Slash Content or Release with Bugs?

There's a long standing theory that World of Warcraft has changed the MMO market because of the high degree of polished it had upon release. While it wasn't 100% bug free, it did have a lot of content which was surprisingly stable and fun to play. It was a sharp contrast to EverQuest 2 which was going through a tough regiment of constant patches at the time. It sort of reminds me how Age of Conan is currently going through it's own weekly patch cycle. It's almost like Funcom had it's head in the sand and missed the epic battle between SOE and Blizzard in 2004.

It's not like Funcom is the only developer to ignore MMO history. The way Sigil handled the release of Vanguard has made it the poster child for incomplete and buggy games. Then again it's not like Pirates of the Burning Sea or Tabula Rasa were shinning examples of polished MMO design either. Even the successful Lord of the Rings only managed to match Blizzard's polish by leaving large stretches of their game barren of content. More content was patched in eventually, but it didn't stop their initial subscription numbers from quickly going downhill. It's funny, but the most complete and polished game after World of Warcraft might actually be Guild Wars.

I have to wonder if ArenaNet had a better idea of how much content they needed to develop for their game compared to other MMOs. Since they were only focused on box sales I bet their development cycle was tighter and had more in common with console games. It seems a weakness of MMO developers is under estimating how much time it will take to finish content. They have a habit of spending way too much time on one part of the game and then having to knock their timeline back. Eventually, they start to run out of money and they make the decision to release with bugs like Funcom/Sigil or slash content like LOTR/Warhammer.

So how the hell did World of Warcraft managed to release with so few bugs and a decent amount of content? Well quite frankly, I think Blizzard had a lot of experienced people working on the game and Vivendi did authorize around 50 million dollars for its development. It may not be necessary to spend that much, but if you want a game with complete and bug free content that might be the cost. It'll be interesting to see how much Mythic has invested into Warhammer when they finally release the numbers. I'm willing to bet it will be under what Blizzard spent but then again I think they are trying to do it in three years instead of four. At the very least Mythic didn't slash any content required for leveling so they are one step ahead of Lord of the Rings.

It's quite obvious that while World of Warcraft raised the bar for MMOs, it's set it way too high for most development studios. I know a couple games like Tabula Rasa and Vanguard cost almost as much money as World of Warcraft and still produced crappy games at release. I think the missing ingredient might be an experienced team combined with ungodly sums of money. I know Tabula Rasa suffered from a lot of hands stirring the pot as people left and came onto the project. Sigil on the other hand was a brand new company and had a lot of ex-developers trying to do project management. Luckily, I think Mythic has the right combination of experience and money. In fact the only reason they probably had to cut any content was that they spent so much time advertising/hyping their game.