Is there less pressure to address content droughts because of the ingame store?

[Deleted]

TBC had even more raid content at launch than any other expansion after that, and they were able to put out even more 5-man dungeons at launch than in WotLK. The idea that Naxxramas enabled them to put out more dungeons than ever doesn't hold up, when there was an expansion where they could do both - new raids and a good amount of 5-man dungeons. WotLK still also had more zones and more quests than any other expansion. It doesn't change that they gave us less in a lot of areas after that.

You can't really compare things as they are now to things as they were in vanilla / TBC. But if you really want to ? well here we go.
TBC did have a lot of content purely group PVE wise. There was so many dungeons and raids I'll give you that, but what else was there ? That's right, just about nothing, bar 1 new BG.
Not only that but they had to tune bosses for one single difficulty (there's 5/6 in MoP, 4 in WoD not even counting the fact that sizes are flexible) and quite frankly bosses had only a fraction of today's mechanisms. Even in SWP, as a DPS I frankly had not much to do. Also do I have to remind you the abysmal amount of work done on balancing classes ? Have you seen what amount of work they're doing on that exact same issue in WoD ? Check the front page if not.

Sure if you look at that tiny part of gameplay you're enjoying and then also realising you've been somehow doing nothing for thepast 11 months you'll get this impression, but you fail to see the big picture.
"but I don't care for LFR, FLex, 25mn raiding, ability pruning, stat squishing, pet battles, brawler's guild, quests, farming, pvp, world bosses, flavor items, fun events, and so much more...also I loved how my old model looked like the really did not need to lose time for that!"
Yeah well all this is still happening and much more. This is content, it's right under your eyes to see. There's more news about new content than I even care to read about, and there I am reading a post about how much we lack in content. I mean surely you can get bored at some point, I even told you earlier I'm unsubbed. But content is here in MoP and well under way for WoD as well., and it's a fact.

I think we're seen all sides of the argument, I'm leaving now. You've made it perfectly clear that TBC was flourishing with content while we're here waiting with nothing to do for a whole year - because yes SoO was totally over in a week btw.
As for the baby thing it just proves that you can't achieve everything by just adding more people to a team. Yes you will be able to give out more content to some extent but this is not infinite, at least not without jeopardising the quality of said content.

[Deleted]

You can't really compare things as they are now to things as they were in vanilla / TBC. But if you really want to ? well here we go.
TBC did have a lot of content purely group PVE wise. There was so many dungeons and raids I'll give you that, but what else was there ? That's right, just about nothing, bar 1 new BG.
Not only that but they had to tune bosses for one single difficulty (there's 5/6 in MoP, 4 in WoD not even counting the fact that sizes are flexible) and quite frankly bosses had only a fraction of today's mechanisms. Even in SWP, as a DPS I frankly had not much to do. Also do I have to remind you the abysmal amount of work done on balancing classes ? Have you seen what amount of work they're doing on that exact same issue in WoD ? Check the front page if not.

Sure if you look at that tiny part of gameplay you're enjoying and then also realising you've been somehow doing nothing for thepast 11 months you'll get this impression, but you fail to see the big picture.
"but I don't care for LFR, FLex, 25mn raiding, ability pruning, stat squishing, pet battles, brawler's guild, quests, farming, pvp, world bosses, flavor items, fun events, and so much more...also I loved how my old model looked like the really did not need to lose time for that!"
Yeah well all this is still happening and much more. This is content, it's right under your eyes to see. There's more news about new content than I even care to read about, and there I am reading a post about how much we lack in content. I mean surely you can get bored at some point, I even told you earlier I'm unsubbed. But content is here in MoP and well under way for WoD as well., and it's a fact.

I think we're seen all sides of the argument, I'm leaving now. You've made it perfectly clear that TBC was flourishing with content while we're here waiting with nothing to do for a whole year - because yes SoO was totally over in a week btw.
As for the baby thing it just proves that you can't achieve everything by just adding more people to a team. Yes you will be able to give out more content to some extent but this is not infinite, at least not without jeopardising the quality of said content.

Tuning raid difficulties in some cases is really just numbers tweaking or leaving certain mechanics out. I'm sure it takes some time, but do you really want to tell me that's why we're getting only half the dungeons than in TBC and WotLK and fewer zones than in those expansions? I'm sure that creating about 8 additional dungeons and 3-4 additional zones with quests for both factions and with quests that are exclusive to Alliance or Horde, all of which comes with art, boss encounters, lore, is more work than tweaking a few numbers and leaving mechanics out to make it easier. Designing raids with different difficulties is also something they've been doing for years now so I expect them to be really experienced at it at this point.

Brawlers Guild, Pet Battles, Proving Grounds, are all nice little things, but it doesn't offer a lot of content and they didn't need to put nearly the same amount of work into that. Brawler's Guild has bosses, but not a very big environment was created for it, it's a very arena-like type of environment and the fights aren't nearly as complex as dungeons and raid encounters. And if you want to tell me that I shouldn't complain about 11 months of no new content and just play some Brawlers's Guild or slimmed-down Pokemon version with everything removed that makes Pokemon interesting in the first place - nah, I'll pass. And even if you hail all these little features as something that gives us content, none of this was released in the last 11 months, which still makes the last 11 months a content drought. Content droughts are a problem and Blizzard acknowledged that. Don't tell people to play some pet battles, when they want new dungeons, raids and quests. That's the core content of WoW.

[Blufossa]

Blizzard takes time to make a quality game they've made for 10 years, and people complain about a small "content drought". One year is nothing compared to the seven years it took ArenaNet to make GW2. And let's not mention some of the console games being "redone" for lack of imagination.

Blizzard is doing a fine job. There's still lots to do in WoW. If you're bored, go play something else for a bit and come back at WoD instead of making pointless threads.

(FYI the Blizzard shop mounts/pets have nothing to do with content. Just like the UI team has nothing to do with how a mob/NPC looks or acts.)

[Lincoln Lawyer]

They must generate a lot of money from the ingame store. They push out more mounts and pets more frequently. It used to be just about two a year, now it's a new one every few months. They added cosmetic gear and will likely add more.

How is that content? That is no more content than heroic difficulty is content.

So I can buy a different skin for my mount. Ok...how does that make the game more fun or appealing?

[Deleted]

Blizzard takes time to make a quality game they've made for 10 years, and people complain about a small "content drought". One year is nothing compared to the seven years it took ArenaNet to make GW2. And let's not mention some of the console games being "redone" for lack of imagination.

Blizzard is doing a fine job. There's still lots to do in WoW. If you're bored, go play something else for a bit and come back at WoD instead of making pointless threads.

(FYI the Blizzard shop mounts/pets have nothing to do with content. Just like the UI team has nothing to do with how a mob/NPC looks or acts.)

It took Blizzard longer than one year to make World of Wacraft. You're comparing the expansion of a game, where people pay a subscription fee to the release of a whole new stand alone game that people had to wait for to be released?

- - - Updated - - -

How is that content? That is no more content than heroic difficulty is content.

So I can buy a different skin for my mount. Ok...how does that make the game more fun or appealing?

I didn't say it's content.

[Lincoln Lawyer]

Blizzard takes time to make a quality game they've made for 10 years, and people complain about a small "content drought". One year is nothing compared to the seven years it took ArenaNet to make GW2. And let's not mention some of the console games being "redone" for lack of imagination.

Blizzard is doing a fine job. There's still lots to do in WoW. If you're bored, go play something else for a bit and come back at WoD instead of making pointless threads.

(FYI the Blizzard shop mounts/pets have nothing to do with content. Just like the UI team has nothing to do with how a mob/NPC looks or acts.)

GW1 had 3 or 4 expansions, remained free to play, always, and its standard leveling zones were more challenging than WoW's raids...you conveniently forgot to mention that.

Even today, GW1 is still a good MMO, and can't classify as ever having had a content drought since for the price it cost its content lasted more than a WoW expansion ever did even with 2 major patches.

- - - Updated - - -

I didn't say it's content.

So then how does it help relieve pressure? 6 million people won't come back to the game because there's a new mount for 30$ on the store.

[Durandro]

GW1 had 3 or 4 expansions, remained free to play, always, and its standard leveling zones were more challenging than WoW's raids...you conveniently forgot to mention that.

Ahahaha, no.

More challenging then 5 man dungeons? Sure. Especially if playing alone with those useless henchmen. But raids? Not even close.

[Queen of Hamsters]

Ahahaha, no.

More challenging then 5 man dungeons? Sure. Especially if playing alone with those useless henchmen. But raids? Not even close.

Was just about to say. Same with GW2, gotta love how people hail content as more challenging when it plainly isn't...at least to anyone above average skill.

[Deleted]

GW1 had 3 or 4 expansions, remained free to play, always, and its standard leveling zones were more challenging than WoW's raids...you conveniently forgot to mention that.

Even today, GW1 is still a good MMO, and can't classify as ever having had a content drought since for the price it cost its content lasted more than a WoW expansion ever did even with 2 major patches.

The guy I quoted directly compared the amount of time we have no content in Wow until the release of the next expansion to the amount of time it took some other developer to develop a completely new game, making it sound as if we should be glad they don't take as long as other developers with their games. Of course a complete new game will take longer to develop than just an expansion. Compare the amount of time it took to create two games or two expansions to each other if you want to make a point. I might as well say Duke Nukem Forever took an eternity, be glad you only have to wait a year without new content in this game you pay a monthly fee for.

So then how does it help relieve pressure? 6 million people won't come back to the game because there's a new mount for 30$ on the store.

Read the OP

[rda]

They must generate a lot of money from the ingame store. They push out more mounts and pets more frequently. It used to be just about two a year, now it's a new one every few months. They added cosmetic gear and will likely add more. And they just made it possible to buy a level 90 character for 50 euros (60 dollars I think). With the amount of classes, people wanting to reroll and try different classes, they likely get a lot of money from that and will get even more in the future. They will only add things to the store, and if sales go down, they can drop the price. "Get your level 90 for 50% off". "Get every class for 100€ limited time only".

Is it possible the money they get from the store puts less pressure on them to address these terrible content droughts between expansions? It only got worse over time, even though they promised they would try to do something about it. I feel that they would be forced to put out more content between expansions if they didn't have the sales from the ingame store and even the other services they offer. We tend to think like, "I like this company and the game, I want to support them, so I'm gonna give them money for these things and even get something out of it". It seems like the right thing to do, support them by giving them more money, so the game will do better, but do they actually put effort into making the game better? Do they use the money they get to finance other games instead? By not supporting them through things like the ingame store, could we actually get them to realize they have to put more effort into keeping players subscribed?

Yes, I think expanding the game store has that effect on Blizzard's managers / devs minds where instead of putting everything into quality / quantity of the game itself, they are trying to "balance" that with the "needs" of the game store. The temptation to do more with the game store and less with the actual game definitely exists, it's not a good one, and it might eventually be their undoing.

The moment they decided to expand the game store while keeping a sub, they have taken a very dangerous road. I am not sure they can actually walk it without falling into a hole. We'll see...

[Lincoln Lawyer]

Ahahaha, no.

More challenging then 5 man dungeons? Sure. Especially if playing alone with those useless henchmen. But raids? Not even close.

You know it's really starting to grind my gears when people refer to WoW's raids as challenging. I've done raiding from BC to WOTLK start to end and I've seen all there is to see. What was there to see?

"Ok guys, why did we wipe last try?"

"Um sorry everyone, cat jumped on my keyboard, I couldn't get a heal off in time."

"Dps, you were a little bit low."

"Yeah we're still in previous tier gear, we're working on our reputation upgrades for this patch."

"Ok then, main tank, can you please switch with off tank for the adds when you're at x stacks faster, so healers don't have to waste as much mana..."


BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAHBBLAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Same shit every time, same problems, same excuses, same strategies. Taunt that guy, do that special gimmick, aoe phase, move out of shit phase. rinse, repeat x100 until everyone got used to the fight or the upgrades started coming in.

As compared to GW leveling (TALKING ABOUT GW1 HERE, DON'T HIT ME WITH THAT GW2 BULLSHIT, I DIDN'T SAY GW2), every encounter past level 10 you had to do the same thing you did in raids except non-stop. You'd have mobs of enemies you had to tank, split apart, aoe, interrupt, cc, and you didn't have any holy trinity really, tanking was more per individual basis. If the hard hitting guy was on you and you died it was probably your fault for sucking. You couldn't yell TANK TANK SAVE ME. Sure, healers were more prevalent and did a more traditional job, but in the end they couldn't keep you alive if you stood still waiting for miracles to happen, as opposed to WoW where all DPS have to worry about is their EPEEN meters and when to AOE/single target/move out of shit.

[cFortyfive]

Yes, I think expanding the game store has that effect on Blizzard's managers / devs minds where instead of putting everything into quality / quantity of the game itself, they are trying to "balance" that with the "needs" of the game store. The temptation to do more with the game store and less with the actual game definitely exists, it's not a good one, and it might eventually be their undoing.

Well to be fair it's not entirely on them. There are enough other titles who paved the way for that and Blizzard even has one of them in house.

[rda]

Well to be fair it's not entirely on them. There are enough other titles who paved the way for that and Blizzard even has one of them in house.

Maybe, but it doesn't change much. The incentive is there, and it's a very, very, very dangerous one.

[cFortyfive]

Maybe, but it doesn't change much. The incentive is there, and it's a very, very, very dangerous one.

Well of course and the customer buys it. You're right it's way too tempting for any business.

[Paradyne]

Whilst it may be annoying for segments of the player base that the in-game store exists it is terrific business sense on Blizzard's part. They've found a way to offset the loss of revenue from losing millions of players by getting a cashed up segment of their customers to pay more. A willing segment it seems as well, the alternate approach of upping the subscription cost would not be so well received.

Does this put less incentive on them to get out more content?....well, given they can seemingly weather content droughts without significantly hurting revenue than I would say absolutely yes it does. Sure, they are kind of getting the best of both worlds of the subscription & free to play models but they have proven that people will pay for both cosmetic items, mounts, pets, boosts & character services. Inevitably they will be forced to push more & more items into the cash store to compensate for subscription losses...there is already some evidence to indicate both the fey dragon & iron sky reaver may have originally been intended as WOD in game mounts.

Where the real problem comes in is like the current situation where it is reasonably clear they have how had internal development issues, it results in a big content drought & it becomes a lot more obvious the cash shop is being used more & more to tide them over. But, if people are willing to pay they will keep going to that well as often as they can.

[Deleted]

there is already some evidence to indicate both the fey dragon & iron sky reaver may have originally been intended as WOD in game mounts.

Really, what's that evidence?

[Deleted]

Yes I know I said I was gone, but there's so many wrongs and arguments taken straight out of your rear in your post that I needed to address it.

Tuning raid difficulties in some cases is really just numbers tweaking or leaving certain mechanics out.

And that is why raid tuning lasts for 2+ months on PTR ? Yea definitely not much to look at right ?

I'm sure it takes some time, but do you really want to tell me that's why we're getting only half the dungeons than in TBC and WotLK and fewer zones than in those expansions?

No, I'm telling you all the "new" casual stuff we're getting nowadays takes similar if not more time than designing a few more dungeons, also while dungeons were still enjoyed all expansion long during TBC the abolition of atonements made them merely relevant past the first raid tier during Cata and onwards. As a company, when you see something as resource consuming as dungeons being left out 4 months after release, what is the next logical step ? Doing more dungeons ? Nope. And that's why you get less dungeons (that you seem to enjoy) and more other stuff (that others might enjoy).

I'm sure that creating about 8 additional dungeons and 3-4 additional zones with quests for both factions and with quests that are exclusive to Alliance or Horde, all of which comes with art, boss encounters, lore, is more work than tweaking a few numbers and leaving mechanics out to make it easier.

Again, I don't get what you're saying. Purely speaking in a matter of numbers MoP had 7 zones, just like TBC, WotLK had 8 and Cata had 5 - and I'm not even mentioning IoT and TI (which would amount to 9 for MoP). Also never before have I encountered more WBs and mini bosses in the open than in MoP's zones. Art, despite being fundamentally subjective has been pretty flawless in MoP and lore is almost a non issue when all the lore up until... what? LK ? was already written down - unlike MoP's lore.

Designing raids with different difficulties is also something they've been doing for years now so I expect them to be really experienced at it at this point.

For years ? 10man were a joke and treated accordingly in WotLK (aka very poor tweaking). LFR is still pretty new and demanded a few iterations to how they function. Flex just came out. Even then, how condescending of you to dismiss all this work with a simple "oh but they are experienced now right ?"

Brawlers Guild, Pet Battles, Proving Grounds, are all nice little things, but it doesn't offer a lot of content

It does.

and they didn't need to put nearly the same amount of work into that.

Says who ? You ? Well ok then !

Brawler's Guild has bosses, but not a very big environment was created for it, it's a very arena-like type of environment and the fights aren't nearly as complex as dungeons and raid encounters.

You mean, just like ToC was? Talking about complex fights and mechanisms, Hexos is to LK what LK is to Garrosh. So yep, there's that.

And if you want to tell me that I shouldn't complain about 11 months of no new content

I'm not, you have every right to complain about that, but it's more a problem about the pace at which they released the content than the amount of it.

and just play some Brawlers's Guild or slimmed-down Pokemon version with everything removed that makes Pokemon interesting in the first place - nah, I'll pass. And even if you hail all these little features as something that gives us content, none of this was released in the last 11 months, which still makes the last 11 months a content drought. Content droughts are a problem and Blizzard acknowledged that. Don't tell people to play some pet battles, when they want new dungeons, raids and quests. That's the core content of WoW.

I mainly play WoW for it's raiding environment, if it was just my choice we'd have nothing else than raiding content and as much of it as possible. I don't care much for pet battles, I don't care much for scenarios, I don't care much for even PvP. But guess what ? This is content and you can't dismiss it because you personally don't like it. There seems to still be 6M people out there enjoying almost exclusively those little features. Those 4 more dungeons at the start of MoP you wanted so much ? They would be totally irrelevant now. The game has never been more versatile than it is today and is able to answer the needs of many different types of players. Is it a good strategy ? I don't know and it's not the aim of this thread because it is irrelevant to the amount sheer raw content they pull out, which is here no matter if you feel it is aimed towards your envies or not.

As for the 11 months of "draught" as you so eloquently repeat post after post.
1. There has always been a long period without content at the end of every single expansion. 2 +/- months isn't enough to declare how little they care anymore or not.
2. As I've said above this can also be the cause of a very bad (and this is my opinion) pacing in their content. Raiding tiers were very demanding and very tiring for most guilds and could have lasted a good month or two longer - especially with the filler patches.
3. SoO took roughly twice as long to clear than DS. Making the effective "draught" time somewhat similar if not shorter for MoP in my experience. Also once again, designing and tuning for only half the bosses is a great way to find time for developing the new expansion faster. Ta-da you've found were those 2 months were mysteriously lost.

[Paradyne]

Really, what's that evidence?

Both the fey dragon & the Iron Skyreaver are used by NPCs & flight points in the beta currently for WOD. This presents two possibilities either they were always intended to be WOD mounts but for some reason were brought forward to the cash shop during MOP (to which they do not relate in any lore fashion) to help raise revenue. Or alternatively as another development cost cutting exercise they decided to re-use the cash shop mounts & save creating new ones for WOD.

Circumstantial evidence, supposition....sure. But it still stands that neither of those mounts relate to MOP in any fashion, are however present in WOD yet were released well in advance of that expansion for no seeming reason other than padding the cash shop & revenue. Maybe they were intended to be in game faction related mounts, Raid rewards & they were moved to the cash shop or maybe Blizzard is just lazy & reused them. Neither is a particularly palatable outcome in my opinion (notice I said my opinion & not that this is fact or anyone else's opinion)

Well apart from maybe this guy as well who seems to share that opinion somewhat

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fo4HhtpQXKI

[Deleted]

Both the fey dragon & the Iron Skyreaver are used by NPCs & flight points in the beta currently for WOD. This presents two possibilities either they were always intended to be WOD mounts but for some reason were brought forward to the cash shop during MOP (to which they do not relate in any lore fashion) to help raise revenue. Or alternatively as another development cost cutting exercise they decided to re-use the cash shop mounts & save creating new ones for WOD.

Circumstantial evidence, supposition....sure. But it still stands that neither of those mounts relate to MOP in any fashion, are however present in WOD yet were released well in advance of that expansion for no seeming reason other than padding the cash shop & revenue. Maybe they were intended to be in game faction related mounts, Raid rewards & they were moved to the cash shop or maybe Blizzard is just lazy & reused them. Neither is a particularly palatable outcome in my opinion (notice I said my opinion & not that this is fact or anyone else's opinion)

Well apart from maybe this guy as well who seems to share that opinion somewhat

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fo4HhtpQXKI

Sounds plausible. Especially with the Iron Skyreaver. Everyone expected that to be released in WoD in some fashion, when it was released in MoP a lot of people thought it was by mistake.

[Paradyne]

Sounds plausible. Especially with the Iron Skyreaver. Everyone expected that to be released in WoD in some fashion, when it was released in MoP a lot of people thought it was by mistake.

It's understandable, they had to do something to offset the revenue they knew they were going to lose with sub losses due to the WOD delays. They were already stretching the art resources to get the character models done & all they had to do was grab & couple of mounts from WOD & release them early. It's not inconceivable that the Warforged nightmare was possibly intended to be for the release of Heroes of the Storm (like the hearthsteed) or possibly as a new RAF mount & it too was put in the cash shop to raise money quickly.