Did Blizz ever gave an explanation why WoD also had a 1 year+ content drought?

[Kryos]

Im guessing because they had more ideas and non-used lore than they have now 3 expansions later?
Just think about it for a few seconds

WoW has lore for 10+ expansions. The universe is big, rich and has tons of interesting things to explore. I don't think that the lack of imagination is a reason to produce expansions slower. You really think there are months wasted with Blizzard guys sitting at a brainstorm meeting all saying "Sorry, I got nothing? Paul?" "No clue... Space... Hamster... expansion?" "Get real... we need to... uh.... phew that is hard!"

[lunchbox2042]

What I'd be interested in knowing is what they originally planned for shattrah. Because it is there and it is obvious something was planned there.



I don't buy that, the time gap between WoD and legion is the same as the one between cataclysm and MoP, which was the same than between WOTLK and Cataclysm.

Dragon Soul lasted 10 months. Last time I checked 10 was 4 less than 14 which is how long Siege of Orgrimmar lasted.

[Justpassing]

Well guise content is consumed faster than it's produced so why bother producing it? Let's just have a WoD-frozen WoW! All the fun of garrisons, apexis dailies and ORCS - forever!

[Kryos]

Well guise content is consumed faster than it's produced so why bother producing it? Let's just have a WoD-frozen WoW! All the fun of garrisons, apexis dailies and ORCS - forever!

It's about the pacing:

[thunterman]

Then how did they do it in BC and WotlK?

Because Vanilla went on for 6+years? The longest part is the design process, making the continents / buildings / models (hence why they rehash so much to speed up development significantly) Yes, Vanilla has ALLOT of content patches, but, most of that would of been ready long before release, aside from bugfixes and tuning (which, at launch was usually MILES off, remember AQ40?) they had a MASSIVE headstart going into TBC, and you mention WoTLK, you realise that's where the content droughts started? Do you not remember doing ICC for over a year? Halion was not really considered a raid was it?

ICC lasted exactly 1 year and 1 day, less than Dragon Soul - which is commonly bashed for being the worst drought period in history and "where it all went wrong" SoO was 1 year and 15 days, Not too much more than the "Best period in wow". Content droughts have existed since the beginning, you were just younger and not as good at the game to realise back then.

[NFA]

Honestly the best way to prevent it happening is to unsub when you start to feel the content drought and fatigue. Blizzard like all other companies only make drastic changes when their money is at stake. As long as people keep paying for something even though they don't enjoy it they'll have no reason to do it differently.

[thunterman]

Honestly the best way to prevent it happening is to unsub when you start to feel the content drought and fatigue. Blizzard like all other companies only make drastic changes when their money is at stake. As long as people keep paying for something even though they don't enjoy it they'll have no reason to do it differently.

I genuinely don't believe Blizzard to be one of those companies. yes, obviously they make alot of money, but I don't think they'd dream of witholding content because enough people are still playing. If anything, unsubbing is more likely to get developers shifted into making HoTS skins or hearthstone cards.

Out of all the game developers / publishers out there I believe Blizzard to be one of the best, they communicate more than anyone, and for the most part are pretty transparent. when there is outcry, they take it onboard (Flying) They can't do much about content droughts other than get more staff (which they have been, they've been recruiting for the last year or two non stop to my knowledge, the adds for development staff haven't been taken down for a long time) There is no way to get it done faster without decreasing quality, which is what they say, and for the most part stay true to.

I'd rather unsub for 6 months and continue playing later than have something buggy and mediocre to do 100% of the time, it makes wow more than worth the subscription.

[Zantos]

Have they signed some sort of contract stating expansions cant last more than 1 year or what?

That was the reason they actually gave for having only two raid tiers. So they could have the next expansion not take a year+ just to release after the last raid.

http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...-tiers-planned
Link with a translation in that forum post for proof. It was a german interview.
@Kryos: They wont give an explanation. If they do, it will just be some BS. It took a long struggle Just for them to stop saying 6.1 was a "major patch" and admit that even giving it the title of 6.1 was probably a mistake since it was essentially a weekend project done because of the holiday breaks by a few people. They wont admit fault with WoD lasting so long and offering so little.

[Lumideta]

Honestly the best way to prevent it happening is to unsub when you start to feel the content drought and fatigue. Blizzard like all other companies only make drastic changes when their money is at stake. As long as people keep paying for something even though they don't enjoy it they'll have no reason to do it differently.

^ This times a thousand. I unsubbed a couple of months ago to wait for 7.0. I'll resub when more content to my liking is introduced. No point in asking for explanations from Blizzard. They will either remain silent or just make empty promises about it not happening again.

[NFA]

I genuinely don't believe Blizzard to be one of those companies.

You realize you're talking about a company that tried to monetize items in Diablo 3 right? They care every bit as much about money as every other developer.

As for them being transparent and communicating "more than anyone" we'll just have to agree to disagree because in my eyes they're one of the worst when it comes to this. And I really don't care what the reason is for them being unable to push out quicker expansions. They shouldn't be stupid and make claims that they're gonna push them out faster when they don't even know if they can (and in hindsight we know that they can't).

[Deleted]

Dragon Soul lasted 10 months. Last time I checked 10 was 4 less than 14 which is how long Siege of Orgrimmar lasted.

I'm talking about the time gap between 2 expansions here. Which has been steady since WOTLK.

Vanilla -> TBC = ~2 years
TBC -> WOTLK = ~2 years (a little less)
WOTLK -> cataclysm = ~ 2 years (a little more)
cataclysm -> MOP = ~ 2 years (a little less)
MOP-> draenor = ~2 years (a little more)
draenor -> legion = ~2 years (a little less)

However, it is a fact there has been more content in all previous expansion (only 8 dungeons and 3 raids in WoD).

[Darkulous]

Just accept this is how it is now. Get your fill and play another game until the next Xpac releases.

[SoulSoBreezy]

I remember how Tom Chilton explained why we had SoO in Pandaria so long. He said the 50% increase in staff members made things go slower than expected and that SoO was running 5 months too long and he was sorry. I don't recall any explanation why Hellfire Citadel is running for 12+ months and no other content. Did I miss it? If there was any, please link it, I'm really curious.

I have a good feeling that their answer will only lead to more questions from players with neither the understanding nor the empathy. The criticism is definitely valid, but this'd be adding fuel to the fire and would do little to serve anybody.

[unbound]

Blizz answer: This is hard, we need to focus on the next expansion, yada, yada, yada

Real answer: Blizz is a business, got their money out of their cash cow and is focused on Stars that promise more money in the future (i.e. not on WoW).

[Alvito]

Blizzard like all companies has to alter it ideas and plans based on the success of similiar games or companies. So when they just assume peole will naturally leave it is based on a tainted pool of information. WoW is the exception not the rule. They didn't have these sort of lulls and as a result the mass exodus of players leaving and partially returning until they steered players that way. The extreme ebb and flow we have now is due in a major part to Blizzard making the content cycle like it does.

[Konteil]

pretty sure they were busy doing other crap during WOD. they dumped all the resources into legion teams to make sure they could have a shit at getting player base back ..restoring the game to former days of glory. and most of all trying to figure out some sort of balance between what all the griping players wanted to make everyone happy i imagine.

[Alvito]

Blizz answer: This is hard, we need to focus on the next expansion, yada, yada, yada

Real answer: Blizz is a business, got their money out of their cash cow and is focused on Stars that promise more money in the future (i.e. not on WoW).

They ate the exception to the industry and potential success though. So a generic life cycle chart doesn't completely apply. They are also more then big enough of a company to keep nurturing the cash cow and milking it rather then sending it off for slaughter.

[Kathranis]

Didn't they say that it's because a large portion of the team had started working on Legion fairly early on in WoD's lifecycle?

Their goal was to try and shorten the time between the launch of Warlords of Draenor and Legion, which was (in fact) a success.

The gap between the launch of Mists and Warlords was 2 years, 1 month, 19 days.
The gap between Mist's final content patch (5.4) and the launch of Warlords was 1 year, 2 months, 3 days.

The gap between the launch of Warlords and Legion will be 1 year, 9 months, 17 days.
The gap between Warlords' final content patch (6.2) and the launch of Legion will be 1 year, 2 months, 7 days.

So, technically speaking, they've shaved four months off the development time of Legion, and the between-expansions content drought is technically the same as it was in the previous expansion.

The problem is that shaving time off Legion's development came at the expense of post-launch content for Warlords.

So, Mists had two major content patches and two minor content patches, with two large raids and plenty of world content, while Warlords only got a single major content patch with one large raid and very little world content.


In short, Blizzard sacrificed two minor content patches (outdoor world content) and one major content patch (one outdoor zone, one raid tier) in order to get Legion out four months sooner.

A trade-off I don't think anyone is happy with.


If they had kept to the usual development process, we'd probably have gotten Farahlon and a related raid in 6.2, and 6.4 would have dropped at the start of the year, so we'd just now be getting sick of Tanaan Jungle and Hellfire Citadel. Ironically, the release date for Legion would probably be December, just in time for Christmas.

Suffice it to say, I think they really dropped the ball.

[Deleted]

Honestly the best way to prevent it happening is to unsub when you start to feel the content drought and fatigue. Blizzard like all other companies only make drastic changes when their money is at stake. As long as people keep paying for something even though they don't enjoy it they'll have no reason to do it differently.

During TBC/WOTLK this would of been a valid but the trouble is they no longer care about the sub fees. The amount of money they get through guaranteed expansion sales + microtransactions (store items, faction changes, name changes probably dwarfs it now. They even encourage it by saying shit like "We are happy with players subbing for a limited time when something new is here".

Milk the lore, slap illidan on the box give everyone Ashbringer and they know everyone is going to buy the new expansion, it's set in stone and they also know they will get loads of money from micro transactions so at this point they probably think "there is no point in developing free content anymore that we can't charge for so lets put our effort into other projects we CAN charge for".

Sucks I know but I don't see how things are going to change.

[Deleted]

They ate the exception to the industry and potential success though. So a generic life cycle chart doesn't completely apply. They are also more then big enough of a company to keep nurturing the cash cow and milking it rather then sending it off for slaughter.

I'd say the generic life cycle chart does apply, even if there are some bumps :

https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=%2Fm%2F021dvx

Though I agree that currently, due to the lack of serious concurrents (be it under development or in operation), the subscriber base could rise again.