Garrisons - Inn and Tavern, Dev Interview, Launcher Upgrade, Blue Tweets, Fan Art

[Redwyrm]

Short-term loss, long-term win.

Short term loss meaning over a year of SoO and subscription losses? Not sure if it's worth it.

Put the new people on the next expansion or patch 6.3 whatever so they don't interrupt/bother the main team.

[thilicen]

rofl, give me a break!

The perks of not knowing how the real world works..

Ever considered time needed for training, getting up to speed, accounting of errors and miscalculations that will inevitably be made?

[Shudder]

Adding more team members delays project for like half of a year, only at Blizztards.

You can't blame them for their half assed illogical nonsense of an excuse. If they said the real reason (legion expansion almost done then they decided to reset and do a movie tie in time travel expansion instead so had to start from scratch) there would be pitchforks everywhere.

- - - Updated - - -

At least two or three, that's rather obvious.

It did actually. We're only getting 2 raid tiers instead of the usual 3 or 4.

[Eled.]

It did actually. We're only getting 2 raid tiers instead of the usual 3 or 4.

You can't tell; you need to know the amount of work involved in each tier and how long the entire expansion lasts.
Maybe I didn't see the official announcement about this, but I suspect there wasn't as it's not how they use to roll.

[TheCrazyCatLady]

Why would Olaf be in the Hordes Inn? Don't they usually kill him in Uldaman? His reaction is friendly to Alliance and hostile to Horde. Seems weird.

[Rolly]

The fact they waited so long to add new employees points to piss poor management at the top or a deliberate strategy of squeezing their biggest money maker for short term gain.

My bet is short term gain to assist in the stock buyout.

[Toiran]

Some sensible people in this thread.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooks%27s_law

Brooks' law is a claim about software project management

The first point is to note that Brooks' law often applies to projects that are already late. Projects can be brought back into (or kept in) control if people are added earlier in the process. It is also important to determine if the project is really late, or if the schedule was originally overly optimistic

The quantity, quality and role of the people added to the project also must be taken into consideration. One simple way to circumvent the law on an overrun project is to add more people than needed, in such a way that the extra capacity compensates the training and communication overhead. Good programmers or specialists can be added with less overhead for training. People can be added to do other tasks related with the project, for example, quality assurance or documentation; given that the task is clear, ramp up time is minimized

If you want to be "sensible" you should probably read your own source, it is not an established "law" because it's simply called "XYZ's law", and it contradicts itself in several areas, it could indeed be the reason but you are trying to make it cut and dry with "guise it's XYZ law /end", when that simply isn't true.

In one of Blizzards own videos, the round table or whatever it was called, I believe the second one, they flat out say "We looked at features like Garrisons and thought we could do better, so we started again from scratch" so which excuse is the real one hmm, some crappy bs about staff, or because they restarted major features of the expansion in the beta? I have no problems with delays if it creates a superior product, but Blizzard flat out lies about reasons sometimes and thinks people are dumb, THAT is the problem, if they were actually transparent I'd respect them a whole lot more, treating your customer on the same level goes a long way.

[Kryos]

Hello Blizzard - something for you that is known for a long time and called a law since 1975:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooks's_law

Brooks' law is a claim about software project management according to which "adding manpower to a late software project makes it later." It was coined by Fred Brooks in his 1975 book The Mythical Man-Month. According to Brooks, there is an incremental person who, when added to a project, makes it take more, not less time. Brooks adds that "Nine women can't make a baby in one month."

[Deleted]

Hello Blizzard - something for you that is known for a long time and called a law since 1975:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooks's_law

Brooks' law is a claim about software project management according to which "adding manpower to a late software project makes it later." It was coined by Fred Brooks in his 1975 book The Mythical Man-Month. According to Brooks, there is an incremental person who, when added to a project, makes it take more, not less time. Brooks adds that "Nine women can't make a baby in one month."

it is man they are going to clone the shit out of it! U dont know nothing!!!!

[Deleted]

Protip: If hiring new people is going to delay your current development cycle, don't hire new people until your current development cycle is over.

- - - Updated - - -

If they said the real reason (legion expansion almost done then they decided to reset and do a movie tie in time travel expansion instead so had to start from scratch) there would be pitchforks everywhere.

Pretty much this ^^^

[Sicarius87]

@blizz I want the option to have all forsaken followers. Please make it happen.

[jwlol]

"The team hoped to have Warlords of Draenor released a few months ago, but scaling up the team by almost 50% slowed things down."

Rofl xD

[Deleted]

Is no one going to focus on:

"After the new character model revamp is done, adding physics and improving the look and feel of combat are options."

PHYSICS!

PHYYYYSIIIICS!

[Azerox]

Where is the portal on the fanart login screen? I see only a gate.

Nice graphics and such but for a xpac regarding a portal. gtfo! :P

[Elpis]

Ok I am sure this has been asked. But sadly I have been working a lot lately and have not had the time to read as much as I would like. But will each of your characters have their own Garrison or will they all share the same one? I am hoping the share, but sensing they will have their own.

[Pandapuncher]

I placed a longish article on the wow suggestion forums about making both outlands and northrend 60-80

I wonder if they used my idea when talking about it *squee*

[markdall]

Is no one going to focus on:

"After the new character model revamp is done, adding physics and improving the look and feel of combat are options."

PHYSICS!

PHYYYYSIIIICS!

I have to be super careful here. See, for years I went on and on about how much I wished they'd redo the old world so we could fly there. Then they did and I loved it! But it seems most people didn't.

Well, for the same amount of time, basically since I first heard about the PhysX physics accelerator that was going to be like the early 3D accelerators (kids: You used to have to buy a separate card to have rad graphics and colored lighting in your Quake FPS games. Get off my lawn.) I've been super excited for them to add Physics to the game.

Now, I never thought they'd add it to the current incarnation of WoW. I assumed it'd be WoW 2.0 or something. And I want to make it super clear that I'm not advocating for any kind of BS twitch game like people have tried to make where you play with a gd console controller and "dodge" out of the way, which is what I'm afraid this'll end up being.

No, I want things like gravity. I want downhill racing. I want StarSiege tribes-like "skiing". I want lava that bubbles and rivers that flow and have currents. I want 3D dungeons with traps and Portal-like things, stuff like that. I want explosive shot to include a napalm-like burst which spatters on my enemies. I still want flying mounts but I also want air currents... I want weather. I want inertia and momentum.

But I'm weird like that. I also want the day/night cycle to not follow that of Earth, and I want NPCs to go to other places at night - some to the Inn/Bar, some home (not available) and I want new/different NPCs to come out at night.

Eh, we'll see.

[willowe]

Short-term loss, long-term win.

Big long term win.

If they're already working on Zones for 7.0, I'm happy to keep playing with nothing new for a month (or so, till 6.0)., knowing this is going to (hopefully) be the last year-long stretch of nothingness.

This also leads me to believe that 7.0 will be announced at Blizzcon this year.

[Rolly]

Ok I am sure this has been asked. But sadly I have been working a lot lately and have not had the time to read as much as I would like. But will each of your characters have their own Garrison or will they all share the same one? I am hoping the share, but sensing they will have their own.

Every character has it's own.


NO ACCOUNT WIDE FOR YOU. BACK OF THE LINE.

[Azrile]

Adding more team members delays project for like half of a year, only at Blizztards.

Only a child with no work experience would say that. If they really did increase their staff by 50% in the last year, it certainly would slow them down A LOT

WOW uses a proprietary program to create WOW. It is a huge program and everything is done directly in that one engine. Anyone they hire would have 0 experience using that program, and would probably takes weeks or months to even get a grasp of how it all works, and probably at least for the first few weeks, there would have to be someone teaching them.... and then for months and months after that, anything they produce (slowly) would have to have to have a supervisor giving a lot of feedback.

It is the reason companies like Microsoft and Google begin to fail after they get too big.. because the guys with talent and ambition end up spending all their time teaching and managing and not actually producing product. It is probably what has been happening the past year. All the guys who really know the WOW engine were not actually producing anything, but instead teaching all the new hires how to use the engine.

- - - Updated - - -

I don't get this at all. Why is this a major pita? The experience requirements have been nerfed over and over and over again. It most likely took longer to level to 60 in Vanilla, 70 in TBC and 80 in WotLK than it is to level to 100 in WoD.

And if you want you can just finish Outland/Northrend.

Yes, they can, and will continue to nerf the EXP requirements to get to 100.. But the problem is that it is breaking the immersion of the game from 1-80. Already you really cannot level through a 1-60 zone without ending up with grey quests for the last 1/3 of a zone. While most of us certainly could care less about ´finishing´a zone, it is bad game design the way the game is set up now.

For me, I would love if they would overlap Outlands and WOTLK so that you could do either. Despite having 11 lvl 90s now, only my main has seen anything but 2-3 zones in either expansion. It would be nice to be able to use all those zones for real experience. But right now, all of my alts have done Hellfire and Nagrand, and really nothing else in BC because they hit lvl 78 so quickly and can go to Northrend where the exp is much better.