A Lesson Learned

[Dvaldin]

"When the team set out to make Legion, the goal was to solve the content drought problem by making expansions faster than they have before.
The team made sacrifices along the way to try and make Legion faster.
They discovered along the way that there is a certain amount of time that goes into making an expansion that is up to par with what players expect and deserve.
If an expansion was just some new zones and dungeons, like a bigger patch, they probably could make them faster.
When the team starts adding new systems or classes, it takes time to iterate on the new things and get them right.
The team was too ambitious with their targets when planning for Legion.
The team has learned their lesson and accepted that they can't produce an expansion faster, so the plan moving forward as they start working on the next expansion is to make sure Legion has a lot more patch content."

Glad to hear that. But am I the only one who thinks that they should have learned this lesson a long time ago? It took Legion to learn it??? Really?

[Deleted]

They say it every time, because it calms people down. They will try again to make expansion faster.

[Relapses]

It's the level of quality Blizzard holds for their content which is eternally and inexorably at odds with the community's desire for more content released at rates which meet vastly varying rates of consumption. I think they've always wanted to have more content but then they actually set out to make the content and realize that it's difficult for them to produce it at a faster pace while still adhering to their standards for quality. That's why we end up with content droughts.

And yeah, it sucks but I think the other end of the spectrum -- more content which is less unique or lower than Blizzard's standards -- would be far more detrimental for the game.

[Saberstrike]

Implying Tanaan is content that's up to anyone's standards... =/

[zeropeorth]

They wanted yearly xpacs for more box sales money; but the players just want consistent patch cycles with real playable content. If they deliver on regular content patches and space their raid releases appropriately, they should do well this time, just have hope they can follow through on this for both the players and the health of the game.

[Relapses]

Implying Tanaan is content that's up to anyone's standards... =/

Tanaan was released alongside HFC, one of the best raids Blizzard has produced in recent memory. A lot of people shit on it nowadays because it's been out for so long but it was a pretty decent raid tier with plenty of memorable and unique bosses, particularly on Mythic difficulty.

[Cæli]

It was obvious that yearly/fast expansion could only be bad for both the player, Blizzard reputation, and Blizzard money. I bet this was a decision of someone no longer working on WoW because asking for such target only show a bad understanding of the game creation and of the game itself (because 1 year, even 1.5 year is not even enough to let players enjoy an expansion, it's like releasing the best raid patch ever and launching a second one 2 weeks after, kek to this decision).

On a side notes all players have life, have school or job or family/social duties, and also are certainly interested in discovering new things, games, movies, stuff, and will most certainly drop wow if wow starts trying taking their life over with an overload of content. Again, that was dumb from the beginning and I'm glad they accept it and are not ashamed of talking about it in front of 100k players.

[Dvaldin]

I mean, it used to be all the time the same thing of 'we want to do expansions faster' line. It's the first time I've heard them say they want to have patches more frequently and allow as much time as they need on the next expansion. I'm just surprised they "discovered" t developing Legion. Would've thought that would have been evident enough with Burning Crusade, but BC had some nice patches.

[Saberstrike]

Tanaan was released alongside HFC, one of the best raids Blizzard has produced in recent memory. A lot of people shit on it nowadays because it's been out for so long but it was a pretty decent raid tier with plenty of memorable and unique bosses, particularly on Mythic difficulty.

Not saying the raid was bad, but raiders have always been a minority in WoW, so making the best raid ever and a whole lot of nothing worthwhile to go with it was what made this patch the worst in history. It's funny how best raid in history came during the worst patch in history (besides 6.1), hopefully proving once and for all that putting all the eggs in the raid basket was the wrong decision.

I just want to play WORLD of warcraft, damn it!

[Flurryfang]

Not saying the raid was bad, but raiders have always been a minority in WoW, so making the best raid ever and a whole lot of nothing worthwhile to go with it was what made this patch the worst in history. It's funny how best raid in history came during the worst patch in history (besides 6.1), hopefully proving once and for all that putting all the eggs in the raid basket was the wrong decision.

I just want to play WORLD of warcraft, damn it!

Well, they are fixing that in Legion with a much higher focus on world content and high-tier content outside of raiding. We might hear more about it at the profession Q&A, but they are proberly also gonna make it so, that crafting will take you far and wide to get high-lvl materials, which can be crafted into very good items.

I would agre, that Tanaan patch was really bad, but i would not say, that it removed the awesomeness, which was HFC. I would not agree, that a minority of players are raiders, proberly mythic players are, but most people, where ever i go, are raiding at some sort of lvl or experience it on a consistent basis. Very few players can play WoW, without going into raiding at some point, which is its own problem in itself ofcourse.

[Saberstrike]

I don't really count LFR / flexi-normal as 'raiding', per se. But yes; If you include those then most people are raiding, though I personally feel like that's mostly because those ez raids are simply the only thing one can do to progress their character.

I do hope Legion delivers on the promise to make crafting / world content / mythic dungeons a competitive way to play the game. Because really, if it pulls it off it will be -THE- WoW a lot of us have been waiting for, despite all the negative stuff like dumbification of classes.

[Alvito]

They spit out the same "what we have learned" or "we were trying/hoping to do X" nonsense each time. They don't learn and haven't learned anything, beyond they can do almost anything and people will still pay them for it.

[judgementofantonidas]

Implying Tanaan is content that's up to anyone's standards... =/

my dozen or so alts enjoyed gear that my main got them.

[MoanaLisa]

They say it every time, because it calms people down. They will try again to make expansion faster.

They've never lost so many in so short a time. Hard to believe I know but I genuinely think they've given up on the yearly expansion idea.

It doesn't make any sense anyway with their alpha/beta/PTR cycle. They would nearly have to announce the expansion after Legion at about the same time Legion launches with the current time frames.

If they can slow--not stop--the drain of players from the game with patch content, that likely makes up for what happened to them with Warlords. Think of it as self-interest and their looking out for it. They may or may not ever admit to this but the deadlines imposed by finishing everything they need to for a 12-month expansion are also unlikely to ever be met with their development/QA system. As always, this will be presented as something good for players but methinks it's just Blizzard bowing to reality.

[clevin]

To OP's question - yes, it's surprising that it took them THIS LONG to figure this out. There's either more to the story (internal, perhaps business side pressures to deliver faster expansions) or they're idiots. I think it's internal pressures.

The other problem is this:

When the team starts adding new systems or classes, it takes time to iterate on the new things and get them right.

There's a balance between letting things stagnate and change to just change things, but sometimes it feels like they change classes just so we have new things and I'd like to see them rein that in a bit (in other cases they don't change classes that need it drastically.... ). They also need to control the massive swings between viewpoints. In MoP it was ALL DAILIES ALL THE TIME. People disliked that much emphasis and they disliked the gearing being involved... so in WoD it was NO DAILIES AT ALL. Earlier it was "wear a tabard and get rep for that faction in any dungeon. In MoP it was NO DUNGEON REP FOR YOU.

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If they can slow--not stop--the drain of players from the game with patch content, that likely makes up for what happened to them with Warlords. Think of it as self-interest and their looking out for it.

This is also why I supported the idea of them giving us an idea of the number of patches and tiers. Sure, some will be skeptical until they see the content actually ship, but there's nothing to be done about that. If they at least get back to 3 or 4 patches per cycle and maybe trim 3 months or so off the end, they'll end up delivering content consistently over the life of the expansion with a slight drought at the end which will let people catch up, etc. I'm thinking of a ~4-5 month patch cycle so the first patch rolls out about 4 months after launch, the second one 8-9 months post launch, the third one 12-13 months post launch and they deliver a new expansion at around 19-20 months post launch so there's a 7-9 month breather at the end.

[metzger84]

I wish everybody who's bored just cancelled their subscription, or asked their dumbass parents to do it, instead of venting their nerd rage on the net, or in /2 respectively. The only thing you can do is vote with your wallet, your ridiculous ramblings are completely useless.

[Queen of Hamsters]

They need to stop listening to people that complete 10% of an expansion and then bitch about "having nothing to do". Steady, high-quality patch releases throughout the expansion and something to tie us over between the final patch and the next expansion = the model. Let those that "run out of content" (lol) quit and don't listen to their whining.

[Eroginous]

Tanaan was released alongside HFC, one of the best raids Blizzard has produced in recent memory. A lot of people shit on it nowadays because it's been out for so long but it was a pretty decent raid tier with plenty of memorable and unique bosses, particularly on Mythic difficulty.

Congratulations, you've just described every raid tier ever. Also, by extension, shown why Blizzard needs to overhaul the concept of 'raids.'

[clevin]

They need to stop listening to people that complete 10% of an expansion and then bitch about "having nothing to do". Steady, high-quality patch releases throughout the expansion and something to tie us over between the final patch and the next expansion = the model. Let those that "run out of content" (lol) quit and don't listen to their whining.

Are you dense? The reason for the complaint is PRECISELY because we did NOT get "...Steady, high-quality patch releases throughout the expansion and something to tie us over between the final patch and the next expansion..." in WoD. We got a release, a stupid, nearly content free .1 patch and one good .2 patch. Nothing else and 14+ months of no content.

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I wish everybody who's bored just cancelled their subscription, or asked their dumbass parents to do it, instead of venting their nerd rage on the net, or in /2 respectively. The only thing you can do is vote with your wallet, your ridiculous ramblings are completely useless.

Millions of people DID cancel. Hence the issue.

[Maudib]

They say it every time, because it calms people down. They will try again to make expansion faster.

Incoming DLCs for sale?