BlizzCon 2010: Cataclysm Equals Two Expansions' Worth of Work

[John Funk]

BlizzCon 2010: Cataclysm Equals Two Expansions' Worth of Work

Is Cataclysm a lazy cop-out for Blizzard? Not on your life, says the developer.

When Blizzard first announced Cataclysm - the third expansion to its wildly successful MMORPG World of Warcraft - at last year's BlizzCon [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/94064-BlizzCon-09-Blizzard-Announces-WoW-Cataclysm], fan reaction was somewhat mixed at times. Some accused Blizzard of taking the cop-out route: How could an expansion that only added five new levels and that largely focused on the old, already-existing world be anything but lazy? Clearly, they argued, the developer was just phoning it in for the third time around.

When asked what he thought about the "cop-out" suggestion, Rob Pardo - Blizzard's executive vice president of game design - just laughed. "It's way more work! Calling it a cop-out is just funny to me," Pardo told The Escapist at BlizzCon 2010. "We've been redoing the entire world on top of making new level-up content [from level 80 to level 85] ... Cataclysm has probably been two whole expansion packs full of work for us so far!"

Part of that, Pardo admitted, was due to Blizzard's notoriously perfectionist nature messing up its initial plans. "[We] have [our] plans, but nothing is ever good enough when you start looking at it. It ends up being way more work than we ever intended ... our dates slipped internally," he said - Blizzard may be barely squeaking into the holiday season with Cataclysm's December 7th launch, but the studio would probably have liked a little more wiggle room than it has now.

Despite the schedule slippage, though, Pardo thinks that Cataclysm is perfectly poised to bring new players into the WoW fold as a "reboot and clean-up" of the now six-year-old MMO. "We try to serve all of our different player groups ... in Cataclysm, with what we've learned with quest content and design, with phasing ... it's our best content, at our highest levels. [With Wrath of the Lich King], the game was getting too complicated. We've done a lot to clean it up."

With the most senior members of Blizzard's WoW team now nearing ten years' time on the MMORPG, how was their experience trickling down to Blizzard's other, not-quite-so-Massive titles? "All of our games influence each other in ways," said Pardo. "We learn from each others' mistakes and successes. I know that for boss encounters in Diablo III, [the D3 developers] talked to the WoW team that does boss fights - just on some general concepts, not anything specific."

The designers may offer each other advice and counsel, said Pardo, but at the end of the day Blizzard's different development teams all know they're making different games. "They're both fantasy games, yeah, but one is more traditional 'Tolkienian' fantasy while the other is dark Gothic fantasy. It's gameplay, too - Diablo is way more fast-paced, there's so much more action in the pacing. It's the whole Nethack and Rogue randomization, the mature-rated violence and colors."

Therein lies the difference between, say, a flying sparkle-pony [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/104634-BlizzCon-2010-Blizzard-Announces-Final-Diablo-3-Class].

Permalink

 

[Exterminas]

Another interessting example of empty language-use in gaming publicity.
What I mean by that?

Sure they can say that it was more work for them. I believe that, but to a customer, who is the adressant of such a statement, that is actually irrelevent, because he won't see or judge the amout of work that has gone into the product directly. What we will ultimatly see might be not worth any effort, to many players. Like moving all low-level instance-quests to the instance hubs. That must have been a lot of work for the devs, restructuring almost all major levle 60 quest-lines. But most players won't notice that work, because they have never known how things used to be. All they will see are some new quests, at best and some minor restructuring at worst.

Yet we are presented with superlatives and comperatives in this message, suggesting that everything will be bigger and better in the future. I can't thing of any other industry that uses these tropes as often as the games industry.

 

[Shihoudani]

I never really believed that Cataclysm was a cop out. A lot of people may claim that changing the old world was simple somehow but changing everything up, bug testing it, altering all of the old quests. That isn't slacking off. I don't envy the people at Blizzard for having to do all that.

 

[Infinatex]

It's an expansion. It's sold for 40% less then a full game. Complaining about value is what people do because they are cheap. The amount of tweaks, changes and updates, along with the new 80-85 and end game content, I'd say we aren't paying enough. From what I've seen at Blizzcon, I would say we are going to be getting our monies worth... and then some. I can't wait!

 

[xDHxD148L0]

While I never really thought it was much of a "cop-out", saying it has as much work as 2 expansion packs sounds like exagerration to me.

 

[Vaccine]

While I never really thought it was much of a "cop-out", saying it has as much work as 2 expansion packs sounds like exagerration to me.

Feels like 2 expansions, we got a complete class overhaul already(Patch 4.0), new content(80-85) and refreshed old content(1-60).

Considering how big the old worlds are as well...

 

[Spencer Petersen]

I don't get the big whining over "its just 5 levels, thats half an expansion!" its just a number really. Plus the only convincing arguement that you could make about the detriment of 5 levels is reduced talent points, but those 5 give 1 point each while the rest of the content is 1 point per 2 levels. Really, this only helps people who don't want to grind out the starting 81 zones because they could realistically move on to the 83 stuff, whereas if it were 10 levels it would be 82 to 86, which would be infeasible

 

[Vaccine]

I don't get the big whining over "its just 5 levels, thats half an expansion!" its just a number really. Plus the only convincing arguement that you could make about the detriment of 5 levels is reduced talent points, but those 5 give 1 point each while the rest of the content is 1 point per 2 levels. Really, this only helps people who don't want to grind out the starting 81 zones because they could realistically move on to the 83 stuff, whereas if it were 10 levels it would be 82 to 86, which would be infeasible

It could easily be double the exp requirements in Wrath content and still using Wrath Exp from quests.

1.5mil, 20k exp from quests - Wrath
3mil, 20k exp from quests - Cata

Secretly 10 levels disguised as 5.

 

[Nurb]

"Cataclysm Equals Two Expansions' Worth of Work"

Sounds like they're priming customers for a $60 price tag

 

[John Funk]

"Cataclysm Equals Two Expansions' Worth of Work"

Sounds like they're priming customers for a $60 price tag

Seeing how you can purchase it for $40 already...

 

[Stevepinto3]

While I never really thought it was much of a "cop-out", saying it has as much work as 2 expansion packs sounds like exagerration to me.

One example would probably just be the quests. They added about 3000 new quests. Wrath of the Lich King had about 1000 quests, and to get all of the big "Loremaster" achievements you need to complete about 2700 quests.

And when they talk about a revamped old world, they don't just mean a few tweaks here and there. You could go back with a new character through old zones you've done before and it will be a wholly new experience.

Really, this only helps people who don't want to grind out the starting 81 zones because they could realistically move on to the 83 stuff, whereas if it were 10 levels it would be 82 to 86, which would be infeasible

Actually, the difference in power in those few levels really shines through. A level 81 in an 83 zone will get clobbered, especially without level appropriate gear (the stat jumps are quite noticeable). In fact, I'm pretty sure you won't even be able to get to the next zone until you've either hit 82/83, or have completed the quest-chains in Hyjal or Vash'jir.

 

[seditary]

I don't get the big whining over "its just 5 levels, thats half an expansion!" its just a number really. Plus the only convincing arguement that you could make about the detriment of 5 levels is reduced talent points, but those 5 give 1 point each while the rest of the content is 1 point per 2 levels. Really, this only helps people who don't want to grind out the starting 81 zones because they could realistically move on to the 83 stuff, whereas if it were 10 levels it would be 82 to 86, which would be infeasible

It could easily be double the exp requirements in Wrath content and still using Wrath Exp from quests.

1.5mil, 20k exp from quests - Wrath
3mil, 20k exp from quests - Cata

Secretly 10 levels disguised as 5.

From what I remember, 84-85 is about 7 million or so xp at 50k per quest. Roughly.

 

[AngryMongoose]

Really, this only helps people who don't want to grind out the starting 81 zones because they could realistically move on to the 83 stuff, whereas if it were 10 levels it would be 82 to 86, which would be infeasible

Actually, the difference in power in those few levels really shines through. A level 81 in an 83 zone will get clobbered, especially without level appropriate gear (the stat jumps are quite noticeable). In fact, I'm pretty sure you won't even be able to get to the next zone until you've either hit 82/83, or have completed the quest-chains in Hyjal or Vash'jir.

It's true that you'll get murdered if you jump starting zones, due to the massive Stamina buffs, but because of how high combat ratings are right now, you're going to see your DPS drop every time you level. You're basically going to see your crit, hit, and haste % drop to below what they were when you first hit 80.

 

[fKd]

ok im cheap i guess... first i brought wow classic, then payed again for burning crusade, then the lich king now this... all the while paying each month to play... seems expensive to me. look at eve, you dont pay for expansions as its part of your monthly sub fee. just sayin... blizzard are milking its customers and fan base because they know these ppl are addicted. kinda like junkies...

but well... yeah... keep on grinding.

 

[Thorvan]

Another interessting example of empty language-use in gaming publicity.
What I mean by that?

Sure they can say that it was more work for them. I believe that, but to a customer, who is the adressant of such a statement, that is actually irrelevent, because he won't see or judge the amout of work that has gone into the product directly. What we will ultimatly see might be not worth any effort, to many players. Like moving all low-level instance-quests to the instance hubs. That must have been a lot of work for the devs, restructuring almost all major levle 60 quest-lines. But most players won't notice that work, because they have never known how things used to be. All they will see are some new quests, at best and some minor restructuring at worst.

Yet we are presented with superlatives and comperatives in this message, suggesting that everything will be bigger and better in the future. I can't thing of any other industry that uses these tropes as often as the games industry.

You'd be surprised at how much minor tweaking can do for the game. The player won't actively see this unless they are actively looking for it, but that's the point; to provide a more streamlined, fun and engrossing experience. You can't structure a game entirely around big moments, especially in something like WoW; but by making significant improvements to the smaller moments leading up to them, you can significantly increase how much impact they have, as well as how much drive the player has to both work up to them and continue playing after.

 

[Yvl9921]

Sure they can say that it was more work for them. I believe that, but to a customer, who is the adressant of such a statement, that is actually irrelevent, because he won't see or judge the amout of work that has gone into the product directly. What we will ultimatly see might be not worth any effort, to many players. Like moving all low-level instance-quests to the instance hubs. That must have been a lot of work for the devs, restructuring almost all major levle 60 quest-lines. But most players won't notice that work, because they have never known how things used to be. All they will see are some new quests, at best and some minor restructuring at worst.

You have a point, it's just inapplicable here. The "It was a lot of work!" argument was indeed bullshit when fanatics used it to defend 3.0's Naxx, and you'd be right to call them out here, since they spent months of work remaking a dungeon so that it's exactly the same, but (a lot) easier. It was a waste of effort because their aim was on making the dungeon exactly the same experience.

In Cata, they're trying to make a whole new experience because players are bored of the old world, which consists almost entirely of primitive relics that they're dying to change. I'm willing to give them the benefit of a doubt before applying the same argument.

Of course, they shoulda said "2 expansions worth of content" since in the end nobody gives a shit how hard they worked if it winds up sucking. Them working hard doesn't hurt the game, though.

 

[John Funk]

ok im cheap i guess... first i brought wow classic, then payed again for burning crusade, then the lich king now this... all the while paying each month to play... seems expensive to me. look at eve, you dont pay for expansions as its part of your monthly sub fee. just sayin... blizzard are milking its customers and fan base because they know these ppl are addicted. kinda like junkies...

but well... yeah... keep on grinding.

EVE's expansions are more like WoW's major patches though.

It's also apples and oranges, because EVE is focused so heavily on player interaction where WoW is based around developer content. EVE "expansions" just change the ways you interact with other players. WoW patches and expansions add massive amounts of content to be consumed.