More on Blizzard's polish
I hadn't really planned to examine the 2004 box art of World of Warcraft so deeply, but take a look at this portion. It's lacking in detail, but I think you'll see the same thing I'm seeing:
When WoW was released, I had a hard time convincing my girlfriend to switch. One of her comments was a lack of classes and in a related note she pointed out that there was a race ("with horns") on the box that wasn't in the game. I looked at this little screenshot on the back and brushed it aside as a helm.
Now hindsight is 20/20, I see a female Draenei casting next to a Tauren. Maybe they were meant to be female Tauren at some point? I don't know, I'm not going to read too much into it other than when the game was released, what was in this image didn't make it into the game.
That's not a critical observation, much the reverse.
Yeah, I'm using this in my leverage against the 'polish' catchphrase. To me, this is what polish actually is, Blizzard cut things from their game as late as the box art going to press. They stuck with what was working and they shelved the rest for a later date.
Is this any different from other games? I don't think so. Blizzard had a smaller audience examining their pre-release, plus their PR team knows how to keep things under wraps. There's this myth that they had no beta NDA, but they segmented concurrent betas for PR: the more public one with no NDA, the closed-beta for real testing and even a friends-and-family server in a state between alpha and beta.
Even WoW's public test servers now are notorious for not so much testing (because invariably, most every mistake on PTR will make it to Live) as advertising upcoming changes.
That's the sort of misdirection that Age of Conan, Warhammer and other upcoming MMORPGs are lacking. Hide what you're working on, trickle out the good info and save the hype for what's actually going into the game.
It's pretty hard to do, because people rarely recognize what it is.
Blizzard wasn't perfect at it either, they had features anticipated that never arrived, but they also didn't have the same massive community of anticipating fans that have followed in WoW's wake.
Jul 12, 2008 6:01pm
Great post, I have to agree on all points. Mythic's mistake was pumping up stuff they were unsure of, when they should of focused on pumping up the stuff they knew is going to make it. The whole mis-direction thing is a double edged sword I think though. On one hand it's good to focus on the stuff that will be in the game for sure, but hiding the rest and people can view it as a bad sign. I'm referring to the Age of Conan beta specifically, with them restricting your access so much, people viewed that as a terrible sign. I believe it was, as the game ultimately turned out to be not ready for release.
Jul 13, 2008 3:10am
Well now my girlfriend says "it could be a male undead if you blur your eyes just right". Hah.
It could be, but the image is just meant to grab the point, Blizzard cut back on their game before release, pretty much every developer has to. Projects of this size don't have every detail worked out perfectly beforehand, it's not a magical process.
When they make these games, they always bite off more than they can chew, they're supposed to be big and glorious. It's just a question of being able to gauge when and what needs to be cut at the right times.
Post new comment