Blizzard announces team working on 6th Expac.

[Deleted]

Planing the big lines of the future expansion is expected. Already "working" on the next expansion's zones is somewhat infuriating since they seem to be "very late due to the team getting bigger"

So if this is really the case, can't you please for the love of Sargeras, work on the fucking xpac that is 6months late instead of working on your next, next 50$ ?

[Army Dreamer]

Blizzard announces team working on 6th Expac.

Who could ever have thought?

[Kryos]

Fool me once...

They are telling the same shit for 10 years now - I don't believe a single word anymore.

[Deleted]

See, part of the reason I'm not interested in coming back to WoW is the increasingly fast expansion cycle. I don't want to spend time working to achieve stuff in the game if its all going to be made pointless and i'll be back to square one in a years time.

[Bosen]

I'm happy to hear it. Hopefully, there'll be some real variety/identity between expansion packs.

[Queen of Hamsters]

I believe in a faster expansion cycle when we see it.

[lunchbox2042]

Activision loves that money. Why wouldn't they try to fleece their customers for $50 a year instead of $50 every two years? It works with Call of Duty and Skylanders.

[clevin]

The idea is that with better pre-production and earlier production (And a bigger staff), you will receive all the content you want with little downtime (Few months at best) and a very short ending raid hiatus that most people take. So it's either start it slowly, or full throttle it. Seems Blizzard has taken the 14 month break of content to pump up expansions faster; at least that's what I get from this.

They've promised faster expansions since TBC. What I get from this is PR fluff - it's not inaccurate or anything but it's a)nothing new and b) doesn't mean they'll do what they claim they want to do. They'll need to actually deliver expansions noticeably faster for this to be meaningful. And no, more people does not always mean faster dev.

Me, I'd like ~18 month expansions OR more content so that the last tier releases about 9 months before the end of an expansion vs 12 months. Basically, have 6 months between tiers, a meaningful content patch between those tier patches (that that about 3-4 months after one tier we get a non-raid content patch to keep things fresh) and the last tier about 7-9 months before the release of the next expansion. Hell, MoP would have been fine if they'd shipped WoD in June.

- - - Updated - - -

See, part of the reason I'm not interested in coming back to WoW is the increasingly fast expansion cycle. I don't want to spend time working to achieve stuff in the game if its all going to be made pointless and i'll be back to square one in a years time.

The expansion cycle hasn't sped up at all. This is, in fact, the longest gap. Try again.

[Borgiest]

They can't be doing much more than some very basic zone work if they don't have a theme. And... how the hell are they working on future expansions if they don't have a story? That bodes ill for any coherent story across expansions.

hey snowflake..just cause they didn't send you the memo doesn't mean they don't know the story line.

[Deleted]

They say this every xpac, they said it in WOTLK, CATA, MOP and now WOD, its nothing new...why are we making abig deal of it this time?

[Deleted]

I disagree I prefer the idea of quicker expansions and less raid teirs. It's better than saying oh what's this mysterious Island that's greyed out that we can't get to - oh that will b xpacx.2/3 raid tier. Getting bored of this to be honest and would prefer a new world / area with its own set fortresses / raid areas.

Holy shit, normally I'd just ignore this kind of batshit logic but today I'm not in the mood.

No, noooo.

You already pay about £100 a year in subs, a fair proportion of which is meant to be spent on patch content. There is no way you can then turn around and say you want them to give you less for that £100 and charge you more regularly for expansions. Do you want them to raise the sub fee whilst they're at it?

Sorry If I sound like an arsehole, but please stop thinking like this, and please stop making excuses for a company who you dont owe anything.

[Galluccio]

Totally expected, quicker expansion for $50, more money for them.

I just don't get people. They put out an expansion slowly and people bitch. They say they're going to push out an expansion more quickly and people bitch. Damned if they do, damned if they don't

[Deleted]

The people working on the expansion are probably the staff members who experience a lull in activity post-launch.

[TheTaurenOrc]

I just don't get people. They put out an expansion slowly and people bitch. They say they're going to push out an expansion more quickly and people bitch. Damned if they do, damned if they don't

I wish people would get it out of their heads that its about the expansion, its not! Its about the 12 months of NOTHING that precedes it!

A consistent patch cycle within a full 2 year expansion in my opinion would be much better.

At this rate the paint on my Garrison would have barely dried before I need to ship out and fight the next big bad.

[Deleted]

"Working on" in BlizzardSpeak means, "Hey I saw Metzen at the watercooler and we totally talked about the possibility of another expac"
It will also be ready when it's ready and they will show more details Soon(tm)

[Daffan]

I wish people would get it out of their heads that its about the expansion, its not! Its about the 12 months of NOTHING that precedes it!

A consistent patch cycle within a full 2 year expansion in my opinion would be much better.

At this rate the paint on my Garrison would have barely dried before I need to ship out and fight the next big bad.

Prolly wouldn't of been 12 months of nothing if they stopped releasing each raid so quickly after the next so early on and than letting everyone skip them before they finished them. IE: EVeryone piled into SoO before even finishing ToT i guarantee you

"Ughh i'm not doing the latest content as random player #41414 Blizzard let me skip 2 tiers!" That's how it goes down and most people who say their is nothing to do are the guys with 0 normal kills.

[alexkeren]

This has always been the case with every expansion.

No, this is not the case, they've only worked on the next expansion during the course of a current expansion. They didn't start WotLK during Vanilla. They didn't start Cata during TBC. They didn't start MoP during WotLK.

[TheTaurenOrc]

you do realize the person you just quoted said the same thing as you just did, right?

No. That is not the case. He said:

I just don't get people. They put out an expansion slowly and people bitch. They say they're going to push out an expansion more quickly and people bitch. Damned if they do, damned if they don't

I said:

I wish people would get it out of their heads that its about the expansion, its not! Its about the 12 months of NOTHING that precedes it!

Its not the same at all. The point being everyone keeps saying that faster expansions is the way to combat content drought, but so are content patches. Its the lack of content that the game is suffering from, not the length of an expansion.

Blizzard increases its development team to combat this and they could have done two things:

A) Have half the team develop content patches for the current expansion, while the other half works on the next expansion at a 2 year cycle.
B) Have the whole team pushout current content and an expansion within a year.

Low and behold Blizzard chose the route which has a bigger pay off.

[Veraki]

Holy shit, normally I'd just ignore this kind of batshit logic but today I'm not in the mood.

No, noooo.

You already pay about £100 a year in subs, a fair proportion of which is meant to be spent on patch content. There is no way you can then turn around and say you want them to give you less for that £100 and charge you more regularly for expansions. Do you want them to raise the sub fee whilst they're at it?

Sorry If I sound like an arsehole, but please stop thinking like this, and please stop making excuses for a company who you dont owe anything.

Never said anything about price, so hold your horses mate.

I was talking about how I'd prefer to see the content. Would of course agree that if xpacs are shorter and coming out more frequent then the price would need revisiting but that was not my response.

Not sure what batshit logic you thought you saw but evidently misread or not clarified by me. I would guess the first comment re your state of mood has made you overreact.

[TheTaurenOrc]

You already pay about £100 a year in subs, a fair proportion of which is meant to be spent on patch content.

INB4 a Blizzard apologist says subscriptions are you 'renting' the use of your character. Which is crap because it clearly was their business model and intention from the beginning that would also be used to fund development of new content. But it gives you an idea of the type of people we're dealing with.