Reason for persistence of content droughts in WoW?

[Grym]

For the argument of "there will always be a content drought at the end of expansion as resources are shifted to the new expansion", I am sure many people will agree WotLK is a decent expansion? Because I am sure between end of TBC and WotLK there wasn't nearly as long a content drought, as more expansions goes on the drought seems to be getting longer and longer.

[Trollfat]

Which to me is mismanagement, letting perfect be the enemy of good. They admittedly cobbled together classic raids very quickly but they were still fun. They need to get back to that mode and away from spending so much time on new models with extra pixels, every single boss having some random new mechanic, etc. Just give us repackaged old stuff for most fights and a few new ones and we'll be just as happy.

Were you playing when patch 4.1 came out? Lol.

Edit: To be clear, I completely agree with you. But most players do not. The second Blizz reuses a raid boss skeleton, the entire forums explode. It's pathetic.

[Pawestruck]

Something else. These are the three biggest things:

1) Throughout the years, WoW's standard of quality has risen and development times have risen with it.

2) Recent expansions let players chew through content far faster than in Vanilla/BC. Dungeon finder, quest hubs, flying, automatic spell learning, removal of literally all attunements, removal of reputation grinds to increase player power, etc.

3) Catch up mechanics.

1) Agreed. This is almost certainly the case, but I'm not sure it accounts for the more egregious gaps (12-14 months).

2) This is a problem, but doesn't affect content cadence.

3) This is a problem, but doesn't affect content cadence.

In fact, let me just say this to a lot of the rather silly strawmen being tackled in this thread: Content cadence is an objective, verifiable piece of data. How one perceives when a patch gets old makes no difference. Catch-up mechanics and "teh cazualz" are interesting in their own right but are not on topic.

[ali725]

Im going with #3 Difficulty upgrading/adding new content simultaneously. Because i still like WoW even if its not the way people prefer it but yes long content droughts suck but i feel like they are trying to make it critically good for players each expansion and after Wotlk receive backlash for every expansion. I also think it is their way of saying do other things but end game. Some people pvp and nothing else. Same with raiding or leveling. Expand your horizons.

[Trollfat]

1) Agreed. This is almost certainly the case, but I'm not sure it accounts for the more egregious gaps (12-14 months).

I'm going to have to go with mismanagement then. For instance, Highmaul was current content for less than 3 months, so they could have at least delayed BRF by a good ~2 months more. That makes HFC 12 months long instead of 14. Still awful, but better.

[Relapses]

I'm going to have to go with mismanagement then. For instance, Highmaul was current content for less than 3 months, so they could have at least delayed BRF by a good ~2 months more. That makes HFC 12 months long instead of 14. Still awful, but better.

Highmaul and BRF were meant to be the same tier. If anything, Blizzard should have released BRF sooner so it wouldn't have given people the idea that they're separate tiers.

[Trollfat]

Highmaul and BRF were meant to be the same tier. If anything, Blizzard should have released BRF sooner so it wouldn't have given people the idea that they're separate tiers.

I think they should have made them separate tiers. Gave Highmaul 2 or 3 more bosses and ogre-themed tier gear. For a little extra work, the "worst expansion ever" becomes a 3-tier decent one.

[Relapses]

I think they should have made them separate tiers. Gave Highmaul 2 or 3 more bosses and ogre-themed tier gear. For a little extra work, the "worst expansion ever" becomes a 3-tier decent one.

Both instances were 100% complete when WoD was released. BRF was a staggered release to give Mythic raiders a chance to catch up. I'd argue it was a stupid decision on Blizzard's part but that was the reasoning given at the time.

[Trollfat]

Both instances were 100% complete when WoD was released. BRF was a staggered release to give Mythic raiders a chance to catch up. I'd argue it was a stupid decision on Blizzard's part but that was the reasoning given at the time.

Agreed. Either release them at the same time to give raiders options, or make them separate tiers entirely. None of this staggered shit.

[thilicen]

Just curious what people think here. I started playing WoW a few months before TBC released, and it seems like content droughts have been a problem since then. I just don't ever remember feeling like "Woohoo, new content, and just in time!" It's always been this mind-numbing wait (during which I've usually unsubbed).

I can think of a few possibilities:
1. Laziness
2. Conspiracy theory type greed ("we want more money for less content")
3. Honest difficulty upgrading the game while simultaneously adding new content (Cf.: Cataclysm)
4. Ineptitude/mismanagement
5. Abandonment of the game in favor of other moneymakers like Hearthstone, Heroes, Overwatch

My money would have to be on 4, with the rephrasing of "sheer idiocy." Blizz claimed to have hired on a bunch of new people which, if true, would disqualify explanations 1, 2, and 5. I believe these hires did take place, but I also think that mismanagement and general stupidity can hurt a game no matter its potential. (Check out the GW2 vis-a-vis the glassdoor reviews of A-net...)

I honestly believe that lack of content has hurt the game more than any allegedly-poor design decision. All the stuff people complain about - LFR, "casualization," ease of achieving max level, PVP complaints - all of that pales in my mind to making us feel like that $15/mo. is going somewhere.

What do you guys think?

See, this is your problem, you don't know fuck all about how things work.

[Joni85]

I've just always assumed that its difficulty adding in new content without breaking old stuff. At this point we've had what, 5 xpacs working on #6? If final fantasy 14 can manage to have a new raid every 3 months (granted much smaller than wows) I don't see why wow would have so much trouble keeping up unless there's something behind the scene making it difficult.

[Draahl]

I personally think blizzard sets to bar too high to provide quality content, they need to lower the bar abit and go more towards quantity over quality cause aparently thats what the community screams for right now. I guess no1 remembers vanilla patch days when you couldnt do shit for weeks after cause the new content was so buggy.

[Relapses]

I personally think blizzard sets to bar too high to provide quality content, they need to lower the bar abit and go more towards quantity over quality cause aparently thats what the community screams for right now. I guess no1 remembers vanilla patch days when you couldnt do shit for weeks after cause the new content was so buggy.

And then all of the people currently bitching about the lack of content will instead be bitching about how much more buggy the content is than it was in the past.

[Deleted]

hello. i myself think most of you need to go seek medical advice for addiction to a video game. How many of you have actually went through all the content available to you? ie: all achievement points. i bet none. so stop moaning and whining, enjoy the game or dont play it. Simple no? it will be funny if you could all link your armory, i guarantee you still have hundreds of achievments to complete, hence still plenty of content to go through. Have a good one

[Kuntantee]

Laziness is not one of the reasons. In a corporate environment, you don't get to be lazy, otherwise you will be fired. Especially in gaming industry where deadlines are tight.

I, too, often criticize Blizz with "laziness", but what I mean is corporate greed and sometimes incompetence.

Where is incompetence in the list?

[lolbubble]

hello. i myself think most of you need to go seek medical advice for addiction to a video game. How many of you have actually went through all the content available to you? ie: all achievement points. i bet none. so stop moaning and whining, enjoy the game or dont play it. Simple no? it will be funny if you could all link your armory, i guarantee you still have hundreds of achievments to complete, hence still plenty of content to go through. Have a good one

Ah yes the retarded argument of "LINK YOUR ACHIEVES BRUH".

Please tell me what else I should be doing in order to enjoy this game.

[RickJamesLich]

I voted ineptitude, although I wanted to go with "other" for dishonesty too. It seems pretty clear that blizzard isn't putting out enough content despite having a much larger team than when the game launched, and the fact that they have A LOT more money now. We routinely hear that the WoW team is the largest it's ever been..... so how is content coming out at the slowest it's ever been released? On top of that, with the limited amount of content, the game is undertuned and it's easy so you can see everything minus the hardest levels of raiding all very fast... and there's not much to keep players on the hook to actually want to see those higher tiers of raiding since most players get funneled through easy mode LFR so many times that they get sick of it. So with a low amount of content, and the content being too easy, people literally run out of stuff to do after a few weeks. Unless you feel like grinding shit from the previous expansions.... but who really wants to do that?

[Echo of Soul]

For the argument of "there will always be a content drought at the end of expansion as resources are shifted to the new expansion", I am sure many people will agree WotLK is a decent expansion? Because I am sure between end of TBC and WotLK there wasn't nearly as long a content drought, as more expansions goes on the drought seems to be getting longer and longer.

Yeah if anything WotLK came out way too fast. My guild had cleared half of Sunwell or something like that when the prepatch released.

[Daffan]

The trade off is only a few percent of players got to see that end content. Only one percent saw the end of Sunwell Plateau. That's a LOT of content generation for a very tiny portion of people. So the trade off appears to be let people watch it on youtube and strive and fail for it - or let them catch up with the probability that they will finish it faster than they can produce new content.

To me, the latter is not preferable, but is better.

This is very true. BUT

There is a difference between now and TBC/Vanilla where people couldn't see Naxx or Sunwell.

FLEXIBLE! Casual groups and guilds no longer need 25/40 people. There is also b.net tag, cross-realm, account wide stuff and premade finder. Seriously there is tons of Quality of life features that did not exist back then that really help ease average players into things.

One of the big reasons people couldn't get past Karazhan was 25 people. A big reason casuals couldn't raid much in Vanilla was as strict 40 man requirement, basically you couldn't even START raiding without a big group and guild.

Secondly, there is an argument to made that's its better to progress and enjoy 2 raids and never make the 3rd instead of skipping 2 raids and zerging down the 3rd one which is not even that fun.

It also means professions, dungeons and world content doesn't become obsolete instantly.

OR the psychological approach where if there is a 3rd raid you are working towards you keep playing to progress and it's like a carrot on a stick approach.

[rda]

This is very true. BUT

There is a difference between now and TBC/Vanilla where people couldn't see Naxx or Sunwell.

FLEXIBLE! Casual groups and guilds no longer need 25/40 people. There is also b.net tag, cross-realm, account wide stuff and premade finder.

One of the big reasons people couldn't get past Karazhan was 25 people. A big reason casuals couldn't raid much in Vanilla was as strict 40 man requirement.

Flexible group sizes didn't change much. Raids didn't become significantly more popular after they made sizes flexible.

It's still only a few percent people interested.