Did Blizz Ever Explain WoD's Content Drought Debacle?

[Paula Deen]

Jesus, I hope that doesn't mean we're in for a new expansion made by the Cata/WoD team...

The next expansion is actually the "Veteran" Team.
WoD and Legion were both the same Development team because at the time they only had one development team. You should be worried about the Legion/WoD team. Unless 7.3 is REALLY GOOD they have proved for almost 3 years that they cannot develop a concept and the following patches to their fullest.

[RobertMugabe]

WoD had a massive amount of content.

People just didn't like the content that was offered enough to leave their garrisons.

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It was scrapped... the story even has a hole in it that they never could explain. Like why we saved rather then murdered helscream.

This is explained in the HFC raid.

Nonetheless, a Shattrath raid was never announced, only Farahlon and the ogre continent. It was only shown on a concept map at blizzcon, which is nothing. In this stage of development, they've just been thinking about what the expansion could look like, but haven't programmed anything.
That's why nothing has been datamined about this raid, as they never even started making it.

[micwini]

People are saying that WoD had a big drought because of an increase in developers in the team and others training them..... Please explain to me then how Legion has less content than MoP with a dev team twice as big??

[ComputerNerd]

No matter what reasoning blizzard give, someone who wants to bash them will accept no answer that isn't completely trashing blizzard for it.
There will never be an acceptable answer for some.

[Paula Deen]

People are saying that WoD had a big drought because of an increase in developers in the team and others training them..... Please explain to me then how Legion has less content than MoP with a dev team twice as big??

Its not twice as big. WoW is now like CoD.

They have Dev Team 1 and Dev Team 2 alternating between expansions. This hopefully means patches will be better in the next expansion and beyond but lmao.

[MoanaLisa]

I've always thought that Warlords was a giant bet made by Afrasiabi and others that everyone wants to raid. So they made access easy enough, directed every single progression path in the PVE game to it and didn't provide a lot else to do.

Garrisons ultimately were there to get you into starter raid gear without having to do much of anything except attend to them.

They were completely wrong of course and, if anything, damaged raiding and the game further by being so obvious about it.

You want a picture in the Urban Dictionary next to Raid-Or-Die? Put up the box for Warlords.

[Gaexion Ramza Beoulve]

Nothing to explain. Was no need for more patches, other than the usual ones that never come.

WOD was fine and suffered from no content drought.

All the angry players who quit because of garrison suffered a heavy content drought, as they didn't play at all.

No need to twist it to something it's not. The polygon link is full of bias from these very same people who weren't even present.

The rest of us were very well contentained all the way up to legion release. The dumbing down of the game and fast clearing of raids doesn't represent anything, but blizz failure in other departments than content and the players who are in a rush to get to the end so that they can complain on lack of content, just like they barely dear to with TOS now, carefully with all the legion hype about.

instead of complaining on lack of content they should stick to complaining on the difficulty, something that they also want. and then the content last long enough for the expansion to get positive feedback. big challenge = big joy.

Tanaan is vastly superior to Broken Shores. You know how much you love the class changes, AP grind, worthless world bosses and superior dungeon system where all the dungeons normal, heroic, mythic and m+ are totally relevant. In almost every aspect WOD is better than legion.

You are all severely spoiled with patches and have forgotten what a patch is. You demand patches like other games release expansion packs, while rest of the game suffer from years of neglect. The game that you likely don't play, because you think you have played it. Azeroth. Just move to GW already. for years on end the large majority of blizz focus have been on feeding raid instances that you do nothing, but fart upon. while large majority of rest of the gamers enjoy the raids for the next two years to come and expansion always release way to soon. your probably so angry from hearing this, congrats if you read. the truth that you can find among the players outside your core. even on this very forum where people list their game activities.

maybe im happy because i didn't see the movie. no, i just cling to the last step on this downward development slope.

and when i do my garrison invasions for mounts, you cant join because you were never there in the first place and i'm not waiting an hour for you to do WOD into quests.

legion is a cookie with many flavors, yet it all tastes the same. guess what makes.

Expert level trolling.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

The next expansion is actually the "Veteran" Team.
WoD and Legion were both the same Development team because at the time they only had one development team. You should be worried about the Legion/WoD team. Unless 7.3 is REALLY GOOD they have proved for almost 3 years that they cannot develop a concept and the following patches to their fullest.

I think the mass of class quests we got put a dent in 7.2. I'm not defending it but it makes sense. Not sure I agree on the two teams that alternate.

[sheggaro]

It was pointless filler.

[micwini]

Its not twice as big. WoW is now like CoD.

They have Dev Team 1 and Dev Team 2 alternating between expansions. This hopefully means patches will be better in the next expansion and beyond but lmao.

Is that really true? Because that's the most retarded system i've ever heard of. How's that even efficient? I think I understand now why CoD has gone to shit that badly. You don't get more content like this, it will only shorten the drought by like,..... 3 months? thats still almost a year of nothing.

[Paula Deen]

Is that really true? Because that's the most retarded system i've ever heard of. How's that even efficient? I think I understand now why CoD has gone to shit that badly. You don't get more content like this, it will only shorten the drought by like,..... 3 months? thats still almost a year of nothing.

Blizzard themselves have said they have a team working on the next expansion at the start of Legion.

Its logical to assume 1 of 2 things.

1. They have a team that does only launch content development.
2. They have two separate teams for expansion development.

I don't know about you but doesn't it seem much more logical to do it the second way so more content is able to be included in patches due to the increased development time?

[EternalBany]

my conspiracy is that the movie being delayed twice fucked their whole content plan and the dev team had no idea it was going to happen. it feels like wod was supposed to be the movie tie-in expac instead of legion. it's too much of a coincidence to me that khadgar, guldan, durotan, garona are all big characters in the movie and played important roles in wod.

i think it is much simpler then that

They wanted to see how much less effort time and money they could get away with and still retain subs and profit
Essencially testing the waters to focus on other shit other than wow
dick move

[micwini]

Blizzard themselves have said they have a team working on the next expansion at the start of Legion.

Its logical to assume 1 of 2 things.

1. They have a team that does only launch content development.
2. They have two separate teams for expansion development.

I don't know about you but doesn't it seem much more logical to do it the second way so more content is able to be included in patches due to the increased development time?

I would expect there to be a small task force laying out the foundations for the next expansion. Then most of the team working on the current one. Then, as the expansion progresses and more and more stuff is done, then the team would slowly move onto the next expansion bit by bit. First finish A then move on to B. Don't work on A and B at the same time. Working on two things simultaniously doesn't work on a small scale. It sure as hell doesn't on a big scale. We all know what happens when you try to do 2 things at a time.

[Wyviner]

Most business models are built around having enough success to be sustainable, but historically for gaming, there was the added element of wanting to push the boundaries of gaming. It was always a gamble. Will this "new idea" be so amazing that we not only do something never done before, but also make our game so amazing that it will draw in new players, and thus make us more money? This was the philosophy around game design and development. This is what most companies are about, and what Blizzard used to be about.

I think things changed with Cata. Blizzard once again, pushed the limits and did what was never done before, had a story line element largely change the entire in-game world. It was an awesome idea in terms of story, but had a massively negative impact otherwise. Changing the world was cool, but anyone who joined the game after had no idea what the world was before, therefore it was irrelevant. Anyone who had already leveled all their characters and had no design to level again, also found it irrelevant. It landed up only being relevant to people who wanted to actively level new characters for the sake of the experience, which was novelty at best. The amount of resources required to do this worldly change hugely impacted the available resources and remaining content available to be developed for the rest of the expansion. 90% of Dragonsoul was copy/paste. While it was a cool idea, the result was 99% of players agreeing Cata was the worst expansion so far, possibly worse than WoD.

Blizzard learned and adjusted. They produced Pandaria, which was a fantastic expansion. But I think the negative affects of Cata changed the business model in the background. It began a decision to put more emphasis on profit, and less on pushing the limits of gaming, and having good ideas. WoD in my opinion was their first attempt to follow a different business model, one of producing less for more. It failed pretty horribly, but that was okay, because sometimes changing a business model has a few hiccups. They perfected it in Legion, but its the same thing. What makes Legion different from WoD? The answer should be fairly obvious. Time-gating.

It's not that time gating hasn't existed in small amounts before Legion, but it is by far the most obvious negative aspect of Legion. Try to image just how different our opinions of WoD would be if it had the same amount of time gating that Legion has. Imagine if fully upgrading our garrisons had taken the better part of 2 years instead of 2 months. Imagine if they had spaced out the content at the correct pace. Imagine if follower missions took days instead of minutes. Legion at its core is making less content seem like more, and saving money in development fees. The content drought of WoD was them failing to implement this new business model, and just writing the rest of the expansion off as an expense. They analyzed the mistakes and produced a hugely more successful product in Legion. And you better like Legion, and especially time gating, because this will absolutely be the model moving forward. It's all about the money, and it will get worse.

[DarkTZeratul]

Nonetheless, a Shattrath raid was never announced, only Farahlon and the ogre continent.

And the ogre continent wasn't even announced as a content update, but as an example of ways to potentially expand Draenor at some point in the game's (not just the expansion's) future.

[Sastank]

The team increase and getting them up to speed was talked about before WoD.

http://www.ign.com/articles/2014/08/...lar-expansions

Oh thought it was before Legion. TIME FLIES. Lol thanks.

[dextersmith]

It was probably min/maxing of budgets and testing out exactly how far their customers will tolerate them going.

I think this was most likely.

[Paula Deen]

Oh thought it was before Legion. TIME FLIES. Lol thanks.

They used the excuse both times. Your memory is perfectly intact.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

Most business models are built around having enough success to be sustainable, but historically for gaming, there was the added element of wanting to push the boundaries of gaming. It was always a gamble. Will this "new idea" be so amazing that we not only do something never done before, but also make our game so amazing that it will draw in new players, and thus make us more money? This was the philosophy around game design and development. This is what most companies are about, and what Blizzard used to be about.

I think things changed with Cata. Blizzard once again, pushed the limits and did what was never done before, had a story line element largely change the entire in-game world. It was an awesome idea in terms of story, but had a massively negative impact otherwise. Changing the world was cool, but anyone who joined the game after had no idea what the world was before, therefore it was irrelevant. Anyone who had already leveled all their characters and had no design to level again, also found it irrelevant. It landed up only being relevant to people who wanted to actively level new characters for the sake of the experience, which was novelty at best. The amount of resources required to do this worldly change hugely impacted the available resources and remaining content available to be developed for the rest of the expansion. 90% of Dragonsoul was copy/paste. While it was a cool idea, the result was 99% of players agreeing Cata was the worst expansion so far, possibly worse than WoD.

Blizzard learned and adjusted. They produced Pandaria, which was a fantastic expansion. But I think the negative affects of Cata changed the business model in the background. It began a decision to put more emphasis on profit, and less on pushing the limits of gaming, and having good ideas. WoD in my opinion was their first attempt to follow a different business model, one of producing less for more. It failed pretty horribly, but that was okay, because sometimes changing a business model has a few hiccups. They perfected it in Legion, but its the same thing. What makes Legion different from WoD? The answer should be fairly obvious. Time-gating.

It's not that time gating hasn't existed in small amounts before Legion, but it is by far the most obvious negative aspect of Legion. Try to image just how different our opinions of WoD would be if it had the same amount of time gating that Legion has. Imagine if fully upgrading our garrisons had taken the better part of 2 years instead of 2 months. Imagine if they had spaced out the content at the correct pace. Imagine if follower missions took days instead of minutes. Legion at its core is making less content seem like more, and saving money in development fees. The content drought of WoD was them failing to implement this new business model, and just writing the rest of the expansion off as an expense. They analyzed the mistakes and produced a hugely more successful product in Legion. And you better like Legion, and especially time gating, because this will absolutely be the model moving forward. It's all about the money, and it will get worse.

I don't really think the business model changed. Time gating has been a thing for awhile.

[Talvindius]

Yep. They said they fucked up and pushed the final content too early so instead of throwing bare bones ideas at us they decided to work on Legion.

Was a good plan. I would rather wait a while for planned content than experienced some half assed bullshit. (COUGH COUGH RUBY SANCTUM COUGH COUGH)