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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsA challenge to Blizzard's secretive philosophy
by Adam Holisky 
Sep 10th 2009 at 4:00PM
Blizzard is notorious for not announcing release dates or patch days until the very last minute -- if at all. Sites like WoW.com and MMO-Champion have had to develop relationships with people in the know in order to have any idea when a patch is coming out, and even then we usually don't find out for sure until about 12 hours before a patch makes it onto the live servers.
Not all MMORPG companies are so secretive however.
CCP, which runs the hard core space based MMO EVE Online recently had to push back an announced patch -- from Wednesday to Thursday.
What happened when they did this? Fans rejoiced that a bug was being fixed. They cheered because you finally could shoot stuff that was 0 meters away with turrets.
Now in Blizzard's world, at least the one they display to everyone outside of their organization, pushing back an announced patch would be the end of world. Cats and dogs would live together, and fire with the occasional brimstone would rain down upon the Earth. They have said many times that the reason they don't want to announce patch dates is because if they don't hit their target, they are going to upset the fans.
This is an admirable notion, one that a lot of other companies could use a little bit of. Don't upset your player base, keep them happy. But there does come a point where a company needs to stand up for what it's doing. If they are targeting a release date of Smarch 13th for Patch 3.3, then they should say it. If they can't hit it because there are still things that need to be worked out -- then say that. Such a level of communication from Blizzard can't hurt, indeed it would help immensely in providing a certain, and dare I say necessary, level of transparency.
Granted if a larger company like Blizzard would announce and then push back a release date, many people would complain and flood the forums. But that happens on a daily basis about anything. Such is life when you're dealing with 12 million people, 6 million of whom are going to complain no matter what Blizzard does.
It's high time that Blizzard stops catering to the whiners and complainers and stands up for the development process that has served them so well. Pushing back a release date isn't a bad thing, especially when there are reasons given to sedate the intelligent of the masses.
With Patch 3.2.2 on the horizon, I have a challenge for makers of WoW -- take a page from EVE's playbook. Let us know when the patch is scheduled to be released, and if it can't be -- communicate briefly why and see what happens.
I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.
2n - 1 go left, 2n go right. I don't see enough DoTs! More DoTs now! Are you ready for the return of Onyxia? With the Brood Mother being revitalized as a 10 and 25 person raid, you'll need to be sure you know everything that's coming at you. WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.2.2 will make sure your set for the next patch!
Filed under: Patches, Analysis / Opinion, Blizzard
Reader Comments (Page 4 of 5)
VSUReaper Sep 10th 2009 4:54PM
I think the thing that made it ok for the Eve players was they said "Hey guys, we found a bug at the last min, its this, this, and this, and its going to take us a lil time to fix it, about 24 hours."
Eve players say cool, sit back and continue to enjoy the game.
Here is what we get from Blizz: "hey guys, we have a patch going thru today, its going to take us about 2 weeks of hot fixes to get everything up to what we think it should be"
This is what we would get from Blizz if they pushed a patch back a day: "Hey guys, we have found a bug in the patch that was supposed going thru today, its going to take us about 24 hours to fix it."
See the difference? Eve says WHAT the problem was, Blizz would just say not today, tomorrow maybe.
Lack of communication FTL
anonymouse Sep 10th 2009 4:55PM
Sorry to get off topic, but.... People keep using the 12 million userbase number.
What are the current numbers? My understanding is it's substantially lower now that China is offline and the release of Aion in a couple major Asian markets.
sonatasun Sep 10th 2009 4:58PM
The author is absolutely right. We need Blizzard to announce patch release dates in advance. My guild had a 25-man Ulduar raid scheduled the evening Blizzard dropped patch 3.2. Because of the download and patch application time most of the raid failed to get into game for the scheduled first pull.
Had we known Blizzard would take 3.2 live that evening, we would have scheduled the raid around it.
Regards,
AutumnBringer Sep 10th 2009 5:01PM
"It's high time that Blizzard stops catering to the whiners and complainers and stands up for the development process that has served them so well."
So essentially in their effort to not cater to people complaining about a slipped date (the idea presented here on why they don't give release dates), they should cater to people saying that they should give a release date? See now why this is impossible?
Also, the process that has served them well has been to not give release dates for anything until it's really close.
I completely understand what you're saying and truly wish we could get release dates on patches. However, I just don't think that the current atmosphere of the (not so resonable parts of the) community would really make having release dates that might slip made public a good idea. I really think people would start trends of trying to crash servers or other shenanigans if the patches slipped, causing way more trouble.
Lissanna Sep 10th 2009 5:18PM
We actually have gotten occasional notices in advance, when they were linking the patch date with arena season start or end times..
stabbington Sep 10th 2009 5:22PM
Setting a target gives you something to miss. Blizzard doesn't set targets, so they're never late. That's all this is. There's overhead and effort involved in communicating with their players that Blizzard doesn't want to shoulder. That's fine with me.
(I do wish they'd be honest about it. Not that I think they're actively lying, just using an exceedingly poor rationalization that shouldn't fool anybody who's been around the block with them.)
theRaptor Sep 10th 2009 9:51PM
Rubbish, Blizzard absolutely have internal targets. You have no idea about project management if you really think they work internally via "when it's done". All that phrase means is that they will slip the release back to work on serious bugs and won't just shove crap out the door like certain other game companies.
Additionally constantly having to alter your project schedule is only a sign of bad project management. There is always delays and mistakes that need fixing which is why you schedule in that time and don't do a barebones 20 hour work day schedule.
The main thing to be said for CCP is that their forum mods have the disposition of Nazi's and so the retards on the EvE forums are largely held in check and don't run the place like on Blizzes forums. That leads to the theorycrafting community actually giving worthwhile feedback on the official forums, and having devs directly communicate with players.
impurezero Sep 10th 2009 5:23PM
Wait...I only read every other word of this post. From what I gather Patch 3.2.2 is getting delayed? Damnit! I hate you Blizzard! Why can't you do anything right? I'm cancelling my subscription.
Xigageshi Sep 11th 2009 12:01AM
impurezero, I just wanted you to know that your joke was not in vain, nice one :) haha
Blacksabre Sep 10th 2009 5:40PM
I'd love to see Blizz shut down the player forums. No more posting, except for tech issues or account problems.
Take away the ability of the kiddies to post their whining, and get on with the more important stuff. Think how many hours Blizz wastes reading all the forum posts saying "I WANNA PONY! NOW!"
Stoneblade Sep 10th 2009 5:47PM
Meh... People are going to find a reason to bitch and moan, one way or another.
I spend my work week dealing with angry customers who feel that any perceived slight is cause for them to call and yell and scream, at length, about how awful they think the stores are, how rude and ignorant they think the staff is, how they think that the stores never have what they want, when they want it, etc.
Generally, it all ends with them threatening to never shop there again.
So, I dunno if it's just a WoW thing, in general. People can be petty, childish pricks about anything.
mesc Sep 10th 2009 5:51PM
Eve is also the game where the developers and GM's were, for years, giving themselves free items in game that they could sell for RL money.
How's that for transparency, eh? :)
Brian Broom Sep 10th 2009 5:49PM
I tend to think more communication is better than less, but this is also the fanbase that creates forum posts *every* tuesday about not being able to log on.
Lethe Sep 10th 2009 5:56PM
Just because they don't owe us transparency doesn't mean there is none. We get patch notes and ptrs well before things ever go live. When bugs crop up, we get forum posts from blizzard informing us of such. Look at the most recent hotfixes as an example. Just yesterday Bornakk posted to let people know that hotfixes went into effect to make Icehowl tauntable and to make frost patches last throughout the encounter unless destroyed using the proper encounter mechanics. Transparency is there where it matters, in the what. We know when there is a bug or when a fix is coming, because they post these for all to see. We know what content is coming up, because they post patch notes, ptrs and previews. Eve is also a much different game than WoW. In May of 2009 Eve hit 300,000 subscribers. WoW has over 10 million. Eve also has a much older average player age than WoW, and the content of the two is completely different.
Sanguinefrozenboy Sep 10th 2009 5:58PM
Two different games and two different companies with two different styles of development.
I don't really care if they tell me when X thing is coming out or if they push it back after telling us when so long as they don't 'early release' something.
Blizzard has done fine so far and as demand in their game for this and that rises, naturally 'someone's' going to look at their style and think, 'that sucks'.
But is it true?
No, it's all a matter of opinion.
If the game is enjoyable and develops along a satisfactory path, then it has succeeded and there is no reason to scrutinize the process by which it does.
Vandersveldt Sep 10th 2009 6:08PM
There... uh... there actually IS a funny Anal one...
I know, I know, this is getting voted down, but tell me you didn't laugh.
Anal [Snakes! Why'd it have to be snakes?]
Nathifa Sep 10th 2009 9:34PM
The only problem with your assumption is that most wow players will never have the intellect to be able to appreciate a complex game like Eve. It takes days/weeks to craft/be successfull at anything in that game. If the Dev team pushed a patch date out because they were fixing a bug that seriously was affecting the game then I would expect their fan base to rejoice. If Blizzard did the same thing, all of the simple minded morons who can barely wrap their mind around WoW and couldn't hope to get their pea-brains understand anything more, would throw a fit. Two different fan bases, two different techniques.
Mr. Crow Sep 10th 2009 6:19PM
Patch 3.2.2 contains information pertinent to the 5th Anniversary Celebration, which will occur in November. The patch could easily go live well before then, and then Onyxia isn't switched to 80 until the Anniversary event starts.
So basically, we know the patch won't be any later than November, and given the relatively small amount of content we can expect in this patch (compared to, say, Ulduar or the Coliseum) it should certainly not be on the PTRs for another two months.
All that being said, Blizzard's transparency about the game's development is of much more importance to me than their transparency about release dates and uptime. Others have commented that giving advance notice of release dates would cause some players to delay play or cancel entirely until the release. Blizzard serves it's ends far better by dangling a perpetual carrot before it's playerbase rather than saying "we'll have a carrot for you on Smarch 13th!" and running the risk of missing that target date.
I'd also like to comment that while Blizzard must have a target date for Cataclysm's release, a target date is not necessarily a release date. Activision (as publisher) will require a target date so they can have resources ready. The game vendors (Gamestop, BestBuy et al) will have a possible date so they can accept pre-orders and get revenue from that, but that's either guesswork or insider knowledge from the publishing industry.
Blizzard won't release it until it's ready enough to be playable. We can all make a lot of assertions about Blizzard's behavior up until now, but I think asking them to change their philosophy about announcing their timetables is asking the tiger to change his stripes.
riven Sep 10th 2009 6:42PM
LOL GHOSTBUSTERS. You missed the last part, MASS HYSTERIA!
Outis Sep 10th 2009 6:52PM
I'm confused. What positive benefits do we gain from "knowing" the release date of a patch?