Iron Docks intended for 6.1, delayed *CONFIRMED*

[Rhine101]

I basically think the entire "the WOW team is bigger now" thing they said is a lie. I think that a lot of new people were hired, and Blizzard *as a whole* has grown a lot. But these people are definitely not working on WOW. You don't increase your team size by 50% and then do 1/4 of the work while boasting about how many people you have.

I think that WOW had its dev team slashed since MOP. I think they are running on about half of the team they had during MOP.

Didn't Blizz lay off a lot of people back in the recession? I recall someone saying "most" was in places like Game masters etc...But they did get rid of a lot of folks.

Not to mention they said that they put the old WoW crew back on WoW from Titan. That and teh 50% increase that is vague.

All in all I really don't know what is going on there. I just know that I can't really trust a damn thing that comes out of a Blizzard reps mouth and I need to wait to see the live product before I ever consider giving them money again.

[Paula Deen]

Just want to step in and say. This is abhorrent. I have no words to describe anything. None. Rygarius, Bashiok, if you guys read this forum, this stuff is not okay. It was fine during 6.0 because we still got quite a bit of new content, but to STILL have no content in 6.1, and then outright admit that the content that was going to be there was only 1 small chain is just.... wow, that is truly awful. I hope and pray 6.2 is out by May, because if it isn't, I don't know how you plan on maintaining any subscribers at all.

[Mormolyce]

I find it silly that people are getting so upset about the "removal" of content they know nothing about.

Just want to step in and say. This is abhorrent. I have no words to describe anything. None. Rygarius, Bashiok, if you guys read this forum, this stuff is not okay. It was fine during 6.0 because we still got quite a bit of new content, but to STILL have no content in 6.1, and then outright admit that the content that was going to be there was only 1 small chain is just.... wow, that is truly awful. I hope and pray 6.2 is out by May, because if it isn't, I don't know how you plan on maintaining any subscribers at all.

Only hole in this - it was never going to be in 6.1, it's a lead-in quest chain for 6.2 content so that would make zero sense. Dataminers jumped to conclusions.

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If Bashiok's tweet that the quest was moved to 6.2 is taken at face value, that implies Tanaan was ALSO moved from 6.1 to 6.2.

I don't know why anyone would think Tanaan was intended for 6.1, that would be retarded. It's four months into the expansion and Tanaan is the outdoor content that goes with the last raid tier of the expansion.

[Deleted]

I basically think the entire "the WOW team is bigger now" thing they said is a lie. I think that a lot of new people were hired, and Blizzard *as a whole* has grown a lot. But these people are definitely not working on WOW. You don't increase your team size by 50% and then do 1/4 of the work while boasting about how many people you have.

I think that WOW had its dev team slashed since MOP. I think they are running on about half of the team they had during MOP.My impressions from seeing how they promoted Overwatch @ BC14 made me think they're siphoning a lot of resources into the new IP. Not just a lot in terms of making a 'packed' small team of devs for the FPS, but I mean actual massive resources going into it so that they can hit a closed beta as soon as possible.

All Overwatch has really made me expect so far are references to the other 3 IPs, in-jokes and appropriate MTX purchases to go with it.. 'Buy your custom P16 Ragnaros Flamethrower today..'.. on successful headshot, it discharges an automated 'By Fire Be Purged!'

This will, of course, make many longing WoW, Diablo, & SC fans salivate with joy at the prospect of gaming vicariously through a short-attention span, flashy, overproduced, overhyped, overwatch, instead of having any faith in their original IPs. (Minus possibly SC2).

This leads to 7.0 being a second iteration of Warlords - big marketing hype, a very big spike in subscribers, possibly from as low as 5 million back up to 9 million, with the promise of a new, nostalgic yet fresh, and content-lush world in the south seas with Azshara. We find that many of the resources and original ideas pitched at BC15 were cut out, and 'Eye of Azshara' is promoted as a Mini-Expansion, as opposed to a full-scale one - this will, of course, still cost you $70 & $15 a month. Flying is disabled, the world is useless, and yet more things are homogenized.. there is an option added for players who don't care enough to quest - hire a butler to do your quests for you for 1 gold an hour. for 10 gold, speed up levelling to 10 levels every 10 minutes, whilst you watch your progress in a mission-style tab in a static user interface, not caring about your character outside of actually creating it.

Content in 7.0 is lackluster, subscribers drop to 4.5 million, etc, etc.. Overwatch becomes a massive hit, becoming the next big game in the genre. Blizzard makes it MLG appropriate.. adds a metric fuckton of MTX for extortionate, yet neckbeard-affordable prices, and continues making it rain, whilst not having to blink an eye at the absolute non-game, facade of an IP that World of Warcraft has become, with its fans still defending it until they die of a coronary at the age of 37.

This is not even a bold prediction for me.

[Stormspark]

All Overwatch has really made me expect so far are references to the other 3 IPs, in-jokes and appropriate MTX purchases to go with it.. 'Buy your custom P16 Ragnaros Flamethrower today..'.. on successful headshot, it discharges an automated 'By Fire Be Purged!'

This will, of course, make many longing WoW, Diablo, & SC fans salivate with joy at the prospect of gaming vicariously through a short-attention span, flashy, overproduced, overhyped, overwatch, instead of having any faith in their original IPs. (Minus possibly SC2).

This leads to 7.0 being a second iteration of Warlords - big marketing hype, a very big spike in subscribers, possibly from as low as 5 million back up to 9 million, with the promise of a new, nostalgic yet fresh, and content-lush world in the south seas with Azshara. We find that many of the resources and original ideas pitched at BC15 were cut out, and 'Eye of Azshara' is promoted as a Mini-Expansion, as opposed to a full-scale one - this will, of course, still cost you $70 & $15 a month. Flying is disabled, the world is useless, and yet more things are homogenized.. there is an option added for players who don't care enough to quest - hire a butler to do your quests for you for 1 gold an hour. for 10 gold, speed up levelling to 10 levels every 10 minutes, whilst you watch your progress in a mission-style tab in a static user interface, not caring about your character outside of actually creating it.

Content in 7.0 is lackluster, subscribers drop to 4.5 million, etc, etc.. Overwatch becomes a massive hit, becoming the next big game in the genre. Blizzard makes it MLG appropriate.. adds a metric fuckton of MTX for extortionate, yet neckbeard-affordable prices, and continues making it rain, whilst not having to blink an eye at the absolute non-game, facade of an IP that World of Warcraft has become, with its fans still defending it until they die of a coronary at the age of 37.

This is not even a bold prediction for me.

Not me. Overwatch looks like *garbage*. It doesn't even look like a game. It looks like a tech demo, and not even that good of a tech demo. Multiplayer deathmatch should be an *optional* mode to a game, not the entire game itself. I had hoped something big was going to be presented at Blizzcon. But then Metzen walked out and showed Overwatch and I just facepalmed and said "All that hype for THIS? Are you kidding me?" I've seen free games on Steam that are better than that (and are actually GAMES and not just deathmatch BS).

[rhorle]

Just want to step in and say. This is abhorrent. I have no words to describe anything. None. Rygarius, Bashiok, if you guys read this forum, this stuff is not okay. It was fine during 6.0 because we still got quite a bit of new content, but to STILL have no content in 6.1, and then outright admit that the content that was going to be there was only 1 small chain is just.... wow, that is truly awful. I hope and pray 6.2 is out by May, because if it isn't, I don't know how you plan on maintaining any subscribers at all.

It was never in the game for players to experience on the PTR. And as you say it is only one small chain so why is it a big deal that it isn't part of 6.1? There is new content in 6.1 as well a lot more then a small quest chain in the iron docks that is to introduce content that also is not a part of 6.1. But I forgot when it comes to trolls and datamining they don't care to actually see what is what. They only care that something didn't show up that someone found in the files and therefore the world will end.

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Not me. Overwatch looks like *garbage*. It doesn't even look like a game. It looks like a tech demo, and not even that good of a tech demo. Multiplayer deathmatch should be an *optional* mode to a game, not the entire game itself. I had hoped something big was going to be presented at Blizzcon. But then Metzen walked out and showed Overwatch and I just facepalmed and said "All that hype for THIS? Are you kidding me?" I've seen free games on Steam that are better than that (and are actually GAMES and not just deathmatch BS).

It might not be something you like but millions of people like to play multiplayer death match games. It still was something big. Big is not defined as something you personally have to like.

[Deleted]

Multiplayer deathmatch should be an *optional* mode to a game, not the entire game itself.

Oh lord, really? I didn't even know that.

They've completely lost it.. I'm guessing DM is their corporate strategy for being globally accessible, because any other game mode is too niche, or some bullshit. That, or they couldn't be bothered. As is usual with Blizzard in these cases, it's probably an accumulation of both of those reasons.

[Deleted]

I keep seeing this comment come up again and again but it misses a key factor in how development teams work. Unfortunately what a lot of people don't appreciate is how hard it is to work on legacy products (and yes WoW at this point is definitely a legacy product) due to the enormous base (code / assets / design decisions / dated engine / inability to adapt to more "modern" faster development techniques or tools (usually due to engine)) which leads to much lower individual productivity.

I would not be surprised if a single person at ANet could pump out "equivalent" levels of content as someone at Blizzard at least 3 to 4 times as "fast". At this point in time there is NO way to increase productivity to the same level newer teams are able to reach simply because of all the legacy stuff in WoW. The only way to be able to pump out similar levels of content with a similar sized team would be effectively to scrap everything and build from the ground up again (which for obvious reasons is never going to happen).

Ok, I'll give you that, you are right here. Again, talking here from experience with mobile games and especially one that has been running with updates every month and a half for 3 years, modifying anything ruins a part of the game you weren't even expecting. For example recently a bug escaped, nobody found it because what has been introduced this last month allowed for content that was inserted 10 updates ago (so a year and a bit ago) to malfunction and start creating problems related to duping items.
For a computer game and one of its age, the problem is even greater I'd imagine.

If Blizzard does take this long, I do hope they are rewriting the code of WoW, in chunks at least, to make it easier to add content in future, content that doesn't actually directly interfere with the "old" content so to say. Guess this will only be seen in time. For now though, as a consumer, I don't feel like I'm getting my money's worth. But I still hope, which is why I linger around(the forums, I'm unsubbed now), as WoW was my first MMO and I really loved this game.

[darklogrus]

It's not that they couldn't get it ready. It's that it would probably just be a cocktease in 6.1 since it's supposed to lead us into future content. Why just have that floating in the game for 4-6 months, instead of placing it on the front of that content in 6.2?

That makes no sense, Its not like the WoD storyline was finished up before 6.1 hit, same could be said about garrison invasion or the legendary quest,

[MoanaLisa]

Ok, I'll give you that, you are right here. Again, talking here from experience with mobile games and especially one that has been running with updates every month and a half for 3 years, modifying anything ruins a part of the game you weren't even expecting. For example recently a bug escaped, nobody found it because what has been introduced this last month allowed for content that was inserted 10 updates ago (so a year and a bit ago) to malfunction and start creating problems related to duping items.
For a computer game and one of its age, the problem is even greater I'd imagine.

If Blizzard does take this long, I do hope they are rewriting the code of WoW, in chunks at least, to make it easier to add content in future, content that doesn't actually directly interfere with the "old" content so to say. Guess this will only be seen in time. For now though, as a consumer, I don't feel like I'm getting my money's worth. But I still hope, which is why I linger around(the forums, I'm unsubbed now), as WoW was my first MMO and I really loved this game.

Drifting a bit away from the topic but I imagine they spend more time on testing and running down unintended consequences than anything else. I think they actually are removing old code as they can but that's tricky too. Their code base has to be a mess of old and new stuff. Choices from the original design are still affecting them. Didn't they say once that changing the backpack would pretty much break the game? I suppose that there are still a zillion pointers into the vanilla code/engine. Changing any of that would cause ripples through everything which is probably why a lot of it is still there. If the engine has only been improved since vanilla and not swapped out for a new engine it would make sense that learning to develop in it would take a great bloody long time to learn where all of the traps are. Vanilla code would be the most foundational and bedrock stuff in the game: pointers based on character names (everything you have in a bag or bank somewhere is pointing at that), realms, old procs, old skills....long long list.

[clevin]

I don't know why anyone would think Tanaan was intended for 6.1, that would be retarded. It's four months into the expansion and Tanaan is the outdoor content that goes with the last raid tier of the expansion.

Oh well that's a convincing argument. You obviously think very deeply.

Or...

You utterly fail at using logic and should re-read the post and think before you type.


One of those two.

[Verdugo]

Slightly off-topic but why is this "content" patch over 2gb in size?

[Apology]

I don't know why anyone would think Tanaan was intended for 6.1, that would be retarded. It's four months into the expansion and Tanaan is the outdoor content that goes with the last raid tier of the expansion.

The blue post:

It's a one-time quest that leads you to Tanaan. Assumptions that this was a big quest hub, focused around Foundry content, or that it's a chunk of substantial content that we cut, are incorrect. It's a one-time quest chain that directly leads into events of 6.2, and that's the patch it's in.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/to...2895932?page=9

When you combine that with...

Still working on it, it was moved to 6.2.

https://twitter.com/Bashiok/status/568125120562094081

If the quest was intended to "lead you to" Tanaan, then that would imply it...well, that it leads you to Tanaan. It'd make no sense to launch the "go to new area!" quest without the new area. If the quest was going to launch in 6.1 and got delayed, then so did Tanaan. For whatever reason, it still isn't ready for them to ship out the door.

That's how I interpret it, at least. Any money the entire zone was the "heaps of outdoor content" they were talking about which never showed up in any form whatsoever. One quest doesn't exactly qualify.

[ildon]

The blue post:


http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/to...2895932?page=9

When you combine that with...


https://twitter.com/Bashiok/status/568125120562094081

If the quest was intended to "lead you to" Tanaan, then that would imply it...well, that it leads you to Tanaan. It'd make no sense to launch the "go to new area!" quest without the new area. If the quest was going to launch in 6.1 and got delayed, then so did Tanaan. For whatever reason, it still isn't ready for them to ship out the door.

That's how I interpret it, at least. Any money the entire zone was the "heaps of outdoor content" they were talking about which never showed up in any form whatsoever. One quest doesn't exactly qualify.

You've completely misinterpreted what was being said. Think about the garrison storyline quests you've done so far. All of them could be said to eventually "lead into" Tanaan jungle content, as well (in case you haven't been doing them, the final quest has you literally walk up to the gates of Tanaan and challenge Grom directly). This would have been just one more step on that path. It was probably delayed not only because it was incomplete, but because they realized that having a several-month delay between people completing that quest and actually being able to zone into Tanaan jungle was a bad design, as people would likely have forgotten the events of the quest by then.

[Huehuecoyotl]

You've completely misinterpreted what was being said. Think about the garrison storyline quests you've done so far. All of them could be said to eventually "lead into" Tanaan jungle content, as well (in case you haven't been doing them, the final quest has you literally walk up to the gates of Tanaan and challenge Grom directly). This would have been just one more step on that path. It was probably delayed not only because it was incomplete, but because they realized that having a several-month delay between people completing that quest and actually being able to zone into Tanaan jungle was a bad design, as people would likely have forgotten the events of the quest by then.

So they were going to have a huge gap between the quest and Tanaan opening.....and they suddenly realised just before 6.1 dropped that it wouldn't make sense so they should delay it?

That makes no sense to me.

More likely that Tanaan was originally going to be 6.1, was put back to 6.2 ages ago and they just didn't realise that the quest wouldn't make sense without Tanaan being open. So when they started testing 6.1 and realised, they decided to put the quest back to 6.1 as well.

[Apology]

You've completely misinterpreted what was being said. Think about the garrison storyline quests you've done so far. All of them could be said to eventually "lead into" Tanaan jungle content, as well (in case you haven't been doing them, the final quest has you literally walk up to the gates of Tanaan and challenge Grom directly). This would have been just one more step on that path. It was probably delayed not only because it was incomplete, but because they realized that having a several-month delay between people completing that quest and actually being able to zone into Tanaan jungle was a bad design, as people would likely have forgotten the events of the quest by then.

To be honest, I'm not subscribed at the moment and haven't been for a bit, so I haven't been around to do the garrison chain to the end. If it was a part of that, though, wouldn't they have said so? They've specifically referred to "The Garrison Campaign" as "The Garrison Campaign" when they talked about it elsewhere, rather than just as a throwaway "one-time quest chain."

Idk. Just theory crafting and working with the quotes we're given! Maybe I haven't done enough of the chain to be commenting on this. If that's the case, feel free to ignore me

[Doombringer]

Anyone on the Overwatch tangent saying the game won't work is clearly out of their mind.

"Hearthstone won't work. Heroes of the Storm won't work." Yet, these are earning for Blizzard. And they're also very polished, highly playable games.

Overwatch will fill that Team Fortress niche. If that game can still keep a playerbase, then Overwatch can develop one for Blizz.

I'm not saying that any of these games are my favorite, but they will definitely have their market. People will play them. I am very concerned that Blizz may take resources off WoW to support these other games, however.

[Deleted]

Anyone on the Overwatch tangent saying the game won't work is clearly out of their mind.

"Hearthstone won't work.

Haha, except nobody ever said this. Of course Hearthstone was going to work. It costs them nothing and its a massive stream of revenue.

Overwatch will be a success because it's addictive & has quirky, endless MTX. Whether it's actually a good game is another question. Same way Hearthstone is an absolutely terrible CCG, completely based around a shoddy, expensive meta.. and it's overwhelmingly luck based.

The people who benefit from this are the publisher, and loud annoying streamers I don't really care about. Consumers get completely shafted these days.

[Razael]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQR9XWGFkj4

you need to watch that bro

Infracted, removed the embed.

Ahaha this is awesome.

[Deleted]

I find it silly that people are getting so upset about the "removal" of content they know nothing about.



Only hole in this - it was never going to be in 6.1, it's a lead-in quest chain for 6.2 content so that would make zero sense. Dataminers jumped to conclusions.

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I don't know why anyone would think Tanaan was intended for 6.1, that would be retarded. It's four months into the expansion and Tanaan is the outdoor content that goes with the last raid tier of the expansion.

So because it was never intended to be in 6.1 (which they have effectively admitted it was BTW) that somehow justifies a patch of bugger all? When are you going to have an opinion of your own instead of posting pro Blizzard nonsense?