World of Warcraft has been in this weird game design bubble that their release window for a new expansion has to be roughly every 2 years. This may have worked a decade ago when things were less complicated to create and there were less moving parts in the timeline, but this notion is outdated.
Personally, I have had a lot of fun playing BFA and exploring raiding in 8.2 and 8.3 with a side of M+ and PvP, but I can still see where things have gone astray. The complete lack of respect for the overarching plot is absurd, and the systems whether they be Azerite, Essences or Corruption are great ideas at their core but came to live in poor states that hide underlying issues within the loot and class design.
If Blizzard/Activision switched to a rough 3 year model versus a rough 2 year release schedule, the benefits could be massive for everyone involved.
New systems can be explored and tuned not just by the game developers but longer Alpha/Beta/PTR time tables that allow the community to help raise concerns and allows Blizzard to actually tweak rather than it being too late because release is too imminent.
Piggybacking on the above paragraph, by allowing more time for developers to design and the community to play with the new systems, there should be less need for the WoW Team to have to create entire new systems to try to mask the issues with the previous iteration. Ex. Essences and Corruption to cover up the issues with Azerite and Forging.
Three year cycles allows the story and world to breath before the next big bad shows up. BFA has been inconsistent with its storytelling with us flip-flopping between having a faction war to defeating one of the most powerful magic-users on the Planet and finally, defeating yet another Old God. All in 1 expansion. As consumers, what are we supposed to remember about this expansion in terms of the big-bad? The driving force for the decisions we make? There is no Illidan, no Lich King, not even a Deathwing that changed the entire landscape as we knew it.
Finally, having more time allows balance changes whether they be in the form of class, dungeon, loot, etc happen roughly every 6 months when a new major patch would drop versus waiting until the new expansions pre-patch to fundamentally change how a spec works. Minor tune-ups could be given here to curve the averages closer together.
Expansive Triple AAA games take longer to create nowadays than they did before. Instead of being able to start a project and see it released in 2 to 3 years on average, that is now 3 to 4 years. Blizzard Activision needs to recognize this and start that change sooner rather than later.
I do not want to see a good expansion followed by a poor expansion and have this be the norm such as it has been with WOD to Legion to BFA and potentially Shadowlands. It is also extremely disheartening as a consumer of this product to see the underlying tone that BFA is being swept under the rug and production is full-blown on Shadowlands, leaving the players in the dust until this new expansion releases to hopefully fulfill both the developers, shareholders and consumers wishes.
What do you all think about this idea? Should Blizzard Activision give their WoW team longer to create expansions/content for the current expansion? Have 4-5 major patches instead of 3 per expansion? From a consumer perspective, would this put WoW back on the “right” track to attempt to grab back the marketshare they once had?
Having a longer development time could possibly allow them to polish up and better test expansion systems.
Increasing the time between each content patch (about a month or more) wouldn’t be too impactful and creating a fourth content patch that has nothing to do with the main expansion or even the next expansion could go along way. The fourth content patch could actually help close up some of the story loops that are out there.
Just be glad it’s at 2 years. At one point they seriously were considering going the Call of Duty route and having one out every year. Want to take a wild guess as to why so much content was cut from Warlords?
Every community complains. That is nothing new in games nor life in general. The difference would be that the gaming experience would hopefully be better. That is what we want is it not? A better game for everyone involved.
I would prefer Blizz revert back to “it’s ready when it’s ready” but I’m also sure they rely on these bi-annual spurts of cash influx (and I’m sure it’s hard to keep the population from moving on with bigger gaps… so short gaps to keep us playing)
we need an expansion once every 5 years and it has to be fully finished no cut content and they could staff another side team to add a bit of content world quests dailies, dailies like icecrown stormpeaks Hyjal( firelands) dailies like in pandaria to earn and raise mounts or pets some that increase story and so forth more mini dungeons add scenrios again solomode dungeons made just for stories pvp dailies( again like past expansions) unique raids that require attunments to do. pet battle questlines dailies that are just for story or cosmetics. seriously this type of stuff would bring people back…
I actually think they need to reduce systems changes between expansions and reduce class churn. They can easily provide players with systems catch ups just like they provide ilevel upgrades to obsolete gear. If we had continued artifact power but given any player the full legion artifact tree at level 110, it would not have bothered me. Right now we have the worst of both worlds-redesigned systems every expansion but the same grind. Offset systems to every other repack and big class changes to every other repack and expansions get smaller in scope on the development side while still giving regular schedules for big class changes. This appears to be their approach for the next expansion as well-replace systems but keep classes largely intact.
I hate this mentality of throwing the excuse that things are done for shareholders. Majority of business people would rather get a 20% return waiting 2 years then a 7% return waiting a year on their investment. It is proven time and time again that great games sell millions of copies.
But on the other hand, once you have a successful franchise, you can just shovel out garbage and it will still sell millions of copies. See for example Warlords, any of the new Star Wars movies, etc.
Is having the same core system enough for people? Every major patch/expansion we receive new gear to strive for. Is that deep enough of a system for people to want to play? I believe it is and has been proven with the likes of Destiny and other large Triple AAA games.
The problem with warlords was that it was sold to be a much bigger thing but when the selfie content patch came out everyone realized that we have been duped.
Warlords? Are you talking about WoD? Do you think COD shovels out garbage? Do you think Fortnite shovels out garbage? What about Assassin Creed, Diablo, Grand Theft Auto? Just because some people may dislike something does not mean the majority do. Movies, novels, video games do not reach their entire market and that is okay. We all have different likes and dislikes. Should EA be blamed for updating Fifa or Madden a little every year when these games make them a billion dollars yearly?
I’m all for it, but I’m in a good spot for that type of schedule - as RPers, we create our own content, so our enjoyment of the world hinges less on fresh content than your average gamer, I believe.
A longer cycle is only good if the current GAME is good. Then, you want a longer cycle so you can progress/enjoy the current game more.
The problem is that they’re creating garbage, and it’s in our best interests to get a new expansion asap to move the whole thing along.
…aaaaaand the problem there is that, in the last 2+ expansions, what we’ve been given as a solution has turned out to be worse than the problem. Bad ideas made worse, again and again.
I feel bad for what has to be a few people left of that core Blizzard mentality who keep saying “this is TERRIBLE”, only to be told “look man… just do it. Do your job and shut up.”
