Why did Blizzard double the dev capacity for WoW?

[rda]

Everything gets more expensive, that's how it works.

No, not even close.

[mvaliz]

I dont think the team was "doubled". Its just "larger than it has ever been".

[cityguy193]

If the next expansion does not release by the end of this year, then the extra devs are certainly not for faster expansions.

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I dont think the team was "doubled". Its just "larger than it has ever been".

That can mean anything from 1 extra person to 50x the staff

[Deleted]

Cause Titan went to shit and everyone who was already working on it had to be put one one project or another. That's my take on it at least.

[Deleted]

I doubt the statement's veracity.
WoD works like something made by 5 IT interns and a couple talented but overworked art freelancers.
The new xpac would have to be something at least revolutionary for the team expansion blabber to be proven true.
And I'm not talking about the hype-generating not-really-promises, but the actual delivered product.

[Krazzorx]

If the next expansion does not release by the end of this year, then the extra devs are certainly not for faster expansions.

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That can mean anything from 1 extra person to 50x the staff

Hmm? I'm pretty sure even a June 2016 release will be faster release by multiple months.

[Deleted]

Quantity does not mean quality. That's the #1 rule in company human management.

I have some employees that are realy hard-working and produce more than 1+1/2 "normal" people. It's easy to manage when you deal with <50 employees because you can always rotate bad people with contracts and get rid of the bad appls, but when you are talking about a 150+ organization workflow you start going into territory that it's actualy bad to have "double capacity" if the quality doesnt keep it - it goes downhill realy fast because the efficiency drasticaly drops.

I'm not saying that the new blizzard devs are "bad" per se, i'm just not seeing the increase in content that justify those numbers. Yes new people need a period of learning but heck i've read those news over a year ago. The new expansion is the deadline to see if they are worth the "hype" or not.

In fact seeing what other MUCH smaller teams in the business can do in quality in much less time actualy makes me wonder if blizzard is actualy as good as we think it is.

With this said, i'm ready to be mindblown with the new expansion. Last chance though.

[Vermicious]

I don't pay for subscriptions anymore, unless I follow the creedo of goblin NPC's "Time is money, Friend!"

Someone else is paying $20 a month for my time, and I'm just buying tokens, which only take me a bit of time to earn gold to purchase them with.

[Nayami]

I really wish it was WoW 2.0, Azeroth is destroyed and we start from scratch in a new world with only a few surviving heroes from the previous WoW. Fresh new battle system, moar graphics, new and modern game engine. Unfortunately though, I don't think this will happen, at least not for now.

It is strange though how they increased the number of developers while current content was pretty much cut in half. This would lead me to think that the interns either took their sweet time in getting the hang of developing for WoW or that they are working on something on the side, either the next expansion after WoD or maybe even WoW 2.

[XorMalice]

The extra devs were given as a reason why WoD took so long to launch. So at this point, who knows.

But here's my wowspiracy theory (it's not really original with me, but it *is* entirely based on speculation):

The situation about six months before WoD Blizzcon was, they were working on an expansion that would follow the up-until-then hints- some kind of old god approach that involved some burning legion in some manner. This was coming along, but the devs weren't sure they could finish in time for the 18 month expac they were targeting. Suddenly, Titan is cancelled, and a bunch of people join. This, plus news of the movie (which they knew takes place in WCI- it's "Warcraft I, the movie") gave them a motivation for an expac that would be around and movie-relevant. Kalgan, Tigole, and other old schoolers are suddenly around. Development changes- now the expac is about warcraft I era orcs. They change gears, and deliver an unrelated announcement at Blizzcon, that wasn't hinted at up until that point, or relevant to what was going on in any way. To save time, they cut out the flight testing (even after deciding to add it back, it's been a multi-month project, still incomplete), and a bunch of zone. They know they can't spin up their new stuff in time, so they start chopping. They pretty much have to tunnel hard to complete just the new raid content.

So I think we'll see a pretty big expac, as it will be mostly double- we'll get the development meant for post-mop, plus the development they've been working on already. They may finally be getting on track from having the expanded team, and we may in fact see an expansion worth of the name WoW.

[DenniZ]

The devteam wasnt doubled. They added 50% but then split the team in two to work on WoD and the next xpac. Practically leaving only 75% of the previous team to work on WoD. The didnt grow in size, it shrunk by 25% instead. They were deceiving the customers by saying the team had grown in size. It did... but not for WoD alone. That team was actually smaller then the previous expansion.

[anveena]

To release those $50 expansions with less content faster.

[ro9ue]

To pop out $50 expansion boxes every 12 months.

Cuz $

[LegendaryDude]

I have a personal theory that is probably complete bullshit: All those people they've added to the wow team have been beta testing the new expansion for the past couple of months, the new expansion will not have a beta with player access, and when they announce it they will blow everyones mind by going "Yeah, here's the new expansion, we'll release it next month"

[MoanaLisa]

They want two teams, each capable of working on an expansion going at the same time. Most of the Warlords team will move on to start the expansion after the one being announced in a day or two. When development work on the current expansion stops that team jumps two expansions forward. That's the theory anyway. Of course there's a lot of cross-talk between the teams and when push comes to shove around launch time all hands will be on deck to finish whatever needs to be finished.

But the whole point was to be able to work on two expansions at once.

[Sansnom]

Now i dont know the exact numbers of devs on WoW, but lets say its about a 100.
Why would they suddenly need 200 developers, when they JUST did an entire graphical improvement overhaul?

Did they? Did they say they double the WoW development team, or did they double the number of developers in Blizzard?

Double the devs could mean double the content, or half the production time. It could also mean they are working on something huge, along the scale of a WoW 2.0.

So what do you think? Why do they suddenly need double the capacity?

That is fallacy. We do not know what they are doing, or even working on content directly. They could developing the framework for the next generation of content.

A modern day Ford is a lot more complicated than the Model T. New contents may be more complicated to build. A modern 3D game takes more effort than a simple 2D pixel scrolling shooter.

We don't know what is happening in Blizzard, or WoW in general. Not all are necessary working on content for WoW. There is a whole infrastructure in place. Look at the non-game related features, such as self-serve lost item recovery. Previously this required a GM. Now it is automated.

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Except that when something has been around for a long time, prices should actually drop and/or additional things are typically added.

You cannot really compare like for like. Depending on how you compare, WoW either gotten cheaper or more expensive. How did a can of Coke cost 10 years ago? Bread? By your definition,

For a 10 year old product with only minor changes to the core programming (remember, the reason you are stuck with a 16 slot starting bag is because Blizz won't dig that deep into the code), things should be cheaper as well as having more content, not less.

You should go and show them how it is done.

[ThrashMetalFtw]

That was posted in MoP, not now.