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WoW Burning Crusade Delayed until January 2007
Wowzer writes "Blizzard today announced that the release date for World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade, the first expansion for World of Warcraft, is delayed until January 2007. From the article: '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.' While disappointing now, what will this mean for the yearly WoW expansions long term? As Blizzard COO Paul Sams revealed plans in August that 'Starting with The Burning Crusade, every year thereafter we plan on bringing out a new expansion set.' 2008, 2009, ad infinitum?"
and as disappointing as this is I'm almost glad, this gives me a chance to actually get some good game play in and get my character leveled up and a chance to make the addiction worse..
So many choices, so little tolerance.
As a WoW player, I know many players who have hanging on "til BC is out." I suspect many of those folks will leave the game until the expansion is released, but I do not think it will be a large enough number to matter in the scheme of things.
It should come as no shock for those who know Blizz that BC is delayed though!
-[joke removed for your safety]-
I guess teenage "Thrombo The Orcslayer" will need to sheath his "Daemon Warblade" and come down from his bedroom over Christmas and join mum, dad and Auntie Flo for a family game of Monopoly this year then.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
...sociologists predict many more marriages will now survive the Christmas season.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I may be the only person on the planet crazy enough to view delays in games to be a good thing...as long as we aren't talking Duke Nukem : Forever or Daikatana delays I see it as another bug has been caught, or someone has thought of more content to add to it, or the gameplay/story is being refined. It looks even better to me when this happens during a beta, as this means they have a finished product that works, but feedback from the beta is affecting changes in the game itself. Hopefully in January (even though I don't play WoW) this expansion will hit the market and blow people away. Just because a game is great doesn't mean an expansion can't totally redefine it (CS anyone?).
Marky Mark Killed Jason Bourne!
I knew it, Blizzard has no plans whatsoever to make games anymore. As long as WoW is played, Blizzard are not developers, they are simply maintainers. Don't take this the wrong way though, would you or I honestly continue to make new games if we're constantly making billions on one game?
disclaimer: I've been known to store numbers in my ass for which to dig out when quantities are required.
While disappointing now, what will this mean for the yearly WoW expansions long term? As Blizzard COO Paul Sams revealed plans in August that 'Starting with The Burning Crusade, every year thereafter we plan on bringing out a new expansion set.' 2008, 2009, ad infinitum?"
It means it's a few weeks or even months late, which will immediately be forgiven if it's a quaility product (as opposed to years of ill will if it's buggy and flawed.)
As for the long term plans... I don't imagine it takes exactly one year from the completion of the first expansion to the completion of the next. Anyway, plans are just that... Plans. If they realized they need a little more time it's best they take it because millions of rabid WOW fans will scream bloody murder if they don't get it right.
Am I the only one that sees this as an attempt to cash in more revenue by creating yearly expansions with new content instead of patching the game with new content which is covered by the cost of subscriptions? I'm already paying $15/mo dollars to play the game, then I'd have to pay another $40/year (God knows they'll have an 'Art Book' and a pet for the special edition, and charge another $20-$30 on top of that)to make sure I'm getting all the content in game.
So I, as a casual player, will have to wait a few extra months before I can get crappy greens that are better than the best Naxx gear. On the other hand, I can keep on rep grinding and maybe hit exalted with warsong/arathi before they screw over the rep rewards system...which they may or may not do, depending on which forum posts you believe.
This game feels like work. If only work didn't feel like work, too...
Sure, as long as the players will pay for it. ;-)
From an economic point of view, Blizzard would be crazy not to milk WOW for as much money as possible. And economic points of view are important to corporations
Of course (and half off topic), it would be smart to use some of that money and invest in something new, because at some point people will get tired of WOW.
C - the footgun of programming languages
no it is, wow, THAT sucks...
I'm not addicted, I'm a level 51 dwarven priest.
Rock is dead. Long live scissors and paper!
Does this mean that millions of people will be able to attend the Christmas family dinner after all... ?
Sig? Who needs a freakin' sig!? Not me!
Thank you for moving the release of this product until after Christmas. By doing so you have enabled my long lost WoW addicted relatives to make a meaningful appearance during the holiday season. There are few things more frustrating than having 2 people ask at the dinner table if they can use your computer.
Women are like electronics: you don't know how damaged they are until you try to turn them on.
WoW players should feel lucky that the expansion pack was only pushed back until 2007 and not indefinitely like every starcraft project...
A WoW burning crusade?? What good would that do? No matter how many copies you burn, you still need software keys and accounts and stuff to get them to work. It's not like 1990s warez, you know!
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
n00bz.
Seriously, this is probably a good thing. I'm surprised how *little* downtime WoW has considering its size and population, but I can't imagine how difficult modifying the codebase for all the changes TBC includes will be. Let them get it right the first time.
--trb
I don't understand how this is so 'new' to everyone. EverQuest has something like 11 expansions now for it; previous MMO games also had expansions. But apparently, when Blizzard does it, it's novel or something.
All of the EQ expansions cost 30 USD or so when they first came out; there have been roll-up packs for those who were behind the curve.
I quit after the 6th (when Gates of Discord came out; my machine couldn't handle it and I was tiring of the game.) I haven't looked back. I've since switched to Ubuntu, and it helps me resist the rare urge to go back.
I hate blog links. Here's the real deal: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topi cId=38244050&sid=1.
Question everything
On one hand they are foolhardy for doing this, on the other it is a brave decision to improve the game. Almost every shop around here is full of WoW stuff leading up to christmas - the 15 day trial packs are literally flying off shelves which shows they will have more than enough new players getting the game for christmas and joining in. However there would have been a huge upsell market for the Burning Crusade pack if it was released in time for Christmas, granted most people who play Warcraft will eventually pick it up but Christmas would have been a perfect time for Blizzard to cash in on both new gamers and existing players.
However, by choosing to delay it they have put the playability of the game over the profit they could make by throwing it out there and just continually patching it up to standard (cough, Gothic 3, EA, cough). I'm quite happy to see a game studio finally taking the time to make a game good before cashing in on it, instead of throwing out whatever they have done to make the sales that will occur anyway. I just have to wonder whether this will be the last delay we will see for Burning Crusade, or whether more lay in wait in development hell.
Business Voyeur
I think there's a popular hope out there that perhaps this delay is brought about by uncertainty on Blizzard's part regarding the new UI restriction. Do a Google search for "WoW UI nerf" and you'll find huge, endless threads in which about five sixths of people (and about 95% of healers) rail against new restrictions in the scripting system that will break numerous existing addons, requiring raiding healers to multiply their mouse mileage during raids by orders of magnitude. Now I'm a casual player (10 months and counting to 60...), so this doesn't affect me that severely, but I'm still playing a priest. While I was uncertain whether I'd ever get into raiding before...I think would clinch it.
Your mind is clear / The things that you fear / Will fade with how much you / Believe what you hear
Perhaps they need a little time to add in some obligatory "South Park" references for the episode that referenced WoW.
To bad the "Sword of a Thousand Truths" probably won't be one of them, other than a mythical weapon that can never be obtained.
LF39M for PUG @ Bliz offices... Good drops, outstanding dkp, no attunement required. Cmon people. Lets get some! -D TV @ Khaz FTW
a great disturbance on my server, as if millions of gamers suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.
Tuesday resets are the best time to post bad news, I guess.
is how this change in release dates will affect the release dates of other MMORPGs?
By pushing back to January this could allow another MMORPG or two some vital time to get in during the holiday crush and make a good impression. Pushing back also treads on some Q1 predicted releases as well, would they move forward or back to avoid Blizzard? (LOTR may still be on path for Q1 release)
Regardless WOW didn't get where it is by allowing crap to get out. If anything the time invested shows, both to the players and owners in Blizzard (stock or otherwise).
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
I was saving vacation days for this year!
God damn it, I'm so mad I could go outside.
I'm a long time EQ player and I only have half the expansions. I got in on most of the betas (or a friend did) and if I didn't like where it was going, I didn't purchase it. Simple as that. If you don't have the balls to hang on to your $30 over a game you don't need then you have problems. Not getting a new expansion doesn't stop you from doing what you were already doing.
As long as the subscription fee stays the same regardless of whether you buy the expansion or not (and it does in every MMO I've ever seen), is the fact that you have to pay for it once even an issue? You spend way more money on monthly fees than you do on actually buying the game in the first place. That's where they make their money. You all know this as the razor/blades strategy: sell the razor cheap and make money selling the blades. The video game industry has been doing this since the glory days of Atari. Of course, this becomes a bigger issue if they're releasing, say, multiple expansion packs per year, but come on. This is Blizzard we're talking about! It may take 2 years to get an expansion, but at least it's a very significant upgrade.
I like to think of online DRM as something akin to a college -- you pay for lessons until you learn something.
Damn you Sony. Can't you get your act together and release something on time?
Oh, wait... nm
I felt a great disturbance in Azeroth, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror...and went RIGHT back to raiding again.
Expansions can make a game gone stale get great again. They can, though, also forever ruin a game never to be resurrected again. So Blizzard will definitly make certain that whatever this expansion brings won't cause too much of a ripple in the universe of WoW. After all, it still goes strong, so far the players aren't fleeing in large numbers, and the worst thing a very bad expansion can do is to make them do just that.
Game balance is the biggest issue an expansion has to solve before it may enter a game. Because one thing's certain: Once it's there, you can't make it leave again. An expansion is here, and it's here to stay. Mythic with DAoC was the only company that ever pulled a stunt and unplugged one of their expansions after a lot of complaints and many people leaving or in the process of leaving, and even they only did it by introducing new servers.
So the delay may very well be not a technical problem, be it stability or bug-freeness. My bet would be on balance. You can make or break balance very, very easily with an expansion that often not only introduces new items but also new classes. Classes are maybe the most difficult part of the balancing process in a game. New classes must first of all be that: new. You can't simply recycle some styles and gadgets from old classes and just give it new names, or people will complain. And that new spiffy thingamajigs you give them have to be in check and balanced, not only against the world but also against the other classes for PvP. They must not level faster than the old classes, they must not be stronger in solo fights (and neither must they be weaker), they must not even provide more "group value" than other classes, and of course they may not "replace" an existing class.
Now do that if you can.
Balancing is a very, very difficult task for expansion packs. And, honestly, if I played WoW, I'd rather give them 6 more months and have it done right than demanding it out now and having it break everything there is.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Seriously, anyone? I called it when I prepayed for the game. Blizzard delays every game they put out. Heck, warcraft 3 was delayed for about a year and diablo 2 expansion was horrificly delayed itself. I wouldn't be surprised if blizzard doesn't release the WoW expansion until the summer.
Kind of off topic, but personally I think Blizzard screwed up their own franchises by marrying the two: they took what's great about Diablo 2 (random items, unique items, groups, dungeon crawling, leveling) and married it with the Warcraft universe. It makes me wonder what they have in store for the Diablo franchise and how it will be different from WoW.. Don't get me wrong, I love both games. I just fear for Diablo.
Damnit! I just reopened my account last week, to start gearing up for the expansion. I even started a new alt! My first priest! Oh well, they're losing me until January!
burrocrisy
and that would be what? Ruling by jackasses? Never has a slashdot misspelling been more apropos
I played WOW obsessively for a year and change. No matter how far I got, there was always some new goal I was chasing (level 60, full tier 1 set, pvp rank, etc). At some point I realized that my time investment in the game was becoming greater and greater. This was just about the time my guild got big and started doing the 40-man raids, and getting in on that would've required me to nearly double my playing time. There was just no way, unless I was willing to just give up on my real life and dedicate myself completely to the game. I wasn't willing to do that. It was right about that time that I realized I had a girlfriend waiting for me in bed, and that with all the late nights I'd been spending on WOW, she'd actually started feeling lonely, abandoned, and betrayed. For once I snapped out of it and actually understood how she felt, and could sympathize with her. So I shut off the game, canceled my account, and went to bed. Things got a lot better between us after that. I hope I never again make the mistake of letting a stupid video game hurt a real-life relationship, especially one as important my relationship with her.
"Ad infinitum" is probably right, at least looking at it from the perspective of computer and video games. Last I checked, Ultima Online is on its way to being ten years old and still has over 100,000 subscribers. World of Warcraft has almost fifty times as many players. If they manage the game well, I can see it being around in twenty years. Part of that would be a yearly expansion. The only people who would want to get the expansion are probably more-than-casual players, and spending $60 a year on a game you might spend 60 hours a month playing (or more) isn't really that expensive. A year or two later, that can be free to any new incoming players.
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
in diabloII, you can play diabloII games, or diabloIIlod (expandsion) games, but not both with one char.
you can convert a d2 char to d2lod- ONCE..
how hard would it be to have the old world and the new world *like england and the colonies* and if you don't buy the box *ticket to the ship*, you stay where you are...
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Will there be a Holy Land, Muslims, Christians, Terrorists and even a WoW Osama Bin Laden? All this stuff is essential for a Crusade!
The problem with the expansion is that it does not add anything new! It's still going to be one single gerbil wheel of getting better and better equpiment. What happened to siege weapons? What happened to guild vs guild PvP? What about player-constructed buildings? Player-controlled NPCs?
Unheard of!
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
How can something without an announced release date be delayed?
further refine the new content that will ship with the game.
/dance emote just right for the blood elves yet.
That is a subtle way of saying that they don't have the
Some random Internet doofus reported this announcement would be coming out today. I didn't believe it, but he was right. Kudos to you, random Internet doofus.
My roommate has the BC beta and i've watched him play. Honestly, i'm surprised it's even in beta, i think it should still be in alpha status. Of the 5 or so hours of gameplay i've seen so far, i have witnessed:
/uninstall
1- Loot rolls being won, but the item doesn't go into your bag. The item was 'lost' since he couln't loot the body anymore.
2- Just clicking on a particular elite mob crashed wow to the desktop, twice.
3- There were several mobs that didn't have any animation assigned to them. they were just these floating statues and you couldn't tell who they were attacking or if they were even dead yet.
4- He has mostly tier 2.5 and 3 gear, and is a freakishly amazing pvper, yet he was easily killed by a rogue only 2 lvls higher. he used to be able to just laugh at rogues with his mail armor and shield, now it appears the lvls signify an overpowering leap in stats making it unfair.
5- I don't know about him, but if I had worked relentlessly, giving up my life to get the uber leet T3 armor, and then see GREEN everyday items drop in BC that are actually better the most sought after gear in the normal game......I'd get so bitter i would prolly logoff and uninstall right that second!
I have seen alot more than this, but all i can say is that the game is nowhere near ready for release. They need to realize that it affects over 6million of us now and most of us like it just the way it is. Also, we already have to deal with the dreaded 'patch day' every tuesday where our servers are offine, we can't play and then we get to read about how they changed the game yet again.
This is just my opinion of the game from what i have seen. I mean no harm to Blizz, and i'm sure that with $(6million X $15 / Month) they can afford to devolop the game into truly one for the recordbooks.
GG
3 months, 2.5mil sp's. I've just started in 0.0 with an alliance at war. Sure the initial period is a bit boring and yes missions do get old and repetitive, BUT you need that time to get your skills trained up anyway. I can't wait to start real engagements!
What other game takes 3months to even ramp up for the REAL game, namely pvp? CERTAINLY NOT WOW.
eve online requires intelligence and planning, thinking which is in short supply in the US these days.
Blue posts found here (WoW forums are dead right now):m
;)"
http://blue.cardplace.com/newcache/us/38233956.ht
They will be doing a 1.13 patch still. To quote Eyonix:
"Keep in mind, we do plan to push a content patch prior to release, which could occupy your holiday time quite well." Followed by, "Oh, you know, just a few small things such as a brand new honor system, as well as new talents and abilities along with dozens of other changes and improvements.
So they are releasing much of the changes available to level 60 people prior to the holiday season. It may even include some world event about the opening of the Dark Portal.
Its not what it is, its something else.
Good for them, I hope they get the bugs out and have a quality product on release. I admire a company that tries to get it right the first time instead of releasing buggy crap. They took a short cut once in one of their patch cycles and it bit them in the arse. If it's not going to meet the target date, then that happens sometimes. Life goes on and maybe some people will be out playing in the snow instead of sitting behind a keyboard around Christmas.
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
Blizzard went down the drain when Vivendi bought them. A bunch of good developers left during the "vivendi taking over" phase
"Significant numbers" is an overstatement. The absolute number looks big, if they left a small dev studio maybe the claim would be true but for a huge organization like Blizzard it looks like normal post-ship burnout and attrition.
The claim ignores the talent that leaves companies like id, Bungie, etc and joins Blizzard. It also ignore the people who left, decided they made a mistake, and then returned to Blizzard.
The people left over a very long stretch of time. For example, IIRC the ArenaNet guys left a little before Diablo II shipped. OK let's assume they had some involvement. Diablo II Lord of Destruction, Warcraft III, Warcraft III The Frozen Throne, and World of Warcraft shipped without them. Now I've read around here that these guys were involved in Warcraft III, I'm sure that's true but that must have been years before the game shipped. ArenaNet fanbois claim they wrote the War3 engine but anyone attending E3 in those days saw the engine change quite dramatically each year and I recall reading an NVIDIA paper that indicated that the engine was completely rewritten. Now, the ArenaNet guys are talented and deserve a lot of credit for Guild Wars, but the people that followed them at Blizzard are also talented and deserve a lot of credit. What people fail to realize is how much of a team effort Blizzard games are. Blizzard games are not made by a couple of "rock stars", they are made by quite large *teams*. Attrition happens after a game ships, and teams survive. History has proven this.
"It's as if a few million WoW nerds all screamed in unison, and were suddenly silenced"
actually, what hardcore WoW player would even have time to read this when they're all feverishly grinding levels? What self respecting WoW nerd wouldn't have Wow and either ventrillo or teamspeak or teamspeak using all their screenspace?
I heard this a few weeks ago. But an expansion EVERY year?? What more can they actually change without making it boring. After a while, it might just become tideous. Like for the next expansion.. raise the cap level again? To 80?? /shrug Who knows?
They should have had the guts to do this for the base game.
I really wonder why you guys advertise this game so much. Its certainly not one of the best MMORPG's out there... there are a lot of much better games in different ways. I'm tired of seeing WoW news on SLASHDOT. kthxbye
Delaying the BC expansion isn't completely a bad thing. This will give Blizzard more time to give us a polished, complete product. Hopefully servers won't crash on the first day!
Also, is anyone that surprised by this? Blizzard has made it a practice to delay their titles, and usually it's worth the wait. I think though many may be disappointed, it'll work out in the end.
I also think it shows that Blizzard has quite some brass, giving up the opportunity of hitting the Holiday market... though I guess they don't really need it.
Don't buy WoW Gold! Make it yourself!
please?
Why are people freaking out about this and calling it Starcraft Ghost like delays? Honestly? Overreact much? Like anybody is really gonna go "two more months? This game has been out for years and I have to wait two more months for an expansion that never had a release date! that's it, I quit!" If anyone does quit, it will be because of boredom, not because an expansion got pushed two months. Such Haters, Hardly anyone on /. called Half-Life 2 vaporware when it got delayed a year, and boy, that delay really hurt Valve, huh!
Whether or not there is some sort of god, I'm not supposed to say/god is a word and the argument ends there-Smog
EQ as it stands now is a carebear paradise to when it first started. When I played, (original game, kunark, velious and to a large extent luclin) it was much more hardcore than it is now. Now in EQ it seems that the Devs are listening to the very vocal minority and making the game so easy to get around it's not even funny.
When I played, it was hardcore. No portal stones anywhere...if you needed to get a port you better find a druid or a wizard to port you. No binding NPCs....if you were a warrior or other non-magical class you had to get someone to bind you to a city. If you wanted to get to a new city you had to run....a LONG way. When you started off in Halas, it seemed you were in such a remote area. Now, meh...you just use the gate-stone to go to plane of knowledge and then you could go to any city you want.
They almost lured me back when they came out with the legacy servers...but they lost me again when it was all based on how fast you could rush through the content. The legacy servers should have been original game for a whole year of real time....THEN open up the kunark stuff and wait again for another year...THEN open up velious etc etc. Now it's just being rushed through by the big power levelers and the big guilds. It's been what, 3 months now since those two servers opened up and they're already through Luclin and about to open up the Planes of Power! It's just a race.
People don't seem to get that it's the JOURNEY that's the fun part...not who can get to the end first.
Now, onto WoW...they made the game just to be fun. They're major motto when making the game was "are we having fun with this". Corpse runs are not fun. Running around looking for a rez is not fun. Looking for a group because you just can't solo if you're certain classes is NOT fun. Not being included to a group because you're a certain class isn't fun either. Being that these are all games, they're suppose to be fun and that also means that this persons idea of fun isn't necessarily that other persons idea of fun. You can't be all things to all people. You're idea of how a game should be isn't everyones idea of how a game should be. Blizzard tries to appeal to as many people as it can, but of course it can't please everyone....but that's not realistic anyway because you can't please everyone. It's impossible.
"Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
Heads up, 1.13 has been scrapped. No new content for anyone until BC comes out.
Dear Blizzard,
...
Take all the time you need and give me a good product.
Sincerely,
Still in the Molten Core
Blizzard has never shipped anything before it was ready. We (gamers) always get very high quality products that we dedicated a lot of time over many years to! You can walk into any game store and STILL get Diablo off the shelf. You can't say that about much software.
Quoting the philosopher, wine connoseuir and two time Victorian dance ensemble champion:
l
"The big ones eat first and the small ones live off the remains and feces."
http://www.afireinside.org/spacemoose/to_sell.htm
Something I heard about a "Sword of a Thousand Truths" by Salzman in Accounting at Blizzard.
So, in order for an MMO to be for proper, manly, basement dwelling men with flowing neckbeards like yours, it should charge crazy-stupid penalties for death and require pathfinding exploits and more math than the Apollo project to figure out how min-max that last .1 DPS out of your level 193 Fighter/Mage/MarySue, so you can repeat some Pacman pattern style attack on the Mother of All Rats, until you get the shiny trinket that drops 0.1% of the time?
I, for one, applaud Blizzard for shunning you and your dragon shirt wearing ilk like the barely functional pariahs you are.
Five minor expansions, and the third major expansion is coming up next month. WoW is just plain lame..if you want dancing naked elves and people leveling at an alarming pace, play WoW..if you want challenge, fun, and realistic play, go to EQ2....
Otherwise just sit there and keep crapping in your bedpan, sooner or later you'll get your expansion.
Eyonix never called it 1.13 though. :)
It seems like Blizzard itself is unsure what they are going to do with the patches.. will there be a pre-expansion patch? Who knows. I'm sure we'll find out as the time comes closer.
Its not what it is, its something else.