They need to hire more.

[Zaptruder]

WoW has already consumed Blizzard in its entirety. It's set back the schedule for Starcraft and even Diablo by more than half a decade!

Originally Posted by Tigole

We're going to continue to patch this game and we're going to try to make sure there's something for everyone in each patch. Sometimes, however, there might be content that's not your thing -- i.e. solo/raid/group/pvp. But please remember, we haven't forgotten about you. Making someone else's idea of fun gameplay go away isn't going to magically create more content for you. We need to provide for everyone. I can assure you, we're working extremely hard to do that.

Really though... I kinda agree with this guy

Originally Posted by tjac

I like what you have to say but:
WoW's zoneless overworld was a step forward. The absolute instancing of all dungeons raidable and groupable was a complete leap backwards. You've basically got Diablo with social hubs.

In the sense, WoW is pretty much a small time multiplayer game with social hubs. Sure it's a more cohesive social hub than the ones found in Guild Wars, but that's essentially what end game boils down to.

OTOH, I don't believe it's necessarily a bad thing; having the social element is good, but the order and cohesiveness of the instancing experience isn't to be underestimated either.

So then why the hell bother paying if it's not really a MMO? Well the hope is for continually progressive content... almost kinda like the idea of episodic subscription games that people have attempted to put forth in the past. WoW has been probably one of the best MMOs around in that respect... but dammit, it's not good enough!

The player base is huge, the revenue is huge; but the young game is precariously perched; it can barely manage to get content out fast enough for the voracious consumers. Raiders want a piece of their pie, non-raiders too. PVPers, and even soloers all demand not to be left out. The last few months, they've shot themselves in the foot, all but nerfing their PVP content due to the horrendously implemented honor/reward system, while really only catering to raiders for the last 6-8 months in terms of content, causing a glut of unsatisfied customers who simply don't prefer that type of content.

...

I guess the main point of this post other than pointing out the obvious, is to cling to the hope that they really do plan on providing more group based content/progression that is actually worth something.

[tjac]

Originally Posted by Zaptruder

So then why the hell bother paying if it's not really a MMO? Well the hope is for continually progressive content... almost kinda like the idea of episodic subscription games that people have attempted to put forth in the past. WoW has been probably one of the best MMOs around in that respect... but dammit, it's not good enough!

The player base is huge, the revenue is huge; but the young game is precariously perched; it can barely manage to get content out fast enough for the voracious consumers. Raiders want a piece of their pie, non-raiders too.

Blizzard's delivered content, but really a lot of it has come in the form of talent tree changes (which are number tinkering, really, to make up for poor initial design and testing) and going live with zones that were unfinished at release. Completely meaningless server rulesets are supposedly content, too.

I think you're close to the idea of blizzard trying to be all things to all people, which just isn't possible.

[Khalikryst]

I think the real point of this rambling thread is you can't please everyone all the time. No matter how well done or full of content an MMO is or can be there will always be people posting inane rambling "whaaa somethings wrong but I can't articulate worth a shit goddammit" posts like this one.

[Zaptruder]

Originally Posted by tjac

Blizzard's delivered content, but really a lot of it has come in the form of talent tree changes (which are number tinkering, really, to make up for poor initial design and testing) and going live with zones that were unfinished at release. Completely meaningless server rulesets are supposedly content, too.

I think you're close to the idea of blizzard trying to be all things to all people, which just isn't possible.

It could be if they hired more content developers. I suspect they're getting busy with the expansion pack... but a smooth steady flow keeps customers. People don't wait a year between updates for imbalances that have been building up the whole year to be set right.

This time Blizzard has been lucky that most of the people have spent the year getting to grips with the game, levelling up their characters and what not.

But the remarkable customer base that they've attracted won't be staying around for long enough for their liking if they're going to attempt to force all the pieces into the raid shaped hole.

[Zaptruder]

Originally Posted by Khalikryst

I think the real point of this rambling thread is you can't please everyone all the time. No matter how well done or full of content an MMO is or can be there will always be people posting inane rambling "whaaa somethings wrong but I can't articulate worth a shit goddammit" posts like this one.

Well the main point I'd like to articulate is the one I've just posted above.

Content distribution needs to be more even and consistent if it wants to please everyone. Obvious enough, but it doesn't seem like they can handle that kind of even roll out well enough. Thus the thread title; hire more developers.

Ideally the situation would be each content patch would provide content for everyone; solo, PVP, raid, group, ontop of standards like bug class and balance fixes. Even a proprely staggered system can be difficult to tolerate, much less one that appears to favor certain groups.

[drenth]

Yes, Blizzard needs to hire more developers. I agree. Awesome thread.

[Dynalisia]

Hey Zaptruder, guess what? You can actually respond to multiple people in one post!

[tjac]

Originally Posted by Khalikryst

I think the real point of this rambling thread is you can't please everyone all the time. No matter how well done or full of content an MMO is or can be there will always be people posting inane rambling "whaaa somethings wrong but I can't articulate worth a shit goddammit" posts like this one.

even if blizzard tried to address the needs of just some (a percentage of the players), the game's total playing population is so huge that this might not even be possible.

[Runnen]

Originally Posted by tjac

even if blizzard tried to address the needs of just some (a percentage of the players), the game's total playing population is so huge that this might not even be possible.

Yeah, it's already pretty hard to juggle with a lot of balls at the same time, but it becomes impossible when each ball is the size of a car.

[Mkopec1]

Its definitely possible.

Just lok at WoWs community. You basically have 3 segments to please.

The raiding crowd...

The casual crowd...

The PvP crowd....

99% of all wow players fall into these 3 categories, some more than others. For example maybe part of the raiding crowd enjoys PvP, and vice versa.

So no, I dont think its impossible to please the 3 major segments of WoW players.

[Magnum PI]

There is no solution to their problem. It's only going to get worse.

[Lyrical]

Originally Posted by tjac

Blizzard's delivered content, but really a lot of it has come in the form of talent tree changes (which are number tinkering, really, to make up for poor initial design and testing) and going live with zones that were unfinished at release. Completely meaningless server rulesets are supposedly content, too.

I think you're close to the idea of blizzard trying to be all things to all people, which just isn't possible.

In any business where you try to cater to all types of customers, it is exceedingly tough to keep all of them happy. The problem is that it is hard to keep focused when you have all these diverse customer sets all screaming to be satisfied. From a business standpoint, when you try to be all things to all customers, the empirical evidence shows that this tends to put the firm in a "No man's land," where no customer's needs exceptionally. It is one of the most tenuous positions to take in business.

I don't care what industry you are in - it is one of the most difficult places to be. If you don't serve each customer segment well, someone else will come along and do it better. You are in danger of having customer segment after customer segment peeled off. If you look at some of Microsoft's comments, you could infer that they plan on taking share from Blizzard by doing this. Vanguard is aimed at the hardcore gamers, and they have made vague comments about other projects (and how they are aimed at other customer segments of Blizzard's). If I were Blizzard, I would take MSFT serious.

The threat doesn't even have to be just MSFT, it could come from any other MMO company that has a real good idea of who WoW's customer segments are (and how to meet their needs).

It is a real future threat to Blizzard and worth discussion, but I fear this will hit the rickshaw because it hits too close to home.

[Tindel]

The game is great, shut up about it or go play something better like.......yeah...

They need a good plan for balancing server population though

[Slick Willey]

Originally Posted by Zaptruder

Content distribution needs to be more even and consistent if it wants to please everyone. Obvious enough, but it doesn't seem like they can handle that kind of even roll out well enough. Thus the thread title; hire more developers.

The reason that much (most?) of the content they have patched in since going live is raid content is obvious -- it was the area most lacking at launch. Lord Pardo himself has come out and said "we always felt we never had the amount of raid content we wanted in game at launch."

Its all perception, and the WoW b.net kiddies are just too stupid too realize that the raid portion of the game was the most underdeveloped part of the game, so naturally that's where most of the new content is going to be directed. These whiners simply don't understand that this area of the game is where WoW is lacking MOST (other areas may be lacking as well). They just see it as "raiders are getting a lot of content and so my playstyle is being ignored."

[Cad]

Originally Posted by Slick Willey

Its all perception, and the WoW b.net kiddies are just too stupid too realize that the raid portion of the game was the most underdeveloped part of the game, so naturally that's where most of the new content is going to be directed. These whiners simply don't understand that this area of the game is where WoW is lacking MOST (other areas may be lacking as well). They just see it as "raiders are getting a lot of content and so my playstyle is being ignored."

Sure, was. Past tense. Viable level 60 content for less than 20 guild-organized raiders as of 1.9 is Strat, Scholo, DM, UBRS, and LBRS if you're being generous.

Raid content as of 1.9 is MC, ZG, BWL, Onyxia (this one is tough because it's so short; still a raid target), AQ 40, AQ 20. You could even count AQ40/20 as one zone and still have just as much raid content as you do small-group, and the small-group stuff hasn't been updated since March.

So yes, we desperately needed some more raid content. Now we have it, and it's time for them to roll out some more small-group stuff.