WoW came back from the brink because Blizzard ran it like a live service game—but now that same tactic’s threatening everything
Terminally Online
This is Terminally Online: PC Gamer’s very own MMO column. Every other week, I’ll be sharing my thoughts on the genre, interviewing fellow MMO-heads like me, taking a deep-dive into mechanics we’ve all taken for granted, and, occasionally, bringing in guest writers to talk about their MMO of choice.
World of Warcraft’s experienced a self-resurrection after the foibles of Shadowlands six years ago, and that’s due, in part, to Blizzard worshipping at the altar of the roadmap—as opposed to past expansions, where content droughts could last into the hundreds of days, Blizzard has stuck to its plans with a religious strictness.
It’s not hard to see why. MMOs are a difficult beast to wrangle, and being able to hit a consistent rhythm of patches is a great way to keep players subscribed. It’s also something all the big live service games—which MMOs first inspired, and now have to draw from to keep current—hold as part of their core model.
And hey, it’s worked. Dragonflight, The War Within, and now Midnight—while certainly not immune from criticism—have done a lot to build up goodwill. Especially when you combine them with the successful experiments of Season of Discovery and Remix. It’s something I’ve complimented WoW on before.
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But the latest patch, 12.0.5, shows the other side of this coin: It’s become quite clear now that Blizzard might’ve needed a few more weeks to pull everything together. It’s an update that’s rife with bugs and design issues—some of which were called out on the PTR weeks in advance and were left unaddressed.
You can safely write out the devs burying their heads in the sand—no one’s more aware of a game’s bugs than the people trying to fix them. So the question is, why weren’t they given the time to sort it?
I think it’s due to that dogged adherence to the schedule, one that permeates the live service, roadmap-drowned structure. Releasing something a little under-tuned, or—as per Ion Hazzikostas—starting conservative with rewards and then tuning things up later? That’s far, far more preferable to the horror of a delay, or so Blizzard’s implied by its actions.
Water, water everywhere
It’s almost hard to blame Blizzard for being afraid of this, because WoW’s droughts have been some of the worst in MMO history. 6.2 for Warlords of Draenor was the last major patch before Legion dropped a whopping 400 days later. Mists of Pandaria saw another lull after the Siege of Orgrimmar—a teeth-grinding 14 months before WoD came out the following year.
I’m certain nobody wants to go back to those days, but there’s something to be said for flexibility. If 12.0.5 needed a few more weeks, would anyone have complained? I mean, obviously they would have. It’s World of Warcraft. But would they have complained more than they are now? I don’t think so.
I have, however, been on the other side of that coin. My main love, Final Fantasy 14, has irked me quite a bit with its sluggish tempo—but a lot of that’s due to its rewards structure rather than what Square Enix is putting out. A lot of column A, and only a bit of column B.
But even then, Square’s inflexibility is a consequence of sticking too much to a schedule.
Moreover, I can’t help but ask myself what all of this is for. The last slice of Midnight’s first seasonal offerings, the March on Quel’Danas, dropped March 31. In comes in patch 12.0.5 less than a month later, hucking Ritual Sites, the Voidforge, and Void Assaults in an overstimulating wave of new crap to do.
Slow your roll
I’m slower than your average player that’s entirely dedicated, given I need to play and write about a wide variety of games—but I wasn’t nearly finished with my plate before Blizzard dropped a bunch more mashed potatoes on it. I’m full. Give me a second!
Maybe I’m complaining that my steak is just too juicy—and I would agree with you if the patch wasn’t so riddled with bugs while my cup runneth over. But if we’re already getting far too much, what’s the actual trade-off, here?
I genuinely would not have blinked if the entirety of April had passed without an update, because there’s already a lot to do in Midnight. A whole raid tier, delves, Mythic+ dungeons, rep grinds, Prey, player housing, and little Arcantina side-quests. I look at what I’ve got left to do and I get given a sense of vertigo that’s honestly making it take longer.
I think there’s been a misalignment here. Blizzard brought its premiere MMO back from the brink by adopting a live-service style structure of roadmaps, seasons, and promises kept, yes—but that doesn’t mean that its playerbase has the same appetite as, say, someone who hops from shooter to shooter.
MMOs can survive a bit of a slower-paced release structure for a few reasons—firstly, the days when people are attached to one MMO as their main gaming diet are over. These games have a bit of an ageing population (a Google Play report from 2022 found that over half of players were between 25-44 years old) with more responsibilities, true, but also wider tastes.
WoW doesn’t need to copy everything from the seasonal live service model—and it certainly doesn’t need to avoid delaying a patch above all else.
Secondly, they’re also just different at a structural level. An MMO like WoW has a broad range of things to do and a big historical backlog of expansions to thicken out the videogame soup. Natural lulls are a chance to dip into things you’ve not explored yet, help out your mates, go hunting for transmogs, level up alts, and so on.
Lastly, MMOs are primarily about investment. They’re games where people make little homes and communities for themselves, and it’s not a disaster if those communities have time to breathe and help each other out rather than chasing the next item level increase.
Does an MMO need to avoid droughts? Yes. Should it release things at a solid tempo? Yes. But WoW doesn’t need to copy everything from the seasonal live service model—and it certainly doesn’t need to avoid delaying a patch above all else.
I hope the lesson Blizzard learns (aside from giving more resources to its QA team, which I’m sure is full of people trying their hardest) isn’t simply that it needs to be better at its current pace, but that it can slow down every once in a while. Maybe not for 400 days, sure, but if a patch ever needs a couple more weeks to cook, I can just go hunt for decor or something. It might be time for WoW to slow down just a little.
