WoD - A Missed Opportunity And Confusion

[Khovai]

Every day, I scratch my head at the thought of this expansion and what a missed opportunity it was. I know we're not 100% through the expansion yet but we don't even have a clue on upcoming features and if there was anything noteworthy coming in the next 6 months, they would have started previewing it to hype it up.

Blizzard claims to have the largest development team and even different teams that work on every single aspect of the game. There's no possible way their team is as large as they say it is.

Every time people ask for features that would be cool to see, their response is the standard "but... dev time".

There's something seriously upsetting when Diablo 3 of all things gets more updates in a given time than a WoW expansion. Is WoW nothing more than a milking machine for other projects? Are they lying about their dev team size and resources?

Draenor is a beautiful land and the nostalgia hits hard when you walk through that portal again to see a fully intact Draenor before it became Outlands.

The lore and story of iconic places like Shattrath. Is Netherstorm even in WoD? I don't think that area made the cut. Tanaan Jungle STILL sits empty.

I seriously don't understand. Did their development team get cut down to 5 people and everyone else is working on other cash cows like Overwatch? The 3 big games Starcraft, Diablo and Warcraft made Blizzard what they are. I fear for their future because I fear that these massive MMOs are coming to an end and the development of small mobile like games with DLC/Micro are the future for companies. Games that people used to make for Warcraft 3 and Starcraft maps are now being developed as full games filled with "unlockable" content through heinous grinding or your debit card.

The leveling aspect of WoD was a hit. Not many people deny that but after that, it's like the development was cut short. Not to mention the absolute failure of a launch which someone hopefully was held accountable. "We didn't know how many people would come back". What? How the hell is that an adequate excuse? Do you guys not have a logistics department and did you fire the people that used to run the server room to keep tabs on things?

With all that aside, they did apologize for that and gave people game-time.

I just can't help but feel sad for what WoD could have been and what WoD is right now. If there was anything noteworthy happening in the next 6 months, it would probably be previewed or we'd have some information on it's progress but we have nothing. Either they're lying about how many developers they have and their resources or they're all working on another project.

Hell, even updates to the old world. There are plenty of these disgusting looking doodads that look like they're from the late 90s (because they are) that could be updated. When questioned about armor/grass/other 1D looking doodads of course their response was "that would take too much art time".

I have no idea how they get away with it with the consumers. Whenever features are asked for, they simply swipe them left and say "but development time".

Does WoD still have any hope? Are they working on something big and just keeping it secret or did they drastically downsize the team and allocate them to other projects?

[Alltat]

Is Netherstorm even in WoD? I don't think that area made the cut. Tanaan Jungle STILL sits empty.

Netherstorm wouldn't be at all recognizable, as the most iconic thing about the place was that it was shattered. They could add an equivalent zone, but without the floating rocks, elven mining camps, the Ethereal domes or Tempest Keep it wouldn't have much in common with the original.

As for Tanaan, it's reserved for patch content. Think Isle of Thunder or Timeless Isle in MoP. We're still only in 6.1, and that was barely a "real" content patch, so we still have several major patches to go.

[Deleted]

We're still only in 6.1, and that was barely a "real" content patch, so we still have several major patches to go.

I think most people have realised by now that this simply won't be the case. It ends with 6.2.
Why? because Blizzard gets money by selling expansions, not patches. 60$ expansions every year over free patches is a no-brainer to them.

[Gadzooks]

Netherstorm wouldn't be at all recognizable, as the most iconic thing about the place was that it was shattered. They could add an equivalent zone, but without the floating rocks, elven mining camps, the Ethereal domes or Tempest Keep it wouldn't have much in common with the original.

As for Tanaan, it's reserved for patch content. Think Isle of Thunder or Timeless Isle in MoP. We're still only in 6.1, and that was barely a "real" content patch, so we still have several major patches to go.

"Netherstorm" doesn't exist on Dreanor...yet. Netherstorm is what's left of Faralhon, after the planet is blown up.

[Khovai]

Yeah, we gonna get "Ashzara - a missed Opportunity and confusion" threads and "Legion - a missed Opportunity and confusion" threads very soon, if people get their way. You know..like everyone wanted the glorious TBC times back and wanted housing and Blizzard just had to do it and put a twist on it.

Expect people to also be dissappointed if Demon Hunters and Tinkerers ever make it into the game.

Really? Are you saying WoD has been well managed?

I personally have never questioned the development team until WoD. I stuck with their decisions when badge gear was introduced, all through Cataclysm, when Pandas became a thing and so forth.

Yes, a lot of people did claim to want "glorious" TBC times back but they're not back.

BC was almost 10 years ago and yet, somehow, the team seemed to pump out more content and care more about the game than they do today which is why I'm utterly confused. I've been a Blizzard fanboi and I've defended them through some pretty thick decisions but this expansion makes utterly no sense from a player standpoint.

The only thing they've added into this expansion was some garrison changes, selfies and Twitter integration. I get your general message though. You're saying everyone looks back at the last expansion as something better than the current but i've never done that. I appreciate when technology grows and I loved the WoD leveling aspect.

After the leveling though, it's like WoD's budget was cut to $0.

[Megalithic]

The leveling aspect of WoD was a hit. Not many people deny that but after that, it's like the development was cut short.

Really? I hated the leveling aspect of WoD. 90-91 was very painful, walking through that completely scripted hand-holding series of quests. And not having any new spells or talents while leveling took away a lot of anticipation. Not to mention the pointlessness of trying to level any professions while leveling. And so much focus on the garrison.

[Spiral Mage]

Said it before, I'll say it again .. they were hurting coming into this expansion .. they hyped up WOD, and made it sound like it would be the savior of their damaged franchise, something they know they need to revitalize .. and they just .. don't seem to care .. at all .. one raid tier for more than a year? Feedback on the Beta largely ignored. "Alright guys, it's judgement time for our main franchise, we really need to -- oops, dropped the ball .. hahaha, oh well .."

Honestly, they've been getting lazier with every expansion, so this one being as bone-dry .. well, I wish I could say it came as a shock but it didn't, I kinda figured this would how it went down. I don't claim to know what's really going through their heads, but this expansion is gonna be the worst for content. It brings with it alotta positive features, but they're gonna go to a waste with an expansion devoid of any major content .. one raid tier (remember, HM and BRF were meant to be one tier, not two), and that's it until 6.3, which will bring the Grommash raid, which they have said will be the only other raid added to this expansion.

Like a poster above said, I've always been more in support of their developement team than against but this expansion has left me .. as the title mentions, very confused -- and more than that, depressed because I know they aren't gonna surprise us with a change of direction or motivation, either. This is it.

The thought of what the next expac is gonna be like, is almost depressing enough to think it'll be the time to quit. I mean, they're gonna do worse than this one ... that's really bleak.

[Melkandor]

Said it before, I'll say it again .. they were hurting coming into this expansion .. they hyped up WOD, and made it sound like it would be the savior of their damaged franchise, something they know they need to revitalize .. and they just .. don't seem to care .. at all .. one raid tier for more than a year? Feedback on the Beta largely ignored. "Alright guys, it's judgement time for our main franchise, we really need to -- oops, dropped the ball .. hahaha, oh well .."

Honestly, they've been getting lazier with every expansion, so this one being as bone-dry .. well, I wish I could say it came as a shock but it didn't, I kinda figured this would how it went down. I don't claim to know what's really going through their heads, but this expansion is gonna be the worst for content. It brings with it alotta positive features, but they're gonna go to a waste with an expansion devoid of any major content .. one raid tier (remember, HM and BRF were meant to be one tier, not two), and that's it until 6.3, which will bring the Grommash raid, which they have said will be the only other raid added to this expansion.

Like a poster above said, I've always been more in support of their developement team than against but this expansion has left me .. as the title mentions, very confused -- and more than that, depressed because I know they aren't gonna surprise us with a change of direction or motivation, either. This is it.

The thought of what the next expac is gonna be like, is almost depressing enough to think it'll be the time to quit. I mean, they're gonna do worse than this one ... that's really bleak.

Well I guess we could start saying that this expac is worse than Cata.

[Megalithic]

Well I guess we could start saying that this expac is worse than Cata.

WoD is at least as bad as Cata, not sure it's worse.

Well, maybe it is worse, since I never unsubbed in Cata.

[unbound]

Is WoW nothing more than a milking machine for other projects? Are they lying about their dev team size and resources?

Yes (the business term is "Cash Cow") and yes (at least in regards to effort placed on WoW).

Did their development team get cut down to 5 people and everyone else is working on other cash cows like Overwatch?

WoW dev team is likely pretty small...that's the point of having a Cash Cow. However, Overwatch is not a Cash Cow, it is a Question Mark...the whole point of a cash cow (WoW) is to take the big profits from them and feed new opportunities or question marks (Overwatch). If you want to understand more, look up Growth-share matrix on Wikipedia (it is a decent overview of the business concepts).

Once you do understand what Cash Cow really means, this all makes a lot more sense.

[Alopex Major]

Netherstorm wouldn't be at all recognizable, as the most iconic thing about the place was that it was shattered. They could add an equivalent zone, but without the floating rocks, elven mining camps, the Ethereal domes or Tempest Keep it wouldn't have much in common with the original.

As for Tanaan, it's reserved for patch content. Think Isle of Thunder or Timeless Isle in MoP. We're still only in 6.1, and that was barely a "real" content patch, so we still have several major patches to go.

Farahlon = Netherstorm. Which, as far as I know has been completely scrapped.

I totally agree with the OP though, I was as excited as anyone to go to Draenor and get some great Draenei content, except that's not really what happened at all. Thematically and game-play wise, WoD has been pretty disappointing for me. I'm also not happy about the abrupt end to the Timewalker stuff, unless of course that's in a future patch.

- - - Updated - - -

Well I guess we could start saying that this expac is worse than Cata.

Honestly, I had a lot more fun in Cata. Going back through the redone zones was a lot of fun, and I actually enjoyed the raids. I certainly played a lot more than I do now.

[SlippyCheeze]

Every day, I scratch my head at the thought of this expansion and what a missed opportunity it was. I know we're not 100% through the expansion yet but we don't even have a clue on upcoming features and if there was anything noteworthy coming in the next 6 months, they would have started previewing it to hype it up.

Blizzard claims to have the largest development team and even different teams that work on every single aspect of the game. There's no possible way their team is as large as they say it is.

I'm not clear why you think this is the case, but there are two things you are not understanding:

One is that the choke-point for content was art and model design, not programming, and when they talk about the "development team" they may mean a group that includes or excludes those, depending on context. It's not a term with a strict definition as you seem to imagine. Anyway, they recently established they have changed processes to allow them to scale up art and model design work, which means that (if it works) some other part of the development team will be the choke-point. (because *something* is always the slowest part of a process, unless it is one person doing it.)

The other is that Blizzard are a public company. This means that they actually have these inconvenient little laws floating around what they do, and what they say, and part of that is that if they make statements that could mislead investors who own stock in the company there are serious legal consequences possible. So, for example, if it were to come out that they had senior developers lying in public about the size of the team working on the game, investors might legitimately decide that they should either involve the government, or just the courts privately, to address their being mislead about the future prospects of the game.

Those two add up to: it is highly unlikely that Blizzard are lying, in public, about the size of the team. It is also highly unlikely that you can make statements like "the biggest" development team without qualification and have them make sense.

Every time people ask for features that would be cool to see, their response is the standard "but... dev time".

There's something seriously upsetting when Diablo 3 of all things gets more updates in a given time than a WoW expansion. Is WoW nothing more than a milking machine for other projects? Are they lying about their dev team size and resources?

The response is pretty standardly "we see other features and/or content as having a higher return on investment, when we consider player fun and engagement, than this thing which is legitimately cool". This is pretty reasonably position for the company to take, since that is pretty much literally always going to be the answer: ideas are cheap, and great ideas are still pretty cheap, but getting things done is costly in terms of resources. Since they only have limited resources to spend, no matter how large the team is, compared to the number of great ideas this is always gonna be a thing. Even a million developers couldn't do *every* cool thing that would be awesome.

I'm also not real clear how you are measuring updates to D3 vs WoW, but D3 has not had anything on the technical scope of WoD -- moving the server from a fixed 600ms cross-actor tick to real-time -- or the class design scope -- ability pruning, stat rebase -- or the graphics and world building -- RoS is smaller and involved significantly less graphical artifacts than WoD, without the 6.2 content -- in the last few years.

So, again, just because you don't see the changes as necessarily "content" doesn't make them free, or mean that Blizzard are not doing things, and it most definitely does not mean that slightly more frequent tuning of D3 and some new/rebalanced spells and legendaries are "more content" than WoW has.

Also see again, public company, for the lying thing. Just repeating it won't make it true, even if it is a classic way to discredit someone you disagree with.

The leveling aspect of WoD was a hit. Not many people deny that but after that, it's like the development was cut short. Not to mention the absolute failure of a launch which someone hopefully was held accountable. "We didn't know how many people would come back". What? How the hell is that an adequate excuse? Do you guys not have a logistics department and did you fire the people that used to run the server room to keep tabs on things?

I build large scale distributed systems professionally. Several of the back-end changes they made in WoD significantly worsened the problem, and it was absolutely not as simple as simply saying "more people showed up than expected". Having watched from the inside, some of this was an unanticipated set of interactions that the changed timebase for cross-actor events that led to way, way more load than they anticipated. (See the disabling of the toy train set, and the haunted memento changes as part of handling this, and spreading load around khadgar.)

In the same vein, you could legitimately criticise them for not knowing about the effect of these changes ahead of time but, well, pretty much nobody runs an MMO on the same scale, very few of those are anything like the age of WoW, and this is an area where you can't see the effects until you are running ten thousand people through the area, rather than two thousand. (...and, yes, you can do some testing for this sort of stuff, but if you think it's easy you should go talk to Google and claim your millions in stock and salary, because I assure you they would one hundred percent give you that if you really have a solution to detecting this sort of distributed systems problem early.)

I just can't help but feel sad for what WoD could have been and what WoD is right now. If there was anything noteworthy happening in the next 6 months, it would probably be previewed or we'd have some information on it's progress but we have nothing. Either they're lying about how many developers they have and their resources or they're all working on another project.

Hell, even updates to the old world. There are plenty of these disgusting looking doodads that look like they're from the late 90s (because they are) that could be updated. When questioned about armor/grass/other 1D looking doodads of course their response was "that would take too much art time".

I have no idea how they get away with it with the consumers. Whenever features are asked for, they simply swipe them left and say "but development time".

Does WoD still have any hope? Are they working on something big and just keeping it secret or did they drastically downsize the team and allocate them to other projects?

I'm pretty sure that you are drawing way too much conclusion from the evidence present here. WRT updating old content textures, though, refer back to my comment right at the top that the choke-point for development was art and model design. If you made a list of things to do when you are blocked by not getting enough art done as quickly as you want, I'm pretty sure "add more workload to the art department" is high on that list, especially when that work is low return on investment -- old models looking nicer is cool and all, but it isn't new content, right?

[Fenixdown]

Really? Are you saying WoD has been well managed?

I personally have never questioned the development team until WoD. I stuck with their decisions when badge gear was introduced, all through Cataclysm, when Pandas became a thing and so forth.

Yes, a lot of people did claim to want "glorious" TBC times back but they're not back.

BC was almost 10 years ago and yet, somehow, the team seemed to pump out more content and care more about the game than they do today which is why I'm utterly confused. I've been a Blizzard fanboi and I've defended them through some pretty thick decisions but this expansion makes utterly no sense from a player standpoint.

The only thing they've added into this expansion was some garrison changes, selfies and Twitter integration. I get your general message though. You're saying everyone looks back at the last expansion as something better than the current but i've never done that. I appreciate when technology grows and I loved the WoD leveling aspect.

After the leveling though, it's like WoD's budget was cut to $0.

The funniest thing of all is that with as much as everyone has begged Blizzard to make "BC 2.0", they made WoD to take all of the things added in BC, heralded as the best expansion by many, and then threw all of those things out of the window.

Difficult, meaningful heroics? Nope, let's just make heroics that are mildly challenging at best and you only need to do them for about two weeks tops.

Flight? Nope, let's scrap that, too.

Daily hubs? Nope, let's ditch those.

Large raid tiers where all of the raids are meaningful together? Nope, let's just make one raid tier where the first raid becomes 110% obsolete once the second half of the same raid tier is released. Three months later, no less.

I mean, right now, look at Highmaul/BRF and compare them to even SSC/TK and tell me which one felt like both raids were more meaningful. Since Highmaul drops exactly zero tier, most people don't even think it's part of this raid tier. They just see it as a "filler" raid, the likes of places such as Zul'Aman, and even ZA was more entertaining in that regard because at least you could go in for mount runs.

And speaking of raid tiers, let's add that to the list of BC accomplishments being removed in Warlords. Instead of the massive tiers of BC (Kara/Gruul/Mag, then SSC/TK, then Hyjal/BT/Sunwell) we will likely get a final tier that, at most, will be lucky to have 11 bosses in it and one will probably only be unlocked in mythic mode. And there's not even going to be three tiers of raiding this expansion. All for the wonderful hefty price of being $10 higher than Burning Crusade cost us.

They made a claim that they were giving us that "epic feeling that BC gave us"...and then didn't even bother to deliver it in the slightest. The world doesn't feel as dangerous as it did in BC because nobody even goes out into it. The raids don't feel as epic because half of them are barely relevant. Dungeons may as well not even exist...you don't even really get quests to do them until max level (68 if you wanna get really technical).

BC this expansion is farthest from. It's like the exact opposite of BC. And people wonder why it's getting such a negative response to it so early into it's existence.

[Littleraven]

I think most people have realised by now that this simply won't be the case. It ends with 6.2.
Why? because Blizzard gets money by selling expansions, not patches. 60$ expansions every year over free patches is a no-brainer to them.

Only problem with that assessment is that at this point it is literally impossible to have a yearly expansion unless the next one is already WELL underway. WoD has been out for what...just under 5 months now? And we have no sign of 6.2 since BRF just launched not too long ago. Each tier could last 6 months yeah but that doesn't seem to be the case unless Blizzard announces 6.2 in a month. Sure they COULD but that would put an unbelievable amount of strain on them to not only get 6.2 and the final raid out but also have the next expansion ready so there isn't a huge gap at the end of WoD.

And believe me....if WoD has a gap at the end on top of the already fairly light amount of content as it is....there are going to be riots. Say what you will about the amount of content in the game currently but 6.1 no matter how you shake it was NOT a content patch. It added things yeah but I would more call that a feature patch. In the past content patches have always added a new raid, dungeon or something of that ilk. 6.1 had none of that. If Tanaan has opened it would have been better but I truly do wonder what Blizzard has been working on all this time.

WoD has felt rushed since the get go and I like to hope that we haven't seen anything yet as far as the expansion goes but If they truly are planning to make 6.2 the final raid/content patch I just wonder what the hell it is. Whatever it is they are running out of clock to make this yearly thing work. Honestly I say they just stick with 18 months. If WoD is a taste of what to expect as a whole going forward I kinda fear for the state of the game. They have done this weird thing where they say they want things for people to do outside of raiding but they are showing the complete opposite.

[SlippyCheeze]

Only problem with that assessment is that at this point it is literally impossible to have a yearly expansion unless the next one is already WELL underway. WoD has been out for what...just under 5 months now? And we have no sign of 6.2 since BRF just launched not too long ago. Each tier could last 6 months yeah but that doesn't seem to be the case unless Blizzard announces 6.2 in a month. Sure they COULD but that would put an unbelievable amount of strain on them to not only get 6.2 and the final raid out but also have the next expansion ready so there isn't a huge gap at the end of WoD.

Much as I hate to defend the tinfoil brigade, Blizzard have publicly stated that development of the next xpac is well underway at this point. That said, it doesn't seem like we are going to get a yearly push since HM and BRF will be out longer than six months if they stick to their stated "feels about right" for tier lengths, and the next tier will not be out less than six months.

- - - Updated - - -

All for the wonderful hefty price of being $10 higher than Burning Crusade cost us.

You forgot about inflation, since the $50 xpac back in 2007 is worth around $56.60 in 2105 dollars.

[shadowstep]

Much as I hate to defend the tinfoil brigade, Blizzard have publicly stated that development of the next xpac is well underway at this point. That said, it doesn't seem like we are going to get a yearly push since HM and BRF will be out longer than six months if they stick to their stated "feels about right" for tier lengths, and the next tier will not be out less than six months.

- - - Updated - - -



You forgot about inflation, since the $50 xpac back in 2007 is worth around $56.60 in 2105 dollars.

If they actually follow their plan of making an expansion every year with only 2 tiers and no content, WoD is going to be my last WoW expansion....
An MMO isnt a game like FIFA or CoD or any other type of game that gets a release every year and should not be played like that, IMO

[Khovai]

So is this it for WoW?

I hear you on the yearly expansion release but there's no way. It takes them too long to agree on anything to release an expansion every year and we haven't even heard a hint of anything being worked on. I would think that if ANYTHING was under the knife at the moment, someone or an oops would have leaked something about it.

I think the worst part about this is, there's people that are still actually defending them. It's unreal. They've built up all these clients over the years who believe they can do no wrong and now they're just pushing out what little they can to see how much they can make.

Believe me when I say I've never been on the hate-train for Blizzard and I grew up with their games. However, WoD has shown me how much of a company they are.

Gaming companies like Blizzard have ALWAYS existed to make money. They used to have 12 million subs paying to play their game. You can call it burn out or old age of a game but look at Wotlk and compare it to what they're doing today.

While Wotlk wasn't perfect it felt like they still had passion and soul behind whatever they did. Today, it's like all the passion has been sucked out and now it's just a chore that needs done for these devs. Then again, Bobby Kotick did say his goal was to take the fun out of making video games. I'm also sure there's people who think Activision's board has absolutely no direction or influence over how Blizzard runs an operation (right).

[Kanadei]

BC this expansion is farthest from. It's like the exact opposite of BC. And people wonder why it's getting such a negative response to it so early into it's existence.

This... actually makes a lot of sense.

I love it when I bring up that BC had bosses like Gruul and Mag in addition to the tier raids and people are like "but we have solo bosses there is drov and rukhmar" but back in BC we had Gruul, Mag AND Doomlord Kazzak and whoever the other world boss was.

In short: I agree, there are so many less dungeons. Less raids. Less bosses. And yet we're consistently told that the team is bigger and more experienced.

[Deleted]

WoD is at least as bad as Cata, not sure it's worse.

Well, maybe it is worse, since I never unsubbed in Cata.

WoD has made the same mistake as cata (catering to the hardcore and fuck everyone else) only this time it's raiding and not rock hard 5 mans that a distinerested gen pop have been herded into. We just need a dev blog saying "deal with it" about the new raid model and then a hasty retraction after a subs crash and we are there.....

[Thelonicus]

Wow has its own style for graphics, the old world was updated with cataclysm, blizzard doesnt do mobile games if you exclude the port of hearthstone, they arent covering anything up by lying about their developement team. infact they are open about most of the changes to wow, yet people take it as conspiracy and lies because of reasons.

Overwatch isnt finished, its not even hit public testing so probably not a cashcow as its not even being sold yet.... Warlords has given room for everyone to get properly started before the next chain of quests, raids, events and features which hits with 6.2. Mists and cata did it aswell, i dont see what the issue is with smaller patches between raid tiers. We got to play highmaul out before we entered the foundry, and we will get to play that out before we hit Tanaan jungle in 6.2. (the story present in the live game even tells it flat out, Grommash is in Tanaan jungle and the iron horde is.... do the quests :P

Take a break if the suspense of whats next is unbearing Blizzard does more things and do them faster cause their community whines and feel entitled like spoiled babies at times :P They sure as day arent lying.