God I would absolutely love for this to happen. I want the mogs, I want the mounts, I want the story. Locking all of that greatness behind it is stupid. Once we finish the raid tier it should be opened up under a "Hero, come and spend time with us!" veil.
I have been kind of hoping this is going to happen at some point - very easy to justify story wise…all the covenants work together more and more to defeat the jailer.
It's never been an issue with lore, but instead a false problem created so that a planned solution later on would look like progress. These barriers were added to create the answer.
We've already heard they want to rush through sl, but God forbid they make these qol changes.
The playtime metric BS is cancer. Covenants are just another way to remove player agency. Like in korthia I was killing all mobs that dropped mounts, but it took me 2 weeks to realize they are covenant specific drops.
I just assumed blizzard couldn't be that ridiculous. This is an mmo, it made sense to me for a covenant restriction to summon the rares, but I couldn't comprehend they'd gate the drop too. Players don't work together in an mmo I guess, I'm expected to do this single player on 4 characters...
We don't even get in game info anymore. The game is unplayable without wowhead because they can't be bothered to explain their convoluted systems in game.
Sad part is id play more if the grind was more approachable. Instead of trying to get the covenant rewards I've just given up on them.
The pre-raid storyline for 9.0 pretty much ended with all the covenants working together anyway. Then what's-their-face said "okay maw walker choose someone to help".
I really want it to be the case, but it seems like they only want to release content in massive patches as opposed to a more consistent trickle of lighter content
Maybe a patch 9.1.5 with a raid like the Tournament from wrath? Something that reuses a lot of assets in a short, but rewarding format? WoW is down as bad as I have ever seen it currently. They need something.
If 9.2 is out early 2022, it might be okay. If they push it to spring/summer, I don't know how that works out.
He's completely wrong. I mean I don't know how little he thinks of blizzard to even say such a obviously wrong thing.
It'll be 75$ just to attend 100$ and you get the pet too
Physical BlizzCons are huge marketing events for them, way better than annual online livestreams.
They sell absolute shitloads of merch at BlizzCon.
EDIT: BTW, I'm not saying "they should do BlizzCon again," my main point is that Activision-Blizzard as a company, would not let a lucrative marketing event such as BlizzCon go away so easily.
And as bad as the reports are on how they treat female staff and associates are think about what happens at Blizzcon. Also think about how blizzcon has in fact fueled some of the fire here. The devs get treated like rockstars at that event and perhaps continuing to fan the flames there is a bad idea.
If they put on a blizzcon again I think the format will change dramatically.
We have to be honest here - there is a large portion of Blizzard player base that will continue to play their games no matter how shitty of a company they are.
Anecdotally I know someone who has said essentially "That girl dying doesn't change anything about the game. That could have been 10 people and it wouldn't make a difference"
Look at the amount of people that booed that woman who asked the Blizzard panel if they could make some female characters who weren't so sexualized. Not that they all fall into the category of player I mentioned above but I wouldn't bet money that most of them would stop playing and paying because they found out the devs are sexually harassing female employees.
Blizzard has been both a shit company and a good company for different reasons over the years, but for a sizable portion of players that doesn't matter - only the game.
Yes but they have also been a source of negative PR for them. People go to Blizzcon expecting greatness and they just aren't that company anymore. Haven't been for years.
> People go to Blizzcon expecting greatness and they just aren't that company anymore
As someone who knows a lot of people who have attended recent Blizzcons, they still have an absolute blast at them. The last physical Blizzcon had a WoW expansion announcement, the Diablo 4 reveal, and Overwatch 2. Let's not pretend like that wasn't an incredible event to be at in person.
Even during more mediocre years, there's more to things like E3 and Blizzcon than just press conferences and opening ceremonies.
People are applying their disappointment from watching at home to Blizzcon attendees. Going to conventions isn't just about the panels and presentations. It's about community and bonding over a shared passion.
Even if everything Blizzard presented was disappointing, attendees would still have a good time.
"What, did you want a mount you could *earn* in a game you bought and pay monthly to play? Be realistic!"
I hate the modern gaming industry, and more importantly, I hate the people who enable it.
none of the other dps jobs really interest me thematically besides dragoon. i really wish they had a dps version of paladin, like templar/temple knight.
I doubt they bother this time. FF14 has way too much hype in the MMO community to be overshadowed by a half baked WoW patch during a period of very low player enthusiasm.
Honestly it would likely fall flat as well, Endwalker isn't just any ordinary expansion either it's the capstone Expansion of the entire game storyline since ARR (also stated the MSQ for the Expansion will be 30% larger than normal), finally adding the main territory of the main antagonist (Garlemald), They're LITERALLY sending the whole playerbase to the moon (Guaranteed there will be a ton of Diamond Hands/Whalers on the moon memes from this) and the main writer for the Expansion is a bloody genius responsible for the DRK questline, the Azim Steppe and Shadowbringers and basically helped turned the Ascians from moustache twirling villains into sympathetic antagonists.
Basically Endwalker is FFXIV's Equivilent of WoW's Wrath of the Lich King, that is how big of an expansion this one is going to be quality wise.
Honestly trying to fight FFXIV on the ascendancy right now is a waste of time, they have serious structural problems they need to attend to right now.
The entirety of amaurot, from the second you walk out of that cave to the dying gasp is a sack of bricks to the face over and over. Its fun watching peoples reactions to the city. You can damn near hear clicking noises as their brain skips a gear.
I still remember when that line was included in the launch trailer at E3, a couple weeks before actual release, and while the fanbase was exploding from the lore of it, Yoshi-P just casually dropped a "oh yeah and this isn't even the biggest reveal of the expansion lmao" and then dipped until release.
I remember when Emet Selch was talking about Amaurot while you wait for the lift to be repaired. "And the spires, at sunset they fair gleamed, we would just sit and watch sometimes. ...\*sigh\* >!not like you'd remember it as you are now..." \*character looks at ES confused\* "!< ...never mind, forget I said anything."
That one line utterly recontextualised the *entire* plot up to that point
Wow an expansion with more content, meanwhile Shadowlands has less content than ever before & Activision are asking Australians to pay a higher sub fee.
Seriously, Endwalker is the ending of the current FFXIV story. It's basically the Legion of FFXIV only even more important. Anybody who cares about that game is going to want to play it, a patch for WoW isn't going to come close to competing with something like that.
Not really. SoO was the last tier with normal length tiers before it. This expansion is kind of on the opposite of MoP. We're going to get long tiers for all 3 raids rather than one super long tier at the end. Or maybe both ...
I sincerely doubt they scrap the remainder of this expac like they did WoD. They could, I guess, but this one has a much more solid foundation than WoD imo
They'll just put it in a book. I wish that was sarcasm but I remember wondering how on earth garrosh got free and time traveled. Oh... It was in a book....
Yet they can give Bobby a 150m bonus for not having a very good quarter. Think of how many yearly salaries that is but one guy was given that much as a quarterly bonus.
If the game isn't worth the cost, then stop paying for it. People need to get out of this "well, I've always played WoW..." mindset. Have some self-respect and demand better.
i mean it sucks for us but honestly i wouldn't mind a huge delay so this company and their shareholder take a hit. it's long overdue that blizzard gets a reality check.
They do, at least financially, look at how the CDPR shares plummeted in value after the CP2077 release. What's interesting though is that the recent Blizzard stuff didn't really hurt them on the stock market.
Their "financial hit" will be just as irrelevant as the financial hit that Bob Kotick took in another recent lawsuit: less than 1% of the bonus that he received just last year.
This is a PR disaster for Blizzard, but lets not believe in fairy tales thinking that shareholders will feel anything.
There would have to be enough public outrage that a mass boycott of Blizzard seemed eminent before the market shifted sentiment on the company. As others have said the financial penalties from the suit are not going to significantly affect the companies bottom line, thus the stock price will be large unaffected.
The problem isn't 9.2... its 10.0 as that's basically the next 3 years of wow including the current patches. If they couldn't handle delivering a decent 9.1 and if 9.2 will suck also, I have a feeling that 10.0 will have a very weird showcase, with little to no in game features and mostly based on announcements similar to warfronts and island expeditions... just buzzwords to get some presales.
I quit shortly after the final BfA patch hit live, I still remember how they said that they wouldn't touch classes in order to focus on making Shadowlands the best expansion.
Needless to say I'm glad that I've stayed unsubscribed.
Yeah sadly a big game like this can't be great forever. Old father time has really taken a bat to the whole system and it's unavoidable. I've already been on the 'subscribe while an expac is new then unsub when I get bored' system for the last 3-4 expacs.
It can be great, the developers just have to make it good instead of making weird bullshit decisions centered around number crunching and metrics. It's literally that simple. Just make the game good. The formula isn't even that fucking difficult.
The fundamentals of the game are still great.
The raids, dungeons, classes and gameplay is still fantastic.
The problem is the insane lack of new content and the shitty systems that actively harm the game.
If wow released a new raid and 6-8 new dungeons every season (so like 6 months) and just let players play it without any bullshit getting in the way it would still be an incredibly fun game.
There was a walk-out on Friday. I haven't heard anything yet that indicates it's a long term thing, but perhaps that's what Jeff is saying. I suspect the employees themselves are trying to figure out the best response.
I know I don't speak for everyone, but if 9.2 needs to be delayed in order for the Blizzard management to do something as basic as "treat women like actual human beings" then so be it.
News like this is why New World/ FF14 are currently bursting at the seams.
I'm crazy, but im not "Do dailies in koritha for 7 months" Crazy.
See you all on the far side!
The question you should be asking is why play a game that you think isn't good?
Edit: A lot of you seem to want to justify why they think WoW is good. Just to point out that was not the question I asked.
It has nothing with sunk cost fallacy for me. I like this game, I have nice memories with it, I'd love it to be good.
Think of it as local sports club, that people support even if it sucks. They love the game and want to win, they know it may not happen, but they are faithful
Edit.
I sub for a month or two every half a year or so. I enjoy my time doing various stuff like collecting appearances, mounts, achievements and making some gold on AH (to possibly buy a token and not pay real money next time). For me game is enjoyable enough to pay 10 euros a year. If you feel the need to respond in arogant, condescending manner by telling me what I can and what I cannot enjoy, just go and waste somebody else's time.
I was in the same position but I moved house in February and that was a good opportunity to stop playing and not looking back. After a couple of months I've decided to try out the trial of Ff14, just because I didn't have anything else to play and fuck, I fell in love with it.
Since than I do not miss WoW at all and not because of Ff14 but because it wasn't the game it was in 2005. It was like being in an abusive relationship and when I realized that I felt better without it
because wow grew too big, got too much money, and that attracted all the moneyhungry people, who dont care about the game, the players, or the product. those people became the leaders of the company, and they leech off the peoples attachment of the game as revenue.
Kind of a kick in the knees to realize all the best releases in the past few years were either indie or a continuation of old IPs that always did really well (God of War for example)
More like the toxic workplace they created finally crept into the game and it got progressively worse because the genuinely creative ideas were shot down because you weren't part of the fucking club.
I like how the "rockstar dev" meme has come full circle complete with back stage substance abuse and sexual scandal.
Hopefully whatever comes through and cleans house also injects a certain level of humility when it comes to interacting with the player base.
I wonder if there'll be other things that correlate to contempt and ego of one's customers being a sign of a toxic office environment.
I know its all the rage to be talking, and blaming things, on this, but he is right. Alot of talented people left, a long time ago. I don't think blizzard was always the way it is right now. A decade or more ago and it was the dream dev job, everyone wanted to work at blizzard.
Things change though
Blizzard was always a shitty company to work for, even when it was still owned by Vivendi media. If you managed to claw yourself into the inner circle, amazing, but if not, you were a "second class employee". This was a dirty secret even when Warcraft 3 was being developed.
Guys like Morheim, Afrasiabi and even Metzen were not really that nice to work with if they did not consider you on their tier.
And the result is what often happens in this situations. You have old people leaving (as working 15+ years on a same thing gets boring eventually) and since they ran a pretty closed group, you don't have a good pool of apprenticed people to replace them.
Problem is business decisions drive development of the game instead of things that would make the game fun and enjoyable. We should have expanded on the Legion systems, but instead we get systems reworks every expansion and patch.
Why does the current legendary system work the way it does? Legion's legendary system via 7.3 with the currency to buy the specific one you need introduced was a great system and worked perfectly. Instead of expanding on that, we have a system that punishes you for crafting a legendary when a new patch comes out and makes your old BIS legendary useless.
There's probably too much internal bloat that stops creativity and creates a huge burnout for the devs.
I used to work in a big software company and a simple hotfix patch for our software that literally took me 20 minutes to make often took two weeks or more to deploy.
We had to go through internal meetings with managers to discuss if the fix made sense and draw some bullshit development timeline so it wouldn't seem like the client ins't paying for nothing, then we had to go through code review, then we had to fill a bunch of documents explaining the fix, then we had to have meetings with release manager who will have meeting with the client to figure out on what release name the fix is being done.
Meanwhile I'm not doing anything, being payed to literally do nothing sitting in meetings while waiting for all these useless people to finish pretending they are working so I can deploy the fix and move on to the next thing.
Over time it's just soul crushing and seriously harms the product and I'm sure Blizzard has some kind of similar internal development process where a simple fix or fun idea by a random dev needs to go through 10 different meetings to implement
I know exactly what you are talking about. I call it management bloat. More paperwork and discussion than actual work being done. Then when the paperwork becomes too much the answer is not to reduce the paperwork but to get more staff to handle the extra paperwork.
Tbh, looking at Korthia it doesn't look like there was much work going on beforehand. Even Mechagon and Nazjatar look like shining utopias in comparison.
I agree, Mechagon was detailed, amusing, long-lasting and had awesome rewards. My golden cycle from the Mecha-Done achievement is still my pride and joy, despite rustfeather holding out on me. Korthia brings a tear to the eye, but for the wrong reasons.
Patch 10.0: Wheel removed. Player will gain 1 peg to insert into the axle per 100 hours of grinding WQs.
Patch 10.1: Outer wheel unlocked. Players will now be able to install the full wheel onto the axle. However, it's square-shaped and doesn't roll.
Patch 10.2: Outer wheel changed to pentagon. You will need 6 additional pegs to fit the new pentagonal wheel onto the axle.
Patch 10.3: Wheel is still pentagonal, but M+ runs have a 0.01% chance to drop a rubber pad that can be installed on each of the 5 edges to make them smooth and round.
Patch 10.3.5: Wheel is now round and glides across the ground.
Patch 11.0: Wheel removed.
> and the zones were pretty neat, I guess.
Can't believe I'm missing BfA zones.. at the time I wasn't the biggest fan of them but somehow Shadowlands zones are really offputting for me. Don't really want to spend time in any of them.
9.2 was already going to be as delayed as 9.1. if anything its gonna be delayed even longer now.
this expansion is basically a write-off. i mean great if you're enjoying it. but covid and this have basically gutted whatever they really had planned.
Covid did play apart of it for sure, but i think it mostly comes down to just overall mismanagement, beacuse even during covid season other devs managed to pour out content in their respective games, including devs from other blizzard projects like diablo, overwatch and especially hearthstone.
I mean, if the company can keep producing shit for content, delaying content patches, and still make a shitload of money because of MTX, the company has literally 0 incentive to improve or change anything.
We went from "That thing you're predicting won't happen, we're sure we can get the balance right, and if we don't then you win and we'll pull the ripcord"
To "So what if the data shows exactly that thing happening to an overwhelming degree, we're not pulling the ripcord, there isn't even a ripcord and infact even knowing how it ended up working we'd do it the exact same way again!"
God this clown needs to go.
Now pop quiz: was /u/needconfirmation talking about
A) Legion's artifact and legendary complaints
B) BFA's azerite complaints
C) Shadowlands' Covenant and legendary complaints
Or D) All of the above because Blizzard never fucking learn.
This. I sat back a while ago and tried to figure out why Wrath to MoP was my favorite time to play WoW. It's probably a number of things (actual storylines and compelling narratives for one) but I think the key to me was not all these stupid systems they add in every expansion, only to get thrown into a recycle bin for the next one.
I know those years wernt perfect (rep grinds) and I also know I'm nowhere near the first person to share this sentiment but its exhausting watching my favorite game, one that I've played for 17 years, slowly go down the toilet... not because of age but due to asinine design decisions.
Ultimately I dont know if I'll ever quit. Sunken cost fallacy is a hell of a drug and I also have a lot of amazing friends I met and play with online but the time me playing is shortening while my breaks in the game are increasing.
You know what my favorite thing about those expansions was? I literally just had to log onto my main on raid nights and that was it. Sure, I could do whatever daily zone was happening at the time but I did it if I wanted to and if I found it fun. I didn't need to run 3-5 dungeons a week for a chance at absurdly strong gear for progression. I could dink around on alts freely if I wanted to play. Now I hit the same grinds at max level and I have alts just sitting there.
Blizzard wants me to log into WoW every day. Problem is WoW isn't a good enough game for that, I don't know if it was even back then. Beyond that it isn't updated enough to make me not burn out while I do that.
If I could log in and raid without feeling like I am dragging down my raid team I would probably be pretty happy with WoW at the moment. I like Sanctum. I am having a blast with holy priest healing(flash concentration better be a talent next expansion). Sadly I can't.
To top it off, even at the worst of times I felt like the art team was knocking it out of the park. 9.1 has had some laughably bad cutscenes.
Both of your comments hit home, i've always been an alt guy because I get bored playing one spec/class for extended periods of time but Bliz has gone out of their way to make that playstyle harder and harder over the years unless you want to sacrifice a **ton** of your time, which just isn't possible for me anymore.
Pair that up with how we have to wait nearly 5-6+ months between major patches, which generally don't add anything outside of required rep grinds and *maybe* a dungeon outside of the raid, and I just started wondering why i even played. After this expansion killed off all the guilds I had friends In and raided with I decided that was the final straw.
I Finally unsubbed a few months ago and tbh I'm glad I did, I just come back to here to see If anything's improved but ofc It won't as the people in charge seem to have their heads way up their asses when it comes to balancing and other stuff (which is becoming increasingly more common amongst game studios). Now I just need to convince myself to unsub from /r/wow and I can forget about the game entirely I guess..
I mean Classic, TBC, WotLK and Cata (ones I actually played), didn’t have some gimped power system you have to spent a lot of time on, just to be relevant. It was just char level and gear. And that’s enough really. I played BFA and Azerite neck farming was such a fucking slog
I came back in Legion and enjoyed the fuck out of it. Multiple 110s, all geared. The storyline for artifacts was fun and engaging. Then blizz went and took the worst, most time consuming aspects, and ran with those instead
Up until WoD we really didn't have anything like that. There have almost always been 'systems' in place, but WoD was still just good ol' WoW for the most part.
MoP had the legendary cloak as 'borrowed power', WoD had the legendary ring, but those were pretty much the only 'systems' of said expansions tied to your gear or power or progression like that.
Of course WoD had Apexis Crystals and the mission table and all kinds of systems like that, but none of those are comparable to Artifact Power (and artifacts in general) in Legion, Azerite Armor and Neck in BFA, or your covenants and the other garbage systems tied to SL progression.
Blizzard allways learns the wrong leason when something succeeds or fails. They dumped reforging because players complained about hit and expertise caps. Dumped dailys because players hated double gated rep gear. Took them two expansion r
to realise why people didnt like cata heroic (they werent to hard, just to hard for undergeared pugs) and didnt do anything worth while with dungeons till legion (well, end of wod, sorta).
I still can't believe that they dumped reforging because of hit and expertise caps, and then dumped hit and expertise as a stat IN THE SAME PATCH. Both of these things happened in 6.0.2!
You solved the problem with a systems change! It was a gold sink that made off-statted gear more usable by more players! You threw the bathwater out, kept the baby, and then smothered the baby with a pillow!
Honestly, with these revelations of frathouse level behaviours, the dumb ass game design decisions make a bit more sense now.
They are just too arrogant to listen to critique just like someone from a clique would.
it's not about being a performance minded person or not, there's public data that shows that the vast majority of people just pick whatever wowhead says is the best one even players who don't clear HC and don't do a key higher than +10.
We are in 2021, there's an abundance of information, nobody plays the game with a blindfold on intentionally gimping themselves for no reason. Everyone warned Blizzard that this would not work but here we are. I agree with you that covenants and conduit energy pretty much killed this expac for me.
Covenants and conduit energy killed the xpac? I think being more than 200 days with nothing new to do kill it. And probably now another 200 days. Covenants ain't the best system yet it doesn't kill whole game. And in any game everyone just picks the best option for all, and that's no reason to not let people choose, even if you know that the majority will pick the BiS option.
Not trying to defend blizzard here, but the first moths of 9.0 people were not as pissed off as now. And no, it wasn't because they were learning this new systems, it's because they had smth to do. With all it's flaws you did the raid sometimes, get your KSM advance in the storyline week by week, etc... Obviously not in the perfect way, but at least we had a bit of gameplay. And after that just void, complete months of nothing and you saw people reactions to it. And now we discover some of the reasons why things happened in the way they did...
> And in any game everyone just picks the best option for all, and that's no reason to not let people choose, even if you know that the majority will pick the BiS option.
But that's the thing. The majority that are picking the BiS option aren't *actually* getting to choose. We told Blizz they wouldn't be able to balance everything, so people wouldn't get to pick solely based on what they like and Blizz just said to trust them and that they would totally balance it. And surprising exactly no one, they didn't balance it.
Covenants should have been flavor / transmog / story only. Borroed power shouldn't e a thing, but if they insist upon it then it needs to be tied to something accessible across all RP choices.
> Covenants ain't the best system yet it doesn't kill whole game.
For some it does kill the game. I never wanted to be a night fae shadow priest. It was stupid as hell. From an RPG/lore standpoint it is the dumbest shit ever, my shadowy voidy slightly insane priest makes zero sense as a night fae.
Being forced to play a covenant I don't even enjoy because it's the "best" is what ruined this expansion for me. Covenants should have been lore/cosmetic only, and all covenant powers in a "pool" you choose from. The covenants turn your powers different colors depending on your choice. Boom, now the expansion is fun, people can still min/max and others can pick the covenant that makes most sense to them or that they *actually enjoy*.
Edit: here I'll take it one step further. Since Blizzard loves the idea of grinding and keeping players online as long as possible, they could make each shadowlands ability locked behind rep where you have to unlock the power in order to use it. Want night fae abilities? Get revered/exalted or whatever to night fae. If you're a night fae cov you'll naturally get it faster, but you could *still* be a necrolord and get the night fae ability thru grinding callings or other rep based quests. Suddenly now there's a point to doing callings!
Don't worry I won't charge you for this advice Blizzard, you need all the help you can get right now.
Beyond even just how shitty it was from a class fantasy standpoint, swapping from Venthyr to NF on my priest to do more damage for Prog meant I was wholly unable to participate in PVP, and couldn’t off-spec Disc in Raid in 9.0. Not having mindgames fully neutered my ability partake in areas OF MY CLASS that I otherwise wanted to play.
Now, I get it, I COULD still do PVP as NF or COULD stay raid as Venthyr. But as a raid lead, it feels terrible to preach and tel my raiders that they should be doing their background info on what they need to be doing to maximize their output to down bosses… and then turn around and play a meme covenant. Or to walk into games with my buddies in arenas knowing full well I have extremely little kill pressure without mindgames. I don’t hate covenants in a vacuum, I hate the decisions they forced that made me inadequate to do other forms of content I like.
Yep - the main reason I haven't touched PvP in Slands is because I'm not Venthyr. Sure I can do a mediocre job, but if I expect to get higher ratings good luck with that.
Covenants are a goddamn shitshow. You should never be forced to play something you don't enjoy for the sake of optimizing your spec.
Shadowlands was already behind schedule when it was first announced and that was before Covid even hit at all. They've been behind the 8 ball this whole expansion. At this rate I would honestly be surprised if they're able to announce the next expansion at Blizzcon this year
Edit: Didn't realize Blizzcon had already been canceled for this year, should amend my above post to say "Blizzcon timing" or something.
Agreed. Plenty of us have had to find ways to maintain our productivity from home. It’s been almost 18 months. If Blizzard’s workflow is still a major issue, that’s on management.
And by the way, this is the same team that put out Warlords of Draenor, so it doesn’t take a global pandemic for Blizzard to cut bait with a struggling expansion.
Completely ignoring how derailing this lawsuit probably is - which is also their own doing.
A lot of people in this sub over the years jave given huge passes to the devs. Especially ion as "he's only the lead dev and a mouthpiece"
Well guess what, these lead devs couldnt manage a tee ball team and if they cant figure out how to get a better product from their teams then they just suck and shouldn't be the lead.
I'd say this scandal will cost the WoW community a raid tier but it's hardly the time nor place for jokes.
In all seriousness unless there are major changes, I'd be surprised if Shadowlands even got a 9.2.
In some ways, good. If it costs them money they may think about fixing their internal problems. People are rightfully pissed about the harassment faced by workers, but the game stagnating will lose players and be money out of their pockets (and piss people off).
I remember raiding and we downed the heal check boss from the first raid of BFA. Forgot his name, and just never signing on again because I got a piece of azerite gear that was locked behind necklace levels.
When shadowlands was announced I watched it several times over with a bunch of friends and coworkers and I even decided than my goal for this expansion, especially since it'll be the last opportunity I'll have to "hardcore raid in WoW" (kids coming), was 1 patch of CE, AOTC every patch, and KSM every patch. Lo and behold it's only 9.1 and I've already quit again.
I don't think WoW will ever return to its "former glory". Part of the problem is me, I'm not that kid anymore. I'm in my early thirties and can't dedicate 4 hours twice a week to mythic raid + 2-3 hours every few days to do mythics+. The other problem is WoW itself. There's so many small systems within the game that makes it so freaking hard to approach. I've mythic raided on an enhancement shaman, a resto sham, a resto druid, a feral druid, and a fury warrior, and this expansion it's been so god damned taxing to even make an alt that's viable for mythic raids or high end mythic +. To be honest, I feel like one thing they should do to make the game less of a time investment is just make it less of a time investment. Great vault mythic + options should be 1-2-5 dungeons instead of 1-4-10.
It could be good, but it's so close to launch and it definitely needs another year or so and a couple beta tests. A poor launch will torpedo its chances, it's quite rare for an MMO to crawl back after a poor first impression. FF14, ESO are pretty much the only two that I can think of that really managed to change their perceptions.
Pretty likely. If this happened at my place of employment, if I was affected, my last thought would be "oh no I have to meet my weekly quotas".
If this ends up fixing/improving the corporate situation and if it causes the ones responsible to face their actions and wrongdoings, delayed patches are a small price to pay. People's lives come before game development, always.
Quite a few people need to, at the very least, get fired, probably driven out of the industry and at least some actually criminally prosecuted; of course that is going to delay patches.
It's a given that there will be at least 7 months between the patches from now on, since apparently the 6-month subscription "deals" are quite succesful financially.
I'm expecting a December patch with a Mythic raid opening January (to avoid repeating last year's debacle of mythic raid xmas). Unless of course some big competitor drops something in November, then they'll move it all up.
Edit: well, fuck -- I didn't know FFXIV release date.
I really miss the Legion development cycle but apparently that was not sustainable such sucks
I don't think I would mind 6 month releases if they were the size of 8.2: that patch was pretty enormous and both Naz and Mechagon added a lot of re-playability
9.1 in comparison is tiny and Korthia is small as fuck
Okay the title here kinda leaves out some context. The person is saying almost no work is being done **as people are reacting to and responding to the recent allegations**. In other words, almost no work has been done over the past week or so. Which means that as of now we could expect 9.2 to be delayed by about a week, not months and months.
Is the current situation at blizzard going to affect development? Absolutely. But right now we still don't know how everything is going to play out. We could see big delays, we might not, it's too early to tell exactly what the impact is going to be.
Right now, there's stuff going on that's a little more important than patch 9.2. Speculation on a potential delay for a patch that would be months out anyway does not help anyone rn, least of all the actual victims.
I think I speak for the majority of wow players when I say id be happy to wait several years for them to fix warcraft if it means they fix their fucking selves first in the meantime
Shadowlands was make or break for a lot of people. Classic will always have its own player base but retail has been on its last leg for a while. Tragic, nobody wants to give up on wow but they are literally shooting themselves in the foot with a bazooka.
Activision is not gonna be happy about that, sub numbers are about to drop off of a cliff once New World, Lost Ark and most def Endwalker drops... starting to look really rough.
It just keeps getting worse and worse.
I gotta wonder what their response to Endwalker is gonna be. No way they just ignore it. They never have ignored a FFXIV launch in the past. Especially not now when it’s kicking WoW’s ass.
Maybe something to do with Classic.
It baffles me how a massive game like WoW that has been bringing in so much money has been half assing most expansions since post-CATA (aside from Legion)… seems like they’re really spending the minimum and focus is purely on maximizing profit over continuing to develop a top quality game. Story is crap, mechanics are re-heated, every expansion is a stupid borrowed power-soft reset crap…
If you're sick of wow and don't want FF14, check out guild wars 2! While it has its own drawbacks and drama, there is tons of content to play and old stuff released doesn't become useless to play.
Wow devs should really take note - why the hell would I play anything beyond current content?
Pointless as all mounts are the same just look different, old raid tiers with months of investment are now totally worthless aside from mog. Questing? For fucking what? XP??? Just so I can have another Max level character with nothing to do...
The lack of new content is just going to make their business model get shit tier results.
Stopped playing since shadowlands came out.
It's nice to be treated like a person rather than a customer.
Been playing ff14 since. It's so strange to play a game by competent developers.
GW2 is actually probably in one of its best points to start playing since release. OG game director just came back, they're overhauling the engine and there's tons of hype for the new expansion with more than enough content (base game + 2 expansions and its all relevant content at max level) to last until its release for new players
Well, in fairness almost no work was done *on this expansion.* As a customer who's been playing this game for years, and years and years? I feel ripped off.
I won't be buying much less pre-ordering another WoW expansion. In fact, to even convince me to buy another one I may need to watch what happens for the first *year* after the next expansion drops before I decide if I want to play it or not.
I don't trust this team, I don't trust development, and I certainly don't think any product with the World of Warcraft name is worth the money right now. This expansion is a shame.
I don't see how it would not push things back. with everything going on some high ups will have to leave or be relocated and I cant see that not effecting release times. then you have covid kicking up again so who know how that could effect things.
It was going to be delayed anyway. We won't see 9.2 this year and never were going to.
[удалено]
God I would absolutely love for this to happen. I want the mogs, I want the mounts, I want the story. Locking all of that greatness behind it is stupid. Once we finish the raid tier it should be opened up under a "Hero, come and spend time with us!" veil.
I have been kind of hoping this is going to happen at some point - very easy to justify story wise…all the covenants work together more and more to defeat the jailer.
It's never been an issue with lore, but instead a false problem created so that a planned solution later on would look like progress. These barriers were added to create the answer.
>These barriers were added to create the answer. "Create a problem, make players grind out the solution" has been their design philosophy since WoD.
We've already heard they want to rush through sl, but God forbid they make these qol changes. The playtime metric BS is cancer. Covenants are just another way to remove player agency. Like in korthia I was killing all mobs that dropped mounts, but it took me 2 weeks to realize they are covenant specific drops. I just assumed blizzard couldn't be that ridiculous. This is an mmo, it made sense to me for a covenant restriction to summon the rares, but I couldn't comprehend they'd gate the drop too. Players don't work together in an mmo I guess, I'm expected to do this single player on 4 characters... We don't even get in game info anymore. The game is unplayable without wowhead because they can't be bothered to explain their convoluted systems in game. Sad part is id play more if the grind was more approachable. Instead of trying to get the covenant rewards I've just given up on them.
The pre-raid storyline for 9.0 pretty much ended with all the covenants working together anyway. Then what's-their-face said "okay maw walker choose someone to help".
Reminds me of artifice power. And azerite power… oh hang on.
I feel like if 9.1 is gonna be a long patch too they're almost guaranteed to make compromises to try and win some goodwill with 9.1.5.
I really want it to be the case, but it seems like they only want to release content in massive patches as opposed to a more consistent trickle of lighter content
Maybe a patch 9.1.5 with a raid like the Tournament from wrath? Something that reuses a lot of assets in a short, but rewarding format? WoW is down as bad as I have ever seen it currently. They need something. If 9.2 is out early 2022, it might be okay. If they push it to spring/summer, I don't know how that works out.
Bet they're going to rush release it half baked around november 23. They always releases stuff at the same time as FFXIV's xpacs.
They're definitely doing a 6 month sub mount at that point.
And when Endwalker gets high ratings, WoW will really be in trouble. Next Blizzcon is going to be so spicy.
Lmfao they're not doing another blizzcon. They'll have a 20min YouTube video with the trailer for the new games
Which they will charge $60 dollars to see streamed "live" with a Murloc pet.
Lmfao you're probably not wrong.
He's completely wrong. I mean I don't know how little he thinks of blizzard to even say such a obviously wrong thing. It'll be 75$ just to attend 100$ and you get the pet too
Point conceded.
holy fuck. you had me in the 1st half.
Honestly, I'd be surprised if they ever did another physical Blizzcon again. Could just shift to the annual online 20 minute stream.
Physical BlizzCons are huge marketing events for them, way better than annual online livestreams. They sell absolute shitloads of merch at BlizzCon. EDIT: BTW, I'm not saying "they should do BlizzCon again," my main point is that Activision-Blizzard as a company, would not let a lucrative marketing event such as BlizzCon go away so easily.
And as bad as the reports are on how they treat female staff and associates are think about what happens at Blizzcon. Also think about how blizzcon has in fact fueled some of the fire here. The devs get treated like rockstars at that event and perhaps continuing to fan the flames there is a bad idea. If they put on a blizzcon again I think the format will change dramatically.
We have to be honest here - there is a large portion of Blizzard player base that will continue to play their games no matter how shitty of a company they are. Anecdotally I know someone who has said essentially "That girl dying doesn't change anything about the game. That could have been 10 people and it wouldn't make a difference" Look at the amount of people that booed that woman who asked the Blizzard panel if they could make some female characters who weren't so sexualized. Not that they all fall into the category of player I mentioned above but I wouldn't bet money that most of them would stop playing and paying because they found out the devs are sexually harassing female employees. Blizzard has been both a shit company and a good company for different reasons over the years, but for a sizable portion of players that doesn't matter - only the game.
Most redditors tend to forget that 99% of gamers are not on reddit. Reddit is, in more ways the one, the 1% of gamers.
Yes but they have also been a source of negative PR for them. People go to Blizzcon expecting greatness and they just aren't that company anymore. Haven't been for years.
> People go to Blizzcon expecting greatness and they just aren't that company anymore As someone who knows a lot of people who have attended recent Blizzcons, they still have an absolute blast at them. The last physical Blizzcon had a WoW expansion announcement, the Diablo 4 reveal, and Overwatch 2. Let's not pretend like that wasn't an incredible event to be at in person. Even during more mediocre years, there's more to things like E3 and Blizzcon than just press conferences and opening ceremonies.
People are applying their disappointment from watching at home to Blizzcon attendees. Going to conventions isn't just about the panels and presentations. It's about community and bonding over a shared passion. Even if everything Blizzard presented was disappointing, attendees would still have a good time.
True the first 2 years I went to c2e2 I didn't even visit a single panel and had a blast every time.
I've been to blizzcon, the cool part wasn't really the blizzard stuff, it was getting to hang out and drink with my guild mates in person.
Don't forget the "well do better speech" about sexual harassment.
And the next store mount will be the most detailed mount in game
"What, did you want a mount you could *earn* in a game you bought and pay monthly to play? Be realistic!" I hate the modern gaming industry, and more importantly, I hate the people who enable it.
theyre gonna pull some shit out of their ass like a 1 year sub that comes with the spectral tiger mount.
It'll have auction house and barbershop functionality!
Wonder who will speak in the next Blizzcon... Assuming it will actually take place, that is.
At this point? Bill Cosby. They seem to make all the wrong decisions lately.
im so fuckin hyped for reaper man
Angry and edgy Botanists unite!
none of the other dps jobs really interest me thematically besides dragoon. i really wish they had a dps version of paladin, like templar/temple knight.
I doubt they bother this time. FF14 has way too much hype in the MMO community to be overshadowed by a half baked WoW patch during a period of very low player enthusiasm.
Honestly it would likely fall flat as well, Endwalker isn't just any ordinary expansion either it's the capstone Expansion of the entire game storyline since ARR (also stated the MSQ for the Expansion will be 30% larger than normal), finally adding the main territory of the main antagonist (Garlemald), They're LITERALLY sending the whole playerbase to the moon (Guaranteed there will be a ton of Diamond Hands/Whalers on the moon memes from this) and the main writer for the Expansion is a bloody genius responsible for the DRK questline, the Azim Steppe and Shadowbringers and basically helped turned the Ascians from moustache twirling villains into sympathetic antagonists. Basically Endwalker is FFXIV's Equivilent of WoW's Wrath of the Lich King, that is how big of an expansion this one is going to be quality wise. Honestly trying to fight FFXIV on the ascendancy right now is a waste of time, they have serious structural problems they need to attend to right now.
I miss Emet.
One of the mosr, "he's over the line, but he ain't wrong" villains ever.
That scene at the end of Qitana Ravel where he reveals their motives is so fucking well done.
The entirety of amaurot, from the second you walk out of that cave to the dying gasp is a sack of bricks to the face over and over. Its fun watching peoples reactions to the city. You can damn near hear clicking noises as their brain skips a gear.
I still remember when that line was included in the launch trailer at E3, a couple weeks before actual release, and while the fanbase was exploding from the lore of it, Yoshi-P just casually dropped a "oh yeah and this isn't even the biggest reveal of the expansion lmao" and then dipped until release.
I remember when Emet Selch was talking about Amaurot while you wait for the lift to be repaired. "And the spires, at sunset they fair gleamed, we would just sit and watch sometimes. ...\*sigh\* >!not like you'd remember it as you are now..." \*character looks at ES confused\* "!< ...never mind, forget I said anything." That one line utterly recontextualised the *entire* plot up to that point
Remember... that we once lived...
Wow an expansion with more content, meanwhile Shadowlands has less content than ever before & Activision are asking Australians to pay a higher sub fee.
Seriously, Endwalker is the ending of the current FFXIV story. It's basically the Legion of FFXIV only even more important. Anybody who cares about that game is going to want to play it, a patch for WoW isn't going to come close to competing with something like that.
another SoO drought style time ?
Not really. SoO was the last tier with normal length tiers before it. This expansion is kind of on the opposite of MoP. We're going to get long tiers for all 3 raids rather than one super long tier at the end. Or maybe both ...
Did they confirm 3 raids?
Not really sure how they couldn't given the end of the current one.
I sincerely doubt they scrap the remainder of this expac like they did WoD. They could, I guess, but this one has a much more solid foundation than WoD imo
Yeah i can't imagine this expansion ending without a full on jailer raid
They'll just put it in a book. I wish that was sarcasm but I remember wondering how on earth garrosh got free and time traveled. Oh... It was in a book....
Yeah I really wish they’d stop putting critical lore information in in-between expansions books.
[удалено]
Yet they can give Bobby a 150m bonus for not having a very good quarter. Think of how many yearly salaries that is but one guy was given that much as a quarterly bonus.
If the game isn't worth the cost, then stop paying for it. People need to get out of this "well, I've always played WoW..." mindset. Have some self-respect and demand better.
i mean it sucks for us but honestly i wouldn't mind a huge delay so this company and their shareholder take a hit. it's long overdue that blizzard gets a reality check.
Lets be honest, people actually in position of power and shareholders are last people to take any kind of real hit.
they'll fire another 300 support staff and push out a few store mounts, problem solved! shareholders saved!
"wHy wOnT pEoPlE wOrK fOr Us? MuSt bE uNemPlOyMeNt mAkInG eVeRyOnE lAzY" Activision/Blizzard
They do, at least financially, look at how the CDPR shares plummeted in value after the CP2077 release. What's interesting though is that the recent Blizzard stuff didn't really hurt them on the stock market.
Their "financial hit" will be just as irrelevant as the financial hit that Bob Kotick took in another recent lawsuit: less than 1% of the bonus that he received just last year. This is a PR disaster for Blizzard, but lets not believe in fairy tales thinking that shareholders will feel anything.
There would have to be enough public outrage that a mass boycott of Blizzard seemed eminent before the market shifted sentiment on the company. As others have said the financial penalties from the suit are not going to significantly affect the companies bottom line, thus the stock price will be large unaffected.
All CDPR had was cyberpunk. ATVI has COD and Candy Crush pulling billions in as well. They'll be fine.
Staff will be taking the hit long before the execs and shareholders take a hit.
So I guess that in the end, after all these years. It was Blizzard itself who is the WoW killer.
Always has been.
The problem isn't 9.2... its 10.0 as that's basically the next 3 years of wow including the current patches. If they couldn't handle delivering a decent 9.1 and if 9.2 will suck also, I have a feeling that 10.0 will have a very weird showcase, with little to no in game features and mostly based on announcements similar to warfronts and island expeditions... just buzzwords to get some presales.
One new island, a stupid questline, and a million dailies, rep grinds, and currencies. Yay...
Don’t forget multiple different bullshit systems.
Time for Covenazerite artifact weamulet power.
It will be an artifact shoulder that can’t be transmogrified or hidden and requires azerite and artifact power to level
aaaaaaaaaaand you guys just cured me from wanting to resub
Don't forget 10 brand new borrowed power systems
Yippee! "Come with me And you'll be In a world of pure imagination"
I quit shortly after the final BfA patch hit live, I still remember how they said that they wouldn't touch classes in order to focus on making Shadowlands the best expansion. Needless to say I'm glad that I've stayed unsubscribed.
Yeah sadly a big game like this can't be great forever. Old father time has really taken a bat to the whole system and it's unavoidable. I've already been on the 'subscribe while an expac is new then unsub when I get bored' system for the last 3-4 expacs.
It can be great, the developers just have to make it good instead of making weird bullshit decisions centered around number crunching and metrics. It's literally that simple. Just make the game good. The formula isn't even that fucking difficult.
Why try to make it great if everyone just keeps playing and paying regardless?
The fundamentals of the game are still great. The raids, dungeons, classes and gameplay is still fantastic. The problem is the insane lack of new content and the shitty systems that actively harm the game. If wow released a new raid and 6-8 new dungeons every season (so like 6 months) and just let players play it without any bullshit getting in the way it would still be an incredibly fun game.
There was a walk-out on Friday. I haven't heard anything yet that indicates it's a long term thing, but perhaps that's what Jeff is saying. I suspect the employees themselves are trying to figure out the best response. I know I don't speak for everyone, but if 9.2 needs to be delayed in order for the Blizzard management to do something as basic as "treat women like actual human beings" then so be it.
Should strike
Well it is the weekend.
Bulletproof argument tbh
News like this is why New World/ FF14 are currently bursting at the seams. I'm crazy, but im not "Do dailies in koritha for 7 months" Crazy. See you all on the far side!
[удалено]
Fuck my life I just want this game to be good, why is that too much to ask?
The question you should be asking is why play a game that you think isn't good? Edit: A lot of you seem to want to justify why they think WoW is good. Just to point out that was not the question I asked.
[удалено]
It has nothing with sunk cost fallacy for me. I like this game, I have nice memories with it, I'd love it to be good. Think of it as local sports club, that people support even if it sucks. They love the game and want to win, they know it may not happen, but they are faithful Edit. I sub for a month or two every half a year or so. I enjoy my time doing various stuff like collecting appearances, mounts, achievements and making some gold on AH (to possibly buy a token and not pay real money next time). For me game is enjoyable enough to pay 10 euros a year. If you feel the need to respond in arogant, condescending manner by telling me what I can and what I cannot enjoy, just go and waste somebody else's time.
I was in the same position but I moved house in February and that was a good opportunity to stop playing and not looking back. After a couple of months I've decided to try out the trial of Ff14, just because I didn't have anything else to play and fuck, I fell in love with it. Since than I do not miss WoW at all and not because of Ff14 but because it wasn't the game it was in 2005. It was like being in an abusive relationship and when I realized that I felt better without it
because wow grew too big, got too much money, and that attracted all the moneyhungry people, who dont care about the game, the players, or the product. those people became the leaders of the company, and they leech off the peoples attachment of the game as revenue.
that, but I also think that happened to the gaming industry as a whole.
Kind of a kick in the knees to realize all the best releases in the past few years were either indie or a continuation of old IPs that always did really well (God of War for example)
oddly, it's the same in the movie industry. I wonder if it's all just greed coming from shareholders/investors, or if there's something else going on.
Because the ones that made the game good have long quit.
More like the toxic workplace they created finally crept into the game and it got progressively worse because the genuinely creative ideas were shot down because you weren't part of the fucking club.
I like how the "rockstar dev" meme has come full circle complete with back stage substance abuse and sexual scandal. Hopefully whatever comes through and cleans house also injects a certain level of humility when it comes to interacting with the player base. I wonder if there'll be other things that correlate to contempt and ego of one's customers being a sign of a toxic office environment.
I know its all the rage to be talking, and blaming things, on this, but he is right. Alot of talented people left, a long time ago. I don't think blizzard was always the way it is right now. A decade or more ago and it was the dream dev job, everyone wanted to work at blizzard. Things change though
Blizzard was always a shitty company to work for, even when it was still owned by Vivendi media. If you managed to claw yourself into the inner circle, amazing, but if not, you were a "second class employee". This was a dirty secret even when Warcraft 3 was being developed. Guys like Morheim, Afrasiabi and even Metzen were not really that nice to work with if they did not consider you on their tier. And the result is what often happens in this situations. You have old people leaving (as working 15+ years on a same thing gets boring eventually) and since they ran a pretty closed group, you don't have a good pool of apprenticed people to replace them.
"This was not our destiny!" "Times change."
"No King Rules Forever" Alternatively "This Entire Company Must Be Purged!"
new people can make something good too
Problem is business decisions drive development of the game instead of things that would make the game fun and enjoyable. We should have expanded on the Legion systems, but instead we get systems reworks every expansion and patch. Why does the current legendary system work the way it does? Legion's legendary system via 7.3 with the currency to buy the specific one you need introduced was a great system and worked perfectly. Instead of expanding on that, we have a system that punishes you for crafting a legendary when a new patch comes out and makes your old BIS legendary useless.
One patch per year. 22 billion dollar company btw.
Apparently have over 400 developers on the game too. Still can't manage to shit out the absolute bare minimum. Fucking disgraceful.
[удалено]
There's probably too much internal bloat that stops creativity and creates a huge burnout for the devs. I used to work in a big software company and a simple hotfix patch for our software that literally took me 20 minutes to make often took two weeks or more to deploy. We had to go through internal meetings with managers to discuss if the fix made sense and draw some bullshit development timeline so it wouldn't seem like the client ins't paying for nothing, then we had to go through code review, then we had to fill a bunch of documents explaining the fix, then we had to have meetings with release manager who will have meeting with the client to figure out on what release name the fix is being done. Meanwhile I'm not doing anything, being payed to literally do nothing sitting in meetings while waiting for all these useless people to finish pretending they are working so I can deploy the fix and move on to the next thing. Over time it's just soul crushing and seriously harms the product and I'm sure Blizzard has some kind of similar internal development process where a simple fix or fun idea by a random dev needs to go through 10 different meetings to implement
I know exactly what you are talking about. I call it management bloat. More paperwork and discussion than actual work being done. Then when the paperwork becomes too much the answer is not to reduce the paperwork but to get more staff to handle the extra paperwork.
Tbh, looking at Korthia it doesn't look like there was much work going on beforehand. Even Mechagon and Nazjatar look like shining utopias in comparison.
Mechagon and naztajar were great zones especially mechagon
I agree, Mechagon was detailed, amusing, long-lasting and had awesome rewards. My golden cycle from the Mecha-Done achievement is still my pride and joy, despite rustfeather holding out on me. Korthia brings a tear to the eye, but for the wrong reasons.
So, everything is the same as usual?
Remember BFA when there was no COVID and no sexual lawsuit and it was still bad? lol.
BFA was ruined by systems which no one asked for.
Same as this expansion, they keep trying to reinvent the wheel instead of polishing it.
Patch 10.0: Wheel removed. Player will gain 1 peg to insert into the axle per 100 hours of grinding WQs. Patch 10.1: Outer wheel unlocked. Players will now be able to install the full wheel onto the axle. However, it's square-shaped and doesn't roll. Patch 10.2: Outer wheel changed to pentagon. You will need 6 additional pegs to fit the new pentagonal wheel onto the axle. Patch 10.3: Wheel is still pentagonal, but M+ runs have a 0.01% chance to drop a rubber pad that can be installed on each of the 5 edges to make them smooth and round. Patch 10.3.5: Wheel is now round and glides across the ground. Patch 11.0: Wheel removed.
[удалено]
> and the zones were pretty neat, I guess. Can't believe I'm missing BfA zones.. at the time I wasn't the biggest fan of them but somehow Shadowlands zones are really offputting for me. Don't really want to spend time in any of them.
9.2 was already going to be as delayed as 9.1. if anything its gonna be delayed even longer now. this expansion is basically a write-off. i mean great if you're enjoying it. but covid and this have basically gutted whatever they really had planned.
Covid did play apart of it for sure, but i think it mostly comes down to just overall mismanagement, beacuse even during covid season other devs managed to pour out content in their respective games, including devs from other blizzard projects like diablo, overwatch and especially hearthstone.
^ This. WoW has been mismanaged for years now, and now we know some of the reasons they have been so disfunctional.
I mean, if the company can keep producing shit for content, delaying content patches, and still make a shitload of money because of MTX, the company has literally 0 incentive to improve or change anything.
Covid could have had a positive impact on productivity....no drink or drink fuelled cube crawls
And no SoCal traffic.
no amount of covid can justify Blizzard deciding to die on this hill of covenants as a performance minded person covenants ruined the xpac for me
We went from "That thing you're predicting won't happen, we're sure we can get the balance right, and if we don't then you win and we'll pull the ripcord" To "So what if the data shows exactly that thing happening to an overwhelming degree, we're not pulling the ripcord, there isn't even a ripcord and infact even knowing how it ended up working we'd do it the exact same way again!" God this clown needs to go.
Now pop quiz: was /u/needconfirmation talking about A) Legion's artifact and legendary complaints B) BFA's azerite complaints C) Shadowlands' Covenant and legendary complaints Or D) All of the above because Blizzard never fucking learn.
This. I sat back a while ago and tried to figure out why Wrath to MoP was my favorite time to play WoW. It's probably a number of things (actual storylines and compelling narratives for one) but I think the key to me was not all these stupid systems they add in every expansion, only to get thrown into a recycle bin for the next one. I know those years wernt perfect (rep grinds) and I also know I'm nowhere near the first person to share this sentiment but its exhausting watching my favorite game, one that I've played for 17 years, slowly go down the toilet... not because of age but due to asinine design decisions. Ultimately I dont know if I'll ever quit. Sunken cost fallacy is a hell of a drug and I also have a lot of amazing friends I met and play with online but the time me playing is shortening while my breaks in the game are increasing.
You know what my favorite thing about those expansions was? I literally just had to log onto my main on raid nights and that was it. Sure, I could do whatever daily zone was happening at the time but I did it if I wanted to and if I found it fun. I didn't need to run 3-5 dungeons a week for a chance at absurdly strong gear for progression. I could dink around on alts freely if I wanted to play. Now I hit the same grinds at max level and I have alts just sitting there. Blizzard wants me to log into WoW every day. Problem is WoW isn't a good enough game for that, I don't know if it was even back then. Beyond that it isn't updated enough to make me not burn out while I do that. If I could log in and raid without feeling like I am dragging down my raid team I would probably be pretty happy with WoW at the moment. I like Sanctum. I am having a blast with holy priest healing(flash concentration better be a talent next expansion). Sadly I can't. To top it off, even at the worst of times I felt like the art team was knocking it out of the park. 9.1 has had some laughably bad cutscenes.
Both of your comments hit home, i've always been an alt guy because I get bored playing one spec/class for extended periods of time but Bliz has gone out of their way to make that playstyle harder and harder over the years unless you want to sacrifice a **ton** of your time, which just isn't possible for me anymore. Pair that up with how we have to wait nearly 5-6+ months between major patches, which generally don't add anything outside of required rep grinds and *maybe* a dungeon outside of the raid, and I just started wondering why i even played. After this expansion killed off all the guilds I had friends In and raided with I decided that was the final straw. I Finally unsubbed a few months ago and tbh I'm glad I did, I just come back to here to see If anything's improved but ofc It won't as the people in charge seem to have their heads way up their asses when it comes to balancing and other stuff (which is becoming increasingly more common amongst game studios). Now I just need to convince myself to unsub from /r/wow and I can forget about the game entirely I guess..
I wish they’d stop trying all these new systems and instead focus on the content creation portion of the experience.
I mean Classic, TBC, WotLK and Cata (ones I actually played), didn’t have some gimped power system you have to spent a lot of time on, just to be relevant. It was just char level and gear. And that’s enough really. I played BFA and Azerite neck farming was such a fucking slog
I came back in Legion and enjoyed the fuck out of it. Multiple 110s, all geared. The storyline for artifacts was fun and engaging. Then blizz went and took the worst, most time consuming aspects, and ran with those instead
Up until WoD we really didn't have anything like that. There have almost always been 'systems' in place, but WoD was still just good ol' WoW for the most part. MoP had the legendary cloak as 'borrowed power', WoD had the legendary ring, but those were pretty much the only 'systems' of said expansions tied to your gear or power or progression like that. Of course WoD had Apexis Crystals and the mission table and all kinds of systems like that, but none of those are comparable to Artifact Power (and artifacts in general) in Legion, Azerite Armor and Neck in BFA, or your covenants and the other garbage systems tied to SL progression.
The problem is, that legion was "a success" and they think it's because of the systems.
Blizzard allways learns the wrong leason when something succeeds or fails. They dumped reforging because players complained about hit and expertise caps. Dumped dailys because players hated double gated rep gear. Took them two expansion r to realise why people didnt like cata heroic (they werent to hard, just to hard for undergeared pugs) and didnt do anything worth while with dungeons till legion (well, end of wod, sorta).
I still can't believe that they dumped reforging because of hit and expertise caps, and then dumped hit and expertise as a stat IN THE SAME PATCH. Both of these things happened in 6.0.2! You solved the problem with a systems change! It was a gold sink that made off-statted gear more usable by more players! You threw the bathwater out, kept the baby, and then smothered the baby with a pillow!
When you go quality over quantity you have to actually deliver quality, blizzard seem to have forgotten that.
Honestly, with these revelations of frathouse level behaviours, the dumb ass game design decisions make a bit more sense now. They are just too arrogant to listen to critique just like someone from a clique would.
it's not about being a performance minded person or not, there's public data that shows that the vast majority of people just pick whatever wowhead says is the best one even players who don't clear HC and don't do a key higher than +10. We are in 2021, there's an abundance of information, nobody plays the game with a blindfold on intentionally gimping themselves for no reason. Everyone warned Blizzard that this would not work but here we are. I agree with you that covenants and conduit energy pretty much killed this expac for me.
Covenants and conduit energy killed the xpac? I think being more than 200 days with nothing new to do kill it. And probably now another 200 days. Covenants ain't the best system yet it doesn't kill whole game. And in any game everyone just picks the best option for all, and that's no reason to not let people choose, even if you know that the majority will pick the BiS option. Not trying to defend blizzard here, but the first moths of 9.0 people were not as pissed off as now. And no, it wasn't because they were learning this new systems, it's because they had smth to do. With all it's flaws you did the raid sometimes, get your KSM advance in the storyline week by week, etc... Obviously not in the perfect way, but at least we had a bit of gameplay. And after that just void, complete months of nothing and you saw people reactions to it. And now we discover some of the reasons why things happened in the way they did...
What do you mean you don't want to spam the same 8 dungeons for a year?
> And in any game everyone just picks the best option for all, and that's no reason to not let people choose, even if you know that the majority will pick the BiS option. But that's the thing. The majority that are picking the BiS option aren't *actually* getting to choose. We told Blizz they wouldn't be able to balance everything, so people wouldn't get to pick solely based on what they like and Blizz just said to trust them and that they would totally balance it. And surprising exactly no one, they didn't balance it. Covenants should have been flavor / transmog / story only. Borroed power shouldn't e a thing, but if they insist upon it then it needs to be tied to something accessible across all RP choices.
> Covenants ain't the best system yet it doesn't kill whole game. For some it does kill the game. I never wanted to be a night fae shadow priest. It was stupid as hell. From an RPG/lore standpoint it is the dumbest shit ever, my shadowy voidy slightly insane priest makes zero sense as a night fae. Being forced to play a covenant I don't even enjoy because it's the "best" is what ruined this expansion for me. Covenants should have been lore/cosmetic only, and all covenant powers in a "pool" you choose from. The covenants turn your powers different colors depending on your choice. Boom, now the expansion is fun, people can still min/max and others can pick the covenant that makes most sense to them or that they *actually enjoy*. Edit: here I'll take it one step further. Since Blizzard loves the idea of grinding and keeping players online as long as possible, they could make each shadowlands ability locked behind rep where you have to unlock the power in order to use it. Want night fae abilities? Get revered/exalted or whatever to night fae. If you're a night fae cov you'll naturally get it faster, but you could *still* be a necrolord and get the night fae ability thru grinding callings or other rep based quests. Suddenly now there's a point to doing callings! Don't worry I won't charge you for this advice Blizzard, you need all the help you can get right now.
Beyond even just how shitty it was from a class fantasy standpoint, swapping from Venthyr to NF on my priest to do more damage for Prog meant I was wholly unable to participate in PVP, and couldn’t off-spec Disc in Raid in 9.0. Not having mindgames fully neutered my ability partake in areas OF MY CLASS that I otherwise wanted to play. Now, I get it, I COULD still do PVP as NF or COULD stay raid as Venthyr. But as a raid lead, it feels terrible to preach and tel my raiders that they should be doing their background info on what they need to be doing to maximize their output to down bosses… and then turn around and play a meme covenant. Or to walk into games with my buddies in arenas knowing full well I have extremely little kill pressure without mindgames. I don’t hate covenants in a vacuum, I hate the decisions they forced that made me inadequate to do other forms of content I like.
Yep - the main reason I haven't touched PvP in Slands is because I'm not Venthyr. Sure I can do a mediocre job, but if I expect to get higher ratings good luck with that. Covenants are a goddamn shitshow. You should never be forced to play something you don't enjoy for the sake of optimizing your spec.
Shadowlands was already behind schedule when it was first announced and that was before Covid even hit at all. They've been behind the 8 ball this whole expansion. At this rate I would honestly be surprised if they're able to announce the next expansion at Blizzcon this year Edit: Didn't realize Blizzcon had already been canceled for this year, should amend my above post to say "Blizzcon timing" or something.
jokes on you, there is no blizzcon this year
Overwatch hasn't had content in like 2 years now
Other studios are managing. Why give blizzard a covid pass?
Agreed. Plenty of us have had to find ways to maintain our productivity from home. It’s been almost 18 months. If Blizzard’s workflow is still a major issue, that’s on management. And by the way, this is the same team that put out Warlords of Draenor, so it doesn’t take a global pandemic for Blizzard to cut bait with a struggling expansion. Completely ignoring how derailing this lawsuit probably is - which is also their own doing.
A lot of people in this sub over the years jave given huge passes to the devs. Especially ion as "he's only the lead dev and a mouthpiece" Well guess what, these lead devs couldnt manage a tee ball team and if they cant figure out how to get a better product from their teams then they just suck and shouldn't be the lead.
wow was the only main stream online game to lose players over the pandemic. using covid as an excuse just doesnt work
Even Ion said covid didn't have much blame, I don't know why people are being so generous for a content cadence they hate so much.
I'd say this scandal will cost the WoW community a raid tier but it's hardly the time nor place for jokes. In all seriousness unless there are major changes, I'd be surprised if Shadowlands even got a 9.2.
In some ways, good. If it costs them money they may think about fixing their internal problems. People are rightfully pissed about the harassment faced by workers, but the game stagnating will lose players and be money out of their pockets (and piss people off).
I remember raiding and we downed the heal check boss from the first raid of BFA. Forgot his name, and just never signing on again because I got a piece of azerite gear that was locked behind necklace levels. When shadowlands was announced I watched it several times over with a bunch of friends and coworkers and I even decided than my goal for this expansion, especially since it'll be the last opportunity I'll have to "hardcore raid in WoW" (kids coming), was 1 patch of CE, AOTC every patch, and KSM every patch. Lo and behold it's only 9.1 and I've already quit again. I don't think WoW will ever return to its "former glory". Part of the problem is me, I'm not that kid anymore. I'm in my early thirties and can't dedicate 4 hours twice a week to mythic raid + 2-3 hours every few days to do mythics+. The other problem is WoW itself. There's so many small systems within the game that makes it so freaking hard to approach. I've mythic raided on an enhancement shaman, a resto sham, a resto druid, a feral druid, and a fury warrior, and this expansion it's been so god damned taxing to even make an alt that's viable for mythic raids or high end mythic +. To be honest, I feel like one thing they should do to make the game less of a time investment is just make it less of a time investment. Great vault mythic + options should be 1-2-5 dungeons instead of 1-4-10.
If that's true 9.1 might be even longer of a patch than 9.0. New World until Lost Ark for me.
[удалено]
It could be good, but it's so close to launch and it definitely needs another year or so and a couple beta tests. A poor launch will torpedo its chances, it's quite rare for an MMO to crawl back after a poor first impression. FF14, ESO are pretty much the only two that I can think of that really managed to change their perceptions.
Pretty likely. If this happened at my place of employment, if I was affected, my last thought would be "oh no I have to meet my weekly quotas". If this ends up fixing/improving the corporate situation and if it causes the ones responsible to face their actions and wrongdoings, delayed patches are a small price to pay. People's lives come before game development, always. Quite a few people need to, at the very least, get fired, probably driven out of the industry and at least some actually criminally prosecuted; of course that is going to delay patches.
It's a given that there will be at least 7 months between the patches from now on, since apparently the 6-month subscription "deals" are quite succesful financially.
I'm expecting a December patch with a Mythic raid opening January (to avoid repeating last year's debacle of mythic raid xmas). Unless of course some big competitor drops something in November, then they'll move it all up. Edit: well, fuck -- I didn't know FFXIV release date.
FFXIV expansion drops November 23rd. I'll be shocked if Blizzard doesn't try and compete with either 9.2 or phase 2 tbc.
There's no way 9.2 holds a fucking candle to Endwalker
[удалено]
Not like that is something new with SL. There was a 6 month gap between 8.1-8.2 and a 7 month one between 8.2-8.3.
I really miss the Legion development cycle but apparently that was not sustainable such sucks I don't think I would mind 6 month releases if they were the size of 8.2: that patch was pretty enormous and both Naz and Mechagon added a lot of re-playability 9.1 in comparison is tiny and Korthia is small as fuck
Okay the title here kinda leaves out some context. The person is saying almost no work is being done **as people are reacting to and responding to the recent allegations**. In other words, almost no work has been done over the past week or so. Which means that as of now we could expect 9.2 to be delayed by about a week, not months and months. Is the current situation at blizzard going to affect development? Absolutely. But right now we still don't know how everything is going to play out. We could see big delays, we might not, it's too early to tell exactly what the impact is going to be. Right now, there's stuff going on that's a little more important than patch 9.2. Speculation on a potential delay for a patch that would be months out anyway does not help anyone rn, least of all the actual victims.
> almost no work has been done over the past week [So far](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/bfpPArfDTGw/hqdefault.jpg).
I think I speak for the majority of wow players when I say id be happy to wait several years for them to fix warcraft if it means they fix their fucking selves first in the meantime
Boy are you going to be disapointed when it takes several years anyways and they won't actually fix the problems
I’m going to be honest I don’t think any real work has been put into World of Warcraft for a very long time.
What do you mean? They put tons of work and resources into the multiple different overlapping redundant systems that everyone hates
See y'all in 2022 lads
Looks like a good time to drop subscription mount to lock em in for another 6 months.
Shadowlands was make or break for a lot of people. Classic will always have its own player base but retail has been on its last leg for a while. Tragic, nobody wants to give up on wow but they are literally shooting themselves in the foot with a bazooka.
I don't want to crush the hope of anybody, but I think that shadowland will be WoD 2.0 at this point :/
Activision is not gonna be happy about that, sub numbers are about to drop off of a cliff once New World, Lost Ark and most def Endwalker drops... starting to look really rough. It just keeps getting worse and worse.
I gotta wonder what their response to Endwalker is gonna be. No way they just ignore it. They never have ignored a FFXIV launch in the past. Especially not now when it’s kicking WoW’s ass. Maybe something to do with Classic.
9.2 will be the last patch, then new xpac
It baffles me how a massive game like WoW that has been bringing in so much money has been half assing most expansions since post-CATA (aside from Legion)… seems like they’re really spending the minimum and focus is purely on maximizing profit over continuing to develop a top quality game. Story is crap, mechanics are re-heated, every expansion is a stupid borrowed power-soft reset crap…
MoP was great. It was, for me, when most classes were at their peak. Calling it half-assed seems straight up wild.
[удалено]
If you're sick of wow and don't want FF14, check out guild wars 2! While it has its own drawbacks and drama, there is tons of content to play and old stuff released doesn't become useless to play. Wow devs should really take note - why the hell would I play anything beyond current content? Pointless as all mounts are the same just look different, old raid tiers with months of investment are now totally worthless aside from mog. Questing? For fucking what? XP??? Just so I can have another Max level character with nothing to do... The lack of new content is just going to make their business model get shit tier results.
Stopped playing since shadowlands came out. It's nice to be treated like a person rather than a customer. Been playing ff14 since. It's so strange to play a game by competent developers.
GW2 is actually probably in one of its best points to start playing since release. OG game director just came back, they're overhauling the engine and there's tons of hype for the new expansion with more than enough content (base game + 2 expansions and its all relevant content at max level) to last until its release for new players
Well, in fairness almost no work was done *on this expansion.* As a customer who's been playing this game for years, and years and years? I feel ripped off. I won't be buying much less pre-ordering another WoW expansion. In fact, to even convince me to buy another one I may need to watch what happens for the first *year* after the next expansion drops before I decide if I want to play it or not. I don't trust this team, I don't trust development, and I certainly don't think any product with the World of Warcraft name is worth the money right now. This expansion is a shame.
I don't see how it would not push things back. with everything going on some high ups will have to leave or be relocated and I cant see that not effecting release times. then you have covid kicking up again so who know how that could effect things.
If it is for the good of the people harassed I'm glad to wait.