Where has the saved development time gone?

[Sangfoudre]

We are literally pre-alpha and know barely anythin except a few panels from blizzcon. Obviously its too early.

Don't go there my brother! There's too much salt in there.

[BeepBoo]

but HoA grind was quite soft.

Define "soft".

I define soft as "would naturally happen at a competitive rate doing only things you'd already be doing without the grind there."
As you could not raidlog and get to 65 in a competitive time frame, I'm disinclined to share your viewpoint.

[oplawlz]

No I say wait to have someone see the final product with his own eyes before speculating and telling it's shit while no one know exactly what's inside.

They've already started selling it, therefore it is entirely appropriate for customers to start judging it.

[Sangfoudre]

I guess there's a window of time where people can try it and play it when it isn't out yet. So I guess Alpha/Beta testing phase is when we can start complaining?

I cannot pinpoint the exact moment when it would be less stupid to complain, because this community spends so much time complaining that you sound like French state employees.
Anyhow, Blizzard only presented a few things, very roughly. And did not promised that much in either way. I guess it'd be smarter to wait how it'll evolve, as they might change their minds, add or remove things, postpone some to .X patches or else.

[vsb]

Development resources gone to other projects. Probably Diablo 4. WoW is on maintenance mode since BfA. Nothing that was introduced after Legion requires any kind of expensive development. It's not only software development. It's clear that art investments are much less than before. Compare billions of weapon models in Legion to few weapons in BfA. Everything's reused.

[unbound]

So the question becomes, where has all the saved development time by not adding these standard expansion features gone to instead? Usually those resources are devoted to expansion gimmicks like Artifacts, Warfronts, Garrisons or other things. But in Shadowlands' case, it has no new gimmicks yet STILL has less staple content.

So, financially, the saved development time is going into corporate (therefore, mostly top management) pockets.

As for resources, they were long ago moved to other programs. In case you haven't noticed, BfA was done with substantially less effort than Legion (and it really does show) which means many resources were likely moved to other programs 2 to 3 years ago.

I wouldn't be surprised if most of them have moved over to Diablo IV to get that moving a bit faster. I don't think Blizz will be in a good financial position if Diablo IV releases like Diablo III (approximately 4 years after official announcement).

[Sangfoudre]

Define "soft".

I define soft as "would naturally happen at a competitive rate doing only things you'd already be doing without the grind there."
As you could not raidlog and get to 65 in a competitive time frame, I'm disinclined to share your viewpoint.

This might be because I'm neither an hardcore raider nor I only log in to raid (if that what means raidlog).
I tend to think that getting to 65 was less time consuming than getting BiS essences or benthic gear so, I'm not sure what the problem is.

[Sondrelk]

Presumably the dev time is going to 1 of 3 things.
Blizzard spent too much time on BfA and cut down to not fall behind.
Blizzard intends something large like a new world revamp for 10.0 and need to make sure they ahve the time and resources.
Or Blizzard intends to make the stuff in Shadowlands perfect and is cutting the extra fluff to make sure the few things they do have is good enough.

And honestly, why do people need much more anyways. Sure, there isnt massive amounts of new stuff, but that new stuff is a crapshoot anyways, half of it is great like M+ eventually became and half is awful garbage that the forums complain encessantly about like Islands or Warfront.
Shadowlands will have slightly more than Legion did, the only difference is Legion had new things and Shadowlands has the same things as Legion except more of it.

[Sangfoudre]

So, financially, the saved development time is going into corporate (therefore, mostly top management) pockets.

As for resources, they were long ago moved to other programs. In case you haven't noticed, BfA was done with substantially less effort than Legion (and it really does show) which means many resources were likely moved to other programs 2 to 3 years ago.

I wouldn't be surprised if most of them have moved over to Diablo IV to get that moving a bit faster. I don't think Blizz will be in a good financial position if Diablo IV releases like Diablo III (approximately 4 years after official announcement).

Do you have anything to support any of these theories?

[FelPlague]

Legion was radically different from WoD in terms of gear, class design, PvP, rewards (especially in regards to the RNG aspect combined with the endless grind through WQ and M+). However, BfA was not that much different from Legion as it mostly iterated on the things Legion introduced. Are you honestly telling me that you don't see that a design shift has occurred with WoW Legion focusing more on spec identity, replayable content, scaling systems and a gear progression that is vastly different compared to any other point in the game?

gear? how so?
Class design? how os explain
pvp? explain
Rewards? explain
you cant just make a list without explaining.

how was legion's gear progression different then wods?

[Sangfoudre]

While I agree that Shadowlands apparently looks like it has less new content compared to expansions in the past, to say that it has "fewer dungeons and zones" is just objectively false.
It doesn't look like it has "fewer zones". Looks within average.
It doesn't look like it has "fewer dungeons". Still looks within average. 9 dungeons if you count Torghast, putting it at the maximum amount of dungeons in the last four expansions.

Thank you for being thorough
We could do the same exercise counting zones and dungeons added in subsequent patches. Add a few metrics like number of quests, zone sizes and so on, but we cannot have that much logic in a single thread because it'd say that Bfa was probably the first or second expansion when we consider content quantity and people don't want to hear this.

[KOUNTERPARTS]

gear? how so?
Class design? how os explain
pvp? explain
Rewards? explain
you cant just make a list without explaining.

how was legion's gear progression different then wods?

You specified gear progression, not him.


But I'll bite.


One example of a radical change from WoD to Legion in terms of gear was adding gear as World Quest rewards. This is radical because (A.) it wasn't seen before Legion, (B.) gear changed often every week and (C.) it scaled.

If you need examples of class design difference between WoD and Legion -- ya know, that entire campaign Blizzard underwent in terms of spec "theme" and "flavor" that resulted in mass spec revamps -- then you are willfully ignoring and that's sad.


PvP? So are we also going to ignore Honor Talents, PvP ranks, Prestige, and everything?


And these are just really easy to remember examples, lol.


Ya know, I just realized, that there is no possible way you need this explained to you since I've personally seen you argue in support of these changes - which from going from WoD to Legion were BIG changes... one could say RADICAL -- in countless posts in the past.


So here's my question: what are you exactly arguing this time? You can't just argue without a point.

While I agree that Shadowlands apparently looks like it has less new content compared to expansions in the past, to say that it has "fewer dungeons and zones" is just objectively false.

Zones at launch:

• Cataclysm: 5 zones
• MoP: 7 zones
• WoD: 6 zones
• Legion: 5 zones
• BfA: 6 zones (-ish?)
• Shadowlands: 5 zones.

It doesn't look like it has "fewer zones". Looks within average.

Dungeons at launch:

• Cataclysm: 7 dungeons
• MoP: 9 dungeons
• WoD: 8 dungeons
• Legion: 9 dungeons
• BfA: 9 dungeons
• Shadowlands: 8 dungeons.

It doesn't look like it has "fewer dungeons". Still looks within average. 9 dungeons if you count Torghast, putting it at the maximum amount of dungeons in the last four expansions.

Would you agree that Shadowlands feels - at least at the moment - a lot less like 9.0 and a lot more like 8.4?

So, financially, the saved development time is going into corporate (therefore, mostly top management) pockets.

As for resources, they were long ago moved to other programs. In case you haven't noticed, BfA was done with substantially less effort than Legion (and it really does show) which means many resources were likely moved to other programs 2 to 3 years ago.

I wouldn't be surprised if most of them have moved over to Diablo IV to get that moving a bit faster. I don't think Blizz will be in a good financial position if Diablo IV releases like Diablo III (approximately 4 years after official announcement).

While this sounds plausible, how could you know this?

[matrix123mko]

They didn't add class or race because there are people crying for no new content.

[Hannya84]

In addition, there will be no new features, races, classes or professions with the expansion.

So the question becomes, where has all the saved development time

So.. Your conspiracy theory is based on the idea that when a new profession, race or class is added. The maintenance on that particular feature is self sustaining.

The class balances itself. The profession invents its own recipes, and all armor models and textures are automatically fitted to every new race.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

Development resources gone to other projects. Probably Diablo 4. WoW is on maintenance mode since BfA. Nothing that was introduced after Legion requires any kind of expensive development. It's not only software development. It's clear that art investments are much less than before. Compare billions of weapon models in Legion to few weapons in BfA. Everything's reused.

While I’m not gonna count them it’s very likely that bfa had more weapons then legion with full sets for orca and humans for the first warfonts, sets for night elf’s and forsaken for the second warfonts, each raid having sets, levelling sets for each faction ect.

Legion on the other hand had 5 weapons per spec then just recoloured them and then the argus weapons.

[SkagenRora]

Is this "Styil" guy the new jaylock?

Just feels like he's posting a lot of bait threads lately

[Lorgar Aurelian]

So, financially, the saved development time is going into corporate (therefore, mostly top management) pockets.

As for resources, they were long ago moved to other programs. In case you haven't noticed, BfA was done with substantially less effort than Legion (and it really does show) which means many resources were likely moved to other programs 2 to 3 years ago.

I wouldn't be surprised if most of them have moved over to Diablo IV to get that moving a bit faster. I don't think Blizz will be in a good financial position if Diablo IV releases like Diablo III (approximately 4 years after official announcement).

Bfa didn’t have less effort it had that effort put into different places that didn’t do so hot. For example instead of extra dungeons we had two warfronts and full zone remade around them.

[Ielenia]

Would you agree that Shadowlands feels - at least at the moment - a lot less like 9.0 and a lot more like 8.4?

Not really, no.

I still think Shadowlands has more than enough content and premise to be its own expansion. I imagine this "feels like a patch" feeling has more to do with the fact the expansion brings no new race or class.

[Sondrelk]

While I’m not gonna count them it’s very likely that bfa had more weapons then legion with full sets for orca and humans for the first warfonts, sets for night elf’s and forsaken for the second warfonts, each raid having sets, levelling sets for each faction ect.

Legion on the other hand had 5 weapons per spec then just recoloured them and then the argus weapons.

The Argus weapons were actually unused models from WoD.

[Sangfoudre]

You specified gear progression, not him.
But I'll bite.

One example of a radical change from WoD to Legion in terms of gear was adding gear as World Quest rewards. This is radical because (A.) it wasn't seen before Legion, (B.) gear changed often every week and (C.) it scaled.

I snipped the rest, my point stays.
It's not radical. It's a change.

Radical would be removing factions, removing roles or no more quests or removing gear completely and getting some kind of ap for every piece of gear (it's easier to imagine removing things than creating new stuff).
These were adjusts, small changes, additions or removals but in no way these were radical.
Core gameplay or the game goal, the very principle of the game have not changed by a single hair.
If it were the case the according changes would have been radical (because that's this word meaning).

- - - Updated - - -

Not really, no.

I still think Shadowlands has more than enough content and premise to be its own expansion. I imagine this "feels like a patch" feeling has more to do with the fact the expansion brings no new race or class.

I'd say "the fact the first patch of the expansion".
Content is staggered over the patches, we could have more races (allied or not) in the .X patches.