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Q u o t e:


I'll make sure to pass the word along that you have a particular time frame in mind that works best for you. ;p

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Pretty good timing for me too. Also depends on when Sunwell comes, as I'd like some time to work through it. TBC was a ton of new content and was relatively unbuggy. I think the xpack release schedule is fine.

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Q u o t e:
I know you are concerned about quality. We all are. You can do both, get expansions out faster and have quality. A year and 1/2 or more for each expansion is slow. 10 levels and the dungeons that went with them can be ingested in 1/2 that time. Faster by most.

Here we are almost a year after the last expansion, and you haven't even announced beta, or even firmed up one of the major parts of it, the Death Knight. That tells me for quality sake, it needs another 6 months of work at least.

World of Warcraft isn't a wine. It's an MMO. Content is king. Get it out there.



ps. i love this game, but I haven't seen the subscription numbers jump in awhile. That worries me.

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Its obvious from your amory and your arena ratings that you haven't experienced any of the high end content. Maybe you need more time?

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Q u o t e:


yes because companies dont have expenses/costs

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I find it hard to believe that blizzards yearly costs are almost 2 billion dollars. Must be great to be an employee there eh! With blizzards profit they should be making 7 figures.

Honestly though, I see a lack of dedication on Blizzards part with the boatloads of money they are making. A hugely selling game like halo3 makes maybe 600 million dollars in its first year, yet blizz is making that in 3 months, on a non ending cycle. Why don't you quadruple your staff and give us more back for our money and you success instead of just pocketing the dough?

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Q u o t e:
the OP has clearly never played MMO's before WoW, and has no idea what expansions are for (bringing customers back to a dying game).

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Really? I thought they were for adding stuff that's simply too big to add in even the largest of content patches. (I'd say a single zone like a dungeon is the most we'll ever see out of a single content patch, although 2.4 will bring a raid and a 5-man...)

EQ pumped out expansions like no tomorrow to keep the game going (not only that, but because there's really no PvP, there's nothing for the 5% of raiders who clear content in less than a few months and they would start to leave after gearing up).

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Q u o t e:


Wait...

You don't have the RESOURCES?

What are you doing with 15 dollars a month x9 million people... building a new headquarters made of gold?

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Everyone on the internet is a game designer, a developer, a lawyer, and now a CFO and COO too.

/me rolls eyes

The longer the better imo...

Only 1or 2% of all guilds i think have even been in BT.. =\

From your gear it doesnt look like you havent even stepped into karazhan, which is fine if you dont want to do it but there is alot of people who would like to experience the endgame instances.

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Q u o t e:


I find it hard to believe that blizzards yearly costs are almost 2 billion dollars. Must be great to be an employee there eh! With blizzards profit they should be making 7 figures.

Honestly though, I see a lack of dedication on Blizzards part with the boatloads of money they are making. A hugely selling game like halo3 makes maybe 600 million dollars in its first year, yet blizz is making that in 3 months, on a non ending cycle. Why don't you quadruple your staff and give us more back for our money and you success instead of just pocketing the dough?

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Let's see...9 million players paying $15 a month at most is $135,000,000 a month, times 12 is 1,620,000,000 a year. However, this is considerably less when you consider how many players are in Asia and how little they actually pay to play. Then you have to factor in maintenance costs, bandwidth, hardware, advertising, merchandising, marketing, and THEN you can account for salaries. It's not nearly 2 billion dollars a year, and you are severely under-estimating the costs it takes to run a game such as this. Bandwidth alone is *#@!in' expensive, then you have to take into account how many employees actually work for Blizzard.

Yeah, I'm just as ignorant to the inner workings of it as you are, but I'm willing to bet you're more wrong than I am, simply because you fail to acknowledge the costs of maintaining a game of this magnitude and what it theoretically entails.

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Q u o t e:


I find it hard to believe that blizzards yearly costs are almost 2 billion dollars. Must be great to be an employee there eh! With blizzards profit they should be making 7 figures.

Honestly though, I see a lack of dedication on Blizzards part with the boatloads of money they are making. A hugely selling game like halo3 makes maybe 600 million dollars in its first year, yet blizz is making that in 3 months, on a non ending cycle. Why don't you quadruple your staff and give us more back for our money and you success instead of just pocketing the dough?

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Because they're a for profit organization. We pay them to provide the service. They provide it. That's the end of the most literal part of their obligation. The money we pay them aren't tax dollars that should be expected to be plowed back into the community.

You're stretching the idea of a customer's sense of entitlement to it's outermost limits.

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Q u o t e:
I know you are concerned about quality. We all are. You can do both, get expansions out faster and have quality. A year and 1/2 or more for each expansion is slow. 10 levels and the dungeons that went with them can be ingested in 1/2 that time. Faster by most.

Here we are almost a year after the last expansion, and you haven't even announced beta, or even firmed up one of the major parts of it, the Death Knight. That tells me for quality sake, it needs another 6 months of work at least.

World of Warcraft isn't a wine. It's an MMO. Content is king. Get it out there.



ps. i love this game, but I haven't seen the subscription numbers jump in awhile. That worries me.

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http://www.blizzard.com/jobopp/

U know Blizzard are hiring, why don't you help them out instead of complaning.


kthxbai

I think the primary problem with Blizzard's Scheduling is NOT their rate of product release so much as it's their rate of information release.

Blizzard has TWO very major games on the burners right now, both arguably the apogee of their genres. Star Craft 2 will likely outsell all competitors world wide just from South Korea alone, and WoW's extent and success aren't things I feel the need to even bring up. Suffice it to say, Blizzard has two products that are the prime of their markets. And yet...

Blizzard is being WOEFULLY tight lipped about them, especially Wrath of the Lich King. Since the original announcement, there has been tragically little in the means of information on the game released to the public. I understand the want to keep things under wraps until finalized - keep out ammo like the Dwarven Mage and Blood Elven Warrior out of the complaints section - but in the absence of any information at all, the impression given is that you're NOT getting anything done.

Even if it's all subject to revision, a better look into just WHAT is in store for us in Northrend would do well to placate some of the impatience many feel with it.

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Q u o t e:
I know you are concerned about quality. We all are. You can do both, get expansions out faster and have quality. A year and 1/2 or more for each expansion is slow. 10 levels and the dungeons that went with them can be ingested in 1/2 that time. Faster by most.

Here we are almost a year after the last expansion, and you haven't even announced beta, or even firmed up one of the major parts of it, the Death Knight. That tells me for quality sake, it needs another 6 months of work at least.

World of Warcraft isn't a wine. It's an MMO. Content is king. Get it out there.



ps. i love this game, but I haven't seen the subscription numbers jump in awhile. That worries me.

---

Depends on what you mean by expansion. So far there has been only one expansion, and it raised the level cap by 10, obsoleting all previous gear. The next expansion will do the same.

I'm fine with gear-wipes happening only once every 16-24 months. If they happened every 12 months, or even faster than that, there would be little point to getting new gear at all unless you could get it all in the first month or two of the expansion.

If, however, by expansion you mean "new content patches", then I'm with you. But as has been noted, these will come out when they come out. Trust me, you don't want critically-buggy or half-baked content.

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Q u o t e:
I've enjoyed TBC myself and believe we made great forward progress. We intend to keep progressing in a positive way and hope that you'll find the story in Northrend to be intriguing and worthwhile. ;)

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I'm sure the portion of the story I'm allowed to see will be fine. I just wish that Wrath wouldn't make me feel like I purchased a book only to turn the page to the final chapter and be told that I'm only allowed to read it if I join a book club with 24 other people where some are specced for refreshments, some are specced for providing lights and chairs, etc. There's something vaguely sad about having TBC be "Illidan, Illidan, Illidan, Kael'Thas, Illidan, Illidan" from the moment you pop the CD in the drive to install it, only to have to go to Youtube to watch someone else playing out the ending (these are characters from the lore of a SINGLE PLAYER campaign after all).

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Q u o t e:


I guess we could argue whether or not they "need" to happen faster, but in the end, they are going to happen as fast or as slow as we feel we need to do them.

We don't like rushing things out the door. We want to make sure that when we release an expansion it has enough crunchy goodness that everyone has something to sink their teeth into (so to speak). We also have a whole company filled with people that have great ideas that we think players would enjoy, but unfortunately we also don't have all the time (or resources) in the world to do it all. So, we are going to do what we can to pick out the very best, most fun and most 'bang for the buck' bits and put them into our expansions wherever we can. If that means things happen a little slower, so be it.

Many people might argue with you on just how far we are along with things based on what they saw at BlizzCon. Does that mean we have a date to give you on beta or release yet? No, not yet. We will do our best though to get you more information to intrigue you as soon as we're able, but not before we're ready to do it. ;) Hopefully, in the end, it will be well worth the wait.

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Maybe you shouldn't have made the claim you would release an xpack once a year. You're pretty good at talking out of your ass bud

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Q u o t e:


Let's see...9 million players paying $15 a month at most is $135,000,000 a month, times 12 is 1,620,000,000 a year. However, this is considerably less when you consider how many players are in Asia and how little they actually pay to play. Then you have to factor in maintenance costs, bandwidth, hardware, advertising, merchandising, marketing, and THEN you can account for salaries. It's not nearly 2 billion dollars a year, and you are severely under-estimating the costs it takes to run a game such as this. Bandwidth alone is *#@!in' expensive, then you have to take into account how many employees actually work for Blizzard.

Yeah, I'm just as ignorant to the inner workings of it as you are, but I'm willing to bet you're more wrong than I am, simply because you fail to acknowledge the costs of maintaining a game of this magnitude and what it theoretically entails.

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What about the 10 million + people who payed 50$ for the game? What about the people who bought BC? I understand your argument, but 2 billion dollars just for SUBSCRIPTIONS is a ridiculous amount of money,

with all they did in 2.3 the expansion should come sooner

being this easy to level i can understand it if lvl 80 was the limit but currently
donno just seems silly to do what they did

1st

oh and considering the OP doesnt have a single piece of Tier 5, i think his comments should be null and void. You havent even experience the content on this expansion.

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Q u o t e:
I say I would rather wait for a quality bug free game then a piece of $hit that just pisses me off every single day that I play it....

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gogo Vanguard :)

Regards,
Thargaull