For Legion to Thrive, it must have a Post Launch Plan

[PrairieChicken]

If you actually believe this, I am very truly and extraordinarily sorry for you.

I feel sorry for you too

[Alopex Major]

How is SWTOR thriving exactly? I enjoy the game, but for me it will always be singleplayer experience. After the first 3-4 months since launch I've only ever been subscribed for a month at the time. There's not enough interesting content for me outside of the class/main storyline. My GF who's been playing it actively since 2013 ( has refused to play anything else just SWTOR for 4-5 hours per day) has said things have started getting worse lately with bunch of people leaving again.

There are weekly events like the Rakghouls, Bounty etc, in addition the new Eternal Championship and new PVP battleground thing. Maybe your server is empty, but both of mine have tons of people on. There were 4 instances of Nar Shaddaa, a leveling planet, earlier today. Anyway, his point wasn't whether the game is busy or not, but the communication between the devs and the players. I can't speak for ESO, but SWTOR does regular dev talks to keep people updated.

OT though, I'm sure that Blizzard has a plan. Whether or not they are actually able to see it through is another matter entirely.

[Freedom]

I didn't like how quickly both Ulduar and Throne of Thunder came as a more casual raider. Blizzard has a bad habit of introducing the second tier too soon and then introducing the final raid such that it lasts too long.

2 months a tier, and I wouldn't even bother. Blink, or have some IRL thing pop up for a week, bam, you missed the key opening part, and you're fucked. I might be misunderstanding, but 2 months between anything but a 5.0 and 5.1 style patch would be too fast.

[Deleted]

They usually have post launch plan for first half of the expansion. WOD was an infamous exception to this rule (with basically only HFC added to its content pool over nearly 2-year period), but most expansions had content for 1st half. Let's take MOP into account:

5.0: launch content (L+0m)
5.1: story patch + Brawler's Guild + valor upgrades (L+3m)
5.2: big content patch (L+6m)
5.3: story patch + HC scenarios (L+9m)
5.4: big content patch (L+12m)

And then a huge gap of nothing. Longer than 5.0 - 5.4 release gap combined.

So an expansion like MOP has about 18 months of content (let's say patch 5.4 was 6 months worth of content, like a typical major patch would be). But its lifetime is 26 months total. So what about remaining 8? Yeah, that's right. It's a boring end-of-expansion content void where the game is bleeding subs and nobody cares because there's hype for new expac. And it has been with us for four expansions in a row. Blizzard's words are empty like decorative easter egg shells. They SAY that 13 months wait is unacceptable, yet they pull off 14-month 6.2 patch anyway.

[Foj]

One of the biggest flaws WoD had is a long content drought, a content drought with very little additions 6.1 being laughably bad and 6.2 being very meh at best.

Well I'm sure at Blizzard everyone thinks that. It's entirely unclear why Blizzard has been completely unable to make it happen for over a decade. I imagine that every other year, people at Blizzard marvel at their own suck-competence precisely in that regard.

But, on the other hand, one of these days, we'll get a free 25% reputation buff just for hanging around. So, basically, it's worthwhile.

[grexly75]

Supposedly about half of TBC was supposed to be in Vanilla.

Yeah Karazhan was supposed to be in Vanilla but they moved it to TBC..

[Xar226]

I wish I could live in an imaginary world where fully fleshed out, perfectly designed and balanced raid instances simply materialized from thin air. Lemme guess, Blizzard is a company with infinite resources, of course they can just mass-produce content. Duh. I mean, that's why Legacy servers are here, right? Damn. Being a game developer sure is easy from the safety of my keyboard. I should apply for a CEO position at Blizzard, I can do this all day!

Did you bother to read a thing I wrote? Or are you just off on your "lulz anybody who doesn't kiss my ass is an entitled brat" rant still?

I am a developer. I know how these things work, a hell of a lot better than you do I'd wager. I know how things get off track, I know how timelines get missed. And absolutely none of that changes the fact that it is my job to be able to accurately estimate the time I need to complete a task. And after twelve years of doing it, if I still can't do that, then I need to stop sucking at it. It matters not at all if it is the developers who can't make a valid estimation or the management that can't keep their hands off long enough to let them do their jobs. It's still their problem.

If Blizzard can not properly estimate the time they need to complete an expansion, and space the content in that expansion appropriately based on that timeline, they are simply bad at their jobs. If you think it takes CEO-level knowledge to understand that, that's your problem. It is literally the first task any developer is asked to do on any project.

[clevin]

You stated that anyone not sharing the view that content is coming out too slow is just "bitching" and "doesn't want content" which is not what I said in any form.\

Fucking hell. I wasn't talking to you. I was talking to the people posting before my first post who were dissing the very idea of wanting content. Look, you need to learn the read the posts and take in the context in which people are making points. AS is, you're just so badly misinterpreting things that it's useless even talking to you.

It is not practical to produce content at a rate which will only suit a dwindling minority.
Because those at the cutting edge constantly are a minority, and by the nature of that rate will exclude anyone else from catching up, reducing that number even further.
Therefore the rate of release is best being somewhere in between the two extremes.

4-5 months is too fast??? Have you PLAYED this game for long? because that's been about the average pace of patches in the most expansions. Again, READ THE FUCKING POSTS. I explicitly noted that 2 months was probably too fast. Don't argue with shit you make up in your head, talk to people about what we really say.

What good reason is there for producing content at a rate only suiting those consuming it the fastest.

Try actually reading my post. I already addressed this. You want everyone to wait for the slowest which means people who are faster have to sit and wait. My way people who are averagely fast get new content every 4-5 months. Your way they, what, wait until the 8th month? 9th? . The slowest people get content before they're ready but so what? They can ignore it until they want to do it.

[Thetruth1400]

Honestly, I agree. Vanilla WoW had 12 patches from it's release day, and they were all fairly major; 1.1 was the launch, 1.2 added Maraudon, 1.3 added Dire Maul, 1.4 added the PvP honor system, 1.5 added WSG, 1.6 added BWL, 1.7 added ZG and AB, 1.8 added the World Dragons and Silithus, 1.9 added AQ both versions, 1.10 added weather effects (arguably the smallest patch), 1.11 added Naxx, and 1.12 added world PvP zones and cross realm battle zones.

All of those also added a TON of additional features beyond just their major ones.

All of that also took place in the span from launch, on November 2004 - TBC launch which was December 2006. So in 25 months, they somehow managed to release, in the least, a battleground, dungeon, raid, or zone every two months. Speaks pretty clearly as to what they can do vs what they are willing to do now, which is as little as possible.

[clevin]

Honestly, I agree. Vanilla WoW had 12 patches from it's release day, and they were all fairly major; 1.1 was the launch, 1.2 added Maraudon, 1.3 added Dire Maul, 1.4 added the PvP honor system, 1.5 added WSG, 1.6 added BWL, 1.7 added ZG and AB, 1.8 added the World Dragons and Silithus, 1.9 added AQ both versions, 1.10 added weather effects (arguably the smallest patch), 1.11 added Naxx, and 1.12 added world PvP zones and cross realm battle zones.

All of those also added a TON of additional features beyond just their major ones.

All of that also took place in the span from launch, on November 2004 - TBC launch which was December 2006. So in 25 months, they somehow managed to release, in the least, a battleground, dungeon, raid, or zone every two months. Speaks pretty clearly as to what they can do vs what they are willing to do now, which is as little as possible.

To be fair, much of that was probably queued up pre-vanilla launch. But even 4 patches spaced, about 4-5 months apart on average gives us content that spans most of a 20-24 month expansion with a little space (not a year) at the end. Like this:

X.0 (Expansion release): Month 0
X.1: Month 5
X.2: Month 9
X.3: Month 13 or 14
X.4: month 17 or so.
Y.0 Month 22 or 23, about 5-6 months after the .4 patch.

[Redroniksre]

That has a self explaining answer.

The fact WoD prooved that blizzard wanted to make content consumable at a fast burnout rate, especially raiding.

So yes, it benefits blizzard to create new content as opposed to tuning old world content to new things.

Y'know I remember when WOTLK Launched, it had 1 new class, 12 dungeons, 4 raids, a new world pvp zone with genuinley fun world pvp, a new arena, several new leveling zones and phasing for the first time in the games life.

I also remember that it added 4 new raids, 4 new dungeons, 1 new bg, 2 new world pve areas and a non legendary epic questline for dungeon players, Quel'delar.

Now compare that to the 6 dungeons, 1 launch raid, garrison quests, pvp world zone and apexis farm we got at WoD.

Then add the fact we got selfie cams, Blackrock Foundry in 6.1 (which was supposed to be in launch), No Faralohn, Blood Elves only got model updates in 6.1 when everyone else got them prior to that. And in 6.2 you got one new raid, and a new pve zone and a "small" addition to the current world pvp zone that NOBODY bothers to use these days except for its event.

Conclusion:

More is ALWAYS better.

Now I will be fair:

WOTLK didnt bring in the dance studio it promised, and it turned Azjol Nerub from a Zone/raid into 3 seperate dungeons (which was more good than bad for the game). Granted I never liked the idea of anyone killing Arthas but it worked for what it was trying to do and it told a pretty dark and mostly consistant plot about the Lich King and his motives, who is still the best villian the mmo itself has ever had, with Garrosh comming second in MoP.

But lore aside, the content was there, content that was toweringly large, we were "never" short of stuff to do in WOTLK, you could farm heroic badges on demand, when ever you wanted, with "no" cap on how many times you wanted to do that.

Compared to WoD where you can only farm a limited number of items per day in LFR runs which do not help gear you up in any way since most of them have abysmal RNG based gear, and again, its only a chance to even get that gear.

Other examples include the fact that World PVPers had their own raid, in total you had 8 raids in the life-span of WOTLK, you had 8...

Compare that to the 3 you have in WoD and you can SEE why people are upset at a lack of content.

Less is "never" better, especially if you want to say that "oh, technically its 12 raids" oh sure, having 4 difficulty curves of the same content doesnt burn out anyone after a few farms.

Theres a reason mythic raiders are "struggling" to get people to join their raids, theres a "reason" that catering to "one" group at the cost of everyone else is "never" good.

So yes, patch content, having more of it, having more content that divercivies away from typical raiding content is "good" for the game in every way and form, if we have patches entirley devoted to world pvp zones and pvp bg's and not a single raid to be found then hell yes.

If we have patches where a new world zone with ongoing weekly stories is added (in the similar ilk of 5.1/5.2) then yes, its good content.

If blizzard uses the excuse that making that content costs the game a raid tier one more time I will hit them with a shoe, because they can "afford" to make more content and they damn well know it, they have more people on team than they did with WOTLK, they have more money than they've ever had the ability to use, and plenty of franchises making it for them.

They have "no" excuse as to why the game is so slacking at this point or why the content isnt being made on demand to the people subscribed to the game.

And yes, subscribers "do" have the right to be upset that they aernt getting their monies worth, because your the consumers, enphasis on "consume".

Except that your subscription does not say ANYTHING about new content. At bare minimum you are paying for access to servers and maintainence of them. That is all. Also you do not account for the massive improvements to the textures and geometry in the newer expansions. Sure you want more? Theb they can put out the same amount of dungeons as WotLK WITH WotLK resolution textures and reuse of assets to inflate dungeon number. But of course nobody says anything about that. Here is an experiment, go back to BC and count the number of dungeons that exist. Now clump together those that use similar assets (all of HFC, Auchindoun etc.) And compare that to Warlords or Mists. There.

[MoanaLisa]

Honestly, I agree. Vanilla WoW had 12 patches from it's release day, and they were all fairly major; 1.1 was the launch, 1.2 added Maraudon, 1.3 added Dire Maul, 1.4 added the PvP honor system, 1.5 added WSG, 1.6 added BWL, 1.7 added ZG and AB, 1.8 added the World Dragons and Silithus, 1.9 added AQ both versions, 1.10 added weather effects (arguably the smallest patch), 1.11 added Naxx, and 1.12 added world PvP zones and cross realm battle zones.

All of those also added a TON of additional features beyond just their major ones.

All of that also took place in the span from launch, on November 2004 - TBC launch which was December 2006. So in 25 months, they somehow managed to release, in the least, a battleground, dungeon, raid, or zone every two months. Speaks pretty clearly as to what they can do vs what they are willing to do now, which is as little as possible.

I suppose if you're willing to wait something like four or five years while the team does nothing else but develop content then they might be able to do that again. Comparing launch after years of development to now is terribly misleading. Not that it's an excuse for the content droughts we get but any sort of discussion about it has to come from a realistic place. They had years and years to develop vanilla WoW and that was on what was at the time a relatively clean platform. It's anything but clean now with several expansions and 24,000+ builds put in place over that. Development conditions before launch are a different world than a decade later.

[Caliph]

I hope that Blizzard shits out the worst, most terribly designed instances in the universe at a rate so impressive our collective heads will suffer whiplash. Then all the people who are currently whining, bitching and moaning about the terrible lack of content will be on here complaining even louder about the amount of God awful shitshow instances we'd have.

my god you're angry. do you need a hug or a cookie with a warm cup of milk or something?

You might accept no content or bad content but it doesn't mean the rest of us do. What you call whining we call feedback and criticism. you'll learn how important those things are some day. Just take a deep breath and calm down.

[Jerichofr]

I wouldn't be surprised if part of the Legion team is cleaning up Beta, part of it has moved on the the next expansion, and part of it is working on the next content patch already. So far it's looking like they are doing things a bit differently with Legion, and that's not a bad thing.

[Relapses]

my god you're angry. do you need a hug or a cookie with a warm cup of milk or something?

You might accept no content or bad content but it doesn't mean the rest of us do. What you call whining we call feedback and criticism. you'll learn how important those things are some day. Just take a deep breath and calm down.

Excuse the fuck out of me for being irritated by the constant, endless waves of "BLIZZ SUX NO CONTENT GG" idiots on this forum spew forth. Demanding the developers adhere to some absolutely arbitrary, ridiculous development cycle so they can feel like they're getting their money's worth. The ridiculous, completely asinine comparisons to other games in different genres and the oh-so-fucking-original implication that Blizzard makes infinite fucking money so they'd be able to shit out a raid instance every 5 minutes if they so desired.

Instead, everybody just circlejerks themselves into fucking oblivion about how much Blizzard hates their customers, how they feel like they could run the company better if they were in charge, how they can't seem to do anything right these days. I'd much rather people had an open mind about this shit and executed even a marginal level of critical thinking about how the company operates before jumping on the freighttrain of hate this forum breeds.

[Tyron]

Excuse the fuck out of me for being irritated by the constant, endless waves of "BLIZZ SUX NO CONTENT GG" idiots on this forum spew forth. Demanding the developers adhere to some absolutely arbitrary, ridiculous development cycle so they can feel like they're getting their money's worth. The ridiculous, completely asinine comparisons to other games in different genres and the oh-so-fucking-original implication that Blizzard makes infinite fucking money so they'd be able to shit out a raid instance every 5 minutes if they so desired.

Instead, everybody just circlejerks themselves into fucking oblivion about how much Blizzard hates their customers, how they feel like they could run the company better if they were in charge, how they can't seem to do anything right these days. I'd much rather people had an open mind about this shit and executed even a marginal level of critical thinking about how the company operates before jumping on the freighttrain of hate this forum breeds.

./clap

10 chars.

[Blackmist]

It embarrassing how much support other Blizzard games get, how much extra content they drench players with in order to keep them playing.

Meanwhile the only one with a subscription fee gets fuck all.

[Deleted]

Post-launch plan:
A) Have second raid tier last 18 months.
B) Make next expansion.

Sounds solid, like something they might consider.

[Deleted]

They are just trying to milk a dead game as much as possible. Wow is done, it has more than 10 years: old mechanics, graphics, gameplay.

Stop buying xpacs.

[Jerichofr]

Excuse the fuck out of me for being irritated by the constant, endless waves of "BLIZZ SUX NO CONTENT GG" idiots on this forum spew forth. Demanding the developers adhere to some absolutely arbitrary, ridiculous development cycle so they can feel like they're getting their money's worth. The ridiculous, completely asinine comparisons to other games in different genres and the oh-so-fucking-original implication that Blizzard makes infinite fucking money so they'd be able to shit out a raid instance every 5 minutes if they so desired.

Instead, everybody just circlejerks themselves into fucking oblivion about how much Blizzard hates their customers, how they feel like they could run the company better if they were in charge, how they can't seem to do anything right these days. I'd much rather people had an open mind about this shit and executed even a marginal level of critical thinking about how the company operates before jumping on the freighttrain of hate this forum breeds.

Love it.

That's basically what this has turned into. WoD was a step back from MoP. But Legion is looking pretty good so far.I'm staying cautiously optimistic about it.