A challenge to Blizzard's secretive philosophy

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

9-10-2009 @ 10:27PM

Riltia said...

Do I wish we had release dates? Yeah, I do. Not "It'll arrive at 3:03pm on Thursday" accurate, but "We're aiming for a mid-April release". That way we can plan what we do, for example, kill classic Onyxia whilst she's still around! And we could experience more content before Cataclysm. I think the player base, personally, would be more annoyed if 4.0 hit without much of a warning. Many people want to get their Loremaster, Explorer etc titles and all the old reps to exalted before 4.0, I'd guess. So if they said "We estimate March", we'd be able to get off our behinds and experience the content before it's gone.

There *will* be internal release dates. If there wasn't, nothing'd get done. I think they need to maybe tighten their belts and pull up their socks though, but also start to toughen up and not give in to demand. Dance studio, for example. It's an oft-quoted example of Blizzard screwing up WotLK. We've been told it's in development, and so forth, but how long is it taking? It was a feature announced, what, a year or so ago? Maybe even two. The Barber Shop was a disappointment, too, in my opinion. I remember a few new hairstyles, but for the most part, it was poor. The models didn't seem to fit together well, the textures were poor... I think Blizzard could have done a LOT better with it.

But they're getting slack, I think. The game balance is not that amazing, and there are many things that need to be fixed (underground miners, for one), and NPCs aren't updated after major changes. There's a guy in Menethil who sends you to Auberdine, and the quest text basically says "go out to the dock, and get the boat", but it now should read "Go to Stormwind, go to the harbour, get the boat". A couple of... Thorim (I think, or Hodir) models weren't updated in 3.1, when they got new models. There's a quest in Grizzly Hills where you assume the form of an Ironforged Dwarf, and you can see it there. It may be a case of being overlooked, it might be more.

I think WotLK was a good step for Blizzard, and I hope to see better things come :)

Add your comments

Your comments:

Remember me

E-Mail me when someone replies to this comment

Please keep your comments relevant to this blog entry. Email addresses are never displayed, but they are required to confirm your comments.

When you enter your name and email address, you'll be sent a link to confirm your comment, and a password. To leave another comment, just use that password.

To create a live link, simply type the URL (including http://) or email address and we will make it a live link for you. You can put up to 3 URLs in your comments. Line breaks and paragraphs are automatically converted — no need to use <p> or <br /> tags.