You literally said that some companies have adapted and some haven’t. Could Blizzard be the latter? Or somewhere in the middle? There’s no doubt that the pandemic has affected output and continues to do so. By end of the year everything should start going back to normal but until then it’s gonna be a bit shit
Non ti fidar di me se il cuor ti manca.
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Don't be a victim of IFOWISNAWL!
Call 800-Calm-The-F-Down, Operators are standing by. Now taking calls on all your Legion worries.
I was comparing it to BfA but you said “no don’t compare two delayed schedules to each other because you have to use legion which had disjointed patch releases like 7.1.5”
8.1 release had less content than 9.1 is set to have
Also in terms of release content
8.0
10 dungeons (I think that or 8)
1 7 boss raid
6 zones
2 war campaigns
1 warfront
7 islands
9.0
8 dungeons
5 zones
10 boss raid
4 covenant campaigns
4 covenant systems
2 torghast modes
Compare the content
Torghast is the equivalent of islands
The maw is the equivalent of a war front (the assault from the jailer is the gear source)
The covenant campaigns are the war campaign equivalent
Bigger raid
Fewer dungeons
More content for a single character but arguably less for multiple
Ussually 3-4 months actually. 5 months is the old record.
- BfA: Aug 14th -> Dec 11th. 4 months. Following was 6 months later with a beefy middle patch between.
- Legion: Aug 30th-> Oct 25th. 2 months. The rest of the patch came a month later so arguably 3. They staggered release to ensure people had content. The following patch was 5 months later with a mini patch between.
- WoD: Nov 13th-> Feb 27th. 3 months. Though to be fair it was a garbage patch and the real patch came June. So 6 months. Though I dont think WoD should exactly be a standard in any way shape or form since at that point they had already dumped the expansion and put all their efforts on Legion.
- MoP: September 25th-> Nov 27th. 2 months. The following patch was 4 months later.
- Cata: Dec 7th-> April 26th. 4 and a half months. Following patch 2 months later.
- WotLK: Nov 15th-> April 14th. 5 months. Following patch 4 months later.
- TBC: Jan 16th-> May 22nd. 4 months. Following patch 5 months later.
- Vanilla: Not exactly fair. It had CONSTANT patches so there is small gaps for all of them.
We are CURRENTLY 5 months in. We are likely still 3 months away. The average for a new patch is 3-4 months. Shadowlands is set to double to average. Its not just doubling the average its hitting the point where other expansions have had two entire patches out.
Likewise, old expansions had arguably more content at launch; each new expansion tends to have less and less at launch for people to do. Likewise it used to be when we were in a situation like now where blizzard doesnt exactly have a whole set of patch to launch we'd get a mini patch to hold us off. For example:
Legion released quickly a patch. Said patch was mostly a dungeon and a tiny raid (It had other stuff mind but thats the big beefy stuff people look for)
MoP did the same: Had a patch before the big raid patch with mostly smaller scale but still good content to it.
Why can't Shadowlands do the same? Why didn't they release the Mega Dungeon NOW and hold off for the raid to later so players could at least have SOMETHING? This is what people mean when they say that blizzard is mismanaging the fuck out of this. They are learning nothing from their past, and are set to absolutly DESTROY the old record for waiting on content (not counting end of expansion waits).
It does not matter that some of the .1 patches were small. Those small patches also came out very rapidly and they were still content. That blizzard isn't doing the same: holding people off with smaller patches, just speaks for blatant incomeptence and a refusal to look at their own history.
Last edited by Toppy; 2021-04-01 at 07:25 PM.
World needs more Goblin Warriors https://i.imgur.com/WKs8aJA.jpg
Because of multiple reasons. There is no quick solution to this.
- first of all, content is not ready. They're not gonna drop a patch with half baked content when they know it's in that state. No one would be happy and given the situation shooting themselves in the foots is not a wise decision.
- covid-19. May sound cliche, but the pandemic has disrupted the development/production cycles of so many companies. Everything's slower, stuff like not being able to buy computers to make people work due to general unavailability, etc. There's a lot of big and small side effects about this that impact companies one way or another.
- Shadowlands overcomplicated structure. So many people called this, and now we're seeing the effects. There's so much interconnected stuff going that touching something has repercussions on multiple other things and they are "losing" time in micromanaging all this stuff when there are blatant flaws all around (last one the DH tank bug that was huge and "no one noticed" until now).
I'm not justifying them. There have been clear underestimations about the effort needed to mantain SL and the situation doesn't help, and majority of players had seen this right from the expansion was announced. We'll see how it goes, but i'm expecting Blizzard to drop 9.3 like in WoD if they stick to their bi-annual expansion cycle.
Last edited by Coldkil; 2021-04-02 at 07:21 AM.
Non ti fidar di me se il cuor ti manca.
But. I. Was. Looking. At. The. Content. That’s why I even added 7.1.5 and 8.1.5 which both came either sooner or around the same time as 9.1 will.
We don’t even know yet if Sanctum of Domination launches when the patch goes live or is unlocked weeks later.
The only difference for 9.1 might be the additional zone, where we don’t have any information about size or content yet. If it’s like the other parts of the Maw it’s pretty pointless and for sure 100% unfun.
Again, compare it to Legion. 7.5 months in in Legion we already got 7.2, which means: new mega dungeon, new big raid, new small raid, new zone, new dungeon, mage tower.
+7 months in we‘ll get: new zone, new mega dungeon, new raid in Shadowlands. That’s one (small) raid, one dungeon and one additional feature less than Legion.
Even if we compare it to BfA Shadowlands looks worse, as BfA launched with one more zone than Shadowlands. We lacked a proper endgame zone like the Maw, but the Maw is pretty much universally disliked. Besides that we have Torghast which is as well or bad received as Islands and then we have the Warfronts, which weren’t well received either - but they existed. In Shadowlands there’s just nothing like that. I didn’t rate Warfronts as zones, but they’re basically that: half-assed (revamped) zones. They’re not less fun than the Maw though.
My overall point is, Blizzard delivered with Legion. They really did. Everything worked flawlessly and there was a lot of content. Then something happened: either they just decreased their efforts again or something else shook them up, because BfA was a clear downgrade from Legion. And now Shadowlands: it might not be worse than BfA, which was already a downgrade from Legion, but it has less to offer than BfA (if we look at the timelines and compare it that way), which makes it even more of a downgrade compared to Legion. So again, what happened to Blizzard that this happened and shows so much? Covid might be a reason, but that’s for sure not the whole picture.
- - - Updated - - -
Let me quote this so that it can be seen again as it’s simple facts to show how slow and lazy Bizzard has become.
Last edited by Nyel; 2021-04-02 at 08:38 AM.
MAGA - Make Alliance Great Again
Gonna be that guy.
FFXIV dropped their last patch in december. Two months after Shadowlands released.
They have another patch next week.
What is in the patch?
- Two raids. Both with their own storylines (sometimes multiple in a raid), gear sets, and cutscenes.
- A new zone.
- New dungeon (with its own gearset, not a recolor)
- New old world content.
- Referencing old story lines and bringing them to conclusions or continuing them.
- Two new trial (single difficult boss fight with multiple phases.
- One of the above trials also involves its own side content where you pilot a mech (its complicated but it does make sense to the setting)
- A few hours worth of new story content including more machinema like cutscenes than blizz does in a whole expansion that WONT be time gated.
- New crafted gear and cosmetic sets.
- Gathering/crafting storyline
- New mounts.
- New emotes.
Mind you said patch may be a staggered release so some of it wont come for a month or two (likely one of the raids and the new zone). Which STILL puts it ahead of WoW in terms of both content and release schedule.
Compared to wow:
- One new dungeon (recolored gear).
- One new raid (recolored gear).
- One new zone
- No new old world content ever, never referencing or finishing old storylines.
- Story content that will be rather, limited and staggered over weeks if not months.
- Two new cosmetic gear sets per covenant.
- New mounts.
- Never any emotes.
With WoW's patch taking twice as long to release. Both are still under covid rules and remoting.
Last edited by Toppy; 2021-04-02 at 12:56 PM.
World needs more Goblin Warriors https://i.imgur.com/WKs8aJA.jpg
We know what happens with legion though, it had extra time put into launch content from them scraping wod and then released smaller patches. There was no downgrade in terms of effort when it came to BFA we just got a bigger patch then 7.1 which is why it would take longer. Legion wasn’t them trying super hard they had more dev time and put in less content compared to BFA or other expans with 4ish month .1 patches.
Then when it comes to shadowlands were obviously behind but given that the patch is far bigger then legion it should be compared to the bigger BFA time frame when talking my about it’s delay.
Last edited by Lorgar Aurelian; 2021-04-02 at 01:05 PM.
Last edited by Toppy; 2021-04-02 at 01:12 PM.
World needs more Goblin Warriors https://i.imgur.com/WKs8aJA.jpg
No, TBC is coming in June, so it won't be the longest drought at all.
Again, I‘m repeating myself, but look at the corresponding timeframes and not solely on the patch numbers.
By the time we’ll get 9.1 we already had 7.2 in Legion. So compare Legion‘s 7.2 state to what we will have in Shadowlands with 9.1. In BfA this works until the state of 8.1.5 (8.2 was 10 months after BfA‘s launch).
It doesn’t make much sense to compare Legion’s state with 7.1 to Shadowlands‘ state with 9.1 when 7.1 launched after 2 months and 9.1 after ~ 7. We can compare the content of the patches itself, but we can’t use them for a time/content comparison because their timelines are totally different. Yes, 7.1 was way smaller than 9.1, but it also just took less than 1/3 of the time to get released.
Last edited by Nyel; 2021-04-02 at 01:14 PM.
MAGA - Make Alliance Great Again
I don’t feel like your reading my post at this point. I’m not saying shadowlands isn’t behind or any thing of the like it obviously is.
I’m saying your earlier statement that it shouldn’t be compared to BFA because BFA was slower then legion and had less effort put into is silly.