Stop claiming that WoD was rushed

[Schizoide]

"The goal is to have Battle for Azeroth launch before the end of 2018"

Wow, they really said that? I missed that quote.

So a full year of 7.3. That's deeply disheartening.

[Tanthoris]

WoD wasn't rushed. For god's sake, it was 2 years after MoP (like usual) and we ended up with a 14 month drought at the end of MoP. Rushed would have meant we got it sooner.

Was WoD abandoned after release? Yeah. Obviously. We got 2 patches only one of which had any content worth the name. Frankly, given the disaster that WoD was in terms of lost subs I was stunned Afrasiabi wasn't fired.

WoD was revamped 3 times during alpha alone, the beta was only 2 zones until the last few months. The story plotholes made it clear that they had rewritten the story at least once. The whole product may not have been rushed, but the end product was which was why we had so little content outside of raids and ashran.

- - - Updated - - -

WoD's launch experience was actually extremely polished. Those questing zones and their cinematics are probably the best in the game.

You clearly don't remember having to queue up for the like 4th quest in, making the garrison. People had to line up for days before they fixed that issue.

[Jtbrig7390]

There is no claim that WOD was rushed.....Its a fact that it was Rushed and a massive amount of content being cut proves it.

[Frozen Death Knight]

Warlords of Draenor was certainly rushed. While the launch package was a lot of fun, the world content was just laughable once the first months had passed. They could have solved most of the major hiccups of the expansion with good content patches, but they never really delivered on that. The initial plan for them was to have yearly expansions, so they abandoned their older model of content patches in favour of faster releases, which again, they never delivered on.

So what we got in the end was an expansion with a lot of wasted potential, more so than Cataclysm, that was abandoned too early in favour of Legion, which certainly delivered on fixing the major faults of Warlords of Draenor. It's a shame, because I had more fun in the first 4-5 months of WoD than I had during many other expansions.

[Unholyground]

"The goal is to have Battle for Azeroth launch before the end of 2018" and people go into full apology mode.

WoD followed MoP after the LONGEST gap between expansions EVER. 14 full months until WoD launched.

Them taking 14 months breaks does not garuantee a good expansion at all.

The dev team for WoD was also the smallest they had on any expansion too...

[Northern Goblin]

WoD's 6.0 endgame content was rushed on launch, they knew what they were releasing. The problem is: if they were just developing Legion in the forefront the whole time, does that mean BfA will end up lacking like WoD was?

If WoDs endgame content at launch is considered rushed, Christ knows what you make of Wrath's.

[De Lupe]

The rushed aspects of WoD had nothing to do with launch. They basically abandoned the expansion due to its unpopularity and moved forward with Legion.

Uhhhh....no.

They had staffing and production issues behind the curtains. That's what hurt WoD.

[Mormolyce]

You clearly don't remember having to queue up for the like 4th quest in, making the garrison. People had to line up for days before they fixed that issue.

Oh no I remember that one ahaha.

But it's not like that kind of thing never happened before.

[Mellrod]

"The goal is to have Battle for Azeroth launch before the end of 2018" and people go into full apology mode.

WoD followed MoP after the LONGEST gap between expansions EVER. 14 full months until WoD launched.

Them taking 14 months breaks does not garuantee a good expansion at all.

Wod was indeed rushed. Not even arguing about the launch, but the expansion after that was certainly rushed, seeing as Blizzard ended the expansion after the second patch just to move onto Legion and sweep WoD under the rug. If your expansion ends on the second patch, then it was obviously rushed. At the very least it was half-assed.

[Brubear]

WoD was 100% rushed and the worst part WAS the delay. How can it be rushed if it took so long to come out? Because they got sloppy and didn't pinpoint the story elements down soon enough is the easiest answer. I'm sure expansions have changed here and there on the story, but I think WoD was the first (and possibly only) expansion that was altered drastically TWICE. It was altered so much that we KNOW about both versions of the story. Did we ever hear about their story alterations in TBC? Wrath? Cata? MoP? No. They all had their central ideas pinpointed very early on.

WoD started off with Garrosh being banished into exile where he would create this "Mongrel Horde" out of the misplaced races of Azeroth. Kobolds, Gnolls, Centaur... those sorts of races.
https://wow.gamepedia.com/Mongrel_Horde

They discussed the next iteration of the expansion idea as well. The first iteration of WoD was going to have Garrosh find himself banished to Outland. He would find a powerful ancient artifact that would allow him to forcefully bring the pieces of Outland together while simultaneously resurrecting the fallen horde leaders as well.

Then we got WoD WoD.

Now, another big reason you can tell that it was rushed was just the lack of content. They didn't know what they wanted to DO with the expansion. They scrapped raid tiers, they scrapped major Garrison features, they scrapped a LOT in this expansion. The entire story ended up being fucked. We didn't get a second raid tier to actually explain what the heck was going on. It just felt so disconnected to be fighting the Iron Horde and then... Guldan shows up and corrupts them? I get the feeling that we were supposed to make them absolutely desperate first, but the raid never came when we actually did something crazy. We beat Blackhand, but they had a lot more Horde than just him and his foundry.

You don't see how that is basically the overall story theme of WoD (Garrosh escapes punishment to build a new army, possibly in Draenor with the old Warchiefs) with some things changed (Outland instead of AU Draenor, resurrected instead of undead warchiefs, etc)? You may have a point with the part about all the scrapped features (though I'm betting you have almost as many scrapped features every expansion, we just don't always hear about it), but that first bit about how the story changed showing it was rushed really doesn't prove much, especially since it looks like it was scrapped/changed fairly early in the process.

[Heladys]

"The goal is to have Battle for Azeroth launch before the end of 2018" and people go into full apology mode.

WoD followed MoP after the LONGEST gap between expansions EVER. 14 full months until WoD launched.

Them taking 14 months breaks does not garuantee a good expansion at all.

Bro, WoD was rushed. I don't know why you're picking this nonsense to run up the flagpole, but nobody's going to salute it.

[Marrilaife]

It's pretty obvious they didn't meet the deadline with WOD so it had a "Mass Effect: Andromeda syndrome" at launch.

Unstable servers due to their new garrison / personal phasing tech fizzling, it was so bad they issued an apology and gave 7 days free game time, something they didn't do since wotlk. Lack of testing / tech QA there.

Everything that was in 6.1 should have been at launch, but wasn't ready. Like Belf models and extra garrison improvements / questlines.

Professions and reputation system looked like obvious "uh oh we didn't have enough time to develop them properly, here you have something randomly scrapped together in a rush by interns".

Massive content cuts like Farahlon, Shattrath raid, Karabor & Bladespire capitals and way more customizable Garrison. I'd rather have them develop these and push Tanaan / HFC patch later, but that could mean a 3-year long expansion and that means less income for Blizzard.

Something obviously went terribly wrong in their development cycle, they didn't meet the deadline, they just released what they had and then put the expansion on life support instead of trying to fix it midway.

[Cyram]

I don't think it was rushed. I think there were a lot of shitstorm hitting the production team, and the constant changes of theme, sotrylines and overall design they just half-assed everything last minute and we got... what we got.
I mean do you remember when they started backtracking during alpha/beta testing about Garrisons, Capitals and all that?
Oh, and also... Blood Elves weren't meant to be part of the new models during launch because they wanted to give Vanilla races a new coat of paint during launch (Draenei got theirs at launch too because the expansion was supposed to heavily feature them, too).

[Catblob]

WoD's problem wasn't that it was rushed; the problem was that they had intended for it to be a shorter expansion, but WoW Movie issues resulted in them having to pull back on Legion development/release.

[Hctaz]

but that first bit about how the story changed showing it was rushed really doesn't prove much, especially since it looks like it was scrapped/changed fairly early in the process.

Well, the point I was trying to make is the fact that this was the first time Blizzard went out of their way to actually TELL us about these previous iterations, you know? That makes it feel like these were actually rather significant instead of being simple. There were previous expansions with cut content. Classic had cut stuff, Wrath had cut stuff, Cata had cut stuff... but we didn't lost anything really significant.

I mean, Classic is different but they made due with what they had. Classic was originally going to have 100 levels and include all of Outland and Northrend as well as a couple of other places such as the Dragon Isles. But... I guess it still felt like a game, you know? TBC was a mess as well lorewise, but it was still a complete game. Wrath had a few things, but nothing gigantic I'd say. We didn't get the dance studio, flying combat, or the Azjol-Nerub zone, but that didn't kill Wrath either. It still told a complete story that made sense. Didn't feel rushed... etc. The only downside was they had to make that filler ToC raid but oh well.

[Deleted]

"The goal is to have Battle for Azeroth launch before the end of 2018" and people go into full apology mode.
WoD followed MoP after the LONGEST gap between expansions EVER. 14 full months until WoD launched.
Them taking 14 months breaks does not garuantee a good expansion at all.

Stp lying to yourself op wod WAS rushed you have to be blind not to see it

[RobertoCarlos]

"The goal is to have Battle for Azeroth launch before the end of 2018" and people go into full apology mode.

WoD followed MoP after the LONGEST gap between expansions EVER. 14 full months until WoD launched.

Them taking 14 months breaks does not garuantee a good expansion at all.

WoD was rushed judging by how 90% of the game was just the initial questing campaign

[Mister Cheese]

WoD was not only rushed, delayed. And it had tons of cut content somehow. The whole expansion screamed poor team management.

[CreatureLives]

It's wasn't rushed due to time, but it was half-baked due to poor design decisions. They shifted gear mid-development and basically cut as many features and stories as they could to meed the deadline, then semi abandoned the xpack to focus their efforts on Legion, and perhaps BfA a bit. This led to so much cut content; Farahlon, the Shattrath raid, Bladespire/Karabor no longer being capitals, and the abrupt changes in storylines such as the Legion dropping in out of the blue and Grommash being our BFF all of a sudden.

So long as they don't make the stupid decision to redesign BfA before it releases, I doubt it's going to have anywhere near the amount of cut content.

It was more than Farahlon that got cut. Zangarmarsh was supposed to be a zone, there was supposed to be a "Ogre Island" as well. Gorgrond got gutted and reworked and they had to cut Orgrim's story even though the Horde story was originally supposed to be about the relationship between Durotan and Orgrim being best friends caught on 2 different sides of the war and the Alliance story was supposed to revolve around Yrel & Maraad's relationship but they decided to cut that and kill Maraad off like a bitch.

There was also supposed to be an uncorrupted version of Tanaan Jungle that actually looked like a jungle and was probably going to be a quest zone that would focus on Kilrogg who did fucking nothing until the last second as well but they decided against it and just threw a bunch of fel all over the place and called it a end game daily zone. Kargath was supposed to return later (probably in the Shattrath raid) but that got cut so that's why he died like a bitch in Highmaul. Gromm was originally supposed to be a raid boss but they decided not to develop that so they just decided to make him a victim at the end and because Legion was already in the works they probably realized they could start teasing the new expansion so randomly Archimonde shows up. There was also a Worgen storyline that got cut. Lots of Garrison stuff that got removed that could have potentially made them not as boring as they were and even though I'm not sure if they were ever planned to be in it, they totally forgot about the Saurfang brothers.

I mean, how could you cut Orgrim's story and not include the Saurfang brothers at all? Other than Thrall, they are the 3 most famous Orcs in history and they did fuck all with them in an expansion about the greatest orcs in history. A Young Saurfang and Broxigar would have been so fucking cool.

The expansion in a nutshell:
Beginning cinematic: "WE WILL NEVER BE SLAVES!!!!!"
End of expansion: *All Orcs are slaves, Gromm is being tortured as a prisoner and Gul'dan got exactly what he wanted which made the entire expansion a waste of time, oh, and the Legion is here.*

[Jastall]

It was more than Farahlon that got cut. Zangarmarsh was supposed to be a zone, there was supposed to be a "Ogre Island" as well. Gorgrond got gutted and reworked and they had to cut Orgrim's story even though the Horde story was originally supposed to be about the relationship between Durotan and Orgrim being best friends caught on 2 different sides of the war and the Alliance story was supposed to revolve around Yrel & Maraad's relationship but they decided to cut that and kill Maraad off like a bitch.

There was also supposed to be an uncorrupted version of Tanaan Jungle that actually looked like a jungle and was probably going to be a quest zone that would focus on Kilrogg who did fucking nothing until the last second as well but they decided against it and just threw a bunch of fel all over the place and called it a end game daily zone. Kargath was supposed to return later (probably in the Shattrath raid) but that got cut so that's why he died like a bitch in Highmaul. Gromm was originally supposed to be a raid boss but they decided not to develop that so they just decided to make him a victim at the end and because Legion was already in the works they probably realized they could start teasing the new expansion so randomly Archimonde shows up. There was also a Worgen storyline that got cut. Lots of Garrison stuff that got removed that could have potentially made them not as boring as they were and even though I'm not sure if they were ever planned to be in it, they totally forgot about the Saurfang brothers.

I mean, how could you cut Orgrim's story and not include the Saurfang brothers at all? Other than Thrall, they are the 3 most famous Orcs in history and they did fuck all with them in an expansion about the greatest orcs in history. A Young Saurfang and Broxigar would have been so fucking cool.

The expansion in a nutshell:
Beginning cinematic: "WE WILL NEVER BE SLAVES!!!!!"
End of expansion: *All Orcs are slaves, Gromm is being tortured as a prisoner and Gul'dan got exactly what he wanted which made the entire expansion a waste of time, oh, and the Legion is here.*

Yeah, and as I recall Blizzard said that it's because they realized that players had Orc fatigue after Garrosh obtained such a spotlight in MoP and we slogged through 14 months of SoO, and thus they changed the whole story. Which is kind of stupid to me; if you're going to do Warlords of Draenor, commit to the concept and have said Warlords front and center.

Of course one could argue the concept of time-traveling to Draenor and have a giant filler storyline in an alternative timeline nobody really cares about was stupid to begin with and should never have happened. But once you're there, it's too late to have second thoughts.