1. #1

    How long should content last?

    We know and blizzard knows that every new content people come back, every new tier,every big addition and of course every new expansion. The genre is so old by now that the only way to keep an stable flow of players is by adding new content.

    So how long should this new content last? I'm sorry but even when I love the franchise so much, I can't stand 10+ months of the same content in every final months of every expansion. I think 5 months should be enough.

    So the question that always drives me crazy is why don't blizzard pull content faster? I work in software develpment as well and I know there are a lot of things to get done before you can pull a software out, and I know the biggest issue here to get a software on time is the human logistic, my enterprise can't afford to hire 200 new employees to accelerate the process, but blizzard? I don't want to start the "lets calculate how many millions do they get each month" but hell yea, they get millions, they should hire twice developers, twice testers, twice engineers, etc, they CAN.

    So the conclussion I came with is that they don't hire temporal developers because they don't want to share their strategies, processes, innovations or whatever they think is too amazing to hide. what do you think?
    Last edited by shamental; 2014-06-25 at 03:32 PM.

  2. #2
    This has been done to death. You can't just throw people at a problem. If you work where you claim you'd know this.

    Although temporal developers would solve the issue since time travel would be fucking awesome frankly.

  3. #3
    How long should~

    Still I think everyone agrees with u that right now with SoO its ridiculous long til next content.
    In between expansions ive Always felt the progression phase has felt fine its just Always at the end of the expansion it gets out of hand everytime

    To me it just sounds like bad planning, after all these years they should now by now that they will get into this situation everytime tbh.
    or its just about Money and they dont care i guess..
    Last edited by Spoonman; 2014-06-25 at 03:28 PM.

  4. #4
    Quote Originally Posted by Spoonman View Post
    How long should~

    Still I think everyone agrees with u that right now with SoO its ridiculous long til next content.
    In between expansions ive Always felt the progression phase has felt fine its just Always at the end of the expansion it gets out of hand everytime

    To me it just sounds like bad planning, after all these years they should now by now that they will get into this situation everytime tbh.
    or they just doesnt care....
    I agree is more bad planning than anything else, I don't think they don't care because as far as I know as soon as an expansion hits, the next is in development.

    PS. Sorry for the title, I was thinking "how much time...." then changed it hehe

  5. #5
    Well if the subs haven't dropped off the cliff by now Blizz could probably cancel WoD and stop updating the game altogether. Everyone still subbed right now is a straight up devotee. They have probably updated their wills to make sure the sub keeps going postmortem.

  6. #6
    A good 6 months or so should do, I wonder if Blizzard will ever move to a system that delivers less content but more frequent (granted that no content is only a problem at the end of the expansion). Adding another Ruby Sanctum would have atleast kept people busy for a bit. I mean, are people seriously still raiding SoO? I rmemeber how sick I got of content at the end of a patch when I raided and those usually lasted 6 months or so, not 10+.

  7. #7
    Deleted
    The topic of Blizzard and there contact release schedule is a bit of a disaster. Mid expansion (mainly MoP) the content patches come too quickly. When only a few weeks into come contact they where talking about releasing more soon. I think like 4-5 months between patches a nice amount of time. Its enough time for people to actually play the game and enough the contact but not too long to get bored.

    And not, with 4.8 SoO we are at the other extreme of that. Where content has been out way way too long and its totally boring now.

    And yes, plans always slip, deadlines and dates are always moving, thats' just the nature of the beast. But planning is something Blizzard clearly need to work on and its their weakness area. Behind closed doors (in blizzard) I'd like to think they know this, but without any public acknowledgement of it its hard to say. No company want to put their hands up a say, "we suck at planing".

  8. #8
    Quote Originally Posted by thorvath View Post
    Well if the subs haven't dropped off the cliff by now Blizz could probably cancel WoD and stop updating the game altogether. Everyone still subbed right now is a straight up devotee. They have probably updated their wills to make sure the sub keeps going postmortem.
    Im just curious, what will acctualy happen if there is a strike from the players? Like 4mil unsub at the same time, will something really happen?

  9. #9
    Herald of the Titans Alroxas's Avatar
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    So you've got two problems here: First how to be effective in releasing content and (more importantly) how to be effective in making worthwhile content.

    Content has to be released at a decent pace so that it engages players but this can be an issue because what might be a good pace for a hardcore player might be to fast for a casual player (and vice versa). One of the common complaints now with Mists was that ToT and SoO probably should have been delayed a bit longer so that people could spend more time in previous tiers. But if you look at the complaints back then during pre-ToT and pre-SoO, the most common complaint there was that we wanted the new raids sooner.

    Part of it also stemmed from the Devs wanting to push content out faster to the players. But there's only so much content they can make before it becomes counter productive with an expansion due to come out.

    Which leads to the second issue in how to be effective in making new worthwhile content. We've all heard that Blizz has increased their dev. staffs by a good amount to help speed up the expansion but realistically, there are hurdles whenever you expand a dev team. First you've got to train the "new" people up to the standards of your current team then proceed to generate the work. However, now that you've got more people working on said project, you'll also want more people testing and evaluating the pieces in the project. Basically adding in some testers and supervisors as pieces start coming together, a necessary step to ensure quality but overall can slow down the project.

    This also leads into review processes for changes made in project based off of feedback sources. To pick on WoW a bit, take a look at the whole active mana regen issue for healers that has now been removed. So you had coders make the change to sort of unify active mana regen, which then went into testing and feedback wasn't positive, so now coders have to go back and remove active mana regen and make changes to various healing spells to adjust throughput, efficiency, or both!

    In general though, I'd rather have Blizzard do all of this footwork before the expansion is released instead of trying to fix it mid-expansion.


    Quote Originally Posted by thorvath View Post
    Well if the subs haven't dropped off the cliff by now Blizz could probably cancel WoD and stop updating the game altogether. Everyone still subbed right now is a straight up devotee. They have probably updated their wills to make sure the sub keeps going postmortem.
    Quote Originally Posted by Spoonman View Post
    Im just curious, what will acctualy happen if there is a strike from the players? Like 4mil unsub at the same time, will something really happen?
    Ok so let me get this straight, you would rather have an unpolish buggy and unbalanced expansion released within the next month then allow Blizzard to finish polishing, bug fixing, and balanced (well as near to balance as they can) expansion whenever it's done?

    I never really understood why people would want the expansion now if it's clearly an inferior product than wait for the developer to finish with it first. Sure I understand the fact that we're all bored with SoO but there are other things (both in WoW and out of WoW) that you can do till the expansion arrives.
    Last edited by Alroxas; 2014-06-25 at 04:05 PM.
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  10. #10
    Herald of the Titans
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    I think your in a dream world if you think they can have a turnaround time of 5 months for an expansion. I am sure they don't create even content patches in that time. I am sure for as many people they have working on the expansion they have more than few working or start the next two or however many content patches they might have in this expansion. I am sure like any other company they pull various people at times from other groups to help in finishing up various stages of content. They even have team(s) working on the next expansion and I am sure they pull them in from time to time to push out content. Software Development and Game Design are not entirely the same thing. What you company does, may not happen at Blizzard.

    If you a re so tired of waiting for the expansion to come out, then go play another game until the expansion is launched. Not sure how many threads have been created on the same subject, to many as far as I am concern. I still have time left on my game card (a month as of today) I have logged in about 4 times in the last month and half.

    I think many better get a grip that this is going to be a longer process, if they are having issues getting a stable build for testing right now, beta is a long way off at this point. They are running out of time, they are probably going to have to force a shorter beta process, just to make the 12/20 date. If they go into September still in alpha, they are going to run into serious problems and issues with the player base that wanted the content in March or April. Frankly, I would rather they take the proper amount of time to do a thorough testing and not bring out a lot of buggy content with the launch. If it happens to workout that way, then I will wait to start playing until it stable enough to play.

    Lastly, Blizzard is not on your time schedule to have content out for you to play when you feel you should be able to play it. If you simply can't wait then maybe you need to find something else to occupy your time. Coming here whining about not having new content and having to do SoO forever is getting old, just like having to wait for the expansion.

    For the first time playing this game I basically stopped playing it and tried out some other games. WoW been the only game up to a month and half ago I played in the last 8 1/2 years. My son gets on me all the time, Dad why don't you try out some other games, well I finally took that advice and now play a handful of other games. At this point I am not sure given what I have been playing, if I even want to continue to play WoW anymore. I guess it will come down to when I can level a character in the new expansion.

  11. #11
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by Tarawa View Post
    I think your in a dream world if you think they can have a turnaround time of 5 months for an expansion. I am sure they don't create even content patches in that time. I am sure for as many people they have working on the expansion they have more than few working or start the next two or however many content patches they might have in this expansion. I am sure like any other company they pull various people at times from other groups to help in finishing up various stages of content. They even have team(s) working on the next expansion and I am sure they pull them in from time to time to push out content. Software Development and Game Design are not entirely the same thing. What you company does, may not happen at Blizzard.

    If you a re so tired of waiting for the expansion to come out, then go play another game until the expansion is launched. Not sure how many threads have been created on the same subject, to many as far as I am concern. I still have time left on my game card (a month as of today) I have logged in about 4 times in the last month and half.

    I think many better get a grip that this is going to be a longer process, if they are having issues getting a stable build for testing right now, beta is a long way off at this point. They are running out of time, they are probably going to have to force a shorter beta process, just to make the 12/20 date. If they go into September still in alpha, they are going to run into serious problems and issues with the player base that wanted the content in March or April. Frankly, I would rather they take the proper amount of time to do a thorough testing and not bring out a lot of buggy content with the launch. If it happens to workout that way, then I will wait to start playing until it stable enough to play.

    Lastly, Blizzard is not on your time schedule to have content out for you to play when you feel you should be able to play it. If you simply can't wait then maybe you need to find something else to occupy your time. Coming here whining about not having new content and having to do SoO forever is getting old, just like having to wait for the expansion.

    For the first time playing this game I basically stopped playing it and tried out some other games. WoW been the only game up to a month and half ago I played in the last 8 1/2 years. My son gets on me all the time, Dad why don't you try out some other games, well I finally took that advice and now play a handful of other games. At this point I am not sure given what I have been playing, if I even want to continue to play WoW anymore. I guess it will come down to when I can level a character in the new expansion.
    I didn't say 5 months for an expansion. I said 5 months per patch :-)

    You make a lot of valid points. While i sound a bit anti-blizz above I don't mean to come across that way. I'd rather wait some something with higher quality that is enjoyable to play some buggy piece of .......

    Luckily, the steam sale is still on :-P

  12. #12
    Poor grammar/spelling. The diction of a 12-year-old. Poor understanding of how software management works.

    Claims to be a software programmer.

    Keep it civil
    Last edited by Darsithis; 2014-06-25 at 04:52 PM.

  13. #13
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by shamental View Post
    So the question that always drives me crazy is why don't blizzard pull content faster? I work in software develpment as well and I know there are a lot of things to get done before you can pull a software out, and I know the biggest issue here to get a software on time is the human logistic, my enterprise can't afford to hire 200 new employees to accelerate the process, but blizzard? I don't want to start the "lets calculate how many millions do they get each month" but hell yea, they get millions, they should hire twice developers, twice testers, twice engineers, etc, they CAN.

    So the conclussion I came with is that they don't hire temporal developers because they don't want to share their strategies, processes, innovations or whatever they think is too amazing to hide. what do you think?
    As a "software developer" you should be aware of Brooks's law. Hiring a fuckton of new employees doesn't speed up the process. In contrary, these new employees require training and only work counter-productive in the first couple of weeks/months, when they actually take time of the old employees who have to train them.

  14. #14
    Pandaren Monk Bodom's Avatar
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    If they're doing what they should be doing, which is adding daily quest hubs (Timeless Isle-ish zones), 5 mans, scenarios and a new tier, content could easily last for 6-8 months.

  15. #15
    Quote Originally Posted by Guinzil View Post
    As a "software developer" you should be aware of Brooks's law. Hiring a fuckton of new employees doesn't speed up the process. In contrary, these new employees require training and only work counter-productive in the first couple of weeks/months, when they actually take time of the old employees who have to train them.
    I would agree with what you say if people had not be complaining about how slow Blizzard have been for almost a decade. Is Blizzard just a shitty place to work that they have a massive employee turnover? They make billions a year and have had years to build and train staff. How long can you use the old 'We don't have the people!' excuse? It's not like this problem came out of the blue. They have been saying the same shit for years.

    Nearly every other mmo in the world do much more with much less. Blizzard know they can afford to be complacent. A good chuck of the player base is happy with literally nothing. They have the perfect fan base for a business.

  16. #16
    The proper answer, in terms of raiding, would be 1 week per boss, but you have to consider both difficulties.

    So for Siege of Orgrimmar, 14 bosses x 2 = 28 weeks, 7 months.

    So far, 6 months has always been the soft spot for content, releasing non-tier content mid tier is a new thing and is not a bad idea to keep people busy.

  17. #17
    Quote Originally Posted by Alroxas View Post
    Ok so let me get this straight, you would rather have an unpolish buggy and unbalanced expansion released within the next month then allow Blizzard to finish polishing, bug fixing, and balanced (well as near to balance as they can) expansion whenever it's done?

    I never really understood why people would want the expansion now if it's clearly an inferior product than wait for the developer to finish with it first. Sure I understand the fact that we're all bored with SoO but there are other things (both in WoW and out of WoW) that you can do till the expansion arrives.
    No I'd rather they had a team that continued to push out some sort of content while the main team is working on the expansion. Even another Grindfest Isle would be preferable to Blizz just saying 'Well that's it for MoP, we aren't gonna work on it anymore but would you kindly keep paying your subscription? Oh and be sure to pre-order the content we ARE working on.'

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