As for the dev time, they could hire more people. It’s pretty simple. It’s not like they are hurting for money with their sub model. If anything, making people pay the full sub price for four year old content is a ripoff. If they are going to continue to justify the sub price point, they need to be earning it for new players and veterans alike.

“it can be a very big deal if the designers spend their limited time on content that is only relevant to alts. ”

It’s not only relevant to alts. It’s relevant to new players. And the major reason I cannot convince a couple of my coworkers to return to the game is simply because they found design of questing in the old world, “boring, frustrating and stupid.” They understand that I enjoy the end-game a lot, but they simply don’t want to endure a month or two of completion. This comes from two people who stopped in STV.

The old world content is relevant to alts and new players. Those are actually pretty sizable demographics. And they have had relatively little content added for them, even though they are just as important as other types of players.

“Blizzard appears to have reached the same conclusion.”

No, actually. In one of the panels I attended at Blizzcon they said they wanted to go back and revisit it. So Blizzard has not reached the same conclusion. They did for TBC, and I agreed with them. But now that they have the technology not to infringe on the zone’s terrain to add new quests, and now that the have the technology to develop new quests that do not depend on level (thanks to the vehicle system), they can actually work on such content.

I also think you underestimate what a company can do with new additions to any given team. If Blizzard were to add enough quality people to their quest design team, they can actually outpace the zone design and artwork teams. Past trends only suggest what the quest team could do with the team they had during the development of a post-release classic WoW, and TBC. It doesn’t say that it would take them X time in the future given the team they have right this moment. And the reason I made my list was mostly to show how much quest content has actually been added and how little what I’m proposing is in comparison.

And, I’ll repeat, some of the new content added doesn’t have to be exclusive to new or low level players. There can be content added to the old world relevant to capped players. Now especially that the content can be phased and the levels of mobs adjusted to suit whether it’s a low level character or a capped character.

Really, I think it’s just a matter of opinion. You don’t think it’s worth the development time. And I do. And I’m personally quite positive it would take very little time away from development of future capped content (and can actually include some). Especially now that Blizzard has had time to retool and build their teams based on what they want to do. Especially now that they have said they want to revisit it.

You’ve actually put your finger on the point I was trying to make – we are discussing how the quest design team should be allocating their time, as distinct from zone designers, encounter designers, class designers, etc. Their time is finite; they have to choose how to spend the “small blip on the radar” worth of time for any given dev cycle (be it a content patch or a paid expansion). For example, in two successive patches, the team made enough quests to re-do Dustwallow Marsh (2.3), followed by a major daily quest hub for level 70 characters (2.4). The fact that there is other content being added to the game in the mean time is very relevant to you – as a member of a Sunwell-capable guild, you have the option of running that content. For players who cannot make the committment required to contribute meaningfully to a raiding guild, the new solo PVE content is the only meaningful content that is being added to the game. Given how many of the game’s solo-friendly incentives focus on single-character accomplishments – see reputations, achievement points – it can be a very big deal if the designers spend their limited time on content that is only relevant to alts.

Blizzard appears to have reached the same conclusion. TBC featured four zones and two cities (plus a handful of questgivers in the old world) at launch that are relevant to low level characters. For Wrath, Blizzard created only a single new starting zone, and instead chose to focus the design team’s time on content that would be used by players who are already 70 on November 13th; Outland contained seven zones, while Northrend contains eight to ten (depending on whether you count Wintergrasp, the non-instanced battleground, and Crystalsong, which, last time I checked in beta, contained a handful of mobs for two Icecrown quests). In fact, not only are they focusing on 70+ content, but they’re also emphasizing neutral faction content – four zones of Northrend (SB, ZD, SP, IG) are populated almost entirely with neutral quest hubs. It’s a very deliberate effort on Blizzard’s part to ensure that the playerbase consumes as much as possible of the solo content in the game before being “finished” with even a single character.

Again, I am not saying that the things you suggest are bad things which I would not enjoy or benefit from (I have a number of lowbie alts I don’t play because the content is so lackluster). I am saying that the time which the quest team would need to spend to implement them would come directly out of the time they have to add new daily quests and other level 80 endgame content. And that’s why we’re seeing a focus on skipping the content (faster exp, less exp per level, increased DPS through revised talents and new profession perks, heirloom items for players with excess badges to burn on their alts, etc) rather than fixing it.

Post-Release 1.x
1. Maraudon
2. Dire Maul
3. Kazzak and Azuregos
4. The Honor System
5. Alterac Valley
6. Warsong Gulch
7. New hubs in the Searing Gorge and the Hinterlands
8. BWL
9. ZG
10. Arathi Basin
11. Green dragon bosses
12. The revamp of Silithus
13. RAQ
14. TAQ
15. Naxx
16. Cross-realm battlegrounds
17. Lolsand and EPL outdoor PvP
18. Opening event for AQ
19. Scourge Invasion for Naxx
20. Opening event for Dark Portal

TBC
21. Azuremyst
22. Bloodmyst
23. Eversong
24. Ghostlands
25. HFP
26. Zangarmarsh
27. Terrokar
28. Nagrand
29. BEM
30. Netherstorm
31. SMV
32. Silvermoon
33. Exodar
34. Ramps
35. BF
36. SH
37. SP
38. Underbog
39. SV
40. MT
41. Crypts
42. Sethekk
43. SL
44. Mech
45. Bot
46. Arc
47. Old Hillsbrad
48. BM
49. Karazhan
50. Gruul’s Lair
51. Magtheridon
52. SSC
53. TK
54. DW and Kazzak
55. Arenas and the arena system
56. EotS
57. Heaps of new talents
58. Flying mounts
59. Shattrath
60. Jewelcrafting
61. Draenei
62. Blood Elves

Post-Release TBC
63. Hyjal
64. BT
65. Netherwing, Ogri’la, and Skettis
66. ZA
67. The Dustwallow revamp
68. MgT
69. Quel’danas, and various other dailies
70. SWP
71. Achievements
72. Inscription

Then let’s consider the fact that Blizzard has also been working on a new expansion, which also has new content.

WotLK
73. Death Knights
74. Howling Fjord (HF)
75. Borean Tundra
76. Dragonblight (DB)
77. Grizzly Hills (GH)
78. Zul’Drak (ZD)
79. Sholazar Basing (SB)
80. Crystalsong
81. Storm Peaks (SP)
82. Icecrown (IC)
83. Dalaran
84. Wintergrasp and siege weapons
85. Strand of the Ancients
86. The DK starting area (which is basically the size of a small zone in content)
87. Utgarde Keep
88. Utgarde Pinnacle
89. The Nexus
90. The Occulus
91. Drak’Tharon Keep
92. Gun’drak
93. Violet Hold
94. Azjol’Nerub
95. Ahn’kahet
96. Halls of Lightning
97. Halls of Stone
98. Old Strat
99. A revamped Naxx
100. Obsidian Sanctum
101. Malygos
102. Ulduar
103. A couple new arenas
104. Tons of new talents

As a summary, that’s:

30 five-man instances
8 outdoor bosses
8 important quest hub additions
17 new raid dungeons
2 new professions
3 major game systems (honor, arenas, siege weapons)
4 overhauls or minor system additions (flying mounts, x-realm BG’s, dailies, achievements)
21 zones
4 major cities
1 new class
2 new races
5 battlegrounds
1 major outdoor PvP zone
3 minor PvP outdoor stuff (that suck, yes, but Blizzard spent time on them)
Many talent overhauls (and several minor tweaks early on)

The cries about how we only have major content patches once every six months are indicative of skewed perspectives. The issue is simply that some players only participate in certain content. Some only raid. Some only PvP. Some only level alts. Some only do dailies to pass the time. Some only do 5-mans and heroics. For the people who cross the lines into more than one territory, it’s a different story.

Right before the release of 3.0.2, I still felt knee deep into SWP, even though we had cleared it in early August. We weren’t done getting the gear people wanted. It was still a challenge to work through it each week. And I had other things in the game I wanted to do that I simply didn’t have the time for. When 3.0.2 was released, SWP was suddenly a joke. But now I had glyphs to consider, new talents to work with, raid issues to sort out, the pre-Wrath launch event, achievements to focus on, and alts to finish.

And now Wrath is close to coming out and I am going to be overwhelmed by leveling, new five-mans, new gear to pick up, new raid content, remaining desires to arena seriously, a new class to level, etc.

That’s a lot of stuff for me and others between March and now. Just because the top raids clear instances in quick time doesn’t make those content gaps glaring for everyone else. However, I will admit that perhaps PvP had no real major developments throughout most of TBC, other than new arena seasons.

The thing to remember is that a lot of the major content that is produced has nothing or little to do with other development teams. You won’t see raid encounter designers playing a huge role in outdoor leveling content, for example. They all spend some time working together, surely. But when it comes to the implementation, the quest team has minimal work for something like raid dungeons, and a lot for things like new zones.

Honestly, however, I’ve seen the development progress from the start of alpha until now and they quest team has improved a ton, in terms of both quality and quantity. Adding a few quests here and there to the old world would be a very minor delay to development of new zones later on. But if they want to retain the people who are altoholics, and if they want to retain entirely new players, they’re going to have to do something.

They could have people start at level 55, as you say. But then they would have to develop content that eases players into their talents, much as they did with DK’s. This means developing new content to ease people into the game. Regardless of how you do it, it’s the same idea, just a different concept.

And when you consider all of the content that has been developed in the 48 months since WoW’s release, it’s merely a small blip on the radar. And it’s much needed for the people who do the things that perhaps you don’t.

Slygth is right, the emphasis has been on skipping players past the old world, rather than improving it. I’ve long maintained that we’re going to see an option to start any character class at level 55 sometime in 2009 (DK’s will drastically skew the alt population if they don’t allow this), and that’s probably going to be the nail in the coffin of old world renovations.

- Faster leveling curves for 20-60 since Patch 2.3, faster leveling curves for 60-70 since Patch 3.0.2
- Additional flight points in the old world (STV, Felwood, etc) to make getting around faster
- Mounts purchasable at Level 30 (similar to above, the faster you can travel, the faster you can level)
- Bind to Account shoulders being introduced in WotLK that give +10% XP
- Recruit a Friend program that gives triple XP and “buy two get one free” levels

I’d love to see new content for the classic continents, as it would probably motivate me level some alts, but at the rate you level now from 20-60, you can skip so much content that it seems almost wasteful to add even more.