World of Warcraft "alive and well", patch 5.2 is a statement of intent says dev

[NineSpine]

Someone's getting defensive, aren't they? I find it funny that someone who thought ME3 was good thinks they're smart enough to form a criticism about anything.



Perhaps the other 97% should have done better?

Wow isn't your own personal little club that the rest of us somehow snuck into. It's a product, and a good product caters to the vast majority of it's customers. BMW doesn't make their cars with your personal ass-print in the seat just so you can feel special and more comfortable than everyone else. They make the car the best they can for as many people as possible. Welcome to the real world.

[Arbs]

Why not? Look at EQ. Still going on.

Look at Runescape they have over 400,000 players still playing.

---------- Post added 2013-03-17 at 01:28 PM ----------

raid, do LFR, log out till reset.

no dungeons, just dailies.

zzz.

Not are fault your to lazy to do anything else

[MoanaLisa]

There's an element of game-bashing creeping into the thread. This forum--for those who forget from time to time--is about World of Warcraft. Comments about the quality of other games and the like are off-topic and likely to lead to problems. Opinions about ME3 or anything like that belong somewhere else. So knock it off.

[Arbs]

If this means they're gonna start churning out bigger and better updates at a faster time rate, then I'd start supporting them again, unlike cataclysm.

Remember though, what were they developing during Cataclysm ?? Prbly 4 games and now most of them are done and they even said the WoW team is even bigger now !! Meaning some people from Diablo / Starcraft maybe even Blizzard All-Stars or Titan that have been moved back over to WoW.

[Taik]

Still dreaming of the day Tigole returns to the WoW-Team

[Arbs]

How about an interview with Tom Chilton? http://www.twizzcast.com/shows/2013/...m-chilton.html

"Part of the team has been split off to work on the odd number patches, Patch 5.1, 5.3, and maybe even Patch 5.5!
The rest of the team works on the even numbed patches with raids, Patch 5.0, 5.2, and Patch 5.4.
The team working on WoW has also been enlarged, and is now bigger than ever before. The team size will be increased as time goes on."

So basically the Even number Team is prbly bigger than the Odd number Team.

[Frozen Death Knight]

They milked WoW when they decided to not update Cataclysm for a year while having a second team making another expansion.

GW2 is terrible, sorry. Rift is different, and TOR was a failure. Honestly with the budget TOR had they could have made a better WoW.

I guess they had a lot of over-paid devs there.

Your PS3 finished third place this generation after the brand monopolized the market for two console cycles.

Monopolies are bad for gamers unless you are a fanboy.

Did you enjoy your PS2 breaking down all the time?

The reason why the PS3 was not as successful as its predecessors was because of its inaccessibility like the notorious price tag. The console had its strong points, but they made it too hard for the average consumer to buy, especially when Sony competed against themselves with their own PS2.

What the heck does this have to do with WoW, whatsoever? I seriously don't get it.

[blackyfrost]

they gave away a free week again when 5.2 hit to everyone who wasn't currently subbed

that's 35 free days this expansion for me

when they stop giving away free weeks i'll believe it's alive and well

[McCronCronz]

I have had a ps2 since they came out and never had a problem with mine. Don't go to the community donation center to get your consoles or that's what happens.

[CrossNgen]

Remember though, what were they developing during Cataclysm ?? Prbly 4 games and now most of them are done and they even said the WoW team is even bigger now !! Meaning some people from Diablo / Starcraft maybe even Blizzard All-Stars or Titan that have been moved back over to WoW.

I know that they've enlarged their team, I just want to know if they'll actually start releasing content as fast and as big as they used to do back in WotLK, with every major patch containing at least a raid, and not just scenarios and even more dailies.

[Frozen Death Knight]

Someone's getting defensive, aren't they? I find it funny that someone who thought ME3 was good thinks they're smart enough to form a criticism about anything.



Perhaps the other 97% should have done better?

If it had not been for the ending, ME3 would have been quite well received, actually. It did ruin a lot of the experience, but it still was a good game regardless.

Also, this is coming from someone who has not played any of the Mass Effect games, so any straw mans and insults you throw at me will be even more pointless.

My apologies to the moderators for replying to this post. I will leave it at that.

[Venziir]

Still dreaming of the day Tigole returns to the WoW-Team

... Really? The guy who was oppossed to all specs being useful? Really now?

[Deleted]

Still dreaming of the day Tigole returns to the WoW-Team

Why? So we can grind countless mobs in STV waiting for those damn pages to drop again? Let's see how Titan is before we carry on making Tigole the harcore MMO messiah.

[Ehrenpanzer]

Someone's getting defensive, aren't they? I find it funny that someone who thought ME3 was good thinks they're smart enough to form a criticism about anything.



Perhaps the other 97% should have done better?

As part of that 3%, I would like to issue a formal apology to you on behalf of the 97%...

"We, the casual, the semi-core raiders, the people with jobs and school, with families and responsibilities, with hobbies outside of staring at a computer screen endlessly, those of us who have chosen to waste our lives with trivial things like children, the military or being wasteful things like doctors or police officers would like to formally acknowledge our sincere regrets in not clearing Naxx at 60. We wish to convey our deepest regret at not being able to all be pasty, snarky, snot nosed little bi***es like you, who are content to live in their mommies basement into their 40's, reveling in the fact that you base your life's accomplishments on a couple of pixels on a computer screen. We regret that Blizzard saw fit to allow us to see the raid that they developed and we have all opened tickets to have any items, achievements or mounts removed that we may have gained from it, as well as sent personal emails to Ghostcrawler to have Naxx removed so your epeen will be safe from the horrid thought of new players ever seeing it. We again apologize for any hardship this may have caused to your fragile epeen.

Sincerely,

The people whose subs pay for the content so you can be an as*h**e"

Infracted: Please refrain from insulting others, either singly or as a group. - Eschaton

[Kathranis]

So basically the Even number Team is prbly bigger than the Odd number Team.

As far as I know it's not strictly divided into two teams or an "A Team" and "B Team" as so many people assume. The Warcraft "team" is already subdivided into many, many different departments, all of which have their own leaders and are divided into many smaller teams, each of which has its own leaders.

Rather than being strictly divided into large groups devoted to different content, everything I've seen indicates that they use a priority-based task system; they've actually shown their task lists at Blizzcon panels. What this means is that there's a list of jobs that, say, the prop artists need to do, and it's organized by priority (importance, deadline, etc.).

My guess would be that the teams are all working on all the various content at roughly the same time, with some working on the highest priority content (next patch) while others are working on lower priority content (patch after next, next expansion). Who is working on what is probably a lot more organic than "team a" and "team b."

So when you think about it in those terms, if we imagine the situation since the core 5.0 Mists of Pandaria content was completed, it probably looked something like:

Quest team was working primarily on 5.1 content, secondarily on 5.2 content, preliminary work for next expansion content. Currently working primarily on 5.3 content, secondarily on 5.4 content.

Environment artists probably completed 5.1 content fairly quickly and went into designing the Isle of Thunder and Isle of Giants, while doing environment design work for the next expansion on the side. Probably working on next expansion content primarily, unless 5.3 needs new environment work.

Dungeon artists and encounter designers were working on 5.2 primarily and 5.4 secondarily, with preliminary work for the next expansion. Probably currently working on 5.4 primarily and possibly 5.6 or next expansion content secondarily.

Character and prop artists (two seperate teams) certainly prioritize tasks by importance based primarily on the needs of other teams; IE if the quest team needs a unique model for a major character, versus the dungeon designers needing new models for bosses. They probably also have several artists dedicated to animating, rigging, and texturing the revamped player models.

And this goes on and on, each team prioritizing their work based on importance and deadlines while also working on future content patch content and expansion content where and when they can.

[Gimlix]

Still dreaming of the day Tigole returns to the WoW-Team

Who is tigole?

NVM know it already.

[Sigmar]

Who is tigole?

NVM know it already.

He's responsible for the last minute patch before WoW's launch that gutted Paladins, Shamans, and Druids so they were utterly useless in their non-healer roles.

[Hellravager]

lol and what your saying Destil is just your opinion as well TOR was fine everything was great until they decided to cut the story off at 50 which pissed alot of people off. Rift is great its like WoW but better graphics. GW2 is fine but it is so not fantastic as your stating its a broken game as soon as you hit max lvl all you can do is grind exotic gear and do pvp thats it no dungeons or raids or anything so its pretty pathetic in this age of gaming nobody wants a pvp only game. Also PS3 is one of my fav consoles too keep in mind its because of jrpgs if it wasnt for them and Monster Hunter i would never want to have a console.

[xanzul]

The idea that the people developing mmo's having "no fucking clue" is just speculation on your part. Surely even you must conceed that the hold Blizzard have on the market place would make starting a new MMO much harder?

---------- Post added 2013-03-16 at 02:29 AM ----------



To suggest that Blizzard are not in any part responsible for the failure of rival MMO's is ridiculous. They will aggresively defend thier market share as they are entitled to do.

I like how people on these forums keep flip flopping to push the Blizzard hate. One day Blizzard has no clue what they are doing and players are leaving in droves because of it and the next day all of a sudden Blizzard has managed to figure out a way to not only prevent players from quitting the game for any reason but they also prevent other companies from developing their own mmos.

---------- Post added 2013-03-21 at 06:40 AM ----------

I actually try very hard to understand both points of view.
Im not going to argue with you because only you know what your true agenda is. Lets just say it came as no surprise to me that you picked on the first anti Blizzard post in this thread attacked the poster ignoring the fact that he may have even a small point and started an arguement with him. Oh and thats the first time Ive seen you have a gripe with Blizzard.

I know this is difficult for you people to comprehend but the point of discussion forums is exactly just that: discussion. If everyone agreed with each other there wouldn't be a whole lot to discuss. Just because not everyone is a serial whiner who makes a thread about every single issue they have with the game no matter how insignificant and then beat it into the ground endlessly doesn't mean they don't have issues with the game. In fact quite a few people are satisfied just seeing others who have their complaints post and feel no need to needlessly repost the exact same thoughts and opinions.

---------- Post added 2013-03-21 at 06:44 AM ----------

I think you're way off on the Rift numbers. The new "expansion" is really disappointing.

Yeah no. Unlike most other new mmos Rift has managed to obtain and maintain a rather significant amount of subscriptions and despite any issues with its first expansion I don't think it is nearly enough to cause any harm to their subscription numbers. I'm not sure where players got this idea that unless an expansion is completely 100% perfect with zero bugs or complaints that it is going to result in killing the game. This seems to come from a lot of people whose first mmo was Wow.

---------- Post added 2013-03-21 at 06:47 AM ----------

Rift is doing great, and is still 15 bucks a month with an xpac, yet the poor game gets shoved to the side. It's unfortunate, it's made a ton of improvements and lots of people don't bother to at least read the new updates. In my opinion, it's a good competitor to WoW.

I was extremely skeptical of Rift when I first heard of it but 2 years after it was released it is looking more and more like it may just very well end up being as popular as Wow. A lot of people forget Wow didn't pick up 12 million subscribers overnight. It happened over a very long period of time over numerous expansions and Rift seems to be following that very same course.

---------- Post added 2013-03-21 at 06:56 AM ----------

There might be lots who are simply staying subbed because there is no competition to WoW (or no replacement game), Rift, SwToR, GW2 are all different types of mmo that people who play / played WoW might not enjoy.

I was subbed for almost a full year even though I didn't enjoy the game any longer (having spent 7 years with it n' stopped 5 days ago), the only times I logged on, was to for the daily routine with the farms / dailies, and then raid in the evening 4-5 times per week.
What keep't me subbed was the players I was with more then anything, but eventually they also vanished.., and with that, my interest in the game.
Game-wise, Patch 5.X raids was great, but it was to little to late for me sadly

Not that this is a doomsday proclamation, but I doubt anyone has a count on how many players are "unhappy" with where the game have gone for the past 2-3 years (Goes for all types of players), just because people are subbed at this moment, or isn't creating thread upon thread, does not mean they are happy and enjoying the game the slightest, it just means their still subscribed.

Opinions are great, their just not factual as you rightly stated to begin with, yet based it on your own opinion also.

No I'm sorry but what a lot of people on these forums don't consider is the fact that outside of these forums most players just play the game to have fun and when they log out they don't even think about it much less spend time on the forums complaining about things. It is the "inside the beltway" mindset that plagues politicians in DC. They get so caught up in their own internal politics and infighting that they lose sight of more practical issues and concerns voters have. Many of the concerns mentioned on forums don't always necessarily match up with what Blizzard sees in game or when players cancel their subscriptions and many of Blizzard's game design decisions reflect this whether forum posters want to accept it or not. What is a huge deal for us and something that makes us want to quit the game might be an extremely minor annoyance to most other players if they even notice it at all.

---------- Post added 2013-03-21 at 06:59 AM ----------

It's fairly clear Titan is being announced this year. The statement seems to be him reasuring World of Warcraft players.

Still, WoW remains at the top of the entire genre. What happens if WoW is surpassed by another game? WoW will be played and generate money for at least another 10 years, however what happens to the player base when Titan is announced, and WoW becomes the number 2 for Blizzard. What happens when ALL the top WoW developers, are working on Titan.

World of Warcraft may squeak out one more expansion. However be ready for a MASSIVE player drop when Titan is out.

Considering Blizzard has significantly increased the amount of people working on Wow, that is pretty much complete bullshit. There are more people working on Wow than Titan right now and if that doesn't tell you Blizzard has no interest in dumping Wow for a newer game then you are pretty much clueless or just simply too blinded by your own personal interests to see the bigger picture.

---------- Post added 2013-03-21 at 07:04 AM ----------

Sorry to say I can't trust anything Blizzard says any more.

Do they intend to keep releasing content like this year after year? Maybe. Will they? That's another story entirely.

With Blizzard I always find there's some spin goes into everything they say just so when it doesn't happen, they have a way to backpedal. Sad really, but it seems to be the way mainstream gaming companies are going nowadays.

When was the last time Blizzard back peddled to get out of doing something they promised? Certainly not during this expansion. In fact they have given us exactly what they said they were going to. We are getting content patches every 3 months and we got a new tier 6 months after Mop launched with a massive Ulduar type raid. The fact that most of the complaints about 5.2 revolve around too much trash in ToT, too many complex mechanics in ToT and that new valor gear is gated behind a raid rep (after 6 months of endless demands for some type of dungeon grindable rep) pretty much speaks to the quality of the patch. In short people are scrambling and reaching to find something to complain about because they can't handle that Blizzard isn't on their knees in financial ruin for daring not cater to the vocal minority.

---------- Post added 2013-03-21 at 07:09 AM ----------

5.2 is great for raiding. Bad for everything else, the game isn't fun anymore when gearing up because Blizz used scenarios to speed up the output of new patches.

And yet very few scenarios have been added in these content patches. In fact there are more one off solo scenarios in 5.2 which are only in game to facilitate story progression than 3 man scenarios from 5.1 and 5.2 combined. Also I'm not sure what scenarios have anything to do with hurting gear progression. All you get from scenarios is a bit of bonus valor daily and daily rep which can be skipped entirely without adding to the time spent gearing up. It would be nice if people would stop trumping up absolute bullshit just so they can complain.

---------- Post added 2013-03-21 at 07:11 AM ----------

Wow. Seriously?

Just because WoW is not the one and only MMO does not by any remotely rational stretch of the imagination mean that everything Blizzard does is good for their players.

Wow seriously? Stop taking things out of context. He said Blizzard can't do anything to harm customers by having a monopoly (which they 100% DO NOT). Your blind hate is making you look foolish.

---------- Post added 2013-03-21 at 07:14 AM ----------

This is true if buckets of shit are considered content. If the content isn't relative to or enjoyed by players, it may as well be a bucket of shit. Scenarios, hours and hours and hours of dailies most people don't like doing, and only 5 new 5man dungeons for the whole expansion?

I don't have a problem with WoW, I still play and I love pandas. I'll take wrath content over farming and dailies any day though.

For gods sake stop complaining about dailies already. Give it a fucking rest. Skip the dalies. Fuck the dailies. You didn't need them before 5.2 and you sure as hell don't need them now unless for some inexplicable reason you need 476 gear from the new daily rep to start ToT (which is laughable considering Tot is tuned around normal mode gear from tier 14 which is significantly higher ilvl than 476).

---------- Post added 2013-03-21 at 07:16 AM ----------

I'm sorry, but WotLK still had the most content an expansion has seen yet, dailies and scenarios which REUSE already existing content does not equate to actual new content, Blizzard are just telling you it's more content because now days people would believe anything they'd ever say.

I'm sorry did Mop end with 5.2? It is crap like this that makes it very difficult to take any complaints about this game seriously.

---------- Post added 2013-03-21 at 07:18 AM ----------

all I think is, if they keep throwing patches and raids out too fast, people will burn out and quit.
Good to have new content, but too fast will burn ppl out to fast.

Players are responsible for preventing burn out. Stop asking Blizzard to manage your game time for you by limiting when content is released.

---------- Post added 2013-03-21 at 07:20 AM ----------

First of all, it wasn't an entire tier, second: WotLK had Ulduar, TotC, ICC and Halion, plus a new PVP map, and that's not counting EoE, VoA and TOS, it also had the greatest amount of 5 mans.

And then we have Naxx, so shut your trap, WotLK had the most, there is no one out there with half a brain who would deny that.

The only thing it lacked was a nice number of world bosses.

Anyone with a brain wouldn't claim an expansion that ended many years ago has more content than an expansion that isn't finished yet.

---------- Post added 2013-03-21 at 07:24 AM ----------

MoP might not be done yet, but anyone and everyone who's up to date knows 5.4 will be the last patch to contain a raid in the expansion, 5.3 will not, same with 5.5, if that ever comes out.

We don't know ANYTHING about 5.3 at all. Nothing. Zip. Zilch. Nada. All we know is it is the lead in patch for 5.4 and that's it. Same goes for 5.4 all we know is that it will be the final raid and Blizzard has already implied a few times there may be a 5.5 so to claim Wrath has more content when over half the content in Mop hasn't even been released yet is about as fucking stupid as it gets.

---------- Post added 2013-03-21 at 07:27 AM ----------

Why is everyone saying how WoW will keep going on for like 20 years??? It's obvious that won't happen... not because the game has continued to get worse and worse... but because Titan is coming out and I don't care what blizzard has to say about how they can run both at the same time... nope... won't happen. Why? Because it's another MMO... you can't own 2 MMO's and run them both with full communities... All the new generation breaking features will be on Titan, and I can reassure you that they won't add those features to WoW because it's old and might not be able to handle it, or they don't want to make WoW as good as Titan and have people jump ship back to WoW if they get scared from all the changes and want to go back to what feels normal.

WoW is a dying game and until they fix the game on a full scale... That includes all aspects of the game... then it's nothing to me... it's just a bunch of air-headed developers who don't know how to do anything other than PvE... not to mention they can't do it that well either.

SOE is running at least 3-4 mmos right now. Many other companies have 1-2. It is quite doable and has been done by companies with far less resources and developers than Blizzard. As for pvp if you want a good pvp game then it would be a good idea to pick one built around pvp which Wow never was and never will be. I really don't get this obsession with shoehorning Wow into being a pvp game when the very people asking for it have done nothing but crap all over any pvp element in Wow.

Move. On.

---------- Post added 2013-03-21 at 07:33 AM ----------

There's an element of game-bashing creeping into the thread. This forum--for those who forget from time to time--is about World of Warcraft. Comments about the quality of other games and the like are off-topic and likely to lead to problems. Opinions about ME3 or anything like that belong somewhere else. So knock it off.

No offense but sometimes it is necessary to discuss other games to put discussion of certain elements of Wow into context. I think it is a little hamfisted not to mention hypocritical to forbid the mere mention of other games simply because this is a World of Warcraft forum because it is "game bashing" and then allow people to mindlessly endlessly bash Wow in this very same forum.

---------- Post added 2013-03-21 at 07:37 AM ----------

they gave away a free week again when 5.2 hit to everyone who wasn't currently subbed

that's 35 free days this expansion for me

when they stop giving away free weeks i'll believe it's alive and well

Oh I guess those coupons I get for cheaper and free food from various resturants means they are about to go out of business too. I don't think you understand how businesses work. It is a common tactic to reach out to former customers when you have new products or improved products. A product can only survive on getting new customers for so long.

---------- Post added 2013-03-21 at 07:42 AM ----------

I know that they've enlarged their team, I just want to know if they'll actually start releasing content as fast and as big as they used to do back in WotLK, with every major patch containing at least a raid, and not just scenarios and even more dailies.

We never got content patches every 3 months in Wrath and hate to break it to you but much of the content patches in Wrath were dailies. Argent Tournament says hi and it is absolutely astounding how players can whine about a grind in Mop where we have account wide pets/mounts and ways to get rep faster on alts and yet grinding out hundreds upon hundreds of seals per character in Wrath was a-ok. Let's not forget we couldn't even buy many of the pets and mounts until we had championed for each and every city and then once we did guess what? MORE dailies. Nothing in Mop has been even remotely as grindy as Argent Tournament not even the whole nonsense of getting Golden Lotus to revered to unlock 2 more reps with more dailies.

[freighttrain]

You were lucky then. The PS2 was notoriously badly designed because it was cheaply made, but the fanboys kept buying it.

It reminds me of WoW now actually. It's a shame because the original Playstation was ahead of its time. Sony sold the console at a loss in order to make a better product.

That's how business works. You monopolize then no one has anywhere else to go so you can charge whatever you want.

I hate to be OT, but I have not know one person to have a PS2, either the original one or the slim version to go bad, and I am talking about easily 200+ PS2s.

However, the Xbox 360 on the other had, I had to replace 5 my self and pretty much 50% of my friends have had to replace theirs at least once.

Sure that is just my anecdotal evidence, but even reading other forums back in the day it seemed to me there were far more red ring of deaths and general 360 failures than there were PS2 problems. But again that is just my experience with the two.


Back on topic, WoW will continue to pour out high quality content until the game is no longer profitable at that level. At that point they may offer a F2P model and offer lesser updates, or maybe reduce the sub price significantly and update the game with 1-2 major content patches per year as they would have had to scale back teams to make it profitable again. I have a theory that they will create a Battle.net subscription. You can pay $15 a month to have access to all their games(no buying games at retail price) or you can buy the non MMO games, or pay for the MMO games individually or multiple MMOs at a bulk rate. I think they will shake up the industry with this plan to offer all their games for a sub to their servers.