Veteran WoW player, what is going wrong with the WoW dev team?

[Deleted]

God I don't know which scenario is worse...

Nr. 1 would be much worse because nr. 2 could easily be fixed (if it hasn't already happened). If Nr 1. is true then the next expansion will be similiar to WoD in design. Which means reduced investment and more money from store mounts, tokens and services.

[ElDoorO]

I agree with everything except ONE thing: Social Integration.
It was a *SIDE PROJECT* that two people did on their own PERSONAL TIME.
Having been a developer -- I've done these things out of passion.
In fact the majority of my side projects 90% of the customers never even knew existed -- only admins did but it made their job SO much easier and faster. I say that -- I mean we're talking something that would take 2 hours now takes 10 minutes.

These "little things" are actually very nice for the people who end up using them though, honestly, I think WoW could have used this a long time ago back when my friends *actually* played.

So this *one* item I'll defend because they didn't "spend" resources on it.

Everything else, spot on.
I'm still VERY butt hurt about the gold though. It felt like my first chance to actually catch up to those around me and that's yoinked.

FFXIV I got running and boy is it nicer than WoW so far but feels like a good WoW replacement but, alas, my MMO flame is dimly lit and was nearly snuffed out when someone said PvP in FFXIV sucked (or maybe doesn't exist?). It does, though, seem to have less of a grindy feel. I mean it's a grind but some "role play" aspects are gone seemingly. I seem to auto-pick up everything without actually *doing* anything to pick it up -- which is surprisingly nice. I have a chick friend whose laptop won't play it so I'm holding off on her to get one and then I'll let her run me through it for shiggles.

I mailed all my gold, non-BoP items to a friend. Gave him my account info to suck out my garrison resources. I'm outtie. He can decide what he wants to do with it.
Besides if I *were* to come back it'd be for PvP one day, so it's not like those mats or gold would matter *anyways* since you can't craft PvP gear and I'd just be bottom of the ladder for my team to carry until I got conquest gear anyways.
I'm jacking around writing my own game (among other person projects) at the moment. Nothing special at the moment, no long-term vision. Just... something to do.

[threads]

blizz needs to purge the idiots in the team that are making retarded design choices.

until then i will play ffxiv

[Deleted]

You're right, it's bad on a level where it's actively hard to even understand what they're trying to do and who they think it's for.

Like for example, they had more than half a year to see what happened with garrison missions and what the feedback was. And then they not only released the same thing over again, the kicker is that they released the same thing but worse. What the fuck? What why how who WHAT? What was the thought process that lead to that? What can you even say? If you land in the vicinity of competence at least I have some feedback, but doubling down with shipyards, what the fuck?

I think this was what they had planned out. They've stated a huge portion of the team are working on the next xpac, so I guess they figured lets just get this done as planned and get back to new xpac as quickly as possible. As for who it's for.....when you look at the slimmed down specs, the rng stats, fewer enchants and gem sockets, reduced content; the only conclusion you come to is that it's for them. It's all been about making their lives easier while trying to maintain profits.

[Xtrm]

Honestly, something catastrophic had to have happened during development, like some intern deleted system32 on all the PCs at Blizzard.

I'll give Blizzard the benefit on the doubt, I'm sure they had great plans for WoD to make it amazing. But, I think towards the end, they started to rush development since SoO was already going on far too long. So they rushed out the expansion, but it fell short in many players eyes, so they realized they had to rush out 6.1 quick, which is why 6.1 was very lackluster, then after 6.1 was a disappointment, they had to rush out 6.2 to keep people interested, thus why 6.2 feels a bit bland too. So, honestly, I think the development issues just spiraled out of control, which led to Blizzard releasing under-developed patches.

I personally blame Garrisons, originally Garrisons were meant to be a side feature, completely optional, similar to the Halfhill Farm, only much larger... Then someone decided it would be a great idea to make garrisons more mandatory than optional. That means reworking a huge part of the expansion to include more garrisons. I think that's why they didn't have time to make Garrisons more customizable, I think that's why Karabor and Bladespire were scrapped, and I think that's why many of the storylines that were planned to be in WoD, are not (Worgen and Blood Knight questlines come to mind). While you can't blame all the issues in WoD on Garrisons, I think you can make connections between them.

[Kourvith]

What happened to Blizzard ?
The answer has been incredibly public for a while now : http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/company...tml?id=15000CJ

[Justpassing]

Man if only these WoW "veterans" came together and made a game...Oh wait, that's Wildstar.

[Kevyne-Shandris]

Honestly, something catastrophic had to have happened during development, like some intern deleted system32 on all the PCs at Blizzard.

I'll give Blizzard the benefit on the doubt, I'm sure they had great plans for WoD to make it amazing. But, I think towards the end, they started to rush development since SoO was already going on far too long.

Politics.

That warlock dev gave us a peak in how the sausage is made there (along with the company critique from current and ex-employees at glassdoor.com).

Too many dinosaurs promoted due to loyalty and longevity that maintains the status quo, despite the market has changed from 1998-2008. The old EQ mindsets don't jive in a world more in tuned to equality (so much so it can be considered communist at times ... kids now don't feel ashamed to beg, for example).

[Dvaldin]

What happened to Blizzard ?
The answer has been incredibly public for a while now : http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/company...tml?id=15000CJ

You might be onto something there. Holy moley, there's a lot of WoW jobs open. Some pretty important ones too. http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/company...as;city=Irvine

[Solvaran]

I've essentially moved on to FF XIV (subscribed halfway through Ion's latest interview, since there was no way we'd see improvement in 6.2, you can't change course that fast). Here's my biggest issues with WoW development lately:

1) Based on Ghostcrawler's comments during MoP, they view new dungeons through the lens of "new raid bosses" vs. "new dungeons". So, we got scenarios added as opposed to new dungeons added over the course of MoP. I much prefer what they did with LK when they added 3 new dungeons when they added ICC, 1 dungeon when they did TOC, etc.

2) They made LFD completely irrelevant to gear progression (outside of 5 runs of dungeons for legendary quest line). This is directly related to the removal of valor points, imo.

3) They made LFR (much) easier than in previous expansions. This happened for a number of reasons (i.e. they assume raiders won't q for it, so "casuals" can't be "carried"... seeing as how me and my friends who q'd together we often in the top 5 dps, top 2 heals, and I often tanked them, I don't feel that we were carried all the often, but that's the perception, I think). Imo, LFR is significantly easier than heroic dungeons (and sometimes shorter!).

4) The completely screwed up the reward vs. effort vs. engagement system, imo. The removal of "currency" to keep content relevant to progression (which is 99.9% gear releated in WoW) was a huge mistake and garrisons are/were out of whack as well (i.e. gold/gear/etc.) for boring/quickish content.

To some extent, I think a lot of this is due to designing for raiders (not including LFR here) but needing casuals to support the business/revenue model. So they probably remove valor to keep raiders from feeling they need to grind it for progression and they make LFR super easy (too easy to have any staying power without legendary quest drops) and garrisons for folks who can "only" log on a few minutes each day.

I get what they're trying to do, I just feel it has been very poorly thought out, executed, etc. To some extent, I think Bliz has grown quite complacent with WoW. They were probably also thinking Titan would be the next-gen MMO so WoW probably wasn't where the company focus/engergy was.

Meanwhile, FF XIV is giving me the feeling I had back in BC/LK days. I'm sad to give up WoW after 10+ years, many, many toons, much gold/mounts/pets/achievements/lore/etc., however, WoD is just plain bad (imo) and I hung in there longer than most of my friends, but it just isn't fun, imo (unless you're a serious raider).

- - - Updated - - -

There are two options here:

-WoD was a calculated business move to cut losses short for reduced investment (earnings call seems to indicate this

-WoD was mismanaged and the flaws are due to incompetent

Yes, they are a publicly traded company now, so while we might think WoD was released before it was a quality product due to how long SOO was, it is far more likely that it was released when it was due to needing to book revenue at a specific time. Blizzard also probably looks at the calendar for when other MMO's release major content and try to "counter program" (they did this on Tues... 6.2 released on FF XIV's new expansion release date). "Stealing" other companies' thunder is a tried and true business practice, particular if you're the market leader.

So, financial decisions (i.e. book revenue and/or stick it to a competitor) > game quality > quality of life (i.e. SOO being around so long).

[Ballrug]

Fuck if I know. The first thing I saw at the Iron Docks was another bar to fill up.

I wasn't drunk enough for that shit. Maybe tonight.

[Kevyne-Shandris]

You might be onto something there. Holy moley, there's a lot of WoW jobs open. Some pretty important ones too. http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/company...as;city=Irvine

One of the bullet points for the lead...

Identify and communicate all roadblocks and bottlenecks that may prevent the team from achieving their goals.

The problem, though?

Politics.

Can identify and communicate all they want, but if no one cares to fix the problems due to a top heavy company maintaining a status quo, it's just words on paper.

[dope_danny]

On one hand they suffer from "good old boys club" syndrome and they keep their friends at the top and new blood is just the rotation undercaste of peons working for them. These people stay on top even when they say "i dont know how we can fix X" when traditionally not having ideas on how to fix problems got you moved from the team or at least from the leadership roles in games development. Thats not the case on the WoW team. No new blood to breed innovation and the same dudes -albiet the pony tails are now greying and the ear rings are more green than gold- and they sit on top going "i dont know what to do". Thats not going to create a good product is it?

Although there have been industry rumours doing the rounds this year that Activision-Blizzard has cut the production budgets of World of Wacraft and Call of Duty to "expand their portfolio" and pump that money into easier to manage cash cows like Hearthstone instead.

Honestly? much as i think WoW could do with some new blood at the top i look at everything outside the first two zones of Dreanor and it SCREAMS that something changed like their budget and time allotments got slashed dramatically and this is what they did with the time and resources given.

Which doesnt bare too well for the future

[Deleted]

What is funny about all those vacant positions at Blizzard is that they require such a rich resume and profile, whereas young people who don't have that are more likely to have better ideas on how to improve the game.

[Ballrug]

What is funny about all those vacant positions at Blizzard is that they require such a rich resume and profile, whereas young people who don't have that are more likely to have better ideas on how to improve the game.

Mostly, people who are young and inexperienced are more likely to be inexperienced. It actually is important.

[manypillars]

There are two options here:

-WoD was a calculated business move to cut losses short for reduced investment (earnings call seems to indicate this

-WoD was mismanaged and the flaws are due to incompetent

It certainly feels like I was optimized out of the target audience, but given what they showed and talked up about WoD (and if you take what they said about flying at face value) it seems like somewhere mid-development something big happened internally that resulted in a huge disruption. Like a change of personnel or strategy high up in the food chain that forced a course change. Perhaps a reallocation of their team to another project. I want to give them the benefit of the doubt, but at this point I don't really see any reason to not accept it when they say WoD is the exactly expansion they wanted to make.

[Deleted]

Mostly, people who are young and inexperienced are more likely to be inexperienced. It actually is important.

You don't need experience to have ideas. Because that's what they are lacking at the moment - someone to put them in touch with what people feel, what people want, what this game could do to be a blast for both the old and the new alike.

Regarding technical positions - experience is decisive there, obviously.

[Ballrug]

You don't need experience to have ideas. Because that's what they are lacking at the moment - someone to put them in touch with what people feel, what people want, what this game could do to be a blast for both the old and the new alike.

There's no shortage of ideas. Ideas are common. Yes, it's true: Lots of people have lots of ideas.

I mean, if you have a good idea for a novel, all you have to do, is write a novel. Nothing to it. Same with games. Have a good idea, just make a good game. It's simple! That's why everyone is so good at it!

[Azwing]

I think Blizz is, and has been for quite a while, a victim of its own success. They are too busy trying to be all things to all people (and, no, this is directed at casual play, or any other group in particular). My opinion: they should make the game they want to make and stop worrying about maintaining sub numbers. If the game is great and shows the passion of the developers, people will play. If some don't like it and stop playing, then so be it.

[Deleted]

What demographic, exactly, are they trying to please?

Raiders. Organized raiders.