WoW, EQ2, SWG Content Updates

Several of the larger commercial MMOGs are gearing up for updates in the next few weeks. The Everquest 2 Producer's Letter details more quests and PvP news, SWG's Patch 19 has smuggler updates and animation fixes, and World of Warcraft lead producer Shane Dabiri offers up a Battleplan for your perusal. (N3rfed has some leaked patch notes, if you're so inclined.) From the WoW Battleplan: "Some of our upcoming plans have already been mentioned on our community site. For example, in our next major update, we will be releasing Blackwing Lair, a 40-person raid dungeon, where you will be able to battle against the epic dragon Nefarian and his minions. We are also working on a 20-person dungeon called Zul'Gurub, and the mysterious lands of Ahn'Qiraj in Silithus. Outside of dungeons, we want to continue adding new world events, such as a carnival that will take place in Mulgore and Elwynn forest."

Comments

WoW Expansion

[Tyrsenus]

WoW expansion just confirmed...

http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/628/628010p1.html

Re:MMORPGs

[Chyeld]

They tried that, it was called Sims Online. Honestly, I wasn't sure how many S&M Brothels could be fit into one town was really a question that needed to be investigated, but TSO certainly made a good effort to try to answer the question.

I hear Second Life is something of a better setup, but given I've only heard of it via /. I can't say it's been that successful.

Or in a less glib manner, because allowing players to create content causes three issues.

1. Who owns the content?
2. Is the content suitable (both in quality and context)?
3. And how do you facilitate content creation when most of the MMORPG's are based on systems that even the developers have to take multiple go's at a project before it's ready to even become public beta?

Need to expand?

[alvinrod]

Why do companies always feel the need to start work on planning on an expansion before their current product is finished or to a point that can be considered mostly finished?

Although it's a really good game, World of Warcraft isn't what I'd call finished, there are still a lot of glaring problems and annoyances that can ruin the otherwise wonderful gaming experience a person has when playing. For Blizzard to even think about working on an expansion or devouting any staff to it is a waste of time and counterproductive.

Just like at how this has caused problems for Microsoft. They've started working on Longhorn thinking that they were done with Windows XP. However, nearly every month some design flaw or security hole is found which requires dozens of developers or coders to be reassigned to fix the problems in their current generation software. You could have two different teams, one for each project, but you still end up splitting your work force.

Like Longhorn, the next generation software will only be delayed because there are too many problems with the current generation software to devout the entire company towards building the next. The project can't be delayed for ever and eventually needs a target release date. It's likely that it won't be on schedule, features will need to get left out, and in the end a lot of shoddy coding will be done to get the software out the door. Then the problem repeats.

Software companies, Blizzard included, shouldn't be worrying about sequals or next generation software before they've got all the problems fixed. The article really doesn't give much information other than it's been announced (big surprise there), so it's difficult to say whether or not they're giving the project developement time. However, the temptation will most assuredly be there at some point.

Hopefully they'll learn a valuable lesson where so many have gone wrong before, otherwise things just tend to get worse and worse as time goes on and the cycle repeats.

Re:Need to expand?

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a limit to how many programmers you can throw at a problem and receive any benefit. If you throw the optimal(or at least near-optimal) number of programmers at the current issues, why shouldn't you have a second separate team working on new unrelated code. With a sensible design so that new development can be kept sufficiently non-intertwined with the existing code, nothing short of a full scale design change due to a fundamental architecture bug would prove problematic, and you'd get the current bugs fixed at the soonest possible point in time plus have new content delivered earlier. Seems win-win to me. Admittedly, skimping on work on the current stuff to work on the future stuff is stupid, but that's not a necessity...