@Kefka-: Work hard for 6 days and get paid. On top of the OT, 10% of the company profits in 2020 go directly to the employees as well. It's a win for only 6 days of extra work over 6 weeks. It's not like they did this over the entire 5+ year dev cycle.

@rudlzavedno: I mean it's only 6 days of OT. Not like they had to do this the entire 5+ year dev cycle.

Delivery guys during the holidays, tax guys during tax season, natural resource industry when they hit a big vein or pocket, fishing industry when in-season, etc...

Grinding off and on for years causes burnout. 6 days in a year is nothing, even if strung together for 6 weeks.

@Blade_Runner_07: Hard work pays. If it doesn't then find somewhere else to work hard. 6 days of OT over 5 years of dev is nothing.

@burn6: 6 days of OT over 5 years of development is hardly 'working your ass to the bone.'

@zyxe: 6 days of OT over a 5+ year dev cycle is not in any way unreasonable.

This is normal. Many industries have 1-2 months of OT a year for a variety of reasons.

It's only a problem if it's long term. Using the final 1.5 months to polish a product before launch is fine. It's not like they were working OT for the entire dev cycle of this game.

@zander80: Nobody cares about your respect for them. Also, there is nothing wrong with working OT for 1-2 months out of a 5 year dev cycle.

@ello432: Compared to other games their games were extremely fun and worked on just about any system. I don't think any game will ever be bug free but yes I do think their games were polished, high quality, long lasting, and fun both before and after their respective expansions.

@esqueejy: Having played classic wow at launch, the game was fun as hell and felt better than any other mmo I had played to date, the network load from the completely insane demand that caused all the problems was painful but due to the laws of physics I don't think any company could have solved that problem even if they were aware it was going to happen. They could have had more servers ready but based on mmo trends nobody could have predicted the level of demand. Also a testament to the overall quality of games they historically produced. People not only endured the network troubles, they kept playing for years to come.

With regards to the topic at hand:
-Age of Empires definitive edition was done right.
-Warcraft Reforged was done so poorly that I'm not sure how anyone objectively justifies it. It was either released way before the developers could get the work done or as Activision expected with as little development funding possible to achieve a 'minimum viable product' so they could make a little quick cash.

The game is literally worse than it was before it was "reforged."

@ello432: As Mogan pointed out they used to take their time and release finished, polished products. It absolutely wasn't just isolated to Starcraft Ghost. For every game we knew about, 3-4 were cancelled and never announced. Sure they sometimes had network issues due to demand meeting the laws of physics (how many connections can fit through a pipe lol) but they always delayed games that weren't finished and released quality products. The quality started to dip 1-2 years after the Activision merger and now that most of top talent moved on and most of the qa/support was canned, they're putting out buggy, featureless products. It's a clear culture shift.

You can try to convince yourself that 'when it's done' was just interview speak but their actions historically fit their words (they literally took their time and put out high quality products).