What happened to Beastmaster?

[Jeeqbit]

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.

Deadlines are important. You know this if you've ever so much as gone to a place of education. Without deadlines, humans often just kinda, don't do stuff. Since there is no pressure to get it done. Even if they don't release the deadline publicly, they have an internal one (we usually know what it is because we know when they released comparable content in every other expansion ).

It tends to be completed months before that deadline normally. As you said, they wouldn't set a deadline they were not certain they could make, so if it's a new content type they don't always put an exact timeframe.

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.

Quality Assurance. As a developer you must know how prevalent bugs are and what games are like if they are released riddled with bugs like Cyberpunk was.

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.

As you said, factors like concept art/story design > models/textures > placement of those models in a world to design the world > designing and creating the story and quests - you're looking at what is something like an 8 month process (this was mentioned in dev panels) and they also have to QA it to iron out thousands of bugs. So the bulk of it is taken up by that time anyway and would only be made faster by, say, a few months where they skip QA and let you play it riddled with critical bugs.

Where there are no critical bugs, there is value in a consistent schedule. It keeps it consistent, not just for developers but also for players who can predict the cycle and plan ahead when the subscribe. I personally like this, and many others do too.

They need to stop announcing "end of expansion" features before the expansion is even out.

We know most of it is coming anyway because we can predict it based on precedent, so they may as well announce it.

I guess this is one of those situations where no matter what, people are going to be upset.

Very true.