A Lesson Learned

[metzger84]

Millions of people DID cancel. Hence the issue.

I doubt millions of people quit for the same reason. And I doubt nobody is coming back for Legion. Those people got one thing right, though - they just quit, and didn't pollute the air with self-righteous drivel. It's called having some decency.

[Laraven]

Timeless Isle was pretty kewl tho. If they can patch in more stuff like that I would be happy while waiting.

[Riistov]

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.

I agree. People said the same thing about SoO, but looking back on it now it was an amazing raid.

[Wondercrab]

I kind of had the same thoughts. Since WoD there's been a variety talk among the devs along the lines of "learning how to do things better", despite many of these issues having already cropped up (and often having been solved) years ago.

Perhaps it's a symptom of the dev team having changed a lot over the years, and new people making the same mistakes all over again. I mean, it's fine to mess some of this stuff up within your first two or three expansions, but after 10+ years it's a little tiresome. The development schedule stuff is more understandable, honestly, because that can vary a lot even when you've got experience under your belt, but some of the game design stuff, such as the reward structures being completely out of whack in WoD, or the bizarre half-and-half approach to flying, is just straight up incompetent.

As much as WoW has improved over the years, there are certain areas in which it's just baffling that a game with this much experience under its belt can make blunders it should've moved past years ago.

[Riistov]

Timeless Ilse was pretty kewl tho. If they can patch in more stuff like that I would be happy while waiting.

I really hope they add something like that again. Timeless isle was a great idea imho.

[MoanaLisa]

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.

Warlords, I think, was conceived as a 12-month expansion and if true--I don't know if it is or not but there's a lot of evidence that that was the original idea--they may have just bumped into some of the realities I was talking about in my post. Honestly, with alpha and beta extending as long as they do along with the rest of whatever it is they do to prepare an expansion, I have always wondered why someone didn't put a timeline up on a grease board at Blizzard HQ and point out that with 12-month expansions they would need to be announcing the next one before the current one even launches. They would need to reduce lead times by months and months before they could announce a new expansion halfway through the current one and have it out in six months. It's just ridiculous and probably only goes to show how insulated some of them are from reality.

I respect Watcher as he's always exhibited a refreshing sense of being in touch with the real world and hope that much of what we are seeing that is different this time around, especially stuff that has moved from the existential column to the realist side has something to do with his promotion to Assistant Game Director. I don't have to agree with everything he thinks or says but I do respect his innate intelligence about the meta of the game.

In short Warlords failed on lots of levels partially due to the corporate difficulties associated with what was going on with Titan, their mistaken idea that more people = faster (something I could have told them if they asked), their own completely wrong-headed ideas about the practicality of jamming their entire development process for an expansion into a 12-month bag, for those of us that remember back that far how the scope for the expansion grew and grew post-Ghostcrawler particularly with systems, and their design-by-committee approach that requires consensus even when that consensus may take months to become apparent. Additionally, there would be a lot of unintended side effects from all of that. Needless to say, compared to something like Wrath, MOP or even Cataclysm, Warlords is thoroughly broken in profound ways but especially with respect to patches.

I've worked or consulted for years on large non-entertainment software projects and while the specifics of what was going on were hidden, what you could see was a team that couldn't make up their mind and was increasingly under the gun to deliver into time frames that never made sense. A lot of that seems to be sorted and even they are now acknowledging that the proof is in performance instead of promises. That's mildly refreshing.

[clevin]

Warlords, I think, was conceived as a 12-month expansion and if true--I don't know if it is or not but there's a lot of evidence that that was the original idea--they may have just bumped into some of the realities I was talking about in my post. Honestly, with alpha and beta extending as long as they do along with the rest of whatever it is they do to prepare an expansion, I have always wondered why someone didn't put a timeline up on a grease board at Blizzard HQ and point out that with 12-month expansions they would need to be announcing the next one before the current one even launches.

Frankly, if anyone in a position of authority at Blizzard needed to see this on a whiteboard they should have been fired for incompetence. It's basic math and obvious with 2 minutes of thought. The only way this doesn't work out that way is if they convince themselves, on zero evidence, that they could do a 1 month alpha, 2 month beta, etc etc. Basically, if you lie to your self, the math works. If you examine it in light of the past 4 expansions, it's immediately obvious that 12 month expansions will never work. 18-20? Yeah, possibly. 12? No way.

[Servos]

I'm glad they failed in their quest because personally I'd hate yearly xpacs even more than yearly droughts. At least the droughts I can take a break. Yearly xpacs would be more expensive with little option to 'take a break' so to speak. Not that I like the droughts.

[Berengil]

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!

Interesting opinion. I liked Tanaan. Far superior to TI, IMO.

[Deleted]

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.

Can't speak for Mythic, but Heroic wasn't all that interesting. It was good, but not great. Personally I much preferred Highmaul and Blackrock Foundry, fights felt a lot more interesting, especially as a tank.

Blackhand also felt like a true end tier boss, even on Heroic you were fucked if someone made the slightest mistake and you were expected to put in over 100 attempts, meanwhile Archimonde fell over without much effort (speaking Heroic not Mythic).

[MoanaLisa]

Frankly, if anyone in a position of authority at Blizzard needed to see this on a whiteboard they should have been fired for incompetence.

Not disagreeing with that. It's just one of multiple things I wonder at times about what goes on within the walls of Blizzard HQ. The entire flying episode from start to finish was pretty revealing about how things work--or in that case didn't work at all--there. Lack of leadership, inability to come to a decision, floating trial balloons to a group of customers that takes every word they say as revealed truth. There are lots of examples of incompetence and insularity at the top.

[Dvaldin]

I do have high hopes for Legion. I like the way dungeons have been elevated. I like they're saying more patches are needed. I like legendaries dropping out in the world. I like more people being able to tag creatures. I like phasing making all zones potential starting areas. And, I like the legion's finally attacking Azeroth again. There's a lot of potential this time around. As always, time will tell. But I can say I've never felt more confident in a lot of things going right in an expansion in quite a long while.

[clevin]

Not disagreeing with that. It's just one of multiple things I wonder at times about what goes on within the walls of Blizzard HQ. The entire flying episode from start to finish was pretty revealing about how things work--or in that case didn't work at all--there. Lack of leadership, inability to come to a decision, floating trial balloons to a group of customers that takes every word they say as revealed truth. There are lots of examples of incompetence and insularity at the top.

From GC on, people have noted that Blizzard does design by consensus. While there are advantages to this in that people feel heard and you don't exclude as many ideas, the lack of someone (or a few someones) saying "THIS is the direction. Work within that" seems absent. Design by committee never produces quality.

[kentribal]

2 things by my opinion lost the people in wow.1:is the heilrooms and 2 is the LFR and LFD staff.back in TBC and First release of LIch king expa is WORLD of warcraft after that is the WORLD OF GRINDING/LEVELING now,like lineage2 noone talk to chat always see spams for sell or chinese sellers/spammers for gold.the lore of the game is fucked up.i hope make a new lore to start a WORLD OF WARCRAFT 2

[Deja Thoris]

From GC on, people have noted that Blizzard does design by consensus. While there are advantages to this in that people feel heard and you don't exclude as many ideas, the lack of someone (or a few someones) saying "THIS is the direction. Work within that" seems absent. Design by committee never produces quality.

It's more and more common in large corporations.

First off it takes an age for them to accept reality (we've heard the same shit since cata) and secondly, committee decisions absolve people of responsibility because "we all decided this!" They also have the problem that they normally produce weak compromise decisions instead of a strong one that may make a specific group angry.

[Deja Thoris]

2 things by my opinion lost the people in wow.1:is the heilrooms and 2 is the LFR and LFD staff.back in TBC and First release of LIch king expa is WORLD of warcraft after that is the WORLD OF GRINDING/LEVELING now,like lineage2 noone talk to chat always see spams for sell or chinese sellers/spammers for gold.the lore of the game is fucked up.i hope make a new lore to start a WORLD OF WARCRAFT 2

You'd be surprised at how few people give a fuck about the 2 specific things that trigger you. People left for many hundreds of reasons. Not two.

[Glorious Leader]

From GC on, people have noted that Blizzard does design by consensus. While there are advantages to this in that people feel heard and you don't exclude as many ideas, the lack of someone (or a few someones) saying "THIS is the direction. Work within that" seems absent. Design by committee never produces quality.

Yea I don't by this consensus talk Ultimately someone is responsible they aren't a gestalt. The fact that they have a structure including a director a producer senior and lead developers strikes me that this consensus talk is alot bullshit. Someone makes decisions and it's not Tim the low level network grunt

- - - Updated - - -

It's more and more common in large corporations.

First off it takes an age for them to accept reality (we've heard the same shit since cata) and secondly, committee decisions absolve people of responsibility because "we all decided this!" They also have the problem that they normally produce weak compromise decisions instead of a strong one that may make a specific group angry.

I can see talk of a committee decision to absolve themselves but realistically their is no committee.

Looks it's possible, it would explain the ridiculous group think that's been happening over the years. I would argue that when they say consensus what they mean is senior management consensus.

[Deleted]

"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?

yet another person who eats up blizzards PR bullshit, they havnt learned there lesson cos they said after ICC they never wanted long content droughts and look at all the long droughts after that dragon soul lasted fucking ages,then siege of orgrimmar 12 months and now hellfire patch with 14 months so yeah blizzard is full of shit when they say we have learned our lesson, i think you should stop believing what big companys say cos what they say is normally to increase there $$$ balance

[SteveRocks]

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!

This is extremely false. Where did you get that idea from?

[clevin]

This is extremely false. Where did you get that idea from?

Actually, you're wrong and the quoted post is correct. Blizzard has noted many times that a minority of people raid (Ion commented on this most recently and no, I'm not finding the link. Use Google). Raids are valuable content of course, but WoD's issue was that they were to a large degree the only core content in the patches. Yes, we got Mythic 5 mans but they were the same 5 mans we had at launch (imagine that Mythic Highmaul wasn't released at 6.0 but instead was released in 6.2 - would raiders be all 'ZOMG NEW RAID CONTENT???" ). Same for most other core content. I mean, look at Tanaan and ask if that's really a ton of new outdoor stuff. It's not. Are there even 10 quests there?