AT THIS POINT in World of Warcraft

[Johners]

I think people forget with WoD is that management literally told the devs about 75% through development that they wanted to change the direction of the expansion - which is why a lot of things were put into the Garrison as well as simple content because of the time constrant.

There was no content because of managerial meddling, as much as we want to blame devs.

Nobody truly knows what happened to Warlords of Draenor and we likely never will. That said, I personally suspect the Warcraft movie has a role to play. Blizzard always planned to do a cross-promotion in which seeing the movie got you a base copy of the game (what was the battle chest at the time) but when the movie was delayed, this would’ve happened during typical expansion downtime. To not have this, WoD was abandoned in favour of going all in on Legion.

Looking at WoD, the initial levelling was great and so was patch 6.2 which is the only actual major patch. 6.1 saw the release of Blackrock Foundry but beyond that it was just some garrison changes and random things that never were anything to write home about. It was also all the last expansion in which PvE progression was purely raid or die. A tried and tested but boring concept that ultimately didn’t fit the modern WoW player base.

Then Legion releases with an absolutely stacked content cycle. There was a patch every 77 days. Five great raids, extra dungeons, the introduction of Mythic+ in 7.0 and extra open world zones that were fun to progress vis reputations. Also the mage tower challenges which were incredible solo challenges. It want without flaw with both Battle for Azeroth and Shadowlands having slower content cycles while also having the same flawed borrowed power systems.

[caffe_macchiato]

Devs also have a life, there's also budget so it's understandable if sometimes they take the easy way to solve problems (like the current fix for PLD, not adding instanced housing but instead just copy paste wards, etc).

Fully agreed. It’s absurd that Square Enix is forcing Yoshida to work on both FF14 and FF16, their two biggest titles. This has never been done before in Square’s production cycle and is indicative of the increasingly abusive work culture in the Japanese gaming industry. They still prioritize crunch. No wonder Yoshida had a breakdown towards Endwalker’s launch. Who could blame him? Many salarymen throw themselves at trains for far less.

Needless to say, Square Enix is complicit in labor abuses and fostering a toxic workplace culture. It’s time we took a stand against this. We should not support this company. Do not but FF16, and unsubscribe from FF14 if you can handle it.

Despite the troubles that Blizzard has gone through, they’ve greatly improved their workplace culture and no longer have the terrible crunch cycles that Square Enix still has. Square needs to do better.

[Avoidy]

Despite the troubles that Blizzard has gone through, they’ve greatly improved their workplace culture and no longer have the terrible crunch cycles that Square Enix still has. Square needs to do better.

This. The Blizzard work cycle is quite enviable, I'd say. They even have kumbaya breaks at work where they sit in a big breakroom circle and sip stolen employee breastmilk together.

[Jojoya]

Nobody truly knows what happened to Warlords of Draenor and we likely never will. That said, I personally suspect the Warcraft movie has a role to play. Blizzard always planned to do a cross-promotion in which seeing the movie got you a base copy of the game (what was the battle chest at the time) but when the movie was delayed, this would’ve happened during typical expansion downtime. To not have this, WoD was abandoned in favour of going all in on Legion.

Tom Chilton had a lot to say about what happened just before and after WoD release. Y2K21 isn't entirely wrong. There was a shift in focus about halfway through development but I never got the impression that the decision was made by upper management. The impression I got was that it was made by lead members of the development team.

That then backfired when they switched Garrisons from optional content to a core feature of the expansion story. They had to pull developers off other content projects to get the garrisons finished in time for beta testing. That much Tom Chilton plainly said in an interview at Gamescon in 2014.

Seems like it was just ill planned from the start, especially with the no flying nonsense.

[SassyAssassin]

This. The Blizzard work cycle is quite enviable, I'd say. They even have kumbaya breaks at work where they sit in a big breakroom circle and sip stolen employee breastmilk together.

Im taking this as factual

[Y2K21]

This. The Blizzard work cycle is quite enviable, I'd say. They even have kumbaya breaks at work where they sit in a big breakroom circle and sip stolen employee breastmilk together.

Reminder: there was a post about 3 years ago in 4chan with OP talking about how he works for a major game dev and stole breast milk because he forgot his pre workout.

Which is unironically around the same date one of the thefts has been correlated as.

[R041]

This. The Blizzard work cycle is quite enviable, I'd say. They even have kumbaya breaks at work where they sit in a big breakroom circle and sip stolen employee breastmilk together.

Yeeaahh I'm pretty sure JP Square Enix employees have done some weird shit too. You just don't see it all published in NA.

[Atelier-Bagur]

Fully agreed. It’s absurd that Square Enix is forcing Yoshida to work on both FF14 and FF16, their two biggest titles. This has never been done before in Square’s production cycle and is indicative of the increasingly abusive work culture in the Japanese gaming industry. They still prioritize crunch. No wonder Yoshida had a breakdown towards Endwalker’s launch. Who could blame him? Many salarymen throw themselves at trains for far less.

Needless to say, Square Enix is complicit in labor abuses and fostering a toxic workplace culture. It’s time we took a stand against this. We should not support this company. Do not but FF16, and unsubscribe from FF14 if you can handle it.

Despite the troubles that Blizzard has gone through, they’ve greatly improved their workplace culture and no longer have the terrible crunch cycles that Square Enix still has. Square needs to do better.

You're forgetting the fact that Yoshida wanted to take the opportunity into making the next big mainline single player FF game. So good on him for achieving something he always wanted to do.

[Themarvin]

I am still like... what does World of Warcraft have to do with everything? I mean? Come on?

There is loads of content to do... and if you think it all has to be friggen level 90 content, then you are dead wrong in it all...

You can start with Deep Dungeons for a starter? I mean PotD, HoH.... OE... alone there you got side content that can keep you busy for quite a while... Eureka... Bozja.... just some mentions of things to do.

And also if they finally plugged it so you can exploit yourself to an easy alliance roulette with ilevel exploiting down so it only will be crystal tower or lower end other stuff if you take note of the other roulettes as well, then you would see a break in the routines and maybe actually even a challenge or actual fun doing something else than same old same old lame crystal tower.

Just cut it out with being a World of Warcraft person trying to generalize FFXIV the same path as WoW.... it is not it is much different, especially if you actually decide to play the game.

[R041]

You can start with Deep Dungeons for a starter? I mean PotD, HoH.... OE... alone there you got side content that can keep you busy for quite a while... Eureka... Bozja.... just some mentions of things to do.

How long are we going to continue parroting old content as something to do? You can fool new players, but you can't fool anyone that's played longer than a year.

You make it seem like everyone's running POTD. Are you?

And if someone that's been playing for years replies with "Yeah I still need to do it, so there's plenty of content to do" - That just means you don't do it at all and you probably just AFK in Limsa, as the meme goes.
How long do people think it takes to finish POTD or Eureka? You suck on the same popsicle for years too?