Blizzard's core "done when it's done" philosophy under threat?

[Santti]

I think Blizzard is very much following the "done when it's done" routine. They might cut content along the way, but who the hell doesn't? Every company does that, but what Blizzard is doing is telling their very early plans to the audience, which they apparently shouldn't do. Just look how that turned out, again. Everyone is all riled up for no reason at all.

The thing is, Blizzard has been very good at releasing very polished and relatively bug-free games since... forever, and that's what counts when we are talking about "done when it's done". Now compare it to most every other game at the same scale Blizzard games are at launch. You guys are just nuts.

[Mormolyce]

Honestly I wish people would stop pressuring them to release things fast. I'm quite happy to wait, if by some strange stroke of fate I run out of things to do in the game I have a huge pile of other games to play.

[Tech Priest Bojangles]

Honestly I wish people would stop pressuring them to release things fast. I'm quite happy to wait, if by some strange stroke of fate I run out of things to do in the game I have a huge pile of other games to play.

Just because you may enjoy eating paste doesn't mean everyone else does.
Not everyone is happy to wait, SoO is getting stale and we still have months to go.

[Deleted]

Lovin the beta so far and from what I've seen, I haven't been this hyped for Expansion or any game really, as I am for WoD. <3

[Doomchicken]

Just because you may enjoy eating paste doesn't mean everyone else does.
Not everyone is happy to wait, SoO is getting stale and we still have months to go.

Then unsub and play something else until they release the new content? Why is that such a hard thing to do for people? Seriously? :|

Here's the big problem. Cataclysm was in development for a while too but they pushed it out before it was done. Cataclysm is almost unanimously regarded as the worst expansion of all time. I do not want this to be pushed out it before it is done. I do not want another Cataclysm level expansion. I want something good and if I have to wait a few more months for it then so be it.

[Deleted]

I think Blizzard's customer interaction is somewhere between amateurish and completely inept. The company has no face whatsoever, the myriad of people twittering make it superhard to follow for even an involved subscriber, and most of them lack any PR or marketing education and knowledge.

That said, what the guy tweeted couldn't be any more obvious or more necessary. Only a handful of companies can afford to can (Starcraft Ghost) or restart from scratch ('titan') huge projects, nobody could even consider it with an ongoing subscription service. After painting and modelling and coding and balancing and twittering for so long, they positively need to publish it in (almost) whatever state it may be. There will be bugs, but we are talking about an effing videogame not a cardiac pacemaker. If you feel it's too buggy to enjoy, unsubscribe till patched or unsubscribe for good.

[Tech Priest Bojangles]

Then unsub and play something else until they release the new content? Why is that such a hard thing to do for people? Seriously? :|

Here's the big problem. Cataclysm was in development for a while too but they pushed it out before it was done. Cataclysm is almost unanimously regarded as the worst expansion of all time. I do not want this to be pushed out it before it is done. I do not want another Cataclysm level expansion. I want something good and if I have to wait a few more months for it then so be it.

I AM unsubbed. Thanks for the advice. Loving the beta though.
The reason I bring up paste eating is because that's pretty much how exciting the majority of old content is. Majority of achievements are a complete waste of time and only appeal to those crazy people compelled to collect every single one of them. The ones that reward mounts or titles are the only ones worth doing IMO, and openraid was amazing for that but they don't last forever.

[Tharkkun]

Blizzard doesn't follow the "done when it's done" rule at least since Wrath of the Lich King

Wotlk -> No Azjol-Nerub zone, No Flying combat (and this was in the actual box), No Dance Studio (at this point I think it will never happen).

Cata -> No Abyssal Maw raid, War of the Ancients raid was transformed into the 5man. (I don't include Path of the Titans because the concept was really weird and confusing)

MoP -> I think "nothing" was scraped? I don't remember.

WoD -> No capital cities, No movable garrisons, No renamig follower, let's hope nothing more gets scraped.

The thing is, they will never follow that rule, now a days they are more a greedy company than a "user-friendly" company, I suppose they owe a lot of money to the investors? who knows.

PS: The lists are not completed, but you get the point.

Garrison placement was corrected in the QA session. Tom Chilton got a little excited during his announcement but this was fixed shortly after. Most people obviously missed this correction.

Fan says: So I was wondering about the garrisons, will they be in pre determined locations? In one slide I noticed the dance studio.
Developers: (Denying it while smirking and laughing.) That's ridiculous!
CS: The garrisons will be in pre determined locations. Within the pre determined area you can move the buildings to how you want them. We have the positions in really awesome locations. If we allowed players to choose any position players would put it say at the entrance to Blackrock Foundry.

Same thing for the name of your followers. It was never an announced feature. It was a cool idea.

Fan says: For people with many alts can they have them as followers for their garrisons?
CS: We haven't thought about this, but it sounds cool! We need a solution to deal with the fact that garrisons are unique and not account wide, we need something to help you make a garrison on your alt. We're not far enough along the development stage to talk about that yet. However we could include something like their name and gear, it could be awesome.

Getting upset over ideas that were announced that probably would have sucked when implemented isn't fair to Blizzard. Flying combat would have been pretty dumb. It would have been underwater combat on steroids and we know how much people like anything underwater.

[Deleted]

They just need innovative programmers and less "fat" , i can imagine that 70% of that company are people that dosnt actually programme.

[arcaneshot]

AS for not having time to do it - that's crap planning. They talked about this at BLIZZCON. 9 months ago. And then, last month, they just realized they'd not have time?

You're under the assumption that they made this decision a couple weeks ago. Chances are, they made this decision right after Blizzcon, which is why Karabor doesn't look any more fuller than when it was first revealed.

[Muneraven]

Maybe his response stems from the fact that they're damned if they do, damned if they don't.
They get bitched at constantly, no matter what they do.

They delay getting the expansion out so that they can fix the capitol cities up to people's liking? They get bitched at for not getting it done fast enough. They delay the capitol cities so that they can get some new content out and wait on showing the cities until they're ready? They get bitched at for not having the cities done (also "not getting it done fast enough"). They give us both the new content and the capitol cities before they're done and ready? They get bitched at for everything looking like crap.

The cities being delayed seems like the least offensive scenario to me, as I'm sure it did to them as well, which is why they're doing this.

Blizzard employees should thank their lucky stars for every player who bitches and moans in forums and blogs and such because those players care passionately about WoW and are out there reading about it, talking about it, and buying xpacs, merch, and other Blizzard games to boot. The day people are NOT complaining about the game is the day Blizzard employees should fear the most because that means WoW has become majorly irrelevant.

- - - Updated - - -

I think Blizzard's customer interaction is somewhere between amateurish and completely inept. The company has no face whatsoever, the myriad of people twittering make it superhard to follow for even an involved subscriber, and most of them lack any PR or marketing education and knowledge.

What do you mean Blizzard has no face? That's Blizzard's face right there, the one with egg on it.

- - - Updated - - -

They just need innovative programmers and less "fat" , i can imagine that 70% of that company are people that dosnt actually programme.

Actually, I think they need to get the former programmers out of management and back to programming and hire truly professional project managers from outside the company who can both demand more resources when necessary AND rein in the geekfest and get people to work on what really matters when necessary.

[Fenixdown]

thats because they decided after blizzcon to redo everything because they didnt like it

Which was a huge mistake on their part, because everyone they're making the game for seemed to like it and now is sorely disappointed. I've never in my life seen a thread pop up dedicated to how you can get your pre-order cancelled until this expansion.

[Evilfish]

One thing I learned is that most things are not always what they seem. That's why I'm willing to try WoD. Hell the garrisons could be fun. But that does not apply to removing flying cause I know that's exactly what it seems - no flying.

Still I'm willing to give Blizzard the benefit of the doubt as far most of WoD is concerned.

Oh and I always thought this "it's done when it's done" line was a bullshit excuse lazy people use. It has to be done when it needs to be done and considering we've been looking at what? One year of no content? It needs to be done pretty damn soon.

[ringpriest]

You're under the assumption that they made this decision a couple weeks ago. Chances are, they made this decision right after Blizzcon, which is why Karabor doesn't look any more fuller than when it was first revealed.

That's not any better for Blizzard's reputation. It's arguably worse because it implies Blizz knowingly lied by omission for months.

[Lord Blackmore]

I really don't understand threads like these. It's almost like some people don't understand what beta means.

We're nearing the end of July and maybe, if we're lucky, we'll see the expansion drop just before Christmas. That's almost 6 months of additional development to be done.

People need to stop acting like they can tell what the product is going to look like when it's released.

[Mormolyce]

Just because you may enjoy eating paste doesn't mean everyone else does.
Not everyone is happy to wait, SoO is getting stale and we still have months to go.

I have some tissues if you want them?

[toychristopher]

"When it's done." has always been an excuse to not make deadlines public so that they are not held accountable to them. At a certain point they have to slap a "DONE" label on whatever they have finished and ship it out the door.

[Raven]

Blizzard employees should thank their lucky stars for every player who bitches and moans in forums and blogs and such because those players care passionately about WoW and are out there reading about it, talking about it, and buying xpacs, merch, and other Blizzard games to boot. The day people are NOT complaining about the game is the day Blizzard employees should fear the most because that means WoW has become majorly irrelevant.

Sorry but no, they should thank their lucky star for those that gives constructive criticism not those that bitch and moans over every little thing.

Those that gives constructive criticism cares about the game and want to help make it better even if its just in a way they think its better, those that bitch and moans just want to bitch and moans about something.

[Mormolyce]

Blizzard employees should thank their lucky stars for every player who bitches and moans in forums and blogs and such because those players care passionately about WoW and are out there reading about it, talking about it, and buying xpacs, merch, and other Blizzard games to boot.

Difference between constructive criticism and bitching and moaning IMO.

[Eroginous]

I saw this and was quite surprised to be honest: https://twitter.com/Bashiok/status/490187297519042560

I dont know exactly what those faction outposts will look like (maybe theyll be better than how they sound?) but in every expansion Blizz have made time to create a decent faction hub. The fact that many people see WoD as having far fewer features than previous xpacs and that a lot of people will be spending much of their online time there doesnt sound too good....

If theyre diverting resources by creating lite versions of faction hubs, what are they spending their resources on? Do you think some other game's internal development is hogging those resources or maybe updating the character models is taking up all the art team's time?

Considering where the expansion is in development right now and after playing beta, this is the first time an xpac feels "rushed" to me :S

I don't think they are diverting resources at all. I think it's a matter of 'an expansion will bring in X amount of dollars, we need to release an expansion by Y date so that our numbers look good for Z quarterly report.' So looked at what it would take to release the expansion by the desired date, and decided to cut features, shift some things around, and as a result, made a lot of people question their motives.

I think they are dropping the ball.