Warlords Alpha Delay, WoW Designer Notes, Blue Tweets, New Character Model Fan Art

Violet Citadel instance would have been interesting

You guys forget that Blizzard is a company that tries to make dough just like every other company so saying "we don`t care about other things in the industry" is flat out: bullshit.

Omg nr. 1 of the recolors look frekkin awesome, that's how they should look! Lovely and feminine, not some butch thing!

Originally Posted by Nozuka

What are you talking about? It looks exactly like Dalaran to me.

Go look at Dalaran in game, around 40% of it is different, some things don't exist at all, some things swapped places, some things were extended.

Also, Blizzard care 100% about whats happening in the Industry, but I think they don't aim in advance for releases/announcements to counter others, but if they can push out/holdback something by a minimal amount, i.e, a few weeks, to counter someone else, they will do it.

Originally Posted by Deepsidedj

You guys forget that Blizzard is a company that tries to make dough just like every other company so saying "we don`t care about other things in the industry" is flat out: bullshit.

Luckily they never said they don't care then hey. Just that it doesn't impact their project milestones. Of course they care, from a business perspective but I'm sure also just because they're gamers and they're interested in new developments in the industry or keen to play the next big thing. At the end of the day, you don't make games unless you have a passion for games because its a HARD job. And you can't make good games unless you're also playing good games and keeping your finger on the pulse so to speak. Doesn't mean you go and structure your project around what other people are doing though, thats not just bad project management, thats bad business.

Originally Posted by Deepsidedj

You guys forget that Blizzard is a company that tries to make dough just like every other company so saying "we don`t care about other things in the industry" is flat out: bullshit.

But they're not saying they don't care.

They're saying they don't arrange their entire internal processes and effort milestones around it. Whenever someone tries to do something like that in project management, make it the primary influence, it screwed up the entire project.

People are jsut sseeing what they want. Oh so some stuff coincidentally released at the same time as another mmo's stuff? tell me about the other dozen things wow released that DID NOT coincidentally align. They're just seeing what they want. I ring a bell every hour and my brother comes home every day twice at 2pm and 8pm, he says "man he rings a bell because iam coming home ...every time!".

I wonder how many more times they are going to have to answer the question about solo raids and Stats reduction?

Alpha getting delayed makes me worried that they are going to end up delaying the expansion till 2015. At this point, I am starting to get worried we will be lucky if it comes out in Dec.

Originally Posted by Nozuka

What are you talking about? It looks exactly like Dalaran to me.

There's no Silver Covenant or Sunreaver district, and there's no sewer on top of that.

Not to mention the landing pad is actually in the middle of the city instead of off to the side (the current Dalaran landing site is where the Dragon Embassy is listed on the layout chart).

That's other than the obvious fact it's rotated 90 degrees.

I used to think the whole MMO counter-hype thing was an overblown conspiracy theory. But then of course we had a rather convenient big dump of WoD alpha info and media right around the time ESO released. Can't help but feel it's all very calculated. The whole manner in which it was released seemed kind of strange (like some officially sanctioned datamining?) and a move of desperation to gain more mindshare in MMO-centered gaming press.

Originally Posted by Durandro

If Blizzard actively avoided every single release date for every other major game release that could in any way be considered 'competition' then they'd never be able to release anything.

Logic. Use it.

When Blizzard releases something new, be it patch notes, PTR, a beta, etc to coincide with another MMO release (hint: the alpha notes for Warlords were released when they were not because the Alpha was ready, but because ESO launched on the same day) and then say that they don't do that, then I'm going to call them on their bullshit.

Logic: Use it yourself.

Originally Posted by Mintie

When Blizzard releases something new, be it patch notes, PTR, a beta, etc to coincide with another MMO release (hint: the alpha notes for Warlords were released when they were not because the Alpha was ready, but because ESO launched on the same day) and then say that they don't do that, then I'm going to call them on their bullshit.

Logic: Use it yourself.

LoL I know right? Ive been playing this game long enough to slowly realize theyve been doing this. We know what stunt theyre trying to pull. What I find funny is, some people are acting oblivious like it is not happening and its just pure coincidence. Ha ha! Thats what im chuckling my arse over here lol. Ive mentioned it in other posts in the past. Im not saying theyll make a big dent into their sub numbers, but damn, for them to coincide things that shouldve been out by now and make excuses like its not ready yet were smoothing things out, then BAM new MMO release, more alpha news and the beta testing date! More screenshots! /facepalm Its just getting pathetic.

2015.

I've said it before and I'll say it again.

You're lucky if you're gonna see this expansion coming out in december.

Originally Posted by Sainur

2015.

I've said it before and I'll say it again.

You're lucky if you're gonna see this expansion coming out in december.

Yeah, no. That would mean WoD would release about or over 2 years and 3 months since WoD. That beats Vanilla-BC (2 years 2 months) and WotLK-Cata (2 years 1 month). Not only that, but a December+ release would imply a testing cycle of 7+ months. This, once again, dwarfs the testing cycles of other expansions which have typically lasted no longer than 6 months (counting alpha and beta).

There is no reason to think that WoD would take such a significantly longer time to release. ESPECIALLY considering Blizzard's confidence in an absolute deadline of December 21.

Originally Posted by OldManGamer

I wonder how many more times they are going to have to answer the question about solo raids and Stats reduction?

Alpha getting delayed makes me worried that they are going to end up delaying the expansion till 2015. At this point, I am starting to get worried we will be lucky if it comes out in Dec.

they can always pull out 6/6 gear upgrades in septmeber hoping people wont notice WoD pushed into 2015 lol ^^

The blood elf colored ones scare me.

Originally Posted by Enan1981

LoL I know right? Ive been playing this game long enough to slowly realize theyve been doing this. We know what stunt theyre trying to pull. What I find funny is, some people are acting oblivious like it is not happening and its just pure coincidence. Ha ha! Thats what im chuckling my arse over here lol. Ive mentioned it in other posts in the past. Im not saying theyll make a big dent into their sub numbers, but damn, for them to coincide things that shouldve been out by now and make excuses like its not ready yet were smoothing things out, then BAM new MMO release, more alpha news and the beta testing date! More screenshots! /facepalm Its just getting pathetic.

If they were trying to counter ESO's release, they did a very poor job. No one is going to stay subscribed to WoW over some hints at an alpha release if they were already going to hop over to ESO.

You would also think that if this were a trend, they would be doing it every time, but this isn't true. You have conspicuous releases like patch 4.3 just a couple weeks before SWTOR, but at the same time you have times like RIFT's release where nothing happened in WoW at all. Aion's worldwide release happened in September 2009, which didn't seem to warrant a patch from Blizzard (well, Onyxia was revamped, I bet players excited for Aion totally had a dilemma over that one!). It also took 2 months after Warhammer's release for Blizzard to release WotLK, which isn't exactly a good response time. Hell, for reasons already mentioned, they barely "responded" to ESO's release too.

LOL Zarhym ... Flat out: our production schedule & milestones are far more important than whatever else is happening in the industry.

Do people seriously believe this lying son of a b****? Funny enough all the WoD Alpha info/client came out when ESO was released, but now it's ABSOLUTELY NOTHING since then. I wonder how fanbois will defend Blizzard after seeing tons of Beta info the week Wildstar gets released ...

Originally Posted by OldManGamer

I wonder how many more times they are going to have to answer the question about solo raids and Stats reduction?

Good point. I remember them doing exactly this before Cataclysm; clarification after clarification on the system changes. Unfortunately, given how poor the WoW community seems to be at reading comprehension (i.e. people asking the same questions/making the same mistakes time and time again), it seems like it's something they NEED to do.

Originally Posted by OldManGamer

Alpha getting delayed makes me worried that they are going to end up delaying the expansion till 2015. At this point, I am starting to get worried we will be lucky if it comes out in Dec.

If Blizzard is to be trusted, the reason alpha is being delayed is because the introduction quest chain to Draenor is not finished yet and they want that to be completed in time for testing. This is, of course, a pathetically stupid decision that is holding up testing for the entire expansion.

Of course, they could also be lying and they might be severely behind schedule, but they did after all have at least two zones ready for BETA, let alone alpha, at the press tours a few months ago.

Ofcourse they're timing their stuff against other MMO's. They've done it every single time the chance has arisen and they're doing it again, this time they plan against Wildstar.

Well too bad Blizzard, Wildstar is vastly your superior in every way and your garrisons are a pathetic joke in comparison to Wildstar housing.

Originally Posted by Endre

LOL Zarhym ... Flat out: our production schedule & milestones are far more important than whatever else is happening in the industry.

Do people seriously believe this lying son of a b****? Funny enough all the WoD Alpha info/client came out when ESO was released, but now it's ABSOLUTELY NOTHING since then. I wonder how fanbois will defend Blizzard after seeing tons of Beta info the week Wildstar gets released ...

I said it in the post above yours and I'll say it again: if this is an attempt to counter ESO's release it is a very poor one. Who is honestly going to suddenly ditch ESO on release day because there were some hints that a friends-and-family alpha was soon to start for WoD, and who is honestly going to argue that Blizzard doesn't realize this themselves?