Quote Originally Posted by Daralii View Post
I would argue that there's a difference between having a roadmap for the expansion and saying "The expansion will have [X]!" with no elaboration on when it's coming out, sometimes as far down the road as the last patch of that expansion. It frequently boils down to guessing off of when comparable content released in previous patch cycles or people repeatedly asking Yoshida or senior devs if it's in the next patch until the answer is yes.
That's a fair take. However, by putting a roadmap for an expansion, they have now timeboxed themselves. Let's say for example Cosmic Exploration was on the roadmap for 7.2. Any number of things caused it to slip, and now they are getting heat if they don't release it 7.2 because they "promised" it would be 7.2. However, if they never said when it would release, just that it would release in the expansion, then even if they didn't hit their internal goal, they can still meet the "promise" of delivering it during the expansion.

As a developer, I would really like to understand the MMO's reason for still doing "waterfall" deployments. I'd much rather have smaller iterations of releases (i.e. 7.0-7.98) and deliver content when it's done. This keeps people engaged with quicker releases, and let's them iterate on feedback much sooner. I know there are a lot of factors that go into content (artists, VA, designers, etc.), but I still think this is something that can be overcome at a quicker cadence.