Blizzard's poor excuses

[Gurbz]

See this is where you lost the connection with reality in order to feel superior

You have 0 facts or proof that all the money earned is directly returned into the game.

Feel free to try again

He said the resource was available. Not necessarily that it was being utilized.

The fact stands that anyone outside of Blizzard does not have the necessary information to come to an informed conclusion on the efficiency of their operations.

[Zalraki]

Basis for this claim?

Prince-2, Basic project management, Agile advanced project tasking, actual work experience in a similar environment. Before the shop they could invest X amount of resources into content. Now they can invest X-<shop team> into content.

Offset by any extra people they hired which is why I said proportionally

[ComputerNerd]

See this is where you lost the connection with reality in order to feel superior

You have 0 facts or proof that all the money earned is directly returned into the game.

Feel free to try again

I don't have to prove the quantity of that which went back in.
All I did was state the publicly reported fact, one which pretty convincingly kills your argument dead.
Now you are just grasping at straws.

Look at how contradictory to most subscription services and despite a decreasing subscriber count the monthly subscription cost of the World of Warcraft game has not increased.
Now again, try to tell me that the store money is not doing something constructive.

Now try to argue with the actual point, instead of changing the subject.

I provided evidence, and if you wish I can go find actual links.
You didn't provide a single thing, only an opinion one which was very easily proven to be utter rubbish.
Yet you demand more from me while simply repeating yourself without anything else.

Point proven.

[Zalraki]

I don't have to prove the quantity of that which went back in.
All I did was state the publicly reported fact, one which pretty convincingly kills your argument dead.
Now you are just grasping at straws.

Look at how contradictory to most subscription services and despite a decreasing subscriber count the monthly subscription cost of the World of Warcraft game has not increased.
Now again, try to tell me that the store money is not doing something constructive.

Now try to argue with the actual point, instead of changing the subject.

You claim that money went to development of the game but you have no facts for that. The fact that the shop makes money is true. How that earned money is used is pure speculation on your part.

The store might very well be what is keeping the subscription at the same price. But we don't know.

We do know that when WoW started that subscription price was relatively high. So it's possible they had a large profit margin
Server consolidation, virtualisation and shared hardware services have made made those expenses decrease drastically the past years. And yes that is based on fact because the same has happened at the company I work for
Other non-shop services like race changes also help offset the subscription fee

Personally I think they still make a lot of money on the subscription alone. So your point isn't actually a point, it's an assumption

[Deleted]

It's not an excuse, it's relative no matter how many people you have on the team, because more people would mean more projects at hand, it's always expanding. It's not like they just hire people and say, "yep, we are going to have THIS many projects and stuff to do, therefore we are only going to do that." It means they always something to do, in your situation that would mean there would be a certain downtime where they wouldn't be doing shit, because they've completed all of their projects. You think Blizz is going to pay employees to sit around and wait until the next project to come along? Maybe they can build forts in their cubicles while they wait and tell ghost stories and roast marsh mellows.

You cannot grasp it, it's fine.

I hate to be the guy who brings up someone's ignorance, but I guess I have to now...

So, basically a project consists of internal employees and external cooperatives, who aren't actually employed at Blizzard. They are paid a remuneration. The internals and externals work together to achieve something with a certain amount of resources in a given amount of time. Blizzard seems to refrain from this form of development. They seem to think that a project manager isn't capable of communication Blizzard's philosophy with his/her team. The reason for this is even beyond me...so no worrys

[randomnamegenerator16]

Stupid thread is stupid.

[Deleted]

When Michaelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel, did they just reach out to hire scrub painters off the street to speed things up?

Chill out and stop displaying ignorance. You have no concept of the work involved nor of the effort involved to find someone up to your standards who works in a way conducive to keeping a group cohesive and efficient. Anyone who's ever had to do hiring for a technical role will understand what they're facing even before timelines, pressures of a creative process, and a rabidly venomous fanbase are introduced.

to quote myself:

Blizzard has a set group of developers, who create new content. These guys are responsible for quality content.

Now, creating (visual) quality content is different from programming a function in the game like LFD or LFR, right?

To give you an example: the community would really like to solo queue for arenas. Blizzard tells them:"No, if we made that possible, we would have to ditch other plans." The question is: What kind of other plans are these? - Two possibilities:

1. "the developers who create visual quality content have plans." - invalid argument because we asked for a function

or

2. "the developers who program functions have plans." - invalid argument because you could always hire new ones of these, as they are no visual quality content creators, they don't work in a design atmosphere, they don't need to blend with anyone, their results do not represent Blizzard's vision ... They code behind the scenes. They either get their job done or they don't, in which case they are made redundant, as they are easily replaced.

If the community demands 5 raids per patch, then Blizzard is right in saying that they don't have enough quality content creators, who have been with Blizzard for years, to make that happen

If the community demands to solo queue for arenas and Blizzard thinks it's a good idea too, then Blizzard has NO excuse for not implementing it. Why? Read above

edit: don't tell me the code of the game is so messed up, that it would take years to understand and alter it.

[Maconi]

While the OP is oversimplifying the issue, I do agree somewhat.

Although I understand why they say they don't have enough time/resources to fix certain parts of the game (they're basically saying if they hired 100 more devs, that they'd rather use them on other projects to speed them up and not the projects the community proposes), it just doesn't cut it due to one thing. The cash shop. All of the dev time spent on it and everything that goes into it would be MUCH better spent working on other parts of the game (at least as far as the community is concerned). However, at this point they're not worried about creating a perfect game. They just want to keep developing whatever makes them the most amount of money, and right now that's obviously nothing PvP related.

[gamingmuscle]

Prince-2, Basic project management, Agile advanced project tasking, actual work experience in a similar environment. Before the shop they could invest X amount of resources into content. Now they can invest X-<shop team> into content.

Offset by any extra people they hired which is why I said proportionally

The fact that resources are being used to do this is obvious...what is not is you said they are prioritizing monetizing/adding revenue streams more than game improvements. Which seems incorrect based on we know they are currently working on, unless that isn't what you meant.

[Deleted]

While the OP is oversimplifying the issue, I do agree somewhat.

Although I understand why they say they don't have enough time/resources to fix certain parts of the game (they're basically saying if they hired 100 more devs, that they'd rather use them on other projects to speed them up and not the projects the community proposes), it just doesn't cut it due to one thing. The cash shop. All of the dev time spent on it and everything that goes into it would be MUCH better spent working on other parts of the game (at least as far as the community is concerned). However, at this point they're not worried about creating a perfect game. They just want to keep developing whatever makes them the most amount of money, and right now that's obviously nothing PvP related.

well said, sir

[Raven]

LOL, yes, if we compare just that, then MoP wins. But if we take a look at all patches, we see this:

Cataclysm
4.0 - first raid tier - 7-dec-2010
4.2 - second raid tier - 28-jun-2011 (~200 days after 4.0)
4.3 - third raid tier - 29-nov-2011 (353 days after 4.0)

Mists of Pandaria
5.0 - first raid tier - 25-sep-2012
5.2 - second raid tier - 5-mar-2013 (~160 days after 5.0)
5.4 - third raid tier - 10-sep-2013 (350 days after 5.0)

The time to go from the first raid tier to the second raid tier in MoP was better than in Cata, but the time to go from there to the third raid tier was better in Cata than in MoP. If we take both raid tiers together, MoP took as much time to release them as Cata did.

What was your point again?

Cataclyms total of 31 raid bosses
Mop 52 with raid world bosses

[ComputerNerd]

You claim that money went to development of the game but you have no facts for that. The fact that the shop makes money is true. How that earned money is used is pure speculation on your part.

The store might very well be what is keeping the subscription at the same price. But we don't know.

We do know that when WoW started that subscription price was relatively high. So it's possible they had a large profit margin
Server consolidation, virtualisation and shared hardware services have made made those expenses decrease drastically the past years. And yes that is based on fact because the same has happened at the company I work for
Other non-shop services like race changes also help offset the subscription fee

Personally I think they still make a lot of money on the subscription alone. So your point isn't actually a point, it's an assumption

So you call my point an assumption, but you stated something as absolute fact with no reasoning.
You call something a fact because it applies to ONE organisation, the only one where you have that sort of inside knowledge.
You state that other services help off-set the subscription fee, something I said about store purchase but you dismiss mine when yours is presented as a fact.

Point proven yet again, you keep calling me as providing no evidence when I have given more than the grand total of nothing provided by yourself.

[Stonecloak]

While the OP is oversimplifying the issue, I do agree somewhat.

Although I understand why they say they don't have enough time/resources to fix certain parts of the game (they're basically saying if they hired 100 more devs, that they'd rather use them on other projects to speed them up and not the projects the community proposes), it just doesn't cut it due to one thing. The cash shop. All of the dev time spent on it and everything that goes into it would be MUCH better spent working on other parts of the game (at least as far as the community is concerned). However, at this point they're not worried about creating a perfect game. They just want to keep developing whatever makes them the most amount of money, and right now that's obviously nothing PvP related.

I think you don't know how easy it was to make those models. Somebody could do it in hours. Cash shop really isn't taking away from development time.

[Zalraki]

The fact that resources are being used to do this is obvious...what is not is you said they are prioritizing monetizing/adding revenue streams more than game improvements. Which seems incorrect based on we know they are currently working on, unless that isn't what you meant.

I said proportionally. We know they are working on the store. That means coding, UI designs, testers, creating content to go in it and so on. All that translates into resources being used. Which means someone within Blizzard feels that it is of a high priority compared to all the things on their to-do list

[Seditian]

Go check out CCP Games' official forums.
Then again, that is what you get when your offices are in Iceland.

And companies like EA don't even use excuses, they just released buggy games (hello Battlefield 4) XDD

Yeah, but seeing as EVE Online is a sandbox game, it doesn't matter as much. You as a player have to create your own content. Which obviously isn't the case in World of Warcraft, which makes your comparison invalid.

[edmorte]

Agile teached us, including more people on a working project does not increase project speed, on the contrary.

9 women can't make a baby in a month.

Now I undertstand non developers may think software can be brute forced with extra hours/man power, if you want to cure your ignorance look foward for Agile principles and Scrum.

Sometimes the software needs some design time / decision / experimentation, including more people does not work as expected.

I came here cuz i thougt it was about the bull the GMs talk everyday, like BG queue. Making horde x horde will just put the final nail in the coffin to break the rivality between alliance and horde. Lets finish the factions and bring FFA. Right?

[crunk]

Why do you people think you're more qualified to run a multi-billion dollar company than the people who do it?

[Kazlofski]

Still doesn't explain how getting many developers into WoW from the scrapped MMO changed nothing.

[Zalraki]

9 women can't make a baby in a month.

Useless comparison. 9 Geneticists with 9 times the resources can clone a baby in a month. Go figure

[Gurbz]

Still doesn't explain how getting many developers into WoW from the scrapped MMO changed nothing.

You don't know what they are working on, just that they were moved to WoW development. For all we know, they are already doing work on the expansion AFTER WoD.