Is Blizzard rushing BfA?

[Magnagarde]

Would've prefered a later release date that would guarantee a smooth and well-built experience.

[Spiral Mage]

Look at how small a time window they had with LEGION and look how that turned out. It's gone a good ways to reviving the game. And that was a huge shock to me. They had abandoned WOD and given themselves half the time to prepare for LGN and it was amazingly good for that.

[Aggrophobic]

yeah, cause the playerbase is patient and willing to wait. why isnt classic done already?!?!?!? /s

In part, yes. They also promised no more content gaps at the end of expansions and it's clearly difficult for them to handle at this point. That one is all on them though.

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They said this over and over on all their blizzard games. The build they work on is much much ahead of what they release in public, months even.

Sure, but that does not mean that they sit on a whole new build that is months ahead of whast being tested.

[Blamblam41]

Yes they are rushing, but it's also content and systems that aren't anything new. Everything that's being added is either just new art assets or old systems with better implementation.

Even Warfronts are just overglorified RTS matches implemented into the real time MMO. You have that kind of stuff in a Gold Saucer game on XIV.

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In part, yes. They also promised no more content gaps at the end of expansions and it's clearly difficult for them to handle at this point. That one is all on them though.

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Sure, but that does not mean that they sit on a whole new build that is months ahead of whast being tested.

That's what happens you have to completely redesign your development studio team and release an expansion with 2 tiers.

Though I guess it was even a problem before then. Just saying that historically, management is Blizzard's weakest area.

[Vynestra]

From one of interviews during WOD announcments:

"Mike also confirmed that Blizzard are already working on their next expansion, having only announced Warlords of Draenor last week."

So no, they had as much time as they needed, since we don't know for how long they've been working on BFA (maybe even during Legion beta already) stuff.

And in fact, the next xpac is being worked on as we speak, the one AFTER bfa.

gj blizz.

[Khaza-R]

Given the tons of intricacies and nuances we’ve seen from the questing zones I would say no. BfA seems to have a level of polish which is opposite of being rushed

[Aggrophobic]

Yes they are rushing, but it's also content and systems that aren't anything new. Everything that's being added is either just new art assets or old systems with better implementation.

Even Warfronts are just overglorified RTS matches implemented into the real time MMO. You have that kind of stuff in a Gold Saucer game on XIV.

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That's what happens you have to completely redesign your development studio team and release an expansion with 2 tiers.

Though I guess it was even a problem before then. Just saying that historically, management is Blizzard's weakest area.

It's still Blizzard though. Rushed and with bugs it'll most likely be a good product compared to other games out there, when it comes to polish at least.
Don't think there is much to worry about here.

Gameplay-wise it might be another story but that has very little to do with the work being rushed or not.

[Letdown]

My ROUGH understanding of Blizzard's current dynamic, and this is by no means exact, is there's basically an "even" team and an "odd team" that are coordinated by producers. I call them even and odd, but basically they work on an "every other" patch type of deal. So while 1 team is doing dungeons for say patch 7.1.5 (Karazhan), another team is working on the dungeon for patch 7.2.5 (Cathedral). And while 1 team is working on the raid for 7.1.5 (Nighthold), team 2's raid team is working on the raid for 7.2.5 (Tomb). This means that team 1 did Antorus (which they would have been able to "start" as soon as Nighthold shipped as the QA team would have taken it over for balance tweaks and what not), so as soon as 7.2.5 shipped, team 2 started working on the raids for BfA.

My point is, part of the WoW team has been working on hard development (post-planning) on BfA since at LEAST 7.2.5, if not earlier for some departments (such as art, narrative design, etc.). They set it up this way to avoid having the 92374832432 month gap this time.

I mean to give you perspective, the guys that actually model and playtest boss mechanics get to move on to their next project pretty much as soon as internal testing gives them the thumbs on the current design. So me saying they move "at release" isn't exactly accurate because mechanics were likely greenlit months before it ever saw PTR.

[Volardelis]

So funny...

I miss Gladiator Stance!

Same

Didn't they say it was probably gonna return in the expansion after Legion? I guess they forgot.

[Micronetic]

Well this early Alpha from BellularGaming he seems to like it..

Who cares? This doesn't mean we have to like it too.

[edw]

Well if you think about it ... it's not that big of an expansion, Legion was, this one I would compare it more to Warlords of Draenor. There is no new class to balance all of the other classes around it, there is no unique race, the allied races are skinns. There is no huge overhaul of the classes, Legion brought huge changes in comparison.
m2c

[Collected]

I don't see how a quality expansion can be released given the timeline Blizzard has to work with.

There is at most a few months left till the Beta. By then:
- 36 specialisations have to be finalised
- 10 dungeons tested
- 6 zones tested
- raid testing starting

All this on top of the new systems coming with BfA:
- warfronts
- islands
- PvP overhaul
- stat squish
- AP 2.0: Azerite

How in the world is there enough time to fully flesh out these systems in a few months so they can be fine tuned for Beta? I think that Blizzard has once again bitten off more than they can chew and as a result BfA will be rushed out in order to meet thr September deadline they cornered themselves into.

They'll be fine.

Once upon a time not so long ago I'd have been concerned. But that was back when Blizzard scaled down the WoW team to focus on their new MMO Project Titan. However once Titan became Overwatch they were able to scale the WoW team back up again and we're seeing the fruits of that decision with Legion content and this will continue into BFA.

What needs to be understood also is the content you're seeing on streams/data mining etc is old. They're likely quiet a lot further into development than it appears and it's always the case that when alpha/beta testing starts we get a shell of an expansion and then the patches quickly arrive one on top of the other that rapidly grows the content.

In other words, relax. People always panic at this stage but Blizzard always gets the job done. They've experienced enough now to know what's possible and what isn't possible. I'm more than confident that BFA will be polished at release.

[huth]

the garrison thing was a bug, not a server capacity issue.

I never heard of anybody getting stuck in their garrison. There were just issues at first since each Garrison was treated as a seperate scenario on the Instance server, which obviously got totally overwhelmed and ran out of available slots.

People then kept clamoring that Garrisons didn't work when really, they just couldn't get a free slot. Once you did get in, they worked just fine.

[FelPlague]

I never heard of anybody getting stuck in their garrison. There were just issues at first since each Garrison was treated as a seperate scenario on the Instance server, which obviously got totally overwhelmed and ran out of available slots.

People then kept clamoring that Garrisons didn't work when really, they just couldn't get a free slot. Once you did get in, they worked just fine.

uhh no, people were getting stuck i nthe garrison, you would be in a garrison with 20+ other people and when when trying to leave would get stuck, you would fly in and get stuck either once you landed, or in the air on your gryphon, and if you were on the ground if you tried to fly you would get stuck in the air

or even simply when trying to enter or exit the place

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yp794vR5kHM
this is bassicly what it looked like, but it was happening alot. and yeah... this didnt allways work

also there was this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0rVXEOnhSg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibl_K7dEQfA
again TONS OF BUGS

[Aggrophobic]

Well this early Alpha from BellularGaming he seems to like it..

Yeah but he likes everything. The guy was even exited over the hunter changes in Legion. I mean, come on.

[huth]

uhh no, people were getting stuck i nthe garrison, you would be in a garrison with 20+ other people and when when trying to leave would get stuck, you would fly in and get stuck either once you landed, or in the air on your gryphon, and if you were on the ground if you tried to fly you would get stuck in the air

or even simply when trying to enter or exit the place

That wasn't a bug, that was the instance server being overwhelmed. People weren't stuck in their garrison, they were stuck in the world trying to zone into it.
It's just that most never grasped that the Garrison is actually a scenario. Which is why being stuck in that place resulted in regular "Instance not found" errors.

You cannot see other people in your garrison because they're not there. It's not phased, it's instanced.

[FelPlague]

That wasn't a bug, that was the instance server being overwhelmed. People weren't stuck in their garrison, they were stuck in the world trying to zone into it.
It's just that most never grasped that the Garrison is actually a scenario. Which is why being stuck in that place resulted in regular "Instance not found" errors.

You cannot see other people in your garrison because they're not there. It's not phased, it's instanced.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yp794vR5kHM
this is bassicly what it looked like, but it was happening alot. and yeah... this didnt allways work

also there was this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0rVXEOnhSg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibl_K7dEQfA
again TONS OF BUGS

[Yizu]

In part, yes. They also promised no more content gaps at the end of expansions and it's clearly difficult for them to handle at this point. That one is all on them though.

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Sure, but that does not mean that they sit on a whole new build that is months ahead of whast being tested.

Yes, you do know wow has a front end and back end, like ANYTHING on the internet. The backend is like what makes everything work, in code. Front end is the client you download, with the assets and stuff, which doesnt need fixing unless its a graphical glitch, so yes they can sit on that one for months. The front end client thats open for the public to test is probably only a tiny part of whats already done, but that doesnt matter because all of the bug fixing and stuff would only be done on a current backend build. OP is crying what little content they have done, im just saying that the front end build we see now, is probably what they had 6 months ago. I really dont know how to explain it properly lol but that probably makes sense

[valax]

I don't see how a quality expansion can be released given the timeline Blizzard has to work with.

There is at most a few months left till the Beta. By then:
- 36 specialisations have to be finalised
- 10 dungeons tested
- 6 zones tested
- raid testing starting

All this on top of the new systems coming with BfA:
- warfronts
- islands
- PvP overhaul
- stat squish
- AP 2.0: Azerite

How in the world is there enough time to fully flesh out these systems in a few months so they can be fine tuned for Beta? I think that Blizzard has once again bitten off more than they can chew and as a result BfA will be rushed out in order to meet thr September deadline they cornered themselves into.

It seemed to me that during Blizzcon they had already a big chunk of the expansion "done" , looked like they were spoiling their own legion finale while giving us hints on the story of BfA , they had also the cinematic ready which usually came months after the announcement .
After 10+ years of wow you'd expect blizzard to have developed some toolkit to speed up world building and quest writing , the only new feature is the isles content so I guess the time is enough for their teams to reshape classes without artifacts

[huth]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yp794vR5kHM
this is bassicly what it looked like, but it was happening alot. and yeah... this didnt allways work

also there was this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0rVXEOnhSg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibl_K7dEQfA
again TONS OF BUGS

None of those people are in their garrison. You didn't get stuck in the garrison, you got "stuck" trying to enter it.(and you could simply walk away once the invisible loading screen aborted)