WoW Patch Cadence & Monetization — Full Breakdown & Transcript

[00:03] Hazzikostas has finally explained at length why wow keeps shipping just a little bit broken. And also, they even got on to basically problems with the game feeling a little bit stale. There's loads to talk about and some really

[00:16] that Blizzard's accountants are in fact sitting right behind him having a laugh. Cuz we do have money related stories to get into today. So, welcome back to the Warcraft news where bug fixes do in fact cause even more bugs and where Blizzard

[00:31] maybe removes a feature just to sell it back to you. let's do the Ion interview. So, Ion had an hour-long interview with Cyber and boy did they get into some stuff. I mean, here's a quote, "We are never

[00:47] going to put something in a patch if it's not ready." To which a few of us may be rolling our eyes. I mean, that's why we pretty much every patch day as if we're stepping into a shower that we expect maybe ice

[01:01] hardly surprising this interview went a little bit viral. I suppose well, there are no bugs in Quel'Thalas, there is no war in Ba Sing Se. But in all seriousness, how about we try giving Ion's statement its full context

[01:18] all came about because Sai [clears throat] asked him for a response to basically the people who feel like wow is being made too quickly these days. And I must confess, I'm certainly one of those people. Ion talks about

[01:31] player feedback and about making enough kinds of content to satisfy every different player type, even the sorts of players we don't really see online. So, he talks about that, basically how broad wow has got to be these days, but then

[01:45] he gets into speed. And he says that their eight-week cadence is a response to the content droughts of BfA and Shadowlands. To which I say, well, I raise you Siege of Orgrimmar. I went through that, but guess what? So too did

[01:58] Blizzard for a long time indeed. But if I'm to seriously cast my mind back to World of Warcraft's past, yeah, things were pretty bad back then. The scale of content drought we used to get was just it's just another order of magnitude on

[02:13] top of anything we may get today. So, in that way, what we get today is pretty great. Now, Ion says he believes that they're moving faster and that they are not sacrificing quality in doing so. And that's where I have disagreements. Now,

[02:28] Ion is obviously a very media trained man. I don't mean that in some sort of sneaky shifty way. It's just how things will be if you've been a game director for so long. But what's of note is when you actually watch the interview, he

[02:42] says all that with his full chest. He really does seem to mean it. And he goes on to say that if something isn't ready for a patch, well, they can just push it to the next patch knowing that it's not going to be far away. Because, of

[02:54] course, the patch will be in 8 weeks. Now, that can be compared to the old days when devs would essentially crunch like mad or skip [music] steps to get their features done because it was their only option. There would be no other

[03:07] patch for many, many, many months on end. Maybe four or five, six months, sometimes even seven. So, ironically, faster patches can let them slow down on how they develop certain bits of content because worst case, you just bump it 8

[03:21] statement like that, you'd think that everything's going fantastic in World of things where Ion will say something, the broad response will be, "Yeah, sounds good. Makes sense." because he's pretty good at answering questions. The problem

[03:36] maybe comes in upon closer investigation. So, I have my issues with what he's laid out there, but I've got to build my case with Ion's other answers before we fully talk about things because he's actually got some

[03:49] apparent good news. And it's this. Blizzard say they are not completely committed to the 8-week patch cycle. They evaluate PTR feedback, QA reports, and everything else when deciding if a release should go ahead or not.

[04:02] Basically, it seems they do a go or no-go process for patches. Now, if that's the case, then how the hell does the disaster of patch 12.0.5 make sense? Well, Ion partially blames that on fixing bugs, because fixing bugs can

[04:17] create more bugs. And an example that he gives is, but honestly a pretty funny one. Housing was turned off on patch day. I know at least it was for people on American servers. Now, that's because Blizzard fixed a bug with a Siege of

[04:31] Orgrimmar elevator. Yeah, fixing an elevator broke player housing. That sounds insane, but there's a logic to it. So, a minor fix that they pushed to stop people falling through the elevator essentially broke things.

[04:45] And it turns out that players attaching to elevators shared some code with how that or attached itself to floors and walls. That may sound a bit silly, but you've got to understand how World of Warcraft is made. The game engines, you

[04:57] see, aren't some sort of huge monolithic thing. They, in many cases, especially for a big production game, they end up resembling orc technology from the 40K verse. A lot of things that are grafted together, and that means that as a

[05:12] project goes on and on and on, well, things like this can end up happening. You have to remember that the World of Warcraft engine fundamentally is an absurdly ancient thing that's just been continually maintained and updated. Now,

[05:26] from this whole situation and them having to turn off player housing for a this. The fix to the Siege of Orgrimmar elevator was put into a release [music] candidate build. And it was put into

[05:38] that build a day before the patch launched. And because of that, it was just too late to catch the bugs that that bug fix had in fact created. So, according to Ian then, they've learned from this and future patches will be

[05:53] less buggy because Blizzard won't fix bugs as aggressively down to the wire. complete madness, but realistically, putting on software degree hat for a yeah, it's pretty bad software engineering discipline to have a release

[06:07] candidate, do a bunch of bug fixes on top of that, and not have time to test it before you push it to main. Absolutely. And the real reason why it sounds like complete madness is that the devs should have more restraint. [music]

[06:20] They should know better than to slip untested changes like that onto an already finished build. Now, the thing is, mistakes happen, and mistakes happen within context. [music] It's not just dev was bad. It could very much be there

[06:34] is a culture of people feeling like they have to ship things no matter what, feeling like the 8-week patch cadence is something that they really do have to stick to, regardless of what Ian may say in an interview. So, that does make me

[06:48] worry about the team's effectively cultural health and discipline. Now, with that said, let's go back to the line, quote, "If something isn't ready," ready, it's not going to go in the patch."

[07:01] definition of ready actually does need some work because there's ready as in this technically works, and then there's ready as in this is a great piece of our paying subscribers. [music] I think the entire team are sitting way

[07:16] too close to the first definition of ready, i.e., it is technically shippable, and I think they really need to move towards the second definition. actually cover that. And to get a feel for what I actually mean, take say void

[07:30] [music] but they were very clearly just filler rework of 12.0.5, which was also technically ready, but in reality was a massive downgrade. Now, by contrast, ritual sites and showdowns are very

[07:45] solid. Very few people have complaints about them, but very few people seem to be excited for them or about them. So, what I think is happening here, honestly, is that WoW's current patch cadence is forcing Blizzard to develop

[08:00] content that people will play, perhaps because they're incentivized to, but not necessarily content that they'll actually care about. And I think that is reflected in the air, the miasma of apathy that seems to have floated into

[08:15] midnight post people hitting 12.0 and the initial rush. Now, it's a good thing Sy asked Ion about this problem as well. He essentially asked how Ion and the team plan to keep World of Warcraft from going stale. You know, we got dungeons,

[08:28] thingy, which does mean we pretty much always know exactly what's coming in the game. It's as if WoW has found a groove, but boring. It very much could [music] be that the content that Blizzard think to

[08:43] make is scoped to fit in that [music] groove and in that 8-week cadence. And it could be that that is a constraint or a target that fundamentally changes the scope and the type of content that they feel like they're able to make and put

[08:57] into the game. And that is where I'm happy to say there's actually some good news because it turns out that Ion seems to think about this problem a lot. And actually harder to develop now.

[09:10] certain things like borrowed power, Mythic Plus affixes, or the Jailer being a bit lame, Blizzard knows exactly what to fix. But whenever players are bored, they're just getting bored, well, Blizzard kind of has to be creative,

[09:26] right? Because whenever a player is bored, they tend to not leave feedback. something else. And that's where we get some good news. Ion says that change for the sake of change is probably worth

[09:38] where that could come off as reckless, but I do think there is a good point. And specifically, Ion brings up the topic of raids. That's because raiding has largely been the same since 2014. They're now sprucing it up though with

[09:51] better Great Vault rewards and a whole bunch of other changes to gearing, which is pretty damn good. Obviously, I think we also need this type of thinking in the actual content that gets scoped out. But ultimately,

[10:04] There's way more granular detail about the likes of say Mythic rating. So, if you're super down for that, obviously, go and check out Ion's video. And the the other news topics is, overall, it's good to hear Ion talk about complacency

[10:18] being the enemy. Obviously, we just [music] need to see if they have any meaningful change coming. I would say, [music] I think they've shown that eight-week patches are technically workable, but something will have to

[10:31] change before long. 12.0.7's launch was not all that buggy, actually, but it's ended up happening is Blizzard kind of buried excellent features in a patch of the community was not excited about. The likes of heroic world tier should have

[10:46] had us all dancing in the streets. So, if I was in Ion's shoes, I would think about when in the season gameplay is released. I would actually front-load it more, and I would try to think about supporting healthy gaming patterns

[10:59] within the MMO, [music] which I'd say isn't just evenly playing progressing an entire six-month period of time. No, it's jumping in, no-lifing break, maybe playing the point five patch, and then probably just that's it.

[11:17] Cuz at the end of the day, if it feels like a season is being bulked out by pro-retention filler, even if that's not what Blizzard intends as developers and what Blizzard intends as developers and game makers, well, that feeling will

[11:29] just create apathy. And that'll mean less excitement for upcoming patches, and I think that's something we sadly have seen with patch 12.1. And now, it's time to talk about money. So, do you remember this thing? It's uh

[11:43] it's a bit weird, but it's called the Rostrum of Transformation. It's in Midnight, but for Midnight, it's basically useless. Now, you see, the Dragonflight gave us these really cool customizable dragon mounts, and then

[11:55] they scattered the world full of variations and customizations for those mounts. Then, The War Within gave us a new customizable mount every season. Of course, those were the ones that were tied to delves. Midnight then gives us

[12:08] nothing on that front. Nothing in terms of customizable mounts. Or should I say, nothing for free. Enter then the Stone Forged Sentinel. It's a new customizable Forged Sentinel. It's a new customizable mount with over 300,000 variations. And

[12:22] if you knock four zeros off that, you get its price, $30. And if you look at it closely, it's extremely obviously pieced together from uh models made for World of Warcraft: The Last Titan, our next expansion. This is something that

[12:36] the way. Now, the store description calls it, quote, "Chiseled from enduring stone and awakened by ancient power," which definitely means it's some sort of Titan creation, or a bunch of Titan creations mashed together. Now, I talk

[12:52] this expansion that actually uses the Rostrum of Transformation, which sounds a hell of a lot like Blizzard selling us a feature that we used to have for free. Obviously, that doesn't feel good, and it's also really to no one's surprise.

[13:06] their monetization game. By now, we're well used to getting future models for sale in the store. Hell, back in the day, we used to look at store mounts for clues about upcoming expansions. Not that we need to do that, because we know

[13:19] I know that to many of you, this is all a bit of an eye roll. Why are we still complaining about this sort of thing? Well, for me, it's really simple. I just want to do anything I can to tip the scales in a more consumer-friendly way.

[13:32] Ultimately, World of Warcraft is a buy-to-play and pay-to-play MMO. You buy it at full price, you then pay a subscription fee, and I think that does mean that the likes of this just feel extra bad.

[13:47] And speaking of things feeling extra bad, it's time for some detective work. bundles? People didn't love them. Here's where it gets interesting. Data mining picked up two more exteriors on the PTR. So,

[14:00] two more exteriors on the PTR. So, basically, a full new model for your And you guessed it, they are tagged as shop items. Naturally then, this kicked up a little bit of a stink, and that's because they were all

[14:13] stink, and that's because they were all tagged as fall. So, basically, it looked like Blizzard were planning to keep selling season-themed stuff on that store, seemingly at the expense of housing decor, you know, being

[14:25] holidays, or at least integrated more fully. Now, other data mining then happened and added more fuel to the fire. And that's because there's a ton of shop-tagged fall harvest decor in the build, as well.

[14:38] Now, the thing is, that's actually not even the real story here, cuz the real prove something. And that's that the housing bundle backlash actually rattled Why? Well, because Blizzard hit up Mr. GM with an

[14:53] immediate clarification to his tweet talking about the data mining, and they did it so fast, they may have made a huge mistake, and they may have let their plan slip. You see, they say that a new exterior is coming, and probably

[15:06] more in the future, and that this exterior in particular is not going to But the weird thing is that Mr. GM's tweet shows two exteriors, not one. And it's the same story on the official forum. A poster mentioned the decor pack

[15:21] and two exteriors and Kybax's response only promised that one exterior would stay off the shop. Now, obviously, it may be a quick mistake and maybe it's Kybax just trying to put out the fire before it spreads.

[15:35] But what if we're to take them on their word as they have written their word on these two different posts? Well, with that wording, it seems possible, perhaps likely, that we'll get one in-game exterior and then one in the

[15:48] shop. But what's more worrying is the fact that they completely ignored the fact that they completely ignored the data mined store decor. Cuz if the fall themed exterior is there for free, but all of the accompanying decor is

[16:01] something you've got to buy for hearth steel, then it almost feels a bit worse. It's the classic salesman trap, like selling you a coffee machine or a printer that only accepts overpriced official coffee or ink pods. Blizz, I

[16:15] you're going to try and screw us, I mean, at least don't be sneaky about it. And also, don't be snarky, either. In Kybax's forum post, he says that this is a good example of how initial data mining can

[16:29] be misleading. Come on, man. You are the ones who pushed that to the PTR build with the stuff tagged as being a shop item. And it's generally the case that things on PTR marked as store items do

[16:43] in fact end up being store items. [music] So, Blizz, Kybax, you can correct the record, you can do your clarification without taking a dig.

[16:55] Because in doing a dig like that, all it does is make you guys seem out of touch. It makes you seem like you have a bunker mentality where you all just feel hard Professionally speaking, that's not my problem. That's not players' problem.

[17:09] And it absolutely comes off as a similar family of smug comeback as the whole you think you do, but you don't That was so infamous at BlizzCon. funny seeing Blizzard try to dodge a bullet, but in trying to dodge a bullet,

[17:24] they basically dodged right into another bullet that hit them. But hey, at least feeling pretty rattled, and that's a good thing. They should feel rattled. Housing has so much potential to be amazing for the game, yet it does feel

[17:40] in many ways a little bit underserved. Maybe Blizzard should actually release, say, the other race exteriors instead of stringing us along with shop items. Maybe they should see shop items as something that they have to earn in

[17:53] return for delivery. Delivery perhaps of things like maybe the housing road map that was promised so long ago, because it's been a while and that thing is starting to feel like an elephant in the room. But there is in fact another

[18:07] elephant in the room, and that's been that as raiders, you feel like going to raid for the sake of gear is just completely pointless, because you get so much gear so much faster from so many other places. Well, guess what?

[18:19] The next patch of WoW is actually fixing that inequality that exists within gear. players, and there's way more changes than just the one that impacts raiders. frustrating, the end of the day, when you look at say their encounter design,

[18:35] art team, so many of those things, they are genuinely best in class, best in industry. I am excited to jump into the new raid, and with all the changes that are coming to gearing, I'm even more excited. You can find out about it in

[18:47] excited. You can find out about it in the next video.