Could Blizzard be shipping Lich King without the polish it needs?

by Michael Zenke Sep 26th 2008 at 1:00PM

Filed under: World of Warcraft, Betas, Fantasy, Expansions

Over at WoW Insider the question seems to be hanging in the air: by pushing Lich King out the door on November 13th, is Blizzard giving short shrift to their legendary dedication to polish? Zach Yozon put up a post noting that the company plans to re-address the Hunter 41-point talent after the expansion ships. Players weighing in on comments note that there were minor issues like this going all the way back to World of Warcraft's initial launch. Others, like Zach, are concerned that this might indicate the company is feeling pressure to get the game's next expansion out the door.

November 18th is juuust slipping under the deadline that Blizzard set for themselves by saying 'an expansion a year'. While the company is well known for their design brilliance and storytelling capabilities, holding to a schedule has obviously never been something they excelled at. Given the recent launch of Warhammer Online and its apparent blockbuster success, could Mythic and their WAR be figuring into this equation? What's your take?

Gallery: What's new in Wrath of the Lich King

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Tags: blizzard, opinion, world-of-warcraft, wotlk, wow, wrath-of-the-lich-king

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

tanek said on 1:24PM 9-26-2008

I could be wrong on this, but isn't it similar to the announcement/launch timing of the Burning crusade Expansion (which, by the way, was well over a year ago at this point, so there is no "under the deadline" ;) )?

I would be shocked if there were *not* things that require a bit of patching after launch, what with the number of changes and the amount of rebalancing required. Actually, I fully expect that, in order to have the number of disks produced on time, there may be an immediate patch available to the content shipped in the retail box. I'm ok with that.

Now, are they under pressure to have a product on the shelves this year? Probably. But I remain hopeful that they know the loss of their reputation as a company that ships something when it is ready would be greater than the outcry over waiting on a release date announcement. So if they say November 13 it will be ready and up to their standards, I am willing to believe it until shown otherwise.

SgtBaker said on 1:29PM 9-26-2008

To be honest, both the original WoW and TBC shipped with quite a lot of bugs. And some of them have still not been patched. It's still possible to fall through the world and there are still geometry bugs in battlegrounds (not to mention other zones).

Maybe we're just making the "legendary" polish a bit too legendary by not remembering how these releases went.

Sure, Blizzard releases great quality games - there's no question about it, but it's important to remember their releases haven't been trouble- or bugfree. I think it's mostl failures from other game companies that have made Blizzard look very good in comparison.

Tasogare said on 1:33PM 9-26-2008

They announced a November release date for BC too...of course that didn't happen. Everyone I talk to in the beta says it's not ready, and frankly I'd be surprised if it actually ships on November 13.

GOGURT said on 1:52PM 9-26-2008

beta seems really close to being done asset wise. Its all there and works well. There is still number crunching to be done but for anyone to say polish wont be attained because of a 41 pt talent hasnt been playing mmos very long. Talents and number are always in flux to some degree. They are always being worked on and changed and tweaked. The beta looks great. I think they are looking good for their nov 13th date.

Frank said on 2:42PM 9-26-2008

There's the beta we play and can talk about and the Beta Blizz plays and wont talk about. I have a feeling that they have a lot more polish on the game than what we see.

I think it will still launch with more polish than Warhammer did.

PurityKnight said on 3:09PM 9-26-2008

It's ready enough.

I was in classic wow beta, BC beta and now wrath beta... the state of the expansion is on par with all their previous releases. A few tweaks here and there, and more work to be done on end game stuff in the following weeks after release.

It's more than playable and fun enough that a few minor issues aren't going to be gamebreaking.

crsh said on 3:10PM 9-26-2008

They always shipped WoW with bugs and unfinished content, I don't see why it's such a big deal.

When TBC launched, the much-showcased netherdrake flying mounts (and the quest content associated with them) was MIA, raid bosses weren't tuned (Gruul 1.0 was nearly impossible for most guilds) and Hyjal wasn't ready so they bugged out the bosses (or put them on supreme mode).

So what, right? Patch 2.1 that fixed all that stuff came out nearly 5 months later, raiders were pissed but that's always a vocal minority, most were just starting to out-gear Karazhan or were still progressing through SSC at that point.

Coldbrand said on 5:01PM 9-26-2008

Maybe because that's unacceptable behavior that shouldn't be encouraged?

crsh said on 8:39PM 9-26-2008

For sure, but why now? Given that it's nothing new, and certainly not limited to Blizzard only (AoC gave us a far more offensive version just recently, for example).

Bacikarma said on 5:22AM 9-27-2008

I for one think that another game picking up the supposed 500k worth of subscriptions is a factor for any company to rush out something to get their customers back in the game again. The longer they wait even though it may be the right thing to do , the more of their players they can possibly loose to another MMO.

Jabberslops said on 8:31PM 9-26-2008

People are forgetting that it takes 1-2 months after a game goes gold to reach store shelves. In that time Blizzard can fix the problems or at least fix most of them and patch the game on the day of release.

Mattimus said on 4:40PM 10-08-2008

Burning Crusade shipped without Netherdrakes, which took MONTHS to implement. Shipping without complete content is not new for Blizzard, despite what people may wish to think.

STereo said on 6:30PM 10-01-2008

I think most of their talent is working on other things and only a bare minimum of developers are working on WOTLK, which is why they are giving such short shrift to certain classes. They can't possibly think that classes like shammy and hunter are anywhere near ready to go.