As most of us should know at this point, this week’s elite specialization teaser is the thief’s specialization which is presumably going to be called the Daredevil, according to what data mining has told us. Most of us also will know at this point that the elite specializations have had minor bits of information data mined out of the client which in turn is revealed to us by the data miners themselves which hasn’t been much of a problem. In fact, I’d argue that it has helped us stay hyped about HoT and increase speculation on just what else we’re getting with the expansion. But after today’s patch it seems Anet at the very least put the descriptions (but more likely most of the Daredevil as a whole) into the patch whereas the day went along, every trait, utility, and weapon skill were mined and shown to the community. Now, the blame can’t really be put onto the data miners because, as their name implies, they’re just finding the data that Anet puts in and tells the community about it. It should also be said that the data miners do have the option to not reveal everything they find right away (something I believe that_shaman has done in the past), but this shouldn’t be something Anet counts on.
Surely Anet would have known it’d get mined out as it has tended to happen every patch they put out, especially since the announcement of HoT, but surely they also would have wanted to keep things a surprise until the Points of Interest on Friday, as well as giving some info to a 3rd party site for a sneak peek on Wednesday. It’s incredibly unlikely that any of the data mined info we got today is going to differ from what we see on Friday either, as it is so close to the official reveal on stream. That point being made, it’s pretty safe to say that our Wednesday article can’t provide anything new to cover other than pictures and our Friday stream won’t reveal much beyond the animations and dev commentary. Now, I do realize that most of the information found today was put behind a spoiler tag, but really, it is not as simple as just shielding yourself from clicking that one reddit or forum post. Upon seeing the link, anyone who wanted to remain unspoiled will have the “privilege” of knowing that many people around them already have the information that they’ve been patiently waiting for. And how quickly after the information is found does it find its way into the various map chats of the game? At the end of the day, avoiding that spoiler tag becomes nothing but impractical.
My main questions are pointed at Anet about why did this info have to go into the client today and ruin their own surprise? Was it just lack of communication between departments or something? I can only guess as I have no idea about their infrastructure. Was it just because the next day there would be an article explaining some details anyways and it just didn’t really matter to them? There would have been little to no consequence for holding it off until the next patch or beta (which would have likely needed a patch anyways).
But I also have some questions for the rest of us as well. Does the rest of the community see this as an issue? I know parts of all of us are quick to want every bit of information revealed to us, hence why we do things like data mine in the first place. Is there value in having Anet properly reveal their information the way they want to or do we deserve to know every bit of it as it is ready?
Sadly I must say it no longer feels like a proper reveal for me, a shame being that Thief is my main and I wanted that excitement that other classes felt on that Wednesday morning and Friday afternoon of seeing what the future of my class was going to be like. But now it’s as if I’m going to see a movie yet I already know the plot and its details; going to a magic show where I know all the tricks already. Anet I hope you handle your reveals a little more carefully in the future.