While yes, the pandemic helped, most companies’ “staffing crises” have been brewing for YEARS. One of the major factors being that at least in America minimum wage (what many companies still pay their employees or close to it per state/region) has not adjusted with inflation in the last 30 years… we’re quite frankly driving the homeless and starvation crisis with the labor crisis.
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Ok? What is the employee gonna do about it? Help the physicians at the hospital? If it wasn’t serious enough to go to the hospital what would they do if the family member got a bad case of the flu? Take off a week of work? Two?
Is covid the reason why we can’t get into the mage tower until early december? Or was it because they were wasting time updating old assets and removing/changing emotes.
There is compassion and then there is stupidity. Let’s do a run down of the meaningful updates to the game coming in 9.1.5 since people have returned to offices and lockdowns have mostly been over since around april:
- Allied race updates we asked for 4 years ago.
- Rehashed the greatest hits of legion content. (In December)
- Aggressive censorship of the game.
- Changes to shadowlands systems we asked for a year ago.
Woooooo they did so much that probably took a lot of hard work.
Since we are talking about Covid let’s look at some information released by the CDC and California themselves just last month:
California has the lowest COVID-19 case rate in the United States. According to the most recent data from the CDC, California has about 95 new cases over seven days per 100,000 people.
Gee Wiz GD we need to stop comparing blizzard to other companies that are doing much better during the covid and stop holding this billion dollar company to higher standards. They can only do so much! Think of their families! Think of the children! Because it was the first thing on your mind when you subscribed monthly to this form of entertainment.
Shame on you GD.
Anyway. Keep on trolling. Game is obviously fine Attimis. No one has left. There is plenty of content and players really want to play. The upside is so many people play now the bots have left because they can’t even compete with what players are providing on the auction house!
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While your not wrong technically and it’s already been said…
^
For how big Activision Blizzard is… the pandemic can’t really be the “excuse” anymore. It’s been nearly 2 years now…
Adapt or let your game die. 
Just as many other companies have done, they adapted or kicked the bucket.
To reiterate, I say that with full understanding of how serious COVID actually is.
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Sadly, there are a lot of COVID deniers on this forum who will gladly tell you that because other companies managed to put out content for their games, that Blizzard has no excuse.
Those people are morons, but they’ll still gladly tell you over and over again like a broken record.
According to surveys done by the GDC, in 2020, 1 in 3 game developers experienced delays due to COVID-19. In 2021, that number increased to 44%. Some game developers were able to adjust and roughly maintain their development schedules. Others were not so lucky. Blizzard was one of the unlucky ones.
Combine that with the investigation and suspension/firing of individuals from the WoW team, and that’s going to create significant delays.
We did consider it and understand it was a factor, for the 2-4 months that it was actually making an impact in the workplace. As many others have said, most if not all companies (gaming and otherwise) adapted to the covid changes within that time frame.
This is 100% a blizz issue now, and has been for this last year or so and you only need to look at the unneeded systems and bad design choices to see why they’re taking so long with these new things.
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Spoiler, it was a factor for longer than 2-4 months.
It’s still a factor now, at the end of 2021.
You missed a key part in what they said…
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No, I didn’t miss that.
Because it’s a load of BS.
The GDC surveyed many game developers in 2021, over a year after the pandemic hit, and their survey results showed that 44% of game developers were experiencing delays due to COVID.
As I said, COVID deniers are all over this forum, and they’re morons.
I don’t disagree.
But there’s a difference between denying covid and letting the billion dollar company of having the excuse of the pandemic, nearly two years after the fact.
When many other companies and businesses have adapted just fine.
Where are the CoD delays then? If that’s the case.
OP doesn’t realize that employees of gaming companies have their own machines to work on from home. 
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Let’s keep blaming Covid, shall we? It’s not the fault of an expansion a lot of people think sucks, or a decade of bad management of employees and work system. It’s all Covid! It’s only ever been Covid! Blizzard and their reputation as a company with a top heavy bureaucratic structure glacially slow to make decisions and fix things in a timely manner aren’t at fault! It’s only covid, and it intentionally did a nuclear strike on blizzard headquarters because it saw they were weak and unable to deal with, like, anything. Because they were too busy doing cube crawls and playing COD.
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Blizzard Entertainment does not make CoD. That’s Treyarch, Infinity Ward, Raven Software and Sledgehammer Games. All of which are owned by Activision, who are in turn owned by Activision Blizzard.
I see we have yet another virtue signaling post to argue about…
Exactly.
Then Blizzard can’t use the “excuse” of Covid, when it’s clearly not effecting those other companies. Which as you said, are also owned by Activision.
1000% a Blizzard issue.
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And wooosh the point went straight over your head.
44% of game developers experienced delays due to COVID-19 in 2021. That means 56% did not experience delays. Blizzard Entertainment is one of the many developers in the 44%, Treyarch and Sledgehammer Games (the only developers to work on CoD games in the 2020-2021 period) were part of the 56%
If they were all made by the same developer, you would have a point. Kind of, different teams at a developer have different workloads and some teams can adjust faster than others. Hearthstone for example, experienced very little in the way of delays, but their content is not as complex as what is needed to be developed for WoW. But they were not made by the same developer, and each developer dealt with COVID and its challenges differently.
Ah yes no sorry I forgot to mention I was a covid denier and I also happen to be getting my second vaccine tomorrow. I also live in one of the most lock downed cities of the world - I know what covid is doing to people and it’s impact but it’s not this.
What’s BS is that people really think that after almost 2 years of covid starting that it’s still affecting game developers to the point where it’s delaying PATCHES by 3-4 months. If it was a game release, probably different but this is WoW we’re talking about with an already extreamly established workforce and update cycle. The delay to the SL launch was understandable (even though I think that’s probably more to do with development mismanagement than covid), but these 8+ long patch gaps are not.
If it REALLY was about covid - they would say sorry, explain what’s happening, and offer discounts/refunds to players. Yet they have done none of these things and they instead try to hide behind covid and let people like you try and defend them.
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No, more so pessimistic or realistic depending on how you look at it.
I don’t disagree or necessarily disbelieve the stats you have stated. But call me, a little stubborn to let Blizzard “get away with that” per say.
Again, I’m not disagree-ing in that front. The pandemic hit everyone very differently.
Games dead
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The covid excuse went out the window 6 months ago.
Nobody cares about that anymore.
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NOt sure if serious.
Most “IT” geeks like our home desks more than out office ones. work can have us limit toys and personalization.
MY really good finds from the streets of Akihabara in tokyo…yeah I can’t bring them into work. And I am not even talking the more revealing ones.