Does the "spent development time" actually matter at this point?

[Justpassing]

The release date thread got me thinking, with all the "blizz shouldn't rush" comments...shouldn't they, really? I think they bloody well should at this point - I'm not talking about the HFC drought specifically really, I mean in general. I'm a fan of "quality over quantity" aswell but this still doesn't explain WoD. Actually, can anyone actually explain WoD to me? We had 14 freaking months of drought for WoD. 14 months. And we got WoD. And we got the selfie patch. That's a tarnish in the WoW records that'll probably never go away, isn't it?

I'm sorry I don't want to make it another "zomg seven years of no content" thread but even the Blizzard white knight in me thinks that Blizzard should probably rush a little at this point, if not for pleasing their customers; to make up for WoD at least. This is getting in the "WoD sux" area a bit so I'll summarize:

Do you think Blizzard should rush Legion and/or future expansions? In an ideal world, quality over quantity trumps but this is hardly "ideal" at this point, isn't it? Maybe something drastic should be done, no?

[Deleted]

I don't want to be an apologist for the abomination of WoD but im now thinking they knew they had to "rush" it and drop it. With the new Chronicles lore and a more on the table in terms of storyline heading from Legion maybe WoD was them slowing down to gather themselves. I hope Legion brings back the true game. Time will only tell now and I don't think they can risk anymore upset.

[Deleted]

Legion will just be WoD continued. With the same quests in endgame you had to level up. With raids.. again.. no new dungeons.. again.. and a large content drought following the 2nd or 3rd patch.

If you really believe blizzard is able to or even wants to learn from their mistakes in the past, you should reevaluate the facts.

[gamingmuscle]

WoD is a well made product that wasn't received well. Blizzard keeps trying to add new shit, and sometimes that shit is going to be disliked. But their work ethic still demands it be a polished product before launching. Rushing WoD would have only made it worse. Rushing legion will only make it worse.

[Pull My Finger]

Yawn, might as well get over it ... seriously. In the grand scale of things and your own life, it's so meaningless what you think about the "content drought" or "development time" or whatever. It's gonna be how it's gonna be.

[Enthralled]

I'm not in the alpha, but I have been in past Blizzard beta tests, and yeah I think this is a silly thing to fret about at this point.

Also giggling at the people who are basing their judgment on the expansion's readiness for release based on what they see on the alpha. None of these people seem to understand that alpha builds are test builds -- not finished builds, not what's available internally at Blizzard. It's what Blizzard wants tested. So quit whining about how bad it is and test it.

[Justpassing]

I'm not in the alpha, but I have been in past Blizzard beta tests, and yeah I think this is a silly thing to fret about at this point.

Also giggling at the people who are basing their judgment on the expansion's readiness for release based on what they see on the alpha. None of these people seem to understand that alpha builds are test builds -- not finished builds, not what's available internally at Blizzard. It's what Blizzard wants tested. So quit whining about how bad it is and test it.

I'm sorry I don't buy that anymore. The "the 'internal builds' are patches ahead" thing. Remember when there were no builds no alpha at all for like three weeks after their mini holiday? After that, can you really believe that they are like ten patches ahead internally? I don't buy it.

[SoulSoBreezy]

I'm sorry I don't buy that anymore. The "the 'internal builds' are patches ahead" thing. Remember when there were no builds no alpha at all for like three weeks after their mini holiday? After that, can you really believe that they are like ten patches ahead internally? I don't buy it.

It's an easy enough pill to swallow. Take a look at all the data mined order hall stuff that's been reiterated build after build, but not a thing has been testable in our version of the alpha. The mission system isn't very complicated and IMO doesn't require alpha testers to look at much aside from "does it work?" We're steered more towards giving Blizzard snapshots of the possible UAT scenario. "How do players feel about this? What can they discover that our smaller test team can't?"

Developing a zone (Azsuna, Suramar) is totally modular, seeing as how it and other zones have a near inclusive experience within.

Finally, these are builds, not patches. Thankfully when there's a patch update to the alpha we don't have to download an entire new client like we used to (when WoW was smaller anyway).

[Enthralled]

I'm sorry I don't buy that anymore. The "the 'internal builds' are patches ahead" thing. Remember when there were no builds no alpha at all for like three weeks after their mini holiday? After that, can you really believe that they are like ten patches ahead internally? I don't buy it.

You're not playing patches. You're playing entire builds. That's what you're not getting about this whole thing.

[Deleted]

Legion will just be WoD continued. With the same quests in endgame you had to level up. With raids.. again.. no new dungeons.. again.. and a large content drought following the 2nd or 3rd patch.

If you really believe blizzard is able to or even wants to learn from their mistakes in the past, you should reevaluate the facts.

i hope for the best but I expect the same. WoD was actually amazing in the first months but then nothing followed.
I'm sure Legion will be amazing, but it needs what WoD didn't get: an amazing mid-expansion content patch. MoP had Isle of Thunder, Cata had Firelands (not amazing, but still pretty good), wotlk had Ulduar as an amazing raid and the tourney for Open World content (the dungeon/raid was crap, but the content around that was a cool idea. It would have been better if they brought it in 2 patches with the quest content first and the dungeon later, so that Ulduar wasn't devalued that quick). BC had a content problem itself, with the infamous voice chat patch. It's basically the same story like the selfie patch, but at least they delivered Zul'Aman and Sunwell after that.

[Deleted]

As said above, wod was great in the first weeks. I like the current patch too (though I agree 1 patch xpac is not enough).

Most of how the end game content is percieved depends on small tweaks. Can you upgrade your stuff ? What do you get doing a dongeon ? Is farming LFR worth ?

[Lillpapps]

I'm sorry I don't buy that anymore. The "the 'internal builds' are patches ahead" thing. Remember when there were no builds no alpha at all for like three weeks after their mini holiday? After that, can you really believe that they are like ten patches ahead internally? I don't buy it.

It's sort of true but also some bs as well. How game development works on a big project where they have teams working on different things is that you only push things that are ready. If you pushed everything you worked on daily you would have chaos and so many assets not working.
Take for example the dungeon team. They work on their version on their game and work on their dungeons. When a dungeons is complete for testing they will push it to the general build. Same with quests in zones. The team might be working on quests in every zone but they don't feel like it's ready for testing yet so they haven't pushed it to the general build but they might have 3 zones almost complete at the same time.
But no, they are not "several" patches ahead. Some areas of development might be further along but they are not complete patches ahead.

[rayden54]

I'm not in the alpha, but I have been in past Blizzard beta tests, and yeah I think this is a silly thing to fret about at this point.

Also giggling at the people who are basing their judgment on the expansion's readiness for release based on what they see on the alpha. None of these people seem to understand that alpha builds are test builds -- not finished builds, not what's available internally at Blizzard. It's what Blizzard wants tested. So quit whining about how bad it is and test it.

Based on what they've said about how long they've been working on Legion, I think I'd be fretting. Especially since the extra work on Legion is why there was so little in WoD. It seems they didn't put the extra development time to very good use.

[Sencha]

As long as you are unsubbed, you don't really care about how long they need to release a new expansion. You should try it.

If Blizzard can get strong income with people still subbed, without releasing new content for more than 1 year, why would they work faster? Best ROI ever.

[rda]

The release date thread got me thinking, with all the "blizz shouldn't rush" comments...shouldn't they, really? I think they bloody well should at this point - I'm not talking about the HFC drought specifically really, I mean in general. I'm a fan of "quality over quantity" aswell but this still doesn't explain WoD. Actually, can anyone actually explain WoD to me? We had 14 freaking months of drought for WoD. 14 months. And we got WoD. And we got the selfie patch. That's a tarnish in the WoW records that'll probably never go away, isn't it?

I'm sorry I don't want to make it another "zomg seven years of no content" thread but even the Blizzard white knight in me thinks that Blizzard should probably rush a little at this point, if not for pleasing their customers; to make up for WoD at least. This is getting in the "WoD sux" area a bit so I'll summarize:

Do you think Blizzard should rush Legion and/or future expansions? In an ideal world, quality over quantity trumps but this is hardly "ideal" at this point, isn't it? Maybe something drastic should be done, no?

Yes, they should do something drastic, because what they are doing doesn't work.

On a different topic, my eye caught the phrase "seven years of no content", and while this is an exaggeration (and you yourself bring it as an example of such)... I can't help but note that of the 8 years or so I've been with WoW, 3 years were exactly no content, and if I stayed for WoD, I'd be adding one more year. The rate of no-content years to all years is so damn high when you actually count it. It's ridiculous.

[styil]

The release date thread got me thinking, with all the "blizz shouldn't rush" comments...shouldn't they, really? I think they bloody well should at this point - I'm not talking about the HFC drought specifically really, I mean in general. I'm a fan of "quality over quantity" aswell but this still doesn't explain WoD. Actually, can anyone actually explain WoD to me? We had 14 freaking months of drought for WoD. 14 months. And we got WoD. And we got the selfie patch. That's a tarnish in the WoW records that'll probably never go away, isn't it?

I'm sorry I don't want to make it another "zomg seven years of no content" thread but even the Blizzard white knight in me thinks that Blizzard should probably rush a little at this point, if not for pleasing their customers; to make up for WoD at least. This is getting in the "WoD sux" area a bit so I'll summarize:

Do you think Blizzard should rush Legion and/or future expansions? In an ideal world, quality over quantity trumps but this is hardly "ideal" at this point, isn't it? Maybe something drastic should be done, no?

If I truly believed that Legion offered groundbreaking and lasting gameplay I would say that they should take all the time in the world. But with the current direction that the devs (who made WoD) have taken Legion, it's probably best just to get it out as soon as possible. An extra 6, 12, 18, 24, ... months isn't going to reverse the poor design decisions of Legion.