Do you think Blizzard is capable of delivering content at fast enough speed at legion

[Tharkkun]

That's wrong unless you can prove it. The content of WotLK and even TBC was more. Cataclysm was probably most work across all expansions but raiders don't notice because the bulk of it was on revamping everything up to level 60.

MOP provided scenarios, flexible raid scaling, pet battles, cross realm raiding. Wod provided enhanced group finder and Garrisons. Features, not new content. Cata provided transmog, lfr and reforging. I might be missing something.


To the OP Wod wasn't rushed. 6 month raid schedule like last expansion. The difference is the sub patches in between were missing meaningful content. 6.2.2 which arrives tomorrow has flying but no meaningful content other than that.

[Vaerys]

I don't know if this is a thing in Economic theory but it probably is: Maybe sometimes the greatest products are developed at a loss.

Nah you can't make things with the expectation you lose money.

I agree with the rest. But on the main point I made I'm not convinced. People are known to be irrational, they aren't really strict calculating machines and we know the team that started Blizzard had some very passionate people in it artistically. Artists are generally very passionate about their work and I wouldn't be surprised if some of the decisions that shaped Vanilla and TBC weren't that strictly based on profit.

Especially Vanilla looks so overdesigned and experimental. Some stuff in it look like 1) Didn't have to be there, it was just extra work to make sure it was great and big and 2) It was too experimental in some parts and very novel, i.e. risky.

Those are generally decisions that show a product that is very risky and aims for big success without knowing if it gets any success at all for certain. Now that the product is established they seem to get mainly into steady sure steps.

One related economic principle is the Loss Leader

Free-to-play games use this principle. They lose money up front but make it up on the back end with microtransactions or whatever.

The Corvette was intended as an image builder for GM, to draw people into showrooms, but not expected to be profitable on its own.

Casinos will give away free shows, drinks, and food to get you in there and hopefully gamble.

[Deleted]

MOP provided scenarios, flexible raid scaling, pet battles, cross realm raiding. Wod provided enhanced group finder and Garrisons. Features, not new content. Cata provided transmog, lfr and reforging. I might be missing something.

Yes you missed the whole world from Vanilla that was revamped.

[Vaerys]

Yes you missed the whole world from Vanilla that was revamped.

I was disappointed that the old world disappeared. I really don't like the chasm in the Barrens and Thousand Needles being underwater. The new zones were pretty good, though, especially Hyjal.

[Banzhe]

I think they can however they have seen they can maintain an extraordinary amount of subscribers by not doing so so why would they bother?

Are you referring to the 50% remaining of what WoD started with?

By any standard of measurement, it's financially unsound to cut your customer base by 50% due to released unfinished / half-assed products, it really does not matter what industry you chose to look at (Unless you look at banking where customers can end up costing you).

What is probably Blizzard main issue now, isn't the speed of delivery, but the longevity of those products (Right from expansion start to patches).

They've effectively dumped every aspect of the game down (Saying otherwise is truly naive), while at the same time producing the 'on rails' approach to world content and automating a lot of it.., all of this naturally results in a life-span that is unsustainable even by 6 months, because people get easily bored, when all there is to entertain you, is 4 different difficulties of the same raid for 6-20 months.

[Pua]

Actually the whole numbers vs numbers debate is pointless. It doesn't actually tell you how much content there is.

It's not pointless, but it's certainly extremely difficult to quantify things in absolute terms. My intention was to point out that it could clearly be argued that Draenor was much more than 20% behind Pandaria in terms of content delivery.

At this point, there's no way I'm going to talk about Legion. I don't think we're very close to beta, which means just about anything can happen to it at this point because Blizzard has no qualms about ditching something with hand-waving, and letting the forum noise drown out legitimate complaints.

[Deleted]

Legion will have a lot more work than WoD and MoP. Perhaps the amount Cata had (don't forget it revamped the whole of Vanilla). That is, if they have any sense and they do realize that even some of their most supportive players blame the lack of content now.