Serious discussion: Is this the end of Blizzard's "We'll release it when its ready?"

[Bramickias]

Remember Diablo 3, Warlords of Draenor?

"We'll release it when its ready?" has been dead for years.

[crusadernero]

If Blizzard tries to cling to that Mantra again in any shape or form, they are unquestionably being disingenuous. The days of delivering polished game are long over. Blizzard doesn't care about quality nor do they care about what is fun, they care about $$$ and nothing else.

And these days you dont need high quality on games for them to be sold or make shitton of money with microtransactions. People pay for the mediocre games, people pay for virtual shite in games.

Its not just Blizzard that knows this these days, all the big companies does. Why spend long time creating high quality stuff when you can quickly create mediocre shite and earn shitton of money?

Gamers overall clearly wants alot of the shite titles that gets released on all platforms & genres.

Games that are quickly consumed, easy to understand, dont require alot of playtime everyday, smack some microtransaction on it = boom success. Start working on some new mediocre stuff, repeat cycle.

[Jester Joe]

Or crazy idea here, you're seeing a fanbase slowly get older and become more critical/aware of issues.

Bugs that were ignored in the past are now harshly criticized, cut content that wasn't paid attention to years ago is now suddenly under harsh scrutiny.

[NoiseTank13]

Or crazy idea here, you're seeing a fanbase slowly get older and become more critical/aware of issues.

Bugs that were ignored in the past are now harshly criticized, cut content that wasn't paid attention to years ago is now suddenly under harsh scrutiny.

Jester, dude, my man, no.

Age does not make a whit of difference in the case of Warcraft 3 Reforged. There is no matchmaking, there is no profiles, stats, icons, for multiplayer, the graphics are overdesigned and null, there is no UI improvements. This is a $40 downgrade for a game that stood the test of time for more than a decade.

And there is no opting out of it either unless you play offline/pirate it on private servers.

My dumbass self in sophmore high school would have seen this as a shit show on it's face, and I wouldn't need 15 more years of experience to see it for what it is.

[Jester Joe]

Jester, dude, my man, no.

Age does not make a whit of difference in the case of Warcraft 3 Reforged. There is no matchmaking, there is no profiles, stats, icons, for multiplayer, the graphics are overdesigned and null, there is no UI improvements. This is a $40 downgrade for a game that stood the test of time for more than a decade.

And there is no opting out of it either unless you play offline/pirate it on private servers.

My dumbass self in sophmore high school would have seen this as a shit show on it's face, and I wouldn't need 15 more years of experience to see it for what it is.

W3R was outsourced in the first place, so not exactly applicable to Blizzard in terms of releases.

Otherwise we're talking about in general, not JUST W3R. And it doesn't take much digging to see people excusing older bugs in like Classic (to the point that they even ask for them to be included in Classic), yet crucify Retail for bugs.

[NoiseTank13]

W3R was outsourced in the first place, so not exactly applicable to Blizzard in terms of releases.

... of course it's applicable, Blizzard owns the IP. Blizzard gave the Malaysian company the job. Blizzard is still responsible. Not to mention the outsourced company did the models, which were overdesigned and contributed to visual "sameness" on the battlefield, but that could have been fixed with a little QA which.. oh. But the engine, the UI, the gameplay, the network, that's all on Blizzard. And no, anyone of any age could tell the difference between WC3 and WC3R.

Otherwise we're talking about in general, not JUST W3R. And it doesn't take much digging to see people excusing older bugs in like Classic (to the point that they even ask for them to be included in Classic), yet crucify Retail for bugs.

What relevance does this have? There's a marked difference between some dumb bug that has your character moonwalking on other peoples clients and flatout missing key components in a game. The only way what you said have any relevance, is if in comparison to WoW Vanilla, WoW Classic took away addon support and UI features, and forced people to download a patch that changed their Vanilla client to Classic.

[Jester Joe]

... of course it's applicable, Blizzard owns the IP. Blizzard gave the Malaysian company the job. Blizzard is still responsible. Not to mention the outsourced company did the models, which were overdesigned and contributed to visual "sameness" on the battlefield, but that could have been fixed with a little QA which.. oh. But the engine, the UI, the gameplay, the network, that's all on Blizzard. And no, anyone of any age could tell the difference between WC3 and WC3R.

Because the question is whether or not Blizzard holds to the standards of "We'll release it when it's ready", and if another company became the one in charge of deciding "This is ready" and it isn't actually Blizzard's work, then how can you judge all of Blizzard by that?

I mean, hell, it was delayed once and changed because of the fans complaining. And if you want to judge Blizzard by "we'll release it when it's ready", it's far more relevant to talk about 8.3 especially considering we're in the WoW forum section.

What relevance does this have? There's a marked difference between some dumb bug that has your character moonwalking on other peoples clients and flatout missing key components in a game. The only way what you said have any relevance, is if in comparison to WoW Vanilla, WoW Classic took away addon support and UI features, and forced people to download a patch that changed their Vanilla client to Classic.

Let's not pretend WoW from Classic had minor cosmetic bugs.

And Blizzard flat out took away the ability to play Vanilla already, and in Classic adjusted the way Alterac Valley functions.

[NoiseTank13]

Because the question is whether or not Blizzard holds to the standards of "We'll release it when it's ready", and if another company became the one in charge of deciding "This is ready" and it isn't actually Blizzard's work, then how can you judge all of Blizzard by that?

Because it's Blizzard's IP, it's their project. They outsourced the models to that company, everything else is on Blizzard. You can forgive graphical sins (somewhat), not mechanical ones.

I mean, hell, it was delayed once and changed because of the fans complaining. And if you want to judge Blizzard by "we'll release it when it's ready", it's far more relevant to talk about 8.3 especially considering we're in the WoW forum section.

This is literally the question being asked in the OP. 'What happened to 'We'll release it when it's ready?'" because for whatever reason the delay could have been (incompetence, setbacks, genuine desire to improve the product) once you got to play it, it was usually mechanically and visually sound. Warcraft 3 Reforged is probably the first egregious example of "Wasn't ready, isn't ready, won't be ready anytime soon... ship it," given by Blizzard. You can argue that this happened before, around Cataclysm, around Diablo 3, around Mists of Pandaria, whatever the fuck- I'm not getting into a subjective fuckfray about it. This game, this travesty here, is what we're talking about.


Imagine being Blizzard, a company that achieved near cult-like status over the course of well over two decades of IP's and games, fucking up so badly, so soundly, that there is a legitimate effort to review bomb their latest release to sub-1 levels. It doesn't matter if it's a hate-train, or it's a bunch of idiots memeing, it's the fact they are doing it at all. Things like that don't happen in a vacuum.

Let's not pretend WoW from Classic had minor cosmetic bugs.

And Blizzard flat out took away the ability to play Vanilla already, and in Classic adjusted the way Alterac Valley functions.

Let's not pretend you aren't purposefully misinterpreting what I said.

[Zyky]

Sure, the quality and standard has probably gone down in Blizzard. Maybe they are much more worried about subs and monthly revenue.

BUT - Its a different world now than back in the 90s and early 2000s. Back then Blizzard didnt have millions upon millions playing theyre games. They didnt have lots of people losing theyre shit about literally everything, everyday, on the internet.

If they delay stuff today it means a shitshow on the internet, bad PR and people who quit the game(s) and never come back. People demand new stuff all the time.

They've proven that all they have to do is make a good polished game, They peaked during Wrath of the Lich King wtih almost 12M subs and it started going downhill with Cataclysm and peaked briefly with Legion, but no where near Wrath levels. It's been proven that they just need to grow on what they do well and stop making bullshit time sink style content built around gimmicking a certain amount of months of subscription time. If they make good completed content the players play and enjoy it. If they make garbage the players unsub and speak out about how bad everything has gotten.

[Jester Joe]

Because it's Blizzard's IP, it's their project. They outsourced the models to that company, everything else is on Blizzard. You can forgive graphical sins (somewhat), not mechanical ones.

And yet that doesn't justify either the hard focus on it as if this is the ONLY thing Blizzard released.

This is literally the question being asked in the OP. 'What happened to 'We'll release it when it's ready?'" because for whatever reason the delay could have been (incompetence, setbacks, genuine desire to improve the product) once you got to play it, it was usually mechanically and visually sound. Warcraft 3 Reforged is probably the first egregious example of "Wasn't ready, isn't ready, won't be ready anytime soon... ship it," given by Blizzard. You can argue that this happened before, around Cataclysm, around Diablo 3, around Mists of Pandaria, whatever the fuck- I'm not getting into a subjective fuckfray about it. This game, this travesty here, is what we're talking about.

We are not JUST talking Warcraft 3 though. That's the issue, you're hardcore focusing on it when it's just brought up as an example. And that's exactly the point, this isn't anything new or unusual, you even mentioned the worst offender (Diablo 3).

Imagine being Blizzard, a company that achieved near cult-like status over the course of well over two decades of IP's and games, fucking up so badly, so soundly, that there is a legitimate effort to review bomb their latest release to sub-1 levels. It doesn't matter if it's a hate-train, or it's a bunch of idiots memeing, it's the fact they are doing it at all. Things like that don't happen in a vacuum.

except Blizzard has never been some perfect company like being claimed. There's always been issue, it's just now they're getting more and more critical of it.

Let's not pretend you aren't purposefully misinterpreting what I said.

...how am I misinterpreting what you said when I brought up Classic for bugs, you said "What relevance does this have? There's a marked difference between some dumb bug that has your character moonwalking on other peoples clients and flatout missing key components in a game." in response. That isn't misinterpreting, you flat out tried to say like there wasn't game breaking issues with Classic that would cause the servers to be down for an entire day often.

[froschhure]

in these days you can be happy that valve and guinsoos/icefrog managed to get dota into other hands than blizzards.

[Grimbold21]

"Release it when it's ready" has been gone for years. The business has changed and taking too long can really hurt things. In addition, I'm not sure when Blizzard knows to say "good enough" any longer.

Games and patches are going to release with bugs. It happens in all games. The trick is to try and judge when what you have meets some acceptable level. I don't think they really have a clear metric about that.

It is curious that releasing a buggy game is somehow less detrimental than a decent release.

I dunno how that can be when you can objectively conclude that games in the first state are broadly.... unappreciated.

Unless you have your hands in your eyes and eat whatever Blizzard, or any other company for that matter, feeds you, there is no way this is acceptable.

But sure let's all gather around the fire and sing "i don't care what's in the store if its just cosmetic"

[NoiseTank13]

...how am I misinterpreting what you said when I brought up Classic for bugs, you said "What relevance does this have? There's a marked difference between some dumb bug that has your character moonwalking on other peoples clients and flatout missing key components in a game." in response. That isn't misinterpreting, you flat out tried to say like there wasn't game breaking issues with Classic that would cause the servers to be down for an entire day often.

Because fucking Classic didn't remove features from Vanilla, nor did it implement new character models that sucked, nor did it charge you additional money (outside of the subscription of course) and you are comparing Classic to Warcraft3R for some reason as though they were were the same in quality?

Fuck these forums. There's nothing intellectually valuable here. Just a constant hunger for being right that people take a block of words, willfully ignore most it, and posit forth a response to something/nothing without putting an ounce of critical thinking or any thought.

[arr0gance]

This is an issue with modern gaming in general. As gaming has become less niche and more lucrative for massive publishing corporations to monetize, there is less incentive to release a "ready" product as much as there is a "good enough" product. In years past, the onus was on developers because they couldn't easily patch the game due to the lack of high speed internet connections. Nowadays, the push seems to driven by market demands and the ability to release games in key cyclical intervals so as to maximize profit. This places immovable deadlines on developers and they're told to work around it. This results in insane crunch time for the developers and because of the lack of reasonable testing time, often results in a game that fails to meet expectations.

This can be both bad and good, though gamers will understandably only look at from the downsides. FO:76 is the best example I can think of a game that was released unfinished and was absolutely demolished by players and journalists alike. They even fucked up the Collector's Edition bonuses. But it can also be beneficial in some situations too. As much shit as BfA gets, it was a commercial success for Blizzard. And even though most would argue 8.1 was the "real" first patch of the expansion, plenty of tourist players checked out and leveled toons to max in the first few weeks. The cynic in me would say that Activision may have learned the wrong lesson from this and we may see history repeat itself with SL but there are tiny parts of me that hope Blizzard understands the importance of sticking the landing with this expansion. Time will tell.

Further, there is evidence that the patch-it-later mentality is burning out gamers in general and there have recently been a number of high profile delays on Triple A titles which have been welcomed by their respective communities. Whether the people in charge at Blizzard are aware of this change in the market perception I think will be key in the likelihood of SL being delayed for its own good. I will say there is only so much good faith the court of public opinion can afford a developer and Blizzard has been teetering on the brink of its playerbase collapsing on itself for a long time so I pray my hunches are correct.

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

You kidding? That ended after people screamed about BC not releasing in 2006.

- - - Updated - - -

It is curious that releasing a buggy game is somehow less detrimental than a decent release.

I'd point to two things. One, the "Early Access Effect." Two, the fact American's attention span is about the length of time for them to hit the youtube button and find another trailer to watch.

Releasing a bad game is fine because after 3 years of updates and some intensive modding it'll finally be a good game. But waiting too long to release means everyone forgets your game ever existed in the first place.

[Mister Cheese]

Or crazy idea here, you're seeing a fanbase slowly get older and become more critical/aware of issues.

Bugs that were ignored in the past are now harshly criticized, cut content that wasn't paid attention to years ago is now suddenly under harsh scrutiny.

Dude no. No. There's so much wrong with the remake. It doesn't matter. Are you also ignoring that older people didn't play WoW when it came out? Come on dude.



This is also blatant false advertising on graphics. They still have this video from Blizzcon years ago up on the official website. They might have removed it now since it was pointed out but nonetheless up until the point the game came out they pushed the narrative that there was going to be dynamic cutscenes as well as new lore put into the game to support the existence of WoW itself.

Not to mention there's tons of missing features. And the original 17 year old version of WC3 was tampered with to be turned into a much worse game for "parity". And everyone knows why.

[Sanguinerd]

When has Blizzard ever released a game that wasn't riddled with bugs and required several patches to fix? The whole "release when ready" never really applied anyway.

Not that Blizzard is still the same company, and the worst part is they're still in a position to change and turn this ship around but probably won't.

[Appelgren]

When has Blizzard ever released a game that wasn't riddled with bugs and required several patches to fix?

Can you enlighten me with some AAA-titles that was released perfect without any bugs whatsoever and never had patches to fix stuff?

[Garretdejiko]

In an alternate reality, WC3R team couldn't meet the deadline, sharing Bungie's fate.

We are in the wrong reality, lads.

[Sanguinerd]

Can you enlighten me with some AAA-titles that was released perfect without any bugs whatsoever and never had patches to fix stuff?

That's not the point, every game has bugs.

But not every game company is known for saying they "release it when it's ready" when it clearly wasn't ready.