Over the past few years blizz has said in many interviews how they want speed up the cadence of content release and have said similar as recently as this week.
“The ultimate goal for us is to be able to deliver content in a predictable fashion so players know when to expect the next expansion,” Hight said. “We would like to do it more frequently, we don’t really want people to have to wait two years for the next expansion. We’re not ready yet to commit to what that cadence is going to be because we’ve got to find that sweet spot between our ability, how much time we think we’re going to need, and when our players start to indicate to us when they’re ready.”
This really is starting to feel hallow when for at least the 3rd expansion running we have nearly an entire year with 0 new actual content. As much as Blizz would want you to believe; fated season isn’t content, it’s slapping a new sticker over old content and calling it new content. Just because you slap a new coat of paint on an old car doesn’t mean the floorboards aren’t rusting out.
Right now we’re paying a full expansion price and 2 years worth of subscription for 1 years worth of content. Blizz is promising faster expansions now, maybe 18 months between expansions? Fantastic if we’re getting 18 months of content but if we’re going to get 2 major raids and 9-12 months of nothing then we’re effectively just paying 25% more or what we’re getting now: 1/2 the expansion worth of content and the other half a recycled mess sold to us as “new” contnet.
The early/mid expansion content pacing has been quite good in Dragonflight so I give that to Blizz. Having said that that’s no consolation to someone who loves playing this game logging in on a new patch and knowing it’s a YEAR before the next expansion.
Blizzard, if you’re promising faster content then actually deliver on the promise for once instead of what you’ve done for the last 20 years: big promises made and often not kept.
It’s obvious the devs believe Fated is content, and multiple devs have said that 10.2.5 and whatever follows is going to have “content” that players aren’t expecting.
Then again there are already players saying there’s nothing to do in 10.2 because they blazed through 4 chapters of the campaign in a few hours and have decided this patch is a complete failure. How do you design against that audience?
those are not patch , 10.2.5 wil be something like
New Customization for Draenei + you can play shaman as Human now ! what a patch and go do that 30 minutes questline ! this is your patch for the next 4 month
Yes a patch without a raid isn’t a content patch. A patch without a raid is a fix patch, and this has been the case since this game came out. Patch notes like balancing specs or fights or even adding heritage armor questline really doesn’t scream “NEW PATCH CONTENT, COME BACK AND TRY!” Even adding timerifts were cool but they’re hardly content, you log in and do it a couple times and you’re done. You can say raids aren’t the only content that matters yet why is every actual piece of content in this game linked to raids? Main storyline is tied to the raids. M+ and PvP seasons start with a raid release. What “content” isn’t tied to raids? Old transmog farming? Battle pets?
Given that most Content Patches take about 18 weeks (4.5 months) to run their course, and that the last Fated Season (SL) took 15 weeks (3.75 months), we can assume that the wait for 11.0 won’t end up taking the entire year… In fact, I’d estimate we will get 11.0 around June/July 2024…
11.0 you mean I assume? I wish that were the case but in the reveal they said 11.0 is releasing “fall 2024” so to me that’d put it September 2024 at the earliest but most expansions have released in November.
It really just depends what the patches give people to do. I still remember when they tried to tell us the WoD twitter patch was a “major patch” and they got reamed over that.
That’s the thing I hate about these Q/As; a lot of the answers end up being fluff for various reasons. They aren’t very candid in their responses and make everything sound good. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn’t; you never know until after the fact, but until then people just argue back and forth debating that Blizzard sucks while the others think should just wait and see.
