Blizzard's poor excuses

[Deleted]

"the development time needed would take away from time spent on something else."

THEN FFS HIRE MORE DEVELOPERS!

I'm so sick of this excuse.

"Oh, you made an awesome suggestion and we really like the idea too? - Well, too bad that we here at Blizzard are greedy as hell and even though our budget would totally suffice to double our staff, we'd rather just sit on it."

We are talking BLIZZARD here! One of the most prestigious video game companies in the world. They have the resources to please everyone, but they just can't bring themselves to take action. And the only reasonable explanation for this is their avarice.

But beware, community, if you bring this sensitive topic up on the official forums your thread will either get deleted OR what they say is:"You know nothing about our company." My response to this is:"Then publish some numbers! Show us that your budget wouldn't allow it!" At this point Blizzard just ignores our concerns.

What's your opinion on this matter?

[Kazlofski]

I never understood this shit of an excuse either.

They complain about that all the time and also add to it that hiring is a long and slow process, but then again not long ago they got so many developers over from that new MMO that got scrapped or whatever, still they can't do anything faster.
It's like they don't have enough PCs to work with more people joining OR my other idea is perhaps they just sit next to other developers and basically work as advisors? Maybe discussing things more/more thoughts of subjects/sharing ideas and opinions on things and don't actually do any progress work other than that? Resulting in actually longer development time because there is more arguing and discussing to do.

[Sierra85]

Hiring quality developers is easier said than done, and once they have created the content what do they next?

You can throw as much money at a problem but eventually there will be diminishing returns.

[Ichifails]

If you can't understand why you can't just "HIRE MORE PEOPLE" then I'm not sure anyone can explain it to you. It's not about budget, you can't just bring someone in and expect him to be able to blend with the people that are already there.

[Layuth]

Quit crying at least you have pet battles. Talk about a development time sink.

[Deleted]

I get the "hiring new devs and expecting them to fit" reason/excuse. That's cool.

But I also understand it can be very frustrating when companies are not transparent, or don't appear be.
Sometimes I feel like they bring out the "other resources" thing because they actually just don't like an idea.
Or, of course, because no one forum goer could ever actually know exactly how much Blizzard make, what their resources actually are capable of, etc.

What I'm saying is, it's very easy to assert that you can't do something with an airy reason like "oh, yeah, resources", so I can understand why people get mad about it so much. Blizzard shouldn't have to explain themselves, they are a company, can do what they want, whatever, but sometimes it'd be nice.

[Barnabas]

They should've never removed it in the first place. You always have war games but that's more for guilds and people with a decent size friends list to find different teams to play against. So I don't know why it'd be a big deal to put in a feature that was removed since it was done before?

[DeadmanWalking]

Developers are not an infinite resource. Most people in our society do not devote their lives to learning how to code games or to use the current gen programs to make video games. Of those that do look at all the games out there being developed right now, all those games require developers too. The field typically is not a long term employment kind of thing either as video game publishers can fold overnight from being forced to produce a game on a timeline. Then out of all of these developers Blizzard has to choose the ones that will 'fit' their standads. Much like comic books when you go work for a major name like Marvel and DC you have to draw their characters the way they want them drawn, not create your own inventions and redraw what happens the way you would prefer. Blizzard has to maintain an art style with wow, and not every developer is a good fit for wow’s flavor. Not all developers make ideal employees.
Reall all this bawl-baby crying needs to come to an end, I get it... you are bored and have way too much time on your hands.

[adorich]

The "we don't have the time" or "fixing 'this' would take away from 'that'" excuse is understandable, but Blizzard uses it way too much.

There was a post on the official forums about low level pvp being horribly imbalanced that got the blue response (excuse) a couple days ago. However, I still don't understand how reducing low level hunter damage or resto druid healing would occupy devs time enough to prevent them from designing new raid content.

[Deleted]

If you can't understand why you can't just "HIRE MORE PEOPLE" then I'm not sure anyone can explain it to you. It's not about budget, you can't just bring someone in and expect him to be able to blend with the people that are already there.

I know that there are enough qualified people out there. It's not like the new employees would be aliens to computers and WoW. Blizzard would fill them in over a month or so and then we would have the "missing developers" in place and everything will be better. The community and Blizzard know what problems there are. You don't have to be an old hand of Blizzard to be able to understand Blizzard's philosophy.

[MasterHamster]

In what reality does "JUST HIRE MORE PEOPLE" and "YOU GOT LOTS OF MONEY" make good arguments?

Like the most oversimplified muppetry ever.

[Deleted]

Welcome to the real world. Things aren't as easy as "HIRE MOAR - DONE FASTER!" despite what people seem to think.

You need the right kind of people, for the right kind of project to do the right kind of job. Blizzard has a vision, mass hiring artists and developers who may not share that vision is not going to give us quality content - it's going to give us Zynga type bullshit.

[Viradiance]

There's a saying in programming communities. It goes a little something like "A woman can make a baby in nine months, but nine women can't make a baby in one month"

Adding more hands doesn't necessarily help. There is a critical capacity.

[Ugum]

People who don't work in a design atmosphere (whether software, hardware, mechanical, etc.) don't quite grasp the concept that doubling your workers doesn't halve your production time. That may work in a factory, but it doesn't work too well in the design/engineering field.

People like to complain about things they know nothing about. It's the way of the world these days.

[Deleted]

There's a saying in programming communities. It goes a little something like "A woman can make a baby in nine months, but nine women can't make a baby in one month"

Adding more hands doesn't necessarily help. There is a critical capacity.

The only thing you really need to say when dealing with these sorts of discussions.

[Tomana]

My response to this is:"Then publish some numbers! Show us that your budget wouldn't allow it!"

Numbers ARE published, it's called the annual report.
How low do you think the shareholders would let the bottom line go?

- - - Updated - - -

Geez - you totally cracked the problem. I suggest you solve the issue of world peace next.

That one is easy: Kill all the bad guys!. Give me my Nobel Peace Prize please.

[Orlong]

People who don't work in a design atmosphere (whether software, hardware, mechanical, etc.) don't quite grasp the concept that doubling your workers doesn't halve your production time. That may work in a factory, but it doesn't work too well in the design/engineering field.

People like to complain about things they know nothing about. It's the way of the world these days.

Care to tell us why it doesnt work? Seems like simple math to me, more people=work done faster

[Avada Kedavra]

OP must not work with technology. It does not work like that. If you cannot grasp, it cannot be explained more than it already has.

[DeadmanWalking]

Care to tell us why it doesnt work? Seems like simple math to me, more people=work done faster

It doesn't work because simply put you have no clue what you are talking about. You can't decide how to solve a problem when you don't know one god damned fact about the problem other than, "Me angry, Me smash!"

[Zalraki]

Assign fewer developers to the shop, and more on actual content. Problem solved

Unless you care more about corporate greed than happy customers...?