Blizzard's core "done when it's done" philosophy under threat?

[Mirishka]

Of course beta is going to feel incomplete to you guys, considering we're God-knows-how-many builds behind Blizzard's internal versions.

[Farabee]

Beta is very behind schedule and feature-incomplete. I'm amazed they're trying to push raid testing right now to be honest.

[Vermicious]

What they should have done is started with basic faction hubs, then add features with patches in WoD, i.e. 6.1, 6.2, 6.3 etc. A faction 'garrison' of sorts.

They've done this before, right? Why not now. Would add something to each patch.

[Xeroz]

Beta is very behind schedule and feature-incomplete. I'm amazed they're trying to push raid testing right now to be honest.

And how do you know that? Source would be nice. Otherwise its just you guessing that,

[Krazzorx]

There are a few things to remember.

The first is understanding that tweet a bit better: for a perfectionist, you could keep WoW in development indefinitely. I mean they've been trying to improve classes for 10 years. The tweet doesn't say they are rushing, it says "we could make the game perfect if we wanted to, it just would never get released".

The second is understanding the delay. If you've followed Simca's posts (who obviously understands the technical parts significantly better than most here including me) it makes more sense. They did something tech wise internally which is going to make this beta a lot more unstable than most. Also, releasing 3 zones at once was most likely due to garrison progress, not the state of the zones. In reality, these zones bar Tanaan are far more finished than MoP's. Its just the garrisons likely were holding back them being tested.

And ofc, they can now test level 100 content without needing the leveling content to actually be at 100.

In addition, build instability is not indicative of how far along they are in development. Those 2 aren't related. You need to look at how much of the content they have finished.

Finally, you can't compare this beta to MoP's. It needs to be analyzed as its own unique beta. 3 zones launched at once and raid testing starting before all dungeons are tested and max level has been achieved proves that.

[megasus]

If theyre diverting resources by creating lite versions of faction hubs, what are they spending their resources on? Do you think some other game's internal development is hogging those resources or maybe updating the character models is taking up all the art team's time?

From what I've seen ingame, the thing that is missing is the entire interior of karabor and probably a little of Bladespire, too (mostly finished tho).
Interior level design is mostly done by the dungeon/city team, however this team obviously works also on dungeon/raid zones, buildings and are also heavily involved in garrison buildings.
So to answer your question, those resources will probably end up in dungeons or garrisons.

[Traveler Voltin]

they have been rushing crap since cata and its starting to show badly now.
cata alliance stuff was rushed and it showed. mainly in the intro to twilight highlands.
MoP: 5.3 horde didnt get rexxar and the alliance got crap. 5.4 lost the scenario that showed forsaken killing the kor'kron in UC
Warlords: all of it

[Duravian]

It feels like they've given up on putting out quality and have decided to just put out what's done.

I wouldn't say that exactly. If anything they're putting out quality but ignoring quantity. So when the expansion comes out, we'll have all these shiny new toys.. but not many of em. And all of us are probably spoiled brats :P

[Wildmoon]

I am really disappointed at Karabor but I will judge if the xpac feels complete or not when it is released. So far, no xpac has ever felt unfinished to me atleast at launch.

[RoKPaNda]

Sometimes I love the internet. Because unless it's for drama related purposes the memory of the internet is so very short.

I've been a part of every WoW beta since the first one. They've always been like this. Promised features not available for testing yet, very small amounts of things up for testing, unstable, and buggy. Features have been cut from Blizzard games to meet release deadlines since StarCraft 1 at the very least.

They tell the testers what they want the testers to test by simply making little else available for testing. I know in my first beta I was surprised at the lack of content available for testing too.

[xanzul]

I saw this and was quite surprised to be honest: https://twitter.com/Bashiok/status/490187297519042560

I dont know exactly what those faction outposts will look like (maybe theyll be better than how they sound?) but in every expansion Blizz have made time to create a decent faction hub. The fact that many people see WoD as having far fewer features than previous xpacs and that a lot of people will be spending much of their online time there doesnt sound too good....

If theyre diverting resources by creating lite versions of faction hubs, what are they spending their resources on? Do you think some other game's internal development is hogging those resources or maybe updating the character models is taking up all the art team's time?

Considering where the expansion is in development right now and after playing beta, this is the first time an xpac feels "rushed" to me :S

If Wod were rushed we would be playing it right now right this second. It is laughable how you people endlessly lambaste Blizzard for dragging out old content and then turn around and bitch that they rush content. You cant have it both ways.

- - - Updated - - -

To some degree I share the sentiment...
The beta feels very incomplete to me. I can't help it, but I have the impression that the game development is behind schedule somehow.

Hard to explain really...
Closest would be, how things were meant to be different, but for one reason or another a drastic change had to be made, that resulted in some kind of a start over from almost scratch. And now the focus is on getting the product ends tied together in a somewhat timely manner that it can get released before the end of the year.

But like I said, that's a feeling... Incredibly subjective therefore.

Do you people seriously not comprehend what beta means and what its purpose is?

This is why I'm having a hard time taking these types of comments seriously because it smacks of agenda and it blatantly disregards past history with previous Wow expansion betas.

[Coraulten]

The guy on twitter talking to the dev is fucking stupid. "so your just being lazy" Yeah lazy in the same one someone is being lazy for taking a plane rather than walking across the country.

[MetroStratics]

Rob Pardo probably had more to do with this then they let on.
Regardless, just let it develop ok?
No need to turn into Blizzard's Financial Adviser.

Its going to be a great expansion. There might be one or two legitimate disappointments this time, but if its anywhere near as packed with features as MoP was through out the patching cycle, I will have absolutely no complaints.

[xanzul]

Yes I would agree. How amazing is Dalaran (not just the look but also the layout of it)? I have set my hearthstone to Dalaran for every expansion since wrath as soon as I get to max level and will continue to do that until its not feasible/a better capital city gets made. If you go to shattrath youll notice its empty, but if you go to Dalaran theres always quite a few people there (and not just mages...). Thats how important a well designed capital city can be.



I think because its an mmo its sort of ok. So if for example WoD is only 80% complete compared to other xpacs when its released its not that important as they can patch in the extra 20% quality content shortly after release, as long as its decently playable until then. I think whats making everything worse is that not only does WoD look extremely feature poor but its been soooooo long since MoP and siege came out as well.....

I love how no one has been able to actually articulate how Wod is lacking "features" mostly due to that entire opinion being completely full of shit and intellectually dishonest. Like I said it is hard to take these posts seriously anymore because the agenda is so obvious.

[Deleted]

They tell the testers what they want the testers to test by simply making little else available for testing. I know in my first beta I was surprised at the lack of content available for testing too.

Ok I should add this is the first wow beta Ive ever been in....but it feels more like an alphas to me - maybe my conception of what levels alpha/beta should be at during development isnt realistic?

Maybe I dont have a good grasp of art team resources and how long certain things take to make but we're just talking about capitol cities. They have made good ones until now and suddenly were going to get tents on the outskirts of Ashran - this really does feel like cutting corners considering we're not getting a whole slew of features either instead.

Imaging wotlk without Dalaran or tbc without shattrath but rather some huts and vendors in their place.....wouldnt be quite the same.

I find it funny that they have still managed to crank out lots of store mounts/pets in the last few months though.

[xanzul]

It feels like it hasn't been long in development at all. It feels as if they went to the drawing board many times and restarted the entire project only a few months ago.

And now they're rushing to stomp an expansion out of the door. Like, I don't even know how to feel about it, the expansion should've launched during spring this year, but they clearly didn't work at all on it yet back then. Something must've happened that made them decide to start from scratch during spring instead.

Again if they were rushing Wod we would already be playing it. Enough of this bullshit already. It is trolling pure and simple.

[Aucald]

I'd actually say that this Beta is pretty far along compared to the MoP and WotLK betas. A lot of people are complaining about the common disconnects, rubberbanding back to the Garrison Town Hall, and overall lag in certain zones. But those issues have almost no bearing on the relative completeness of the builds, and most of what remains seems to be small-scale break/fix work and texture implementation. My personal estimation for a release would be early October, but of course any number of things could crop up between then and now.

[xanzul]

"We have to release this expac some time" and "it's done when it's done" are almost two sides of the same coin. It seems there's been a shift in policy at Blizzard. Whereas they'd have taken as long as needed to get things right, even if it means re-doing an entire zone like they did with Jade Forest in MoP, now it's a case of "yeah it's not perfect but it'll have to do, we need to get this expac out."

What the fuck do you people want? You whine that Wod isn't out yet and then you whine that it might be out this year. Again you can't have it both ways.

[Traveler Voltin]

They can both rush content and be too slow with releasing it, which in this case is what seems to have happened, because it feels as if they didn't actually start developing it until a few months ago.

thats because they decided after blizzcon to redo everything because they didnt like it

[clevin]

On karabor/bladespire they are taking hits because it's something they showed at Blizzcon and then, nine months later, casually said "Oh yeah, not doing that." Part of the anger was dropping it, but a good chunk of it was Mumper's casual tweet about it followed by Lore's bullshit explanation which was an obvious lie. If they'd come out and said "Look, we really hoped to do this, but nailing the models, the dungeons and the raids has set us back and it's not going to happen, we're sorry about that" a lot of the annoyance would have been muted. Especially if they'd committed to opening them in 6.1 or something. I've always felt that the flight issue was due in part to the fact that to give us flight they have to 3D render the world and that perhaps they didn't have time. I still think that's the case for 6.0/WoD release.

GC has said in the past that design at Blizzard is very consensus driven... that could be part of the issue. No matter how good your development team is, you have to finish the design and give it to them far enough ahead that they can actually build it.

Class-wise I also wonder why they feel the need to mess with things that aren't broken like Moonkin, etc. Yes, it feels new... but GC again noted that one of the reasons people gave for quitting was having to relearn, again, their class.