The Gaming Lizard

By now, everyone would have heard of the news about 4.1 - Firelands and T12 will not be coming with it. The changes have everyone up in arms with the forums raging (as always) about:

1. Lack of content
2. How Blizzard is sucking your money
3. Lazy ass developers

There are also those who are glad that T12 will not becoming "too soon" since they are still clearing the present raid content. I am one of those who are happy that we've been given more time to finish up T11 before Blizz slaps T12 and welfare epics in our faces.

But what is left for players in 4.1? 2 new-old heroics and some class changes. Sounds lackluster? Certainly so, especially if the patch is numbered X.Y. Big content patches have traditionally 1 decimal place naming while small tweaks and fixes are numbered X.Y.Z. So naturally, players expected moar from 4.1 than 2 heroics. But is it true that Blizzard has become nothing more than a soul-less company, recycling old contents just to suck more of our money? Or are we as players getting more and more greedy?

Too soon or too late?

Blizzard has stated that they want to move away from blockbuster patches and instead, give us episodic ones and much quickly. WoW Dev J. Allen Brack estimates that 4.1 is still roughly 2 months away, which I think is a slight overestimation. While there are still bugs in the PTR, they can be easily resolved with 1 PTR update. Perhaps we'll see 4.1 much earlier...which makes the gap between 4.0 and 4.1 4 months.

Looking back at previous content patches over the years, 4 months for only 2 "recycled" content and class changes is a bit too long for players. However, we cannot fault Blizzard ultimately as the original plan was to include T12 content so pushing 4.1 out later seems to be a good idea back then. What the devs did not anticipate (which frankly I think they should!) was that many guilds have not cleared T11. This consequentially leads to their decision to pull T12 content out.

From Datamining, they have been working hard on T12 with all the weapon models and on Firelands itself. So yes, we have to forgive Blizzard for giving us lesser content in 4.1. Odds of this happening again (content being pulled out from original plan) is low since Blizzard is likely to have learned their lesson. Had they notice the problems earlier, we'll probably see 4.1 hitting us faster.

Hungry for moar

Still, the cries of inadequate content in 4.1 only serves to highlight just how greedy we have become over the years. Looking back at content patches from 1.X, there are no increases in raid tier and one of it even give us weather! If 4.1 today reads "Weather graphics have been improved dramatically and outdoor raids now experience changes in weather" I am confident that there will be cries for blood on the forums.

We now expect many more contents and within a shorter time (not 3.3 long thou, a year for a patch is murder). Players wants more dailies (despite the limit being easily achieved now), more heroics (even if they are determined to run it to death then proceed to complain about lack of things to do) and more raids.

Blizzard is ultimately to blame for this increase in greed. With the blockbuster patches of old, where contents are aplenty, we now expect the same amount of stuff to come out with every major patch and at a faster rate despite Blizzard stating that they want more bite size patches.

We must remember that creating new content takes a hell lot of time, from concept to coding to balancing. They may be working on the game 24/7 but they are humans after all. Cut them some slack.

Cataclysm a time for change

Over the years, Blizzard has become more open with their communications, explaining their thinking behind nerfs and buffs. Does it always work? Not really, judging by the backlash of poor Ghostcrawler's blog posts (he seems to disappear totally afterwards!) But we must remember the days of old when Blizzard just smack us with class changes and ask us to deal with it for the next few months.

Cataclysm is still young and 4.1 shows us how it is going to be for the rest of the expansion - a return to the small patches of 1.X although I sincerely hope it wouldn't take too long.

Still, it all boils down to our expectations as players. ZA and ZG may use the same map but the boss fights are different, mechanics used are different as well. We have to learn to be less greedy so that we can actually enjoy the game. Heck, Vanilla went on for 2 years and 12 major content patches. By WOTLK standards, we would have reached T12 5 years ago!

So let's sit back instead and see how Blizzard's new philosophy plays out. 4.2 is expected to hit PTR weeks into 4.1, bringing us T12, Hyjal dailies, Abyssal Maw and possibly a whole lot more. What we can do is to use the time between 4.0 AND 4.2 to determine the pacing of raid content patches since they kinda screw up on the timing of 4.1. If you still think that Blizzard is doing a bad job when you see 4.3 and beyond, vote with your wallet.

A History of Patches

It's always fascinating to see what the old content patches bring us. Weather is something we take for granted but it's not always there! Similarly, 2.2 brings us Voice Chat only, no major content added.

I will only include the major contents of each X.Y patch here. Class changes and bug fixes are expected to be in all patches.

Vanilla WoW - Released 23 November 2004

Patch 1.2 - 18 Dec 04
*Maraudon 5man
*Hide your cloak and helm options

Patch 1.3 - 07 Mar 05
*3 Dire Maul 5man
*2 Outdoor Raid Bosses
*Meeting Stones

Patch 1.4 - 5 May 05
*Honor System
*Gurubashi Arena Event
*Elemental Invasion

Patch 1.5 - 07 Jun 05
*WSG and AV Battlegrounds

Patch 1.6 - 12 Jul 05
*Blackwing Lair 40man
*Darkmoon Faerie
*Battlemasters

Patch 1.7 - 13 Sep 05
*Zul'gurub 20man
*AB Battleground

Patch 1.8 - 10 Oct 05
*4 Green Dragons world bosses
*Revamped Silithus

Patch 1.9 - 03 Jan 06
*Ahn'Qiraj 20 and 40man (T2 content)
*Linked Auction Houses

Patch 1.10 - 28 Mar 06
*Epic Dungeon Sets
*Weather Effects!

Patch 1.11 - 20 Jun 06
*Naxxaramas 40man

Patch 1.12 - 22 Aug 06
*Cross Realm Battlegrounds
* World PVP

Burning Crusade - 16 Jan 07

Patch 2.1 - 22 May 07
*Black Temple 25man (T5)
*Druid Epic Flight Form
*Ruins of Lodaeron Arena

Patch 2.2 - 25 Sep 07
*Voice Chat

Patch 2.3 - 13 Nov 07
*Zul'Aman 10man
*Guild Bank
*Levelling Experience Change
*Arena Season 3

Patch 2.4 - 25 Mar 08
*Sunwell 25man (T6)
*Isle of Quel'Danas

Wrath of the Lich King - 13 Nov 08

Patch 3.1 - 14 Apr 09
*Uldaur Raid (T8)
*Argent Tournament Dailies

Patch 3.2 - 4 August 09
*Trial of Crusader raid(T9)
*Crusader 5man
*Argent Tournament Dailies
*Updated Druid Models
*Isle of Conquest Battleground

Patch 3.3 - 8 Dec 09
*Icecrown Citadel (T10)
*3 Icecrown 5man
*Dungeon Finder tool
*Quest Tracking

Cataclysm - 7 Dec 10

Patch 4.1 - Slated May
*2 revamped Heroics

Patch 4.2 - TBA
*Firelands and War of Ancients (Speculated) (T12)
* Abyssal Maw (Speculated)
*Hyjal Dailies