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Blizzard should rethink their content release model
Blizzard changes many things for each new expansion: raid structures, class spells and talents, game systems, UI elements -- few aspects of WoW survive an X.0 patch untouched. It's time for Blizzard to change the one thing that has stayed the same since The Burning Crusade: the "event patch" release cycle. In WoW today, every patch is a big deal. We get previews. We get a trailer. We get fancy artwork with the X.X numbers. The patch release is an event. Every patch has tons of content for nearly every aspect of the game. It's exciting -- there's almost too much to do. When a new patch releases, we're in WoW heaven. Then months go by and that content grows stale. Blizzard doesn't give us new content at that point, but peeks at future content. We're starving for a delicious content meal, but we can only look at pictures of the food. It's a feast and famine cycle that has to end. It creates this massive gap between the final content patch of one expansion and the release of the next. We must cross it once again in 2014. Players put up with it because we know Blizzard will deliver, eventually, a tremendously fun experience. But should we have to endure this, still, after the game has been around for almost ten years? It's time for Blizzard to rethink the way they release content.
The Daily Grind: Should companies offer release schedules for updates?
If you've been following the news about The Secret World lately, you know that the game's second monthly update has now been delayed until next week, meaning that it's missing the "monthly" mark entirely. That's part of the development process; projects wind up taking more time than you expect. That's normal. But it does mean that the promise of "monthly content updates" isn't coming to fruition, and that promise may have been better off never being made in the first place. Lots of companies promise a certain rate of content delivery, and more often than not those targets get missed on a regular basis. Making the promise does serve a purpose, however, as it helps players know that the game's team is still hard at work. So are promises of update schedules a good thing? Or should studios stop saying that there will be a regular stream of updates when it so rarely comes to pass? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
