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Q u o t e:


I'd agree that this is the most logical reason.

Wow is old in the tooth as MMO's go. They are working on new projects. It makes sense that they've sent their A team to work on the new project and left the B team to keep WoW on lifesupport until the new game comes out. Everything we've seen.....and havent seen this expac lends credence to this.

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Jeff "Tigole" Kaplan says........
So is Blizzard’s new MMO going to be sci-fi, near-future, post-apocalyptic or historical? “All of those combined!” he said, laughing.

I also mentioned to Kaplan that I recently spoke with Sony Online Entertainment president John Smedley, who said that he hopes that the company will become number one in the console MMO space. I asked if he thought Blizzard was behind by not making console MMOs.

“Well, we definitely aren’t adapting ‘World of Warcraft’ to the console at this time,” Kaplan replied. He explained that people think Blizzard developers only play and like PC games, but that’s not the case; the games they chose to make just happened to work better for the PC.

“We have a pretty savvy group of console developers… so we might have a few tricks up our sleeves in that regard.”
“So I don’t think ‘World of Warcraft’ would really work that well on the console,” he continued, “but that’s not to say that other MMOs couldn’t. And we have a pretty savvy group of console developers — a lot of the guys we inherited from Swingin’ Ape really know what they’re doing on next-gen consoles. So we might have a few tricks up our sleeves in that regard.”

Kaplan also added that the next-gen MMO is very early in development and, like all Blizzard titles, it’s “going to be a while” before we see it.

source....http://multiplayerblog.mtv.com/2008/10/13/world-of-warcraft-game-director-on-new-mmo-and-console-games/

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Q u o t e:



This has what to do with what?

They were working on BC during Vanilla WoW as well and were releasing content every 60 days.


Never the less, not many people know this but(Its mentioned on the Wrath CE DVD I believe), they put a dev team together for expansions.

That means there are people who are working on Expansions and ONLY expansions. They are usually dissolved back into the company when the expansion is released or move on to other things.

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Perhaps they are having more trouble with bugs this time around than they were with BC and prebc?

Can't release a patch if it keeps crashing clients/servers internally.

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Q u o t e:



Activision reassigned a significant amount of WoW developers to develop other projects. They went as cheap as possible on WoTLK. On re-hashed raid instance. Two single encounter raid instances. Heroics that require little thought and effort. They hoped adding achievements would be an adequate replacement for legitimate content.

The PvP balancing, the length of time between patches and even basic Q&A problems with minor patches makes it obvious that something is off.

I'd wager they're getting by on the cheap with the xpac, assigning developers to Diablo 3 and Starcraft 2 to avoid hiring as few new warm bodies as possible.

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This seems like pretty much the best answer.

Unfortunately, the company once known (to most of us) as Blizzard doesn't exist any more. It was purchased by Vivendi, and that was the end of the old Blizzard - you know the company - never put out anything unless it's perfect. I do admit Wrath is a great expansion, and I haven't had any problems, but some of the patches lately are just lousy.

I agree with some of the previous posters - why increase the pace, etc., when almost 12 milllion people are buying your product, and millions are playing actively daily/weekly. I have noticed the slowdown, too, but thought it was coincidence, but the OP brought out the dates and presented an interesting time-line.

It will be interesting to see how we progress in the future. They have a lot on their plate, and there are only so many people that have the skills and knowledge needed by the large companies to make games.

666

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Q u o t e:
The Classic average is a bit wonky as they released things that were in progress, but not ready for the initial release of WoW. I recall many people feeling the released too much in classic, and that Naxx should have been in BC.

You aren't even looking at the substance of the patches, giving Mara the same content weight as Black Temple. This makes using the word "comprehensive in your title misleading at best, a bold faced lie at worst

As the game evolves so does the rate at which content comes out in a way meant to better match the average pace of the community.

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I gave each content patch as much credence as Blizzard does. Blizzard considered Voice Chat a MAJOR content patch and therefore I declared it(And I shouldn't have).


Each content patch by the way is subjective as quality by the individual who rates it. Therefore one content patch could be "full of more" and "quality" than that of the latter. But the individual who rates it is subjective in their own analysis.


What I basically mean is its impossible for me to give weight to each content patch vs another because that weight is my opinion.


I used the Example of Black Temple->Zul'aman and Blackwing Lair-> Zul'gurub because they are similar.

Both had a varying amount of work done to them but both are similar in that both are somewhat simplistic raids and are somewhat similar.

One would have to assume that Black Temple->Zul'aman would infact take longer because the simple fact is that there is more complex encounters in those than in Blackwing Lair->Zul'gurub.


However I ask, Is it 1 year complex? Does the complexity of both encounters grant the dev time of 1 full year compared to 60 days?

Surely you can see something is wrong in this.

Also look up the definition of Comprehensive. You do not seem to know what it means.

ITT: People who don't know anything about game development talking about game development.

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Q u o t e:

Patch 2.2: Voice Chat! 25 September 2007

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ROFL

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Q u o t e:


ROFL

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Trust me, I cringed while typing that. The fact that it delayed the content patch after it a month+ also irritates me. I'll never forget it.


The thing that very few of us use....

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Q u o t e:


ROFL

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Oh wow voice chat, I completely forgot about it.........

Probably because Vent is 100x better.

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Q u o t e:


Oh wow voice chat, I completely forgot about it.........

Probably because Vent is 100x better.

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The fact is, if they would allow us to up the volume of other people in game; it would have made it usable.

But because people don't know how to adjust their mics or they simply have problems with the mic input sound/hardware; voice chat is unusable in game.


One simple Addition, and it would mean the world of difference.

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Q u o t e:



Activision reassigned a significant amount of WoW developers to develop other projects. They went as cheap as possible on WoTLK. On re-hashed raid instance. Two single encounter raid instances. Heroics that require little thought and effort. They hoped adding achievements would be an adequate replacement for legitimate content.

The PvP balancing, the length of time between patches and even basic Q&A problems with minor patches makes it obvious that something is off.

I'd wager they're getting by on the cheap with the xpac, assigning developers to Diablo 3 and Starcraft 2 to avoid hiring as few new warm bodies as possible.

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QFT. Diablo 3 and Starcraft 2 are going to be massively successful, thus the increased manpower assigned to them. Why not keep milking the cash cow for all its worth? You can keep people going with a surprisingly small amount of new content...

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Q u o t e:
ITT: People who don't know anything about game development talking about game development.

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PC games are usually built around a central piece of software, known as a game engine,that simplifies the development process and enables developers to easily port their projects between platforms. Unlike most consoles, which generally only run major engines such as Unreal Engine 3 and RenderWare due to restrictions on homebrew software, personal computers may run games developed using a larger range of software. As such, a number of alternatives to expensive engines have become available, including open source solutions such as Crystal Space, OGRE and DarkPlaces.

Wow....just wow

I can't beleive anybody has enough spare time on their hands to do that much research, and put that much thought into such a pathetic topic.

I know, based on your logic it should take me the same amount of time to change the gearbox on a 1960 ford, as it does to change one on a nuclear warship.

Seriously, get a grip

Oh, and you do know that blizz spent over $450 million US last year on development of existing MMO software alone?

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Q u o t e:
A lot the of 1.X content was already partially developed by the time the original game shipped. When a patch was released in that era, development on the next patch was already under way. This isn't to say we're making it up as we go now. We have clear outlines and development schedules. Ever since the release of The Burning Crusade though, the next patch to come out is more or less developed from scratch. The actual internal development pace has changed very little over time. If anything, content is developed more quickly now than it was when the game began.

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That was a very nice way to say "You guys are idiots and don't know what you're talking about." Thanks floating skull man!

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Q u o t e:
Wow....just wow

I can't beleive anybody has enough spare time on their hands to do that much research, and put that much thought into such a pathetic topic.

I know, based on your logic it should take me the same amount of time to change the gearbox on a 1960 ford, as it does to change one on a nuclear warship.

Seriously, get a grip

Oh, and you do know that blizz spent over $450 million US on development of existing MMO software alone?

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My ol 60's Ford had a top loader box, what's in the nuke warship?

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Q u o t e:
A lot the of 1.X content was already partially developed by the time the original game shipped. When a patch was released in that era, development on the next patch was already under way. This isn't to say we're making it up as we go now. We have clear outlines and development schedules. Ever since the release of The Burning Crusade though, the next patch to come out is more or less developed from scratch. The actual internal development pace has changed very little over time. If anything, content is developed more quickly now than it was when the game began.


This isn't really true at all. There are separate development teams fully staffed for each project.

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This actually makes a lot of sense. I can definitely see why it would take more time since in vanilla wow you already pretty much had a patch to work with and from then on you had to start from scratch.

Thanks for the insight. I genuinely appreciate it.

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Q u o t e:


My ol 60's Ford had a top loader box, what's in the nuke warship?

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Lol something damn site more complicated i'd imagine...... dunno maybe i can find worthless info on the net and take a wild stab for ya (seems to be the current trend)

Maybe that is the case but has anyone thought that the slow down in content is because blizz is running out of new content and is trying to stretch out whats left. Now im just being pessimistic but how long to you think Wow is going to last? I mean just look at any other mmo, they all gave a run at it ( some went farther then others ) but the games just got old at one point. My point is just enjoy Wow while you still can i just hope to get a taste of endgame before they start closing servers. /sigh

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Q u o t e:
There are separate development teams fully staffed for each project.

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Although I do not doubt this, from my experience developers get reassigned to new projects, rather than hiring off the street. The overall headcount in the company stays about the same. "Fully staffed" for a brand new piece of software tends to be an order of magnitude larger than for a maintenance phase.

My guess is that the top-end devs/artists/designers are going 80% new project/20% WoW patches. Also from experience, people tend to get burned out if they work the same project year after year. Having people switch to new projects makes good business sense.