Let me just start by saying that is absolutely incredible what Blizzard can do in only 2 years of development time.
Battle for Azeroth has 2430 quests.
Detailed continents, tmogs, dungeons, raids, cutscenes...and somehow they find time to put smart references and hidden tricks.
Its absolutely incredible.
But, do you think a 2 year development is holding Blizzard back?
Let me give you some perspective:
Every new expansion Blizzard has to do the STANDARD first. Entire continents, quests, tmogs, dungeons, raids etc
Then, with little time they have, they create *new* stuff like Island Expeditions, Warfronts, Warmode, mob AI.
From an interview:
"We can do anything we want, it's just a matter of how long it takes," he said. "The compounding factor is how difficult that is in terms of time. Everything's a trade-off. We want to do this new feature, or refactor this old system, but is there a way we can find to get both out of this by doing something more efficient or making different choices? Really, it's a big collaboration between engineering, art and design to figure out what's the right thing for our players"https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articl...t-a-limitation"There are things that are harder to do in our system, and things that are easier. The technical difficulty gauge weighs in on the design choice as well. If something is going to take five years to develop and we don't want to wait five years for players to get something in their hands, we may make a different decision.