They have always worked way, way ahead on expansions. They were working on Wrath in classic, for example. It is very likely that they've already got the general outline for the expansion after Warlords and some general design decisions that he was apart of.
This doesn't mean WoD is a "filler" expansion, it just means it's the same as every other one.
You seem oddly obsessed with that man.
( ; , , ; )
No surprised. I am sure they had several ideals for future expansions and he was involved in somewhat with the initial conceptual designs, discussion etc. That was part of his job.
And I think people need to stop. The guy has moved on. It is bordering on obsession.
It is rather unhealthy.
Leave the poor man alone for goodness sake. He's left wow can the haters not leave him in peace now?
Why would he lie on his professional profile? Stop accusing him of lying just because you guys blame him for everything that's changed with the game that you dislike.
"...money's most powerful ability is to allow bad people to continue doing bad things at the expense of those who don't have it."
Shipped Wrath, Cata, MoP.
Worked on BC, WoD.
Expansion VI is in planning and storyline development at best right now. No systems needed.
FFXIV - Maduin (Dynamis DC)
They said they were already actively designing Cata and MOP (Which was not gonna be about pandas at first) during WOTLK, so I don't see why they wouldn't be working on the expansion after WOD already.
As mostly a casual player in TBC, I can say I felt his influence late on. I went from having nothing to do to being able to get new items with the revamped Badges of Justice. New weapons and armour became available without having to beat advanced content (you could farm a load of tokens in Karazhan and the easier heroics alone), which led to my rather poor guild being able to gear up and eventually down most of the bosses in some of those later raids.
Regardless as to whether people here feel he can contribute to an already released expansion, it certainly wasn't a complete expansion at release. Work still happened on it. Some of that was almost certainly his.
FFXIV - Maduin (Dynamis DC)
He contributed partly to BC and WoD and was there for the releases of Wrath, Cata and Mists. Shipped 3 and contributed to 2 sounds about right.
This isn't always, or even usually, true when it comes to software. Someone wrote a whole book about it, in fact (The Mythical Man-Month). Development tasks, because of their complexity and interrelated nature, sometimes get slower as you add people because the volume of communication required to manage the complexity will go up dramatically as people are added. There have even been studies that suggest that smaller teams finish software projects only slightly slower than big teams, but with dramatically less bugs, making it more sensible to cut your team in half, add 10% to your schedule, and end up with better quality.
I know this is off-topic, but I find it kind of fascinating so I thought I'd share.
-SB
Yet they didn't say a word about WoD so far after blizzcon other than their tweets. If they could focus all their teams on 6.0 then it would be better than rather splitting them into 7.0 and other patches since they've promised faster content release.
Please tell me where you've heard that expansion 4 wasn't gonna be about Pandas.
Last edited by enchanted; 2014-01-16 at 07:47 PM.
Not one expansion has been filler in the eyes of Blizzard. In the eyes of some fans some have, but that is irrelevant. If Blizzard decided that the Protoss are indeed the future evolved versions of the Draenei, and both universes are in fact one in the same, then that is official. Just because some people think Cata and MoP were "filler" expansions does not mean they are.
- - - Updated - - -
GC was a systems designer. He had no input into story. So I doubt he has/had anything to do with after WoD.
Eh? So they doubled their team, apparently, so they can do a quicker turn of expansions. And in the same time decide to working on two expansions in parallel? Sound like doubling their team and the workload isn't going to solve much.
And I pretty sure the extent of 7.0 work done is Metzen wrote the Lore on a napkin.