Has Blizzard given up on WoW?

Perhaps I'm spoiled by a shockingly productive development and design team on Rift, but I was stunned today when I read the patch notes for the upcoming 5.0 patch that's going to land for WoW. This is the first patch since 4.3 which introduced a bunch of new features including a new raid, 3 new 5-man dungeons and the Raid Finder feature. That was a good, solid content patch. Then, eight months later, you would think that they'd have something new to throw to the players while they wait for the September patch, no? Yep... a world event involving Theramore.

Rift: More content? Seriously?!

MMO Report visits Trion, makers of Rift

Rift is blowing my mind. I just went back over what we've gotten for new content since June. It's... well, it's a bit daunting, really. And now they're coming out with a new 20-man raid with 2 of the major lore characters (the dragons Maelforge and Laethys) for guilds to wipe on... er, do battle with!

So, just to recap, here's what we've seen since June of 2011:

• Twisted artifacts (ground spawn goodies visible with a specially purchased ability)
• The Hammerknell 20-man raid with 11 bosses introduces tier-2 raiding
• PvP rifts
• Instant adventures: a queue for ongoing world event quests
• Drowned Halls 10-man raid
• Variant warfronts introduced
• Ember Isle zone introduced with ongoing invasions to fight and its own periodic zone events with improved rewards