Did Blizz ever gave an explanation why WoD also had a 1 year+ content drought?

[Sinyc]

Iirc WoD was also supposed to be one of those shorter expansions.

I thought WoD was gonna be the guinea pig to have 2 raid tiers, but not necessarily be a short expansion. Legion would start that 1 year expansion trend, or however long they floated around.

[In Ogres We Trust]

They were trying to push out more content faster. I can't fathom how delusional they have to be thinking that would work given their history.

My guess would be that they were lying and knew all along that yearly expansions wasn't going to work.

Blame it on the managerial staff that only saw dollar signs.

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I do believe a shattrath raid tier + content patch couldve made wod soooo much better, they couldve made the world give better rewards then the garison ... Wod could have been fixed, I dont see why they stopped working on it and I hope ppl got fired for whatever made them cut all the content
I would so dig a shattrath raid, it is my favorite area in wod and only used for 1 quest and a bonus objective that was outdated quickly

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The launch wasnt even that bad
The lack of content patches was
Something went wrong and maybe if they explained it to the players with a good reason they could win some credibility again

They don't owe you an explanation. Regardless, Warlords had substantial, development issues on the back end that resulted in most of the expansion content at the release being scrapped - which, in turn, led to the decision to suspend any further content post-release.

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Yes Blizzard will do fine with just 2 Million subs instead of the 12 million they once had... as long as you are happy, everything is fine, isn't it?
Look you are as important as the next guy playing the game. But if a few thousand people leave, thats a few ten thousand dollars lost every month. If a million people leave thats 15 Million Dollars lost. So don't go around and tell people the game can do without them, because it could fucking do without you.

Apparently, you're a delusional individual that's still fixated on an unwarranted and unsustainable peak. After all, how could Blizzard neglect Warcraft when they're making more money - from their entire portfolio - than ever before?

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If enough customers think the same way I do, their subscriptions will drop ... oh look, they already did, so much that they decided to keep the numbers secret after they dropped 50%! The golden age is over, they need to be nice to the guys that keep paying or they will lose them, too.

The Golden Age of WoW was over after WotLK.

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Honestly? As much as I love Blizzard (and World of Warcraft) it really did feel like they just gave up on Warlords after the release.

Garrisons clearly took too much out of the team, and while certain aspects of the game were wonderful, the post-launch content just never appeared. It felt like they had burnt out, and needed to spend too much time recovering. I don't blame them of course, but it had a huge impact on the game.

I really do hope that Legion doesn't suffer this fate, and I don't think it will. I suspect that everyone in Blizzard knows that Legion is the last chance to revitalise World of Warcraft. The theme is one of the most popular designs in recent years, as Cataclysm, Mists & Warlords didn't quite sit well with much of the playerbase. Legion is something that in theory, most of us could get behind.

But beyond just the concept, they need to keep new dungeons coming, new raids, new zones, and artifact updates. If they fail, I genuinely believe that World of Warcraft will have put a nail in the coffin for too many fans. Years of repeated content drought and poor designs can't be undone if you go too far, and I think that Legion is the tipping point, and they know it.

There is a lot of pressure to get this right. I know personally, if Legion doesn't go well, that'll be it for me. I've got other commitments these days, and the expansions need to keep me entertained, captured and excited for me to warrant spending so much time away from my other desires.

A large portion of the community considers Mists to be one of the best expansions to the game, so if you will, don't lump it in with the garbage that was Cata and Warlords.

[gamingmuscle]

Rational people would be okay with paying 180$ for nothing? I doubt that and the attitude of "unsubscribe if you don't like it" is bad for Blizzard, they "need" as many subscriptions as they can get.

You are never paying $180 for nothing. You are paying $180 to access whatever is offered during that time span. If you are paying for it when it stops offering you things to do you are a fool =P It's the nature of their business. WoW is not a needed service. Customers cycling around content releases would be rather expected. I expect its similar to TV, viewership is up when new episodes are aired, and dips when it goes to re-runs in the off season. Do you get pissed at whatever shows you watch during the off season?

Yes they didn't tie the sub to content updates... but if there is no content people leave, so blizzard makes less money... which is the last thing any company wants.

Rushing a product is not a good solution.

So Blizzard wants my money from subs and they know people only sub if there is content, so subs = content. So yes, if they WANT subs they need to PROVIDE content. Otherwise shut it down!

A subset of players never run out of content, while others do and this will always be true without artificial gating on basically everything.

Content can only be built so fast. Head count won't always solve it, and can actually make it worse. Neither will multiple teams running in parallel, due to limitations caused by dependencies. It also can take a few years for the net effect to even be visible. I think they once said an expansion takes ~4+ years to build, and they have been overlapping development since vanilla.

[Deleted]

That is what Square did with FFXI, slowly cutting down support, eventually a final patch (but keep the game running), and after another while, finally shuts it down. But, MMO typically can run off 500k sub, having 1mil+ sub is already pretty profitable, so I can see Blizzard will keep that running with minimum effort for a long time before even consider shutting it down.

Different is, FFXI vs FFXIV, are very different audience. FFXI are more the old school "grind your life away", whereas FFXIV is more modern/western themepark MMO, so both could co-exist and not affect other group.

WoW on the other hand, heavily relies on the franchise, and pretty much would be targeting the same group of audience. If they piss off the crowd too much, even if they make WoW 2 they may not come back to play it, so if Blizzard is thinking about WoW 2 they have to implement it carefully.

The worst grind I ve ever seen are in FFXIV though (the anima weapon grinds), and I played both.

They don't owe you an explanation. Regardless, Warlords had substantial development issues on the back end that resulted in most of the expansion content at the release being scrapped - which in turn, led to the decision to suspend any further content post-release.

Do we actually know this for a fact ?

[In Ogres We Trust]

No official reason was given, but from statements made during Warlords of Draenor, it paints a picture of what caused WoD's problematic content cycle:

From dev comments & the quarterly investor calls, we learned that the Devs felt the best way to combat subscriber lull was to shorten content droughts as much as possible. And that the best way to do that was to streamline the development process as much as possible. For example they've been trying to shorten each expansion's lifespan from 2 years to 18 months since Wotlk.

So many of the Devs wanted the 7th expansion to be half-as-large, and turn each expansion cycle into an annual thing: With players receiving a new expansion every year, and 1 major content patch to conclude the storyline at the 6 month mark. This was all ready to go, until Activision mandated the exact opposite thing: Activision wanted a huge expansion and it's release to correspond with the release of the movie.

So WoD's problematic content cycle was caused by them wrapping up WoD too early, and throwing all their resources into a new, huge expansion, rather than the smaller expansion intended to be released much sooner.

That's the theory, at least.

Activision doesn't mandate anything to Blizzard. Blizzard and Activision are sister companies within the same holding company, i.e. Activision-Blizzard. Furthermore, I always get a chuckle out of the argument, because it precludes the notion that Morhaime and Co., i.e. the founders of the company - along with the original employees/stockholders, don't have a say in the direction of the game, the other IPs, Blizzard Entertainment, and Activision-Blizzard. Here's a hint: they were all a part of the ownership group that bought the company from Vivendi.

[dextersmith]

They stopped caring and knew any excuse would be transparent.

[Deleted]

You are never paying $180 for nothing. You are paying $180 to access whatever is offered during that time span. If you are paying for it when it stops offering you things to do you are a fool =P It's the nature of their business. WoW is not a needed service. Customers cycling around content releases would be rather expected. I expect its similar to TV, viewership is up when new episodes are aired, and dips when it goes to re-runs in the off season. Do you get pissed at whatever shows you watch during the off season?

Then again I don't pay monthly for the show I want to see but for the package. Difference with WoW is, I'm paying to play. And if there is nothing to play, I leave and a sub based MMO should try to have people stay subbed the entire time. That's just common business sense.

Rushing a product is not a good solution.

If they cannot make a single dungeon in 2 to 4 months, they are completely incompetent at what they do. We are not talking about full scale raid tiers, simply adding a content patch with one or two nes dungeons would go a long way.

A subset of players never run out of content, while others do and this will always be true without artificial gating on basically everything.

Content can only be built so fast. Head count won't always solve it, and can actually make it worse. Neither will multiple teams running in parallel, due to limitations caused by dependencies. It also can take a few years for the net effect to even be visible. I think they once said an expansion takes ~4+ years to build, and they have been overlapping development since vanilla.

then they need to stop doing thinks like class overhauls every expansion. What alone would take 2 years of work off their shoulders. And 3 of these 4 years would be planing and designing art, not actual work on code.

See comments.

[dextersmith]

They did not, but part of the selling point for WoD was this wouldn't happen anymore.

They couldn't even launch that xp without cutting half of it.

[rda]

People pay a sub because of content updates. It's unquestionable. "The sub only guarantees you access to servers" is completely beside the point, that's for the courtroom when someone decides to sue Blizzard for not doing content updates often enough / whatever.

[xChurch]

Because there is no excuse this time. Even the one major patch we got was basically just patching in delayed content that was slated for launch.

[Deleted]

Apparently, you're a delusional individual that's still fixated on an unwarranted and unsustainable peak. After all, how could Blizzard neglect Warcraft when they're making more money - from their entire portfolio - than ever before?

Right... from launch to the end of WotLK there wasn't a continous growth...I must have dreamed that.
They didn't have any real story from WotLK onwards, and lost over 8 Million subs in that time! They must have done something wrong.
WoW making more money while making a "free" sub option that gives them extra cash, selling server transfers, character changes, faction changes, store mounts and increasing the price of the expansion.
Makeing money hand over fist with hearthstone, a game with probably only 20 people working on but where people spend hunders of dollars on packs?

AND they are making more money off that then just having expansion and a subscription service? WoW, unreal.

[Veldoranz]

If we were all investors or something, we would have had an answer a long time ago. Alas, we are but plebs on the internet, so we're unlikely to ever find out, probably because it was a pretty horrific situation. I've gotta imagine it had something to do with the cancellation of Titan and all the resources devoted to it, not to mention the hit to moral that came with it's cancellation.

Besides all of that I would guess that it was just really shitty project management. They thought they could deliver yearly expansions, found out everyone actually fucking hated that idea once they got a taste of it and then bailed and started devoting a fuck load of resources to Legion.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[satimy]

I'm pretty sure the dev team collapsed during development and this expansion. It's been almost 3 years since SOO came out. In that time we got 3 raids, garrisons and ashran.

A sub would have payed close to 600$ during this time, it's unacceptable and pretty clear blizzard was siphoning money from wow to pay for failed shit like d3, sc2 and hots. Either that or they got caught in development hell and scrapped an entire expansiOn

[rda]

I'm pretty sure the dev team collapsed during development and this expansion. It's been almost 3 years since SOO came out. In that time we got 3 raids, garrisons and ashran.

A sub would have payed close to 600$ during this time, it's unacceptable and pretty clear blizzard was siphoning money from wow to pay for failed shit like d3, sc2 and hots. Either that or they got caught in development hell and scrapped an entire expansiOn

They didn't uncollapse either, judging from what's in Legion and how long it is taking.

[Faroth]

They have said they want to make shorter content droughts all the way since Dragon soul, but it never happens.

Since Icecrown Citadel, actually.

[chaosmage]

As Blizzard has said: "We cut WoD short by a tier in hopes that was can get legion done quicker, But thing didn't not go as planned" in was in one of the wow dev interviews not i can't look through everyone of them to find it. Just like in MoP where they Cut 5.5 (the 4th tier of MoP) To get WoD done quicker.

If blizzard had any Faith in there own product they wouldn't have made this mistake twice.

[Hyve]

A large portion of the community considers Mists to be one of the best expansions to the game, so if you will, don't lump it in with the garbage that was Cata and Warlords.

Firstly, I never stated that Mists was a failure or that the community had a huge issue with it, merely that it "didn't sit quite well with much of the playerbase", which ...

Secondly, we clearly talk and interact with different communities. Mists is regarded as one of the worst expansions, as many people place it second, only to Cataclysm, with Warlords coming in third.

[Kazgrel]

Because they have the greatest suckers...er fanboys...I mean customers in the world.

[Yoshimiko]

You know how they work right? You download the files from a site, that's your emulator core, that someone else has done for you. Then, and "content" you want to add, is available in countless scripts (for instances) that have collaboratively been made by thousands of people over 10 years. No, they don't "Make more content" they heavily edit existing content. New items? That takes litterally 2 seconds in a database, poof, new item. I managed to host a server when I was about bloddy 12, it's not hard.

I've coded for a private Ultima Online server and made plenty of custom scripts. It took me about a week to integrate a custom materia system(a'la FF7), including graphics, about 40 spells and things that altered the spells, a leveling system, drop system, etc. A small time learning programmer did that in a week.

I don't really know what you're trying to say, that private servers are more efficient than blizzards server? Not sure why you stopped at my first couple of words and skipped the rest. What about FF14? They don't have the money, size nor scope of the blizzard team - and still manage to churn out more regular and sizable chunks of content.

[Deleted]

The Blizzdrones are out in full force today. No, they haven't signed a contract that states they can't last more than a year.

But when they come out and say they're going to make shorter expansions so we don't get a year+ of the last raid tier then you kinda expect them to do what they're saying they will.

If you still expect them to do what they say they will do then you don't know them very well.