WoW release: Nov 23, 2004
Cataclysm Release: Dec 7, 2010
WoW Classic release: Aug 26, 2019
WoW Classic Cataclysm: May 20, 2024
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A huge chunk of that is because they don’t need the year long droughts at the end of the expansion to develop the next expansion. Even though it may be quicker I haven’t really felt much of anything was released too quickly.
I mean you gotta remember, LFR wasn’t even a Cata feature for instance. It was an MoP one they moved forward so they could get some testing on it.
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Because it’s old content that we’ve all done before. And long drawn out phases with nothing new for players to do, absolutly crushes player retention.
They haven’t really been rushing though. Usually by the time things are released everyone, including casuals, are pretty much ready for the next phase.
Like I said, the bulk of the speed up has been from skipping the long development time where there was nothing added for over a year at the end of expansions. You know those points where playing pretty much slows to a trickle before the pre-patch hit and people saw it as time to get prepped.
The time may be quicker, but it hasn’t felt rushed at all imo. I mean what are people not getting done they feel needs more time?
Funnily enough they haven’t rushed classic. Wrath went WAY too long for a rerelease. The only raid they are rushing currently is Firelands.
If anything they are going too slow. Part of the allure of classic servers in a game like WoW is you can remove all the dead space. Players can chew up content far faster than developers can create more, so artificial blocks are put in place to slow players down. You don’t need road blocks in classic content because the content is already finished.
Let 'er rip.
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I don’t feel as though we are rushing. One year honestly feels pretty good. That gives us roughly four months per patch. With the first patch or launch, it takes players about two weeks to level up, so 52 lockouts in the raid-year, minus the two from leveling and Blizzard withholding the raids for about two weeks anyway, gives us about 16-17 lockouts per tier.
I know I framed my response within a raiding paradigm, and that not everyone raids, so I can see that for some it may feel as though we’re going too fast. Personally, I’m loving Cataclysm, so I wouldn’t mind letting it marinate for a bit, but I’m fine to go with the flow too.
Lfr released with 4.3
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Not true… I don’t even have a single level 85 character and they’re already pushing out the next RAID tier.
bro that isn’t casual that’s just straight up not playing
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I play EVERY night
I assume classic is a research venture of seeing what worked before and what has not.
I hope you realise your example only shows a 1 year difference.
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The gap will widen with the speed up everything angle Blizz is going for now with both classic and retail.
They are rereleasing content so we don’t have content droughts this time around.
no phase needs to be longer than 3 months
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Because we don’t need more than 4 months per tier.
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You may be logged in every night, but you aren’t playing if you haven’t managed to get to 85 yet. I’ve got a Warlock I’ve managed to get to 84 and all she did was JC dailies and playing 20-30 minutes every couple of days or so.
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I have 11 characters that I play, and not a single one was even level 60 when Cataclysm hit. I play the game every night. Some nights it’s leveling, some it’s chasing achievements, some it’s clearing old dungeons, some it’s farming mats for profession leveling. My point is, why do people feel the need to rush through everything then complain that patches are too slow? I’m playing alot and having fun (although I did not think that I would), but am beginning to not see a point since everything will just be reset in 7 months for MOP.
Exactly this. For expansions like Cata and MoP, the content droughts at the end are arguably the biggest issues those expansions had.
I’m all for slowing things down