Dratnos and Tettles Discuss WoW Patch Cycles - Content Timeline and Droughts

Live Posted 2021/10/04 at 5:42 AM by Squishei

About Dratnos and Tettles

Tettles is a World of Warcraft content creator focused on the high-end PVE scene. He is world renowned for his superb casting ventures in the likes of the MDI, Race to World First, and Twitch Rivals Classic Warsong Gulch. He also raids in the smartest guild in the world <Might> of Zul'Jin. You can catch his endeavors on his Twitch or check out his videos on YouTube.

Dratnos is a World of Warcraft content creator focused on the high-end PVE scene. He's best known as a caster for MDI and Race to World First events, and as the creator of the Weekly Route series on RaiderIO. He raids with World Top 50 guild <poptart corndoG>, and you can watch him live on Twitch or check out his videos at YouTube.

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Comment by AlakeiThancanI know lots of people will hate me for even considering what I'm about to say, but I really can't blame Blizzard for the delay of patches. I can definitely agree that they were wrong on iteration (the super low anima drop rate, the soul ash weekly grind, that kind of thing was detected by testers in the very early days of beta and took months for them to even try and course-correct, and even then, it's still a problem until 9.1.5), but I can't blame them for the delay. Virtually every dev team around the globe has been hit, hard, by Covid. Just look at how many games were announced for 2020 and still aren't out, or how broken a lot of released games are (Cyberpunk is one of the few games released since the beginning of Covid and one of the most broken games ever released, although, granted, Covid is not the only issue).

Blizzard only took 2 additional months for the Shadowlands release, and it took 3 more month than usual (since release, obviously) for them to release 9.1. They definitely should have focused on different things than they actually focused on, but I really won't blame them for the delay. If anything, releasing these patches at the "normal" date would have been catastrophic.Comment by VSozonovDelaying launch and first patch because of covid I can understand but by now pretty much every company has adapted to working from home or working with anti covid measures, not to mention that the vaccines exist. Yet despite all that we are still getting insanely long waits between major patches, 7-8 months without any new raid or dungeon is way too long. For 13 euros per month that is completely unacceptable. The only thing that's coming right on time is a new store mount every 6 months. We need Legion's patch cycle in every expansion without having to sacrifice previous expansion and to get that Blizzard needs to hire more people and to spend less time making stupid systems.Comment by VulpturiusThe thing that frustrate me the most is the complete silence. Where was the time that every few weeks/months we got a video of the state of upcomming things, small Q&A's. I can agree with everything that happened ... but i think now, more then ever we need the support of the devs as they need us. I do want to know if they are still passionate about the game or have they giving up on the game? Hiring more and more employees, for me is a start but i want to know how they feel now about work and where the game will go too.Comment by NierielNoraokay, I don't understand that diagram at all... is that a timeline? why does it have 2 arrows? where is the origin? in the center? who made this thing?Comment by JMjuristi really don't care if they were hit by covid, harsh as it sounds working during it is their problem to solve, we are just consumers who give them money. We've all had to adapt, most people i work with including myself had to adapt too and we couldnt rly afford our work to suffer. They are providing a service because they choose a sub payment model, so covid or no if they fall behind the service objectively becomes worse. If they don't adjust the price accordingly we have every right to call them out on it.Comment by walrockThe readability of the graph is quite bad.
Theres like no consistency in the type of data or labeling of the timeline.
Eg. 7.1 or similar patches are above or beneath the timeline, same goes for .05 patches
Patches from the same xpac are beneath or above aswell, making the graph annoying to read.Comment by AlakeiThancanokay, I don't understand that diagram at all... is that a timeline? why does it have 2 arrows? where is the origin? in the center? who made this thing?Comment by Lis25okay, I don't understand that diagram at all... is that a timeline? why does it have 2 arrows? where is the origin? in the center? who made this thing?Comment by OldGrommokay, I don't understand that diagram at all... is that a timeline? why does it have 2 arrows? where is the origin? in the center? who made this thing?Comment by joeboe610Made a graph that might be more helpful to some.Comment by GorerackMade a graph that might be more helpful to some.Comment by NierielNoraMade a graph that might be more helpful to some.Comment by KamillI know lots of people will hate me for even considering what I'm about to say, but I really can't blame Blizzard for the delay of patches. I can definitely agree that they were wrong on iteration (the super low anima drop rate, the soul ash weekly grind, that kind of thing was detected by testers in the very early days of beta and took months for them to even try and course-correct, and even then, it's still a problem until 9.1.5), but I can't blame them for the delay. Virtually every dev team around the globe has been hit, hard, by Covid. Just look at how many games were announced for 2020 and still aren't out, or how broken a lot of released games are (Cyberpunk is one of the few games released since the beginning of Covid and one of the most broken games ever released, although, granted, Covid is not the only issue).

Blizzard only took 2 additional months for the Shadowlands release, and it took 3 more month than usual (since release, obviously) for them to release 9.1. They definitely should have focused on different things than they actually focused on, but I really won't blame them for the delay. If anything, releasing these patches at the "normal" date would have been catastrophic.Comment by moomoojimmyWhich means if the whole world got it, that would be around 23,259,000 deaths. Probably worth a bit of work disruption to mitigate these. However, I also agree that Blizzard should take the hit here and try and compensate for the lower productivity eg. have Vicarious Visions or some other studio help out as much as possible to produce content much faster and foot the bill for that. Our subs should pay for a reasonable amount of content and the content produced by the team is far less than most of us would deem 'value for money'.

We also need to remember that the only expansion people weren't complaining about the lack of content was Legion and people had serious concerns about the pacing back for WoD, and BFA. Blizzard also acknowledged that this was a problem that they would fix by hiring more staff. It looks like we are continuing to see this problem today. My guess is that the higher ups do not want to pay enough to get extra devs enough to produce the content at a reasonable rate. This leaves the lower down devs a bit stuck as they feel they have to work faster but are already working at maximum capacity. Added to this issue is a high rate of turnover (due to issues higher up) and lack of morale leaves me wondering how motivated/productive the existing staff are. I know I'd be demotivated if I was working there right now (especially as they also have a reputation for underpaying staff).Comment by deathlavitzWhat else do you expect while working from home? It is seen as pretty much a day off and getting paid by society, albeit jokingly. People are not as productive at home as they are in the office, its shows in more than just the delays to. With the delays we likely will not see a 9.3 also feels like 9.1 squished some story that could of been a stand alone patch. Maybe the other half will be squished into the ending patch of 9.2, with 9.2.5 being the final chance to put in content before 10.0 prepatch.Comment by iamcevrus2Love the "hit hard by covid" bit, quite the knee jerk excuse. They missed the Shadowlands release because the person that authorized the release date didn't take into account anything (usually you make a firm release date when the product is done/ you know when it's going to be done. Praying that it'll be done in time or not bothering to look at factors before making a release date choice is bad form. I'm not talking missing a ballpark window, I'm talking missing a date). It also doesn't excuse the patch delays (they're not missing dates, they're just taking longer than normal). That excuse only works if each group is working on one patch and isn't sharing their findings/problems/solutions/etc with other groups. Correct me if I'm wrong, but they have 2 groups for patches, and they alternate. So they took none of what they learned working from March 2020 until March 2021 (or heck June 2021 which was 9.1), haven't found/applied solutions to get back on track? Bonus points for an X.X.5 patch taking longer than normal, as the only thing "new" added is Legion Timewalk (super bonus points for adding that in when people where already wondering when the heck the patch was coming out).

Love the comparison to Cyberpunk. You really want to compare Blizzard to a company that is being investigated for lying about status of a games development?

Only comment I'm not seeing yet here (and have seen on other articles) is using Blizzards investigation. as an excuse.

Reminder: we're still discussing this and patch is at least a week away still (and likely longer as I've yet to see an article about a release build yet)Comment by Merf1980What else do you expect while working from home? It is seen as pretty much a day off and getting paid by society, albeit jokingly. People are not as productive at home as they are in the office, its shows in more than just the delays to. With the delays we likely will not see a 9.3 also feels like 9.1 squished some story that could of been a stand alone patch. Maybe the other half will be squished into the ending patch of 9.2, with 9.2.5 being the final chance to put in content before 10.0 prepatch.Comment by couchpotato2013Love how everyone is finally getting off the copium and realizing 9.2 isn’t coming until next year around February/March. People were mentioning the obvious delay and highly liking capping to SL at 9.2 back around May/June.

Loved legion’s cadence but that is when I was enjoying the content. Right now, not so much. Sort of happy for the slow progression because that gives more time for leveling characters to 60, and then doing parallel renown to cap in prep for mage tower for its possible only 3 times in SL (first time being 2 weeks then definitely one more rotation with a possible 4th week depending upon 10.0 launch). Better to get that all done now and only use 9.1.5 as a means to bring up those characters alt covenants to a floor of renown 40. Rather than try to hurry to prep later on.Comment by JlopezI know lots of people will hate me for even considering what I'm about to say, but I really can't blame Blizzard for the delay of patches. I can definitely agree that they were wrong on iteration (the super low anima drop rate, the soul ash weekly grind, that kind of thing was detected by testers in the very early days of beta and took months for them to even try and course-correct, and even then, it's still a problem until 9.1.5), but I can't blame them for the delay. Virtually every dev team around the globe has been hit, hard, by Covid. Just look at how many games were announced for 2020 and still aren't out, or how broken a lot of released games are (Cyberpunk is one of the few games released since the beginning of Covid and one of the most broken games ever released, although, granted, Covid is not the only issue).

Blizzard only took 2 additional months for the Shadowlands release, and it took 3 more month than usual (since release, obviously) for them to release 9.1. They definitely should have focused on different things than they actually focused on, but I really won't blame them for the delay. If anything, releasing these patches at the "normal" date would have been catastrophic.Comment by TheCheat54Considering the relative lack of content in 8.1 outside BoD (if there was anything else notable, I barely remember it; Darkshore? is that it?), my bigger concern is that they changed something in their workflow for BFA coming off of Legion which resulted in slower patch cycles. The pandemic then only further amplified this error for all Shadowlands development.

We do know that 8.2 took longer because of azerite essences but that doesn't explain the increase in time to get 8.1 out.

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