New BC news

[Lunessa]

Anyone see that it's been announced that the expansion has been pushed back to January?

[Roh]

Yay. More time for me to get another 6800GT to SLI. And more time for Relikk to wield that Thunderfury

[Marner]

Aye, just saw that on the gamestop site. More time for a little gear gathering that means then.

[Jadeynn]

Noooooooooooooo..............

[Maube]

ROFL - we all knew it was coming... but they fooked themselves over

Missing the Christmas rush... January people rarely buy a lot of video games because of the happy credit card bills =p

[katakorinthia]

IRVINE, Calif. -- Blizzard Entertainment® today announced that the release date for World of Warcraft®: The Burning Crusade™, the highly anticipated expansion for World of Warcraft, will be in January 2007. By adding a few extra weeks to the development cycle beyond its original target date, Blizzard will be able to extend the closed beta test and further refine the new content that will ship with the game.

“We appreciate the enthusiasm surrounding World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade, and we’re excited about putting the finishing touches on all of the new content,” said Mike Morhaime, president and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment. “We feel confident that the extra time spent polishing the game will result in the high-quality experience that our players expect and deserve.”

Blizzard began the closed-beta phase of testing on World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade earlier this month. The January 2007 release window will allow extra time for current beta testers to participate in the final stages of development and continue providing valuable feedback.

Further information on specific worldwide release dates, pricing, and other details will be announced in the near future.

is the sticked blue post if you want to lament an see it.. heh

[Ghules]

/sadpanda

For the best I suppose. More time for bug fixes, and a smaller flood of patches in the initial weeks after release.

*stares at the character selection screen*

Hmmm, maybe enough time to catch up with V in 60's

--Ghules

[Baracko]

Don't invite that level of pain on yourself, Ghules

[Jeroabem/Sabrianica]

Deleted this post because a more complete and accurately formulated response came out when I was responding to Relikk's response. Thank you, Relikk, for making me think things through a little more! =) I always appreciate that about you and I value that in our relationship.

Edited October 24, 2006 by Jeroabem/Sabrianica

[Relikk]

I have no problem with it. From a business standpoint, it makes sense.

They will decrease the amount of complaints about how they should have waited until the software was fully ready before releasing it, and they will avoid the hundreds of existing exploits.

Right now, they have a telephone-book-sized punchlist. The TL has reviewed the punchlist, calculated the hours for each "critical" update, and notified upper management of the realities that it will take 90 days unless they want to place developers on overtime (which they are probably doing). Only the niave will think Blizzard can simply hire more people to reach a target deadline.

Deadlines need to be made realistic, within budget parameters, and without burning out key developers who require no training on the project. Anyone old enough should remember what happened to Atari when they released Pac-Man for the Atari 2600 just to make the Christmas deadline. It really was a beta product.

I really want to see a fully finished product with only a few bugs, and not see the market flooded with items and gold a la Diablo due to player discovered exploits.

Rel

[Maube]

Um Relikk... they cant even work out the bugs in small holiday theme patches... you really think when the expansion comes out it will even be remotely playable?

I remember the first month of WoW. I remember the looting bugs...

[Jeroabem/Sabrianica]

I completely understand where you are coming from with your post Relikk, and in a different industry I deal with the exact same flow matrix. There are things that are beyond my control and sometimes I have to push back a delivery time. I also know this a reality, so I don't tell my potential or paying customers that the delivery of what they want is on Date #1 and then push it back to Date #2 and then Date #3. Maybe I am oversimplifying it by comparing two unrealistic situations.

The end-result, though, is that there will be patches and updates both immediately following the release and in the months that follow similar to what we have seen now. Balance in a controlled environment with semi-trusted testers is one thing, but releasing the product to a population that has a large portion of people who look for exploits is another. In my opinion, no amount of testing will find everything, and everything they find, someone will find another way of getting around.

I, as a consumer, would have preferred that they had decided to ship the product and say "Ok, we know this list exists. We will fix this with the release, but items B, C, D will be on a patch on this week, E, F, G will be on this patch, and H, I, J will come in January - just like they "fixed" the class balances as they went. When I worked on two different major mods for the Digital Anvil/Microsoft Game "Freelancer" (Space Sim), I faced deadlines, betas, fixes and patches just like what you had discussed. I worked my 40-60 hour a week job, put in another 15-20 hours of coding, modelling and skinning for the mods and still managed to make time to have some fun. I actually had to write a mod to mod with, which was a headache in itself. So, in some frame of mind, I feel like I can empathize with the dev crew for this.

However, with that empathy comes a desire to have it out in a more timely fashion. My displeasure comes not so much from the fact that the release is in January, but in the fact that it was originially scheduled for Late June, then mid August, then "sometime in October", then firmly November 28th (or was it the 30th?) and now late January (the 23rd, allegedly, which makes sense as a Tuesday). In my opinion, it would have been much better had they not even implied a date, but said that it was coming, and we are in Stage X of development and testing. It's the rollbacks that have me flustered.

And when I get home tonight, I'll still be logging in, I'll still be playing the game, just like I do every night.

[Baracko]

As a side note....

After perusing the forums today, one or two blue posts blatently said they would be releasing the new talents beforehand, as well the the new honor system.

No news on whether or not they would raise the level cap ahead of the expansion, however, which could make the talents useless in many ways.

Im sure there is more gossip to come... in the meantime, Ill keep drooling over the RBH I keep missing in ZG.

Edited October 24, 2006 by Baracko

[chemmy]

yeah i hate it as well but look on the good side, we just started BWL so it gives us more time in there.

[Lunessa]

You know what? I bet this is all Baracko's fault. He probably snuck into Blizzard and started looting files from the computers and that delayed everything.

[chemmy]

Baracko -500dkp

[Grimgor]

I could write up an article with references to Blizzard's notorious track record when it comes to their game release dates, but I am afraid I lack the time or energy. Trust me, though, this is par for course for Blizzard. With exception of Warcraft I, which was the beginning of the Blizzard as we know it today (Lost Vikings and that Rock n Roll Racing game don't count ) they have always come out late.

It has only been in the release of the past two titles -- Warcraft 3 and WoW -- that they have seemed to learn from their mistakes and so have avoided giving a release date in previews and other official information outlets. Anyone recall the Diablo 2 ad contained in the insert for Starcraft? Yeah, 1999. Diablo 2 didn't hit until August 2000. Oops. I think that was the game where it finally crystalized for them: it will be out when the game is ready and up to Blizzard standards, and not before. And so it has been ever since.

I am actually surprised that now they're giving us a real month instead of the "when the game is ready" line. That must mean they're sure as gold it's going to be January. Me? I'll do what *I* have learned to do:

Keep on doing what I've been doing. Wait and see.

[Qiris]

Y'all make me giggle. Did NONE of you play EQ? Blizzard is amazingly good compared to Verant. I kid you not, we never knew when patches were happening or servers were going to be taken down. And forget expansions--completely unplayable for months, not weeks or days.

[Jeroabem/Sabrianica]

Y'all make me giggle. Did NONE of you play EQ? Blizzard is amazingly good compared to Verant. I kid you not, we never knew when patches were happening or servers were going to be taken down. And forget expansions--completely unplayable for months, not weeks or days.

Nope, WoW broke my MMO cherry. I played other games that had a Single Player and then Multiplayer modes to them, but WoW was my first.

I can't imagine what they are getting though. I remember getting 100-200 emails and PMs a day when a newer version of a mod was due out...and I wasnt even the head of the mod team. >.<

Oh well...more time to play and have fun!

[Lunessa]

Oh I played EQ, for about a week. I couldn't stand the game. Course that's still longer than I played SWG.

[Rhoach]

(Lost Vikings and that Rock n Roll Racing game don't count )

*sputters*

*fumes*

*rages*

HOW DARE YOU!? LOST VIKINGS AND ROCK 'N ROLL RACING OWN YOUR SOUL!

*rotates head 360 degrees and vomits hot cherry cobbler in Grimgor's general direction*

[chemmy]

It really don't matter to me how long it takes, knowning that everything will be 100% fine when it does reless, just think of BWL, gives us more time to learn it, and have it on farm status, same with AQ20 and other future runs. When we running them keeping us busy the next thing you know, it's out, and plus over top of the run's, i pre-order Phantasy Star Universe for the xbox 360, i will be picking that up later on today. It's a real good mmorpg game for the xbox 360, a must get if you have a 360, but just think about our future runs and learning BWL besides bc right now. That's how i see it and what is on my mind.

Plus my birthday is on the reless date, a nice birthday present to me.

Edited October 25, 2006 by chemmy

[Qiris]

I don't expect everything to be 100% fine when the expansion is released and anyone who's worked in any sort of large IT shop won't either. Even with extensive beta testing, there's just no way to run every single use case you can think of to drive out all coding bugs--not going to happen.

So yeah, I expect we'll have issues and some will struggle more than most.

I don't think we'll experience what EQ did when Luclin went live--servers were beyond unstable, crashed with no warning (talk about frustrating if you were on a raid), and frame rate lag was horrible. This was when they introduced their new 3D models and many many players had outdated systems that didn't meet minimum required specs.

I totally get that if this is all you know, then you think it sucks. I for one really appreciate regularly scheduled maintenance and the pretty fast response time when servers (realms) have issues.

[Baracko]

bah! those files are far from shiny!

Smedlock has the shiney, now..... ask him!

[chemmy]

yes it wont be 100% fine, that was just a figure of speech i just said, yes there will be issues and all but like you said some players might have little issues and some with major ones.

Edited October 25, 2006 by chemmy