I'm afraid bugs are not depending on testing time at this point. Just look at 8.3. The more they complicate game systems and try to hide stuff, the more bugs we gonna get. This has started with personal loot and it still causes issues.
I would probably resub for level squish. Not for 8.3. Yuck.
Last edited by Lei; 2020-01-17 at 09:01 PM.
Blizzard wants to release content faster. They desperately want to avoid these content droughts. They are just not capable of doing it, after many years of trying, so now they just accept it. That doesn't mean they want players to stop giving them money.
They have to release it in this year, December is dead line, it's guaranteed in pre purchase clause.
Yes, it'll come out in 2020. We know from 8.3 they're happy to release without QA, so that won't be a problem.
A lot of rumors saying Shadowlands is a ways off, even in this interview Ion says sometime this year when we get the beta going.
Expansion release months have been as early as August, with most in Oct, Nov, Dec. time. So no way Shadowlands comes out any earlier than August, but most likely the typical Oct / Nov release. Which means we have 9+ months of content drought between 8.3 and Shadows. At least it's not as bad as the insane SoO patch and WoD release, which was 14 months. But 9+ months is shit still, WoW will lose tons of subs come Summer with nothing new.
Look, it doesnt matter who the dev is, its the top guys at activision that make the call. When they say that they want an expansion done in 2020 and no delaying for tweaking, then that means that the devs hands are tied. He simply tries the best thing he can do and make an expansion thats is doable to make in that short time with low workforce and low moral in the developers. He is is listening so that he wont get fired from blizz.
The lore however IS determined by the lore devs, which is why it sucks now. Both of them never have written a book, here you can blame the lore devs. In my opinion, I would hire some expert fantasy writers and keep them forever in a dungoun to write for WoW.
How would I handle things if I was Ion?? Well in the 1e year I would do whatever what activision wanted me to do, after that I wouldnt listen to them anymore and just think how I can make the game better. Be a wall to protect the WoW team against those sharks activision and make a great game, asking employers to submit ideas etc.
Its 2 things:
1) I dont believe Blizzard has "lack of reseources"....lack of TIME, yes...lack of resources...NO (IMO)
2) I made a fail thread with a study on player retention here
https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads...n-study-of-WoW
And it says "lack of content" is not the culprit of "players churning (aka leaving) from WoW"
Quote from the study (5% of entire playerbase leave every month, no matter what)
So....maybe....i think it makes little sense for Blizzard to have more patches...because no matter what, players will leave and some players will staySecond, it also tells us that the lifespan of patch 4.3’s content was less than six months for a lot of players. Around the release of patch 4.2, Blizzard’s CEO attributed churn to the lack of new content. Yet Blizzard did not release any new content for nine months after patch 4.3. In expansion 5.0, they released four patches with new content at intervals of roughly three months. Yet the number of subscribers still fell from 10 to 7.6 million between October 2012 and 2013. If lack of content is not to blame, what could be?
WoW’s lead game designer believes that players burn out because the game has trained them to complete quests as quickly as possible, rather than taking the time to explore the world [10].
We know they fired 800 people and the QA department was heavily impacted. Then 8.3 came out as the buggiest patch since.... I actually can't remember another patch this bad, off the top of my head.
We know that major content patches lead to a rush of returning players, and we know that population drops back down again. We know that expansion releases similarly lead to a huge player spike. There is a definitive positive correlation between new content and population. That said, it's fair to say that players quit the game for many reasons, and lack of content is just one of those reasons.
From the study's quote.
Blizzard CEO first blamed the "churn" (players leaving) for the lack of new patches.
And on patch 5.0 they tried patches every 3 months...and 2.5 MILLION players still left...
So the study arrived to the conclusion that "lack of content" is not to blame...or is the biggest factor.
Last edited by Big Thanks; 2020-01-17 at 09:53 PM.
What that proved was feeding content to players in small chunks gated by time was ineffective at improving retention. Large patches are a better strategy.