10.0.5 has been out for about a day, and 10.0.7 is already almost heading to the PTR.
Normally I’d say, great! More content! But does it feel like quality is being sacrificed for quantity?
- Perpetually bugged world quests (Fields of Ferocity, Are You Kitten Me)
- Poorly balanced, buggy new events (new Primal Storms)
- Unannounced changes (Primal Storm gear upgrades, which are also broken and buggy)
- Unaddressed technical problems (falling through the world, graphics lag)
- “This is the way we’re going to change this— WHUPS NO WE’RE NOT” (walking back daily world quest change a few hours later)
- Incredibly opaque and confusing systems left without explanation or refinement (crafting, work order changes)
- The group loot system was rolled out universally to even queued raids but bugged, without a word about the known issues with people being able to Need on items that they already had that weren’t upgrades (directly counter to how it was described)
- Abilities for multiple classes are broken left and right
- Inconsistent, arbitrary white and gray transmog restrictions (WHY DO YOU HATE OFFHAND FISH?)
It’s not unusual for new content to come with bugs, that’s just the nature of things. Things just feel slapdash lately, though, the push to progress to the next thing is driving so hard that there doesn’t seem to be time set aside to make sure that anything is working as intended anymore because everything is “GO GO GO” like it’s a timed key. It can’t be good for Blizzard’s internal people to be in a constant crunch state, and it feels like the result is like how I used to “clean my room” when I was six, by taking everything I owned and throwing it in the closet.
Maybe the developers need to gently tap the brakes a little to make sure that most things are working before they barrel ahead to the next thing at breakneck speed in the hopes that Little Timmy Dopamine Fiend won’t unsub for ten minutes?
2 Likes
Dragonflight was released about 4-5 months early if previous alpha/betas are to go by. And as a result, the game is very buggy.
But to be fair, the game would have been pretty much dead if Blizzard had waited until late march/april to release DF.
Like wise, waiting too long for content updates are going to result in a drastic decline in whatever playerbase that is left. Shadowlands patch schedule was the real Cataclysm.
True, but I think it could be argued that the effect of having new content is largely nullified by said content being broken, and slightly older content going unfixed. People will be like, “Well, this isn’t fun for arbitrary, frustrating reasons, so I’ll just come back in a few months and see if things are better then.”
And then things aren’t better, meanwhile more people get fed up and leave.
Well, slow patches had the same problem with bugs unfixed. Most of the ones I reported in Shadowlands still aren’t fixed.
2 Likes
Honestly it’s all speculation. I do believe they rushed the launch but who knows? I guess they do but they won’t tell us. Even if they did I don’t know if I would trust the answer.
In reality we have bugs they need to squish in a timely matter or face the back lash
1 Like
Hello, I see you posted a thread about buggy patches. I agree! When you go from WoW to FF14, it kind of boggles the mind that they can have the patch cadence they have while also having little to no bugs for each one!
Thanks for your post and have a great day!
1 Like
Dear OP,
When companies choose to stop focusing on quality this is what happens. But people here tend to accept mediocracy even though they paid a premium price for the product. As long as that is the case, Blizzard really doesn’t have any incentive to do better.
1 Like
I mean I don’t know if I would consider $15 a premium price tag.
Hey maybe that’s why things don’t upset me
The primary problem, as I see it, is yeah, they rushed the launch like they tend to do. Gotta get it to hit at the same time as a new FFXIV patch or Christmas or the end of the fiscal quarter or whatever, business goes brrrr.
But now that’s being compounded by a breakneck don’t-look-back forward rush to keep the pace of that heedless multi-car wreck going. It must be a nightmare internally right now, where there’s never a minute to breathe and go back and fix blatantly broken things before they’re putting in new broken things on top of the already broken things.
This Jenga tower is starting to get real wobbly.
Granted I haven’t played in 2 weeks so I don’t know about the new bugs… But they were always minor things more annoying than game breaking.
I guess I’m not taking it that seriously.
Though I do think they could do a much much better job.
I’m honestly usually pretty zen about things, as long as there’s some kind of workaround. I’m not a min-maxer. I don’t push progression content.
But the number of things that were broken at launch that still haven’t been glanced at are starting to pile up, and then new stuff is constantly on the horizon that is also broken, and I’m going…when are they going to be able to get back to this stuff to fix it?
The answer is that they’re not, realistically, and I wonder when that’s going to turn into a situation that starts leading to cascading subscriber loss as the game increasingly gets a reputation for being unstable and frustrating.
The reason Blizzard can’t seem to get anything done is as obvious as the nose on your face. The fact that they expend more energy in denial and punishing anyone who disagrees than fixing the problem they continuously compound just digs their hole deeper and deeper.
I’m curious to see exactly how much patience Microsoft has for them. I’d be willing to bet it’ll only go so far before a LOT of heads roll.
What are you talking about who are they punishing
1 Like
content speed doesnt change the lack of bugs being fixed. dont we have bugs from past xpacs still around. the problem is nobody seems to care about fixing the bugs as long as it works against the players. if it works for the playerbase everyone knows to abuse it as much as they can as fast as they can and hope enough people do to because that means nothing will happen to them
I forgot to mention, but Brian Birmingham (recently fire Classic dev leader) confirmed on twitter that both DF and WotLK classic was rushed out the door before they were ready.
1 Like
Ohh that would be a good hill for snow sledding