How far ahead is Blizzard?

[Orwell7]

Hold up a minute.

Of the best intentions I believe that Blizzard is working REALLY hard on new content. Maybe they scrapped whole semi-done zones/expansions like they did it with the Azjol'Nerub and Abyssal Maw raids. Who knows?

But it is dis-gus-ting that they leave players without any new content for 12-8-14 months. Unacceptable.
I really wish that the numbers prove if they provide content (maybe not 100% quality) on a regular basis (lets say 6 months) then the subs will be up to 10 million again.

But unfortunately, the world does not work this way.

For example, my company is a big multinational german-based one. They leave departments to rot just because one (!) person got to the CEO position of that department. Hell, he even said "everyone can be replaced" when we asked about the future of that department... And they just let it go, absolutely NO questions asked from the management. Only the management can ask questions, but they can't be questioned.
So yeah. That is happening at Blizzard, I'm pretty sure.

[Gadzooks]

They tried that with Titan... and said themselves they cannot design a MMO even if they live depended on it.
http://www.gamespot.com/articles/bli.../1100-6439068/

That's not what Kaplan said, at all.

[Jessicka]

You can say they've had extra time to work on the expansion because they abandoned WoD early but that's not entirely true.

You can look at it as they have LESS time because WoD didn't last as long.

They said they increased the team, and had started working on Legion at the same time as WoD - so it is very easy to argue they've had much more time on Legion. On the other hand, I think what people have said about Garrisons has a ring of truth to it; this was the new baby, we've seen what level 4 and 5 Garrisons could have built up to, but it turned out to be a catastrophically bad move. Order halls were/are clearly going to be very central, and what we're seeing of them is clearly an effort to rescue some of the work that went in to them, but still players are incredibly sceptical of them - to the point they wheeled a Developer out to try to sooth the complaints. At some point they may have opted to start over, and suddenly time is at a premium.

Hold up a minute.

Of the best intentions I believe that Blizzard is working REALLY hard on new content. Maybe they scrapped whole semi-done zones/expansions like they did it with the Azjol'Nerub and Abyssal Maw raids. Who knows?

But it is dis-gus-ting that they leave players without any new content for 12-8-14 months. Unacceptable.
I really wish that the numbers prove if they provide content (maybe not 100% quality) on a regular basis (lets say 6 months) then the subs will be up to 10 million again.

But unfortunately, the world does not work this way.

For example, my company is a big multinational german-based one. They leave departments to rot just because one (!) person got to the CEO position of that department. Hell, he even said "everyone can be replaced" when we asked about the future of that department... And they just let it go, absolutely NO questions asked from the management. Only the management can ask questions, but they can't be questioned.
So yeah. That is happening at Blizzard, I'm pretty sure.

I think it's a more institutional one, I work for a very large institution and the idea of collective memories not being passed on is a pretty big deal. WoW is old, much of the design team is new. Ideas, focus and direction have just changed because older members of the team moved on, be it to bigger things other franchises, or just out the company altogether, and don't have the same 'shop floor' influence; while the newer guys have their own ideas that maybe weren't quite so aligned with the old guard, and they want to make their mark. This is why we see classes flip-flopping in different directions every expansion, and it's why we see them fail to take their own advice after every expansion's post-mortem.

[Stormspark]

Blizzard is working on a console version of Wow. That's where their development time is going. This also helps explain the ability pruning, so that all your main abilities can be mapped to a controller.

/takes off tinfoil hat.

It's not necessary. FFXIV is already on console, and works with a controller (even on PC, if you choose), and it has easily 3x the number of abilities per class than WOW. So the prune has nothing to do with consoles.

[Berndorf]

All I know is I grew tired of the double speak from them years ago. Its been double speak regarding classes/abilities(one minute its 'such and such class is exactly where he want them' followed by a nerf 2 months later 'for balancing purposes' or 'we like the large amount of cc in the game despite many complaints for such and such reasons' followed by 'we think there's way too much cc in the game and are doing a massive cc prune'). Then there is 'we have a second team working on the next expansion to speed up the release process to an 18 month cycle and hired a ton of new people' followed by 2 consecutive expansions which did absolutely nothing to address the 12+ month gap from last patch to prepatch. Its been the same old crap for years(going back to wotlk/Cataclysm). I think adding a bunch of new people may have just been more than they could handle and still be able to have a clear vision and keep everyone on the same page. Ultimately the larger the team the more managerial skill whoever is in charge needs to have and I think whoever is managing these teams is dropping the ball.

[Echocho]

It's not necessary. FFXIV is already on console, and works with a controller (even on PC, if you choose), and it has easily 3x the number of abilities per class than WOW. So the prune has nothing to do with consoles.

As much as I love FFXIV (I consider it a far superior game to WoW) I don't think it's a great game to play with a controller. It is absolutely playable but there are a bit too many abilities for it to translate well to a controller.

[styil]

You can say they've had extra time to work on the expansion because they abandoned WoD early but that's not entirely true.

You can look at it as they have LESS time because WoD didn't last as long.

What do you mean? Cata was 22 month expansion. WoD will also be a 22 month expansion. Same time as Cata, 4 months less than MoP (but 3 major content patches less too).

Dont kid yourself. WoD was abandoned early, but the wait is still just as long as before.