I’d wager one of the awful problems plaguing every expansion is the time spent developing systems, just to have them dumped at the end of the expansion.
Imagine all the valuable time and effort gone into covenants and torghast. And just as they are getting somewhat decent, boom, expansion over, and then they need another cool system to market, and it releases half-baked, and the cycle repeats.
Honestly, staggered content releases and mini-patches would be a lot better. Class changes should be happening at least once a month.
Between Cataclysm and Warlords of Draenor, one of their big pushes was to get to yearly expansion releases. It never materialized. This was probably due to their iterative and consensus development style. At the end of Warlords of Draenor, during one of the longest content droughts in the history of the game, they announced they were abandoning the idea of yearly releases. They switch to the current season format after that.
I see your point here, I really do. However, I am in a position where I’ve been playing WoW now for what I think 15 years, I have done the things I want to do outside of current content (except for getting Invincible but I gave up on that recently because someone at Blizz apparently has blacklisted my account from getting him). And I’m sure there are a lot of others in my position. There ARE things I have not completed yet in older content, but that’s because I don’t want to. So to play devil’s advocate, yes there is a crap ton of stuff that is there to do if you want it, but if you’re an oldie like me and you’ve seen most of it 500 times it’s not really comparable to wanting to complete current content.
For that segment of the playerbase, I think maybe the best approach would be to start building content in a way that’s focused on replayability and holds player interest in the longer term better instead of being effectively disposable.
WoW’s content/expansions supply the most content of any mmo in the most reasonable amount of time. SWTOR hasn’t had anything for quite awhile and at times their “expansions” are about the size of 1 WoW patch. Yes at times it may feel a bit of down time etc. but it gives me time to play other games then while I wait. I’ll still log into to WoW as for now I just do some old mount/pet farming because I am all caught up where I want to be till 9.2.
I think some people may think expansions last too long because they simply can’t be pleased. Imagine if WoW had no rng, no gating etc. like all the things the complainers complain about and had everything handed to them within a few weeks. The expansion time wouldn’t change but people would be done extremely fast and then no one will be online.
I think the dungeon rotation goes on too long. I played a full season. Then toon almost a full season off. Then came back and looking at another almost year of the same dungeons plus only 2.
I don’t usually agree with Brewa, but I largely agree with this. Expansions don’t really last too long, the bigger issue is how Blizzard views what expansions are versus what they should be…especially now we have the systems in place to scale ALL the content as Chromie Time shows us.
totally agree. while i had the odd break here and there for months at a time due to work i still find myself swamped with stuff to do. i honestly cannot keep up with it all. there is just way to much to do.
usually the people that whine about nothing to do are the same ones that do the 15min story quest in the next patch and log out to the forums to whine that there is nothing to do.
i am still grinding at the garrison to get the 1 last mount that i am missing from the invasions and i am still back in mop killing nalak to get his mount as its the only world boss mount i am missing. not to mention transmog collection and achievements that i missed out on when i was away.
I’m not talking about old content. I’m talking about all the current content that people REFUSE TO DO, all while complaining they have “nothing to do”.
The loudest complainers that there’s nothing to do are the people who have done nothing.
I feel the exact opposite I feel like it was far too little content to do this expansion compared to others. Now of course I’m no Mythic plus Runner. 3 raids… bleh.
Nah they can stick to two years and should maybe go three as quality and polish have been degrading lately
Release patches every 4 months with a dead period at the end if they can’t manage enough content. I don’t need a wow hamster wheel all the time and when they start churning stuff-to-do instead of fun content the game really dies