"We'll release it when it's ready"... does blizzard still follow that philosophy?

[Frozen Death Knight]

They still follow the same philosophy, yes. Blizzad have always cut out features when they feel that they can not make them good enough for the release. Heck, "WarCraft 3" was supposed to be a more RPG styled game with much more focus on individual Heroes than the RTS part of the franchise, at that time (at least for singleplayer, as far as I know). Though, they toned the RPG down and made it work a lot more like the previous games worked.

Another example would be the chat rooms in "StarCraft 2". The game played like a charm on release and you did not really need the chats to enjoy the entirety of the game. Delaying it just for one single feature not being done would have been just annoying and would just make us wait longer than we actually needed.

This is also the case for the "Diablo 3" Arenas. They feel that the game is really solid as it is and they will add the feature some time after the release once they got all the issues with the system resolved. Trying to fix it all for the release would just delay the game even more and people are already at the top of their seats. They are aiming for a release now and the features not quite ready yet will be postponed.

Also, Arenas are an end game feature. People will be quite busy with other stuff before they will worry about what to do at end game, so Arenas will not be needed yet. If they release Arenas a couple of months after the actual release, it will have a minor impact on how people will enjoy the game, so it is an acceptable loss, for now.

As long as it will make Blizzard release "Diablo 3" faster, I will just be happy. =)

[Herecius]

... they're going to ship it without PVP, and minus a bunch of features that made the original debut trailer 2 years ago.

Yes its ready. No its not what they promised. Yes they will patch content in later.

People need to stop taking Blizzard's extremely early Blizzcon previews as set in stone. Blizzcon gives us glimpses of what's currently in development, which is ALL subject to change, always. Blizzard has tried to tell players this, to no avail.

[Dhrizzle]

Remember SC2 was supposed at first to be...ONE game....Then...Actiuvision'S geniuses came with the idea to bring 3 times the money selling 3 games.....

Look back at everything else Blizzard has released and tell me you didn't expect expansions for SC2.

In no way has the game been watered down in order to stretch it out more - the story has yes, but this is because they accidently made a whole game for the Terrans instead of a single campaign and decided to do the same for Zerg and Protoss.

Remember it was supposed to be released LAST YEAR ?? And it's still NOT out...

They WANT money so they'll rush D3 out

You gotta hate the way developers simulataneously delay games and rush them in to shops, I hate having to play paradoxes.

[Deleted]

for qualitiy you should be able to wait... want shit now or want a great thing in a few month? be patient...

[NotValidAnymore]

People need to stop taking Blizzard's extremely early Blizzcon previews as set in stone. Blizzcon gives us glimpses of what's currently in development, which is ALL subject to change, always. Blizzard has tried to tell players this, to no avail.

Dance studio comes to mind...

It's annoying how much people delay things for "quality", or rush things just to try to beat their competition these days, but they're the ones making the games, so... yeah.

[Boogums]

Upon hearing the news about Blizz postponing the release of the PVP arena for Diablo 3, I really got to ask myself a serious question - "does Blizzard still follow their own philosophy of "we'll release the game when we feel the game is ready"?*

Now, before I get assaulted by 123 people saying "IT's a PVE GAME!"... please hear me out as I'm actually NOT complaining about lack of PVP on a personal level. :P

I agree that it's a PVE game and on a personal level I could care less about D3 arena PVP... but just because I don't care about PVP doesn't mean everybody doesn't either - and I know many MANY people who just love dueling in D2 and in D3 that is to be one of the major elements of the game.*

While I never was a Warcraft/Starcraft RTS fan - wasn't Warcraft I-III, Starcraft, and Starcraft II also PVE games with a PVP element? Did those PVP elements get delayed at all?*

When Blizz generally releases a game - they said "When we feel the GAME is perfect and ready". The GAME - as in, the entire package. Back in the RTS days, that also applied to the PVP aspects too, didn't it?*

Now, Warcraft didn't launch with BGs or the Honor system until a later patch - but that has been forgivable as, well, it's a gigantic ginormous MMORPG. It wasn't feesable to get everything they want in there as it's supsed to be a whole WORLD of things to do, and by design it was meant to be a game that slowly grew over time with new content patches and expansions.*

...Diablo III isn't designed to be an expandable world, nor has the complexity of design as WoW does.

So, why couldn't they just delay D3 for a month or three to get arena done for launch? Which (given the number of MASSIVE tweaks each D3 patch has) also gives them time to tweak the PVE content more as well.*

The bottom line is this - Blizzard always says "We'll release it when we feel the game is done" and yet, they're deliberately postponing a major feature in D3 just to get it out the door ASAP.

Why is it so important to get it out right now when before, back in the RTS days, it didn't matter to them how long it took until the game is, in their eyes, perfect?*

So... DOES Blizzard still stand behind that philosophy? Because with D3 arena postponement, it sounds like they've adopted the "get it out NOW, patch it later" philosophy that every other gaming company tends to do.*

Good thing you don't have to pay for D3 patches or a monthly fee for it.

Also, if they wanted to "get it out the door ASAP" we'd have had it in Q4 2011. The game is already a quarter delayed.

[Moshots]

so you would rather wait 3 more months for a game already 6 months behind on release that people have been waiting 10 years for? we dont want this game to turn intlo duke nukeum forever do we?

[Herecius]

Dance studio comes to mind...

It's annoying how much people delay things for "quality", or rush things just to try to beat their competition these days, but they're the ones making the games, so... yeah.

Dance Studio is a feature that's even more frivolous than pet battles. Blizzard was smart to leave it on the cutting room floor. I could easily see pet battles ending up there too.

That's just how development works. We should be so lucky that they make their development so transparent, if only people would actually see it for the fluid and constantly-changing process it is.

[stavius]

People will still find something wrong with it because it's not WoW.

[Beazy]

Dance studio comes to mind...

It's annoying how much people delay things for "quality", or rush things just to try to beat their competition these days, but they're the ones making the games, so... yeah.

You do know that the dance studio was an April fools joke, and people blew it out of context when someone at blizzcon said they were "complete and ready to patch in" as a joke, right?

Blizzard never promised anything.

[PetersenIII]

You do know that the dance studio was an April fools joke, and people blew it out of context when someone at blizzcon said they were "complete and ready to patch in" as a joke, right?

Blizzard never promised anything.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WF_1Pk_4UZk

2:32

[Deleted]

People will still find something wrong with it because it's not WoW.

Well if it was WoW, people would definitely find something wrong with it

To be honest I think we could probably leave it at "People will still find something wrong with it...", and it goes for every game ever released. It's impossible to please everyone.

[PizzaSHARK]

They still follow the same philosophy, yes. Blizzad have always cut out features when they feel that they can not make them good enough for the release. Heck, "WarCraft 3" was supposed to be a more RPG styled game with much more focus on individual Heroes than the RTS part of the franchise, at that time (at least for singleplayer, as far as I know). Though, they toned the RPG down and made it work a lot more like the previous games worked.

Another example would be the chat rooms in "StarCraft 2". The game played like a charm on release and you did not really need the chats to enjoy the entirety of the game. Delaying it just for one single feature not being done would have been just annoying and would just make us wait longer than we actually needed.

This is also the case for the "Diablo 3" Arenas. They feel that the game is really solid as it is and they will add the feature some time after the release once they got all the issues with the system resolved. Trying to fix it all for the release would just delay the game even more and people are already at the top of their seats. They are aiming for a release now and the features not quite ready yet will be postponed.

Also, Arenas are an end game feature. People will be quite busy with other stuff before they will worry about what to do at end game, so Arenas will not be needed yet. If they release Arenas a couple of months after the actual release, it will have a minor impact on how people will enjoy the game, so it is an acceptable loss, for now.

As long as it will make Blizzard release "Diablo 3" faster, I will just be happy. =)

Don't defend Battle.net 2.0. There's no justification for its complete lack of features other than Blizzard pretty much just not giving a shit.

That said, I like that they're willing to sideline the D3 PvP systems to get the game out earlier. Now, we just have to see if they can deliver on the implied promise that the PvP will be awesome when it does get finished.

The cynic in me says they'll push it back to the first expansion and convince us it's a feature for the expansion ::eyeroll::