Mists of Pandaria

[Newsom]

Ulduar was fantastic, and that was the second tier of Wrath.

That could be because they reused Naxx, so they could start working on Ulduar earlier.

They started developing Ulduar before the expansion was released.

[Fenrìr]

They've implied very strongly that the next tier is a 10-boss instance, which is still a reduction in environments and bosses however you look at it. They're staggering T14 this time, which is a step in the right direction, but it's a very brief thing. Maybe they really should hold back and stagger raids throughout the life of the expansion...

They also implied very strongly that DS wouldn't be out for nearly a year.

[Lieris]

"We intend to get expansions out much more regularly."

"We will now make smaller raids but have much more frequent raid patches."

[Darielle]

T15: WE're sorry to announce that the Maw of Terror raid has been scrapped. It's totally not that we felt like it couldn't come out fast enough, but we just felt that it was suitably resolved by the questline in Dread Wastes.

Their throttle is in the things like art, so everything at this point does actually impact on being a throttle for how much or how fast they can put out the raid content, unless it requires no new assets whatsoever, and DS pointed out just HOW lame using reskinned bosses and shoddy platform settings really is.

[benebarba]

I'm guessing they have a lot more resources available for an expansion than a patch. T11 was phenomenal, and I'm sure T4 will be. Will not be surprised if I'm disappointed by T15.

Possible - but that should be more reason to prepare more than you plan on releasing at the start. See my comment about management and spacing of content. Take cata - we were told that the revamp of the world was a huge undertaking, yet *still* they released more bosses and 5-mans than the subsequent tiers. Yeah, lore tied em together (well, sort of - I'd argue they could have had most of the uldum stuff shuffled out later and actually made that more interesting), but it's not like lore's not something they aren't in complete control of so I don't buy that.

Additionally, just because something will come out half way or towards the end of an expansion doesn't mean it *has to* be made after the expansion goes live. *Especially* if it's the upfront encounter design, environmental layout and art assets that are the time-sink and the time spent on balance just gets shifted around.

Not saying I could do better, and I imagine there isn't a single person at blizz who actually thinks to themselves 'Yeah! We'll have a big team spending 2 years on all this awesome stuff for the next expansion while we have a few over-tasked folks working on a couple things to toss in as we go.'... but a casual glance does seem to indicate that they may be far too optimistic about what they can put out.

[Nooska]

Well they did say (tweet or Q&A, can't remember right now) that they were already "knee deep in 5.1 and 5.2" in regard sto raids.

[degre]

In this interview Ghostcrawler gives the reason for adding pet battles as 1) they felt like MoP needed another new system (seeing as it didn't introduce a profession like previous expansions), and 2) they didn't want it to be something that every player was required to understand and use (like glyphs or gems), because the game has enough of that already.

I just can't figure out how they haven't been sued yet.

Pokemon wasn't the first and won't be the last, it's just a type of game, it's like saying that id should sue Microsoft for making Halo or Valve for Half Life, just because they made Wolfenstein before them.

Plenty of similar titles have been released through the years, I remember working on a dinosaurs themed one for SEGA a few years back.

To be fair I am looking forward to pet battles, it's a completely not necessary activity that I'd take up probably to kill those minutes before when you have no time to do anything else, those moments when you're stuck in a place and can't do anything else, think like a raider has disconnected, you come back earlier from your break, you show up earlier for the raid. At times we used to get out the sword rack and do foam swords tournaments, now we'll have pet battles.

You don't like the above idea? Fair enough, ignore the pet battles, you 3 raids and plenty of other stuff to focus on.

[Nikachelle]

Oh I'll be all over those pet battles. There's a metric ton of achievements attached to them!

[bldavis]

Oh I'll be all over those pet battles. There's a metric ton of achievements attached to them!

o/
same here

[Worldie]

Oh I'll be all over those pet battles. There's a metric ton of achievements attached to them!

Can we duel crosserver?

[Nikachelle]

Oh I'll be all over those pet battles. There's a metric ton of achievements attached to them!

Can we duel crosserver?

I don't see why not if we get into a cross realm zone.

[Worldie]

/adds nika to friendlist

[KysenMurrin]

Achievements. Meh.

[stevos]

I am seriously hoping that the 25 DK Heroic Dragonsoul raid is not an indication of another balanced class issue that seems to effect DK more than most.

[Paxen]

I am seriously hoping that the 25 DK Heroic Dragonsoul raid is not an indication of another balanced class issue that seems to effect DK more than most.

I would think it's mostly down to existing nerfs on top of pre-expac patch nerfs?