrote:Padafain, I might catch you, it just depends how much Minecraft I want to play. If anything, it's good for the site as there is more data coming in.

Amen to that superxdude. More numbers = all the better for WCR. How could we encourage more people to do the same? I've pitched the site/addon to many while taking census. Mostly on the dedicated census toons I've made when people ask why a level 1 is just sitting there doing nothing but I'm not shy about spreading the word on the other toons too. I don't know how many have made it to the site but I give a shoutout every chance I get. What else can we do?

superxdude · Post by **superxdude** » Tue Jul 16, 2013 1:14 am

hmm...i'll think of some ideas tonight...have a few stewing in my brain...

FuxieDK · Post by **FuxieDK** » Fri Jul 19, 2013 5:39 am

Woot.. I replied in the "original" post before I saw this thead... Somhere is what I wrote:

Since only 10N testing have been done on PTR (still missing 10H, 25N, 25H, Flex and LFR), most "popular" release date guesses, is late august, early september.

I have the utmost confidense in you (and Metalbeast, if need be) have time to make the nessesary changes before v5.4 is released..

superxdude · Post by **superxdude** » Fri Jul 19, 2013 6:38 am

Hmmm if I can get my Rogue's guild renamed, I could rename it to Warcraft Realms

It would take a few people reporting me though.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/a ... cks/simple

Post by **bringoutyourdead** » Tue Aug 13, 2013 10:48 am

As expected it finally happened... the latest PTR build(s) broke CensusPlus.
Padanfain has been helping me since I don't have access to the PTR...
Balgair you will be happy to know that Horton the dreaded had to be prodded awake and he provided the first of the information needed to get PTR testing going.

I love Blizzards PTR, for our addon it is a unique experience, as they treat the information we are looking at in a completely different manner then how it is handled on live realms.
(sure helps in testing..

)

The test plan is:
1. Get Censusplus functioning again in the PTR environment (expecting data to exist just not be valid/usable)
2. Get Censusplus working again but not handling Virtual realms efficiently
3. Get Censusplus working so that one census run correctly handles the whole Virtual realm system as one realm... i.e. one census run tracks not only the characters but the character activity for each member realm in the Virtual realm.

Since Blizzard still hasn't provided any information on how they are going to setup Virtual realms we probably won't have a ready to run addon until release day (or soon after).. sigh

Post by **bringoutyourdead** » Fri Aug 16, 2013 11:23 pm

Looking for 2nd PTR tester..
Padanfain is doing a test for me that requires a 2nd account on the PTR realms

If you can spend a few minutes with him most likely evenings US west coast time
or otherwise send him a PM here onsite.

He has been gettings lots of invite request for all sorts of raid and other stuff.. but is being ignored when he asks for a couple of minutes in cross realm addon testing.. sigh.

Padanfain · Post by **Padanfain** » Sat Aug 17, 2013 12:39 am

10K gold got an almost instant group add lmao don't know why I didn't think of paying earlier

superxdude · Post by **superxdude** » Sat Aug 17, 2013 12:51 am

us ptr?

Padanfain · Post by **Padanfain** » Sat Aug 17, 2013 12:55 am

I was on a US realm yes, grouped with someone from an EU realm.

superxdude · Post by **superxdude** » Sat Aug 17, 2013 1:02 am

i can d/l ptr if you need help, busy with schoolwork though...

too old to go back to college

Padanfain · Post by **Padanfain** » Sat Aug 17, 2013 1:07 am

For now I think it is covered but if the need arises again I will give you a holler

TY

Bah, never too old to go back to college.

Balgair · Post by **Balgair** » Sat Aug 17, 2013 5:46 am

I too can download if needed, though being in the EU, timezones may be an issue

Padanfain · Post by **Padanfain** » Sat Aug 17, 2013 8:39 am

Cool

TY Balgair