Normally I'm not bothered by the amount of stupidity that occurs in this sector of the interweb -it's to be expected- but recently, more than some of the headlines I've glanced at have induced a chronic state of "double-take".
It seems like SCII and DIII are getting all of the effort. SCII had a great expansion and has burgeoning support for its mod community. DIII has effectively been overhauled from a B+ title into a AAA title (Blizzard literally turned a 180 in quality improvement changes, no small feat). And Warcraft... Jesus, it's Spring 2014 and where is it?...
...It's at least 2 quarters away, placing it a cool 5 quarters after SoO. This is after the developers at Bcon gave us their thoughts about a Spring release.
...And it's going to cost 25% more.
https://battle.net/shop/en/product/w...rds-of-draenorAfter they deliberately said it would not at Bcon.
...And they are removing features. "Afrasiabi also mentions that he thinks it is possible that players could love a world with no flying."
I mean, I've grown up playing Blizzard games, they're great, and for the most part, they still are. But, I'm having a little trouble suspending disbelief every time a Blue post is made about WoW. In the end, development takes more time than ever, and they *want* to abolish features to make the game artificially longer to play: i.e. less to develop, and if that wasn't enough, the product is more expensive than ever.
The discrepancy, we all know, deep down, is money. We've already seen this unfold with the RMAH and the $shop$ buttons branded to the UI. But the RMAH was removed...and rightly so! So why haven't the WoW devs taken the hint? Because ($15.00 USD x 12 + $50.00 USD) x 7,000,000 translates to roughly a Billion and a half dollars per year. That's why. And to think the excellent SCII was made for a mere hundred million. Oh wait, that was the
actual cost to produce WoW?!
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/...googlenews_wsj So Where the FUCK does the remaining 1.3 Billion go exactly?
It's starting to feel like Blizzard's other franchises. Because, at the moment, it actually feels like they're getting the overhauls they deserve. WC gets whatever is left at the bottom of the barrel. Don't get me wrong, I've enjoyed each expansion, but I'm *almost* hoping that WoD tanks, so that the SC team can start work on WC4 after LotV is released...