It's a bad practice for things like narrative to change at the whims of angry players when player choice in questing and narrative was never a design philosophy of this game. If this has signalled a move towards a new lore and narrative system that encouraged player agency, that would be great. It doesn't appear to be a paradigm shift, but simply weak-kneed devs or a product they lack faith in. Neither of those are good signs.
Adding those will not functionally change the story at the end. I think they do have an overarching story with a prescribed end.
Know what's funny? So many of the things that have happened that make literally NO sense whatsoever would have been more understandable had the Alliance attacked Undercity first, with Horde reacting that led to the burning of Teldrassil. Narratively, if you look at the story as it is now with a different start to the conflict, things are somewhat more palatable.
I honestly believe that that was the original narrative that the dev team "chickened out on" because they were afraid of backlash from the Allies community.
I also think that they really believed that the majority of the Horde would be totally down with the whole "muh honer" Saurfang narrative and that they are surprised that many simply are not. "We obviously know that hasn't been as easy a transition as they thought (or liked). So it feels like, in an attempt to make players turn against the current Horde, they've just submerged the entire narrative in a river of sh!t to try and dislodge Sylvanas loyalists."
They need an ESO style review and fixing crew to come through and fix the problems.
They need to start with the armor problems.
Then they need to fix the class specs they have ignored in order to rush out the expansion.
There are serious holes in the design of many specs in classes that have been neglected for far too long!
They need features such as housing and house decorating.
They could add a whole new series of things to the game such as event items that could be placed in the house which could be linked to special events in the game like the battle of the lich king. They could also add to several already existing craft systems, the ability to make furniture decorations and lighting.
They need to add a group that give rewards to the dungeoneers and raiders for raiding such as the dauntless in ESO.
We need mounted combat.
We need glider mounts or flying mounts given glider abilities in zones that you have to earn flying in.
Additionally I totally agree with these:
Reforging
Profession bonuses (belt buckles, leatherworker-only enchants, specific upgrades, etc.)
Enchants for most of the gear
Secondary stats
Glyphs that changed how abilities work (cosmetic glyphs still remain)
Tier sets & PvP vendors
We need ALOT of updates to this game to make it a modern game.
But do the devs listen to their playerbase?! nope!
I got onto one of the support people in reddit and twitter because they claimed that posting the wow forums would make a difference. I pointed out the sheer years of being ignored by the developers in the forum, which makes them liars.
As someone above stated the game currently has basic fundamental issues to its core. And thats a result of changes of the last 6-7 years on certain aspects of the game that have become insufferable
I could easily ignore the lackluster Azerite armor thing...the lackluster designing and lack of it...hell u were leveling a hunter from 1 to 30 back in the day and u would use dozens of different looking armor and stuff. The laziness of this departmement the last few years is mind boggling, But all of that could be ignored if they improved a few basic stuff and thats, but no they didnt they made it worse.
A:)Classes ...absolutely horrendous in every aspect, i first leveled my DK... and it felt so empty..but not entirely bad i did like the auto hitting aspect they added, who would've thought that leveling my shaman and hunter woiuld have caused my such a trauma afterwards. There are no classes atm, just buttons that activate skillshots with different graphical presentation.
B:) Proffesions Omegalul. Literally engineering and Jewelcrafting must have taken 1 day to be designed by the devs. Like it is incredibly hilarious how shallow they are.
The only enjoyable thing(once again) was the leveling expirience(quests and lore, yes..i had no issue with the lore) and areas, buty tbh no1 cares and its almost very little to compensate since leveling is extremely fast and has become a routine.Nontheless they did a great job on that departmement.
I dont want to be 'that guy'' but u would literally spend a day or 2 to arrange and keep your proffs on track with your level back in the day.Everything mattered. Nothing matters now, I wont go any further back, cause we will again deviate from the main issue which is BFA, but some1 cant just ignore how fundamentally the game has changed to the worse.
And not just the fundamentals as WoW but the aspects of being an MMORPG.
1 Character and class Individuality
2 Social aspect of the game
Basic principles of every MMORPG,in WoW's case both were declinging expansion by expansion
It's a bad practice for things like narrative to change at the whims of angry players when player choice in questing and narrative was never a design philosophy of this game. If this has signalled a move towards a new lore and narrative system that encouraged player agency, that would be great. It doesn't appear to be a paradigm shift, but simply weak-kneed devs or a product they lack faith in. Neither of those are good signs.
Adding those will not functionally change the story at the end. I think they do have an overarching story with a prescribed end.
Know what's funny? So many of the things that have happened that make literally NO sense whatsoever would have been more understandable had the Alliance attacked Undercity first, with Horde reacting that led to the burning of Teldrassil. Narratively, if you look at the story as it is now with a different start to the conflict, things are somewhat more palatable.
I honestly believe that that was the original narrative that the dev team "chickened out on" because they were afraid of backlash from the Allies community.
I also think that they really believed that the majority of the Horde would be totally down with the whole "muh honer" Saurfang narrative and that they are surprised that many simply are not. "We obviously know that hasn't been as easy a transition as they thought (or liked). So it feels like, in an attempt to make players turn against the current Horde, they've just submerged the entire narrative in a river of sh!t to try and dislodge Sylvanas loyalists."
That's the trend this will start though: if, in the end, Sylvanas does fall from grace here and get run outta the Horde, those same players will thing be angry their earlier choices didn't result in a different ending for Sylvanas or their own toons. This issue is that once you open Pandora's box, you can't close it again.
And yea, the story in general went from adequately intriguing to downright absurd in like 4 seconds flat. I'm just not sure inviting players into the illusion will do anything but make the backlash worse once they realize it is, in fact, an illusion.
I think if we have a conversation about BfA we need to be super clear about the good and the bad.
Good: Art - the world is beautiful and amazing. I mean they really stepped it up a notch.
Story - Like it or hate it, the story packed an emotional punch for most people. It sets them up to make changes to the capital cities. The blood god ststuff in Nazmir was intriguing and overall pretty enjoyable.
Raid Encounters - Fun and unique themes with raids.
Bad: Classes - feel slow and awkward before Azerite armor and haste cap, feel awkward and still fairly slow as you near the haste cap. Many classes aren't even close to evenly balanced in damage, heals, or tanking. Some classes are so easy you just hit a couple of buttons with no meaningful choice of which to use.
Armor - pacing is a horrible joke. HORRIBLE. Devs claimed to add in "bad luck protection" and RNG. However, it's clear that most players get new items that fill duplicates slots of their existing pieces at a higher rate than they get slots they don't have high level. Ex. You have 1 ilevel 370 cloak and 1 ilevel 370 wrist, then proceed to get cloaks and wrists for the foreseeable future. It feels like reverse bad luck protection used to slow down progression.
Tradeskills - Alchemy, enchanting, and jewelcrafting are currently the only professions useful at end game. Other professions offer you armor pieces that 80-90% of players will never use due to the "fail rate" of discovering the next level recipe. Even though you craft bop items it's expected that you spend at least 30 expulsom per creation in addition to other mats only gathered from very high level dungeons and raids. By the time the player has the mats they don't need the item. I really don't understand what they thought would be useful about these professions. The follower items? For followers items you don't need and won't use once you hit exalted with some reps? I don't get it. As a player that leveled up Leatherworking and raids I can say that it's not likely or viable that you'd ever use profession boots. 2-3 pieces of expulsom per purple isn't worth it and that's roughly 90 purple items that you didnt get gold for, cycled through to get enough mats to make the cheapest recipe one time. I made the boots once used them for a week and didnt get the recipe upgrade. Think I will waste time and gold to make bop boots I can't use again in the hopes I will "discover" the higher level recipe and then start all over again at a higher mat cost? Haha. Yeah right.
TLDR
Fun to start, no depth in characters, professions, or loot. Meaningful and fun things are removed from game for mystical reasons. Can't wait for a new mmo to come out and try. I'm tired of having 4 ilevel 370 pieces out of 15 slots and still only getting the same 4 slods I have
It's a bad practice for things like narrative to change at the whims of angry players when player choice in questing and narrative was never a design philosophy of this game. If this has signalled a move towards a new lore and narrative system that encouraged player agency, that would be great. It doesn't appear to be a paradigm shift, but simply weak-kneed devs or a product they lack faith in. Neither of those are good signs.
Adding those will not functionally change the story at the end. I think they do have an overarching story with a prescribed end.
Know what's funny? So many of the things that have happened that make literally NO sense whatsoever would have been more understandable had the Alliance attacked Undercity first, with Horde reacting that led to the burning of Teldrassil. Narratively, if you look at the story as it is now with a different start to the conflict, things are somewhat more palatable.
I honestly believe that that was the original narrative that the dev team "chickened out on" because they were afraid of backlash from the Allies community.
I also think that they really believed that the majority of the Horde would be totally down with the whole "muh honer" Saurfang narrative and that they are surprised that many simply are not. "We obviously know that hasn't been as easy a transition as they thought (or liked). So it feels like, in an attempt to make players turn against the current Horde, they've just submerged the entire narrative in a river of sh!t to try and dislodge Sylvanas loyalists."
nah the sylvanas being self serving narrative has been around since wc3 but has taken a back seat to more important plot lines because it was a pretty shallow narrative even in the beginning. Id say its more of dev team grasping a straws to justify the faction conflict when the world has almost ended like 4 times now.
the alliance couldn't have started the conflict because Anduin is too much of a mary sue and graymane would be trying to reclaim Glineas not Undercity. Everyone with any real connection to Lordaeron has been undeaded or dead at this point. That being said sylanas's reason for the burning of teldrassil doesn't make much sense either ..... because of the existence of portal magic.
also everyone likes Saurfang….even the alliance view him in a favorable light.
I don't agree its a filler. That suggests that next time will be better. Really?
My take on it would be an expansion with no "sparkle".
My take would be that its because WoW is an old project - dating back to when development started years before its launch. And as such its now a "sunset" project.
A "sunset" project is one that no longer gets the big budgets, no mentions in company reports, no longer the big money earner, runs on old systems, is in decline etc. People working on such a projec struggle to make a mark, the big problems have been tackled and getting money for new stuff faces the "will it pay for itself" question. Motivating people on a sunset project is a real challenge. The excitement and "sparkle" has gone.
With that said professionalism will have kicked in so I am sure the devs believed the expansion was "good". And they had come up with the idea of a staged rollout of content designed to get people to stay subscribed "longer".
At the end of the day though bad champaigne is bad champaigne. Doesn't matter how many you sell - which is heavily influenced by marketing.
And I think "good but no fizz" is a better summary. With no reason to think that the next will be better.
I don't agree its a filler. That suggests that next time will be better. Really?
My take on it would be an expansion with no "sparkle".
My take would be that its because WoW is an old project - dating back to when development started years before its launch. And as such its now a "sunset" project.
A "sunset" project is one that no longer gets the big budgets, no mentions in company reports, no longer the big money earner, runs on old systems, is in decline etc. People working on such a projec struggle to make a mark, the big problems have been tackled and getting money for new stuff faces the "will it pay for itself" question. Motivating people on a sunset project is a real challenge. The excitement and "sparkle" has gone.
With that said professionalism will have kicked in so I am sure the devs believed the expansion was "good". And they had come up with the idea of a staged rollout of content designed to get people to stay subscribed "longer".
At the end of the day though bad champaigne is bad champaigne. Doesn't matter how many you sell - which is heavily influenced by marketing.
And I think "good but no fizz" is a better summary. With no reason to think that the next will be better.
Which makes no sense, because if including all the regions its still #1 most subscribed MMO
If taking the account of subscriber link (if true or not), that only accounted for europe and north america...not any other region.
So it'll still be #1 most subbed MMO. Which means its making a ton of income every month for Blizzard.
Doesn't make sense at all for blizzard to "sunset" it just because of its age, when its still #1 if include all the regions
My Skyrim, Fallout 4, Starbound and WoW + other game mods at MODDB:
Close down. Just run a vanilla F2P no strings attached but perks and cross marketing other games like live in game Hearth stone amtches linked to your hearth stone account.
Charge xpansions in cash shop. With more cash goodies non p2W.
Watch your population quadruple, servers crash like it is 1999 due to huge success, and watch revenue pick up.... or stay ignorant and cater to the chineese market.
uh stfu with your vanilla wow. why would we want to screw 14 years of development? bc some cry babies don't like em?
sorry, but those who play like em.
uh and for those who don't like it, as always, over there is the door. bye.
you want classic servers? pathetic, you have NO idea what you ask for there.
what exactly do you want? those 3 instances or that one raid where you actually had to farm for several months so you could enter and fight the firelord for real?
most of you guys would INSTANTLY start crying with the ammount of grind needed to put your weapon skills to the reqiured lvl alone.
If Blizzard opted to screw 14 years of development it would be because of money. I agree with you though "closing" the current version of WoW isn't something they should do. Nor do I see them doing it. There are people who play current WoW and enjoy it and they shouldn't just be "dumped".
That said Blizzard are going to launch vanilla - whatever that means. Vanilla will have an impact on current WoW - based on every single game that has gone down this road previously; some current players will leave current WoW and some will stay with vanilla, some will return to current and some will unsub. There will be an impact though.
And so Blizzard will have two versions of WoW running and a decision to make. Do they: - launch vanilla, never touch it again and go back to pushing out expansions for current? - launch vanilla and support both versions, new expansions for each on alternate years? - launch vanilla, leave current WoW as is, and do expansions for the vanilla?
Wouldn't surprise me if they are trying to hold off on making a decision.
also everyone likes Saurfang….even the alliance view him in a favorable light.
Not everyone. I'm one of them. Frankly, the fact that the Allies love him and he's cozied up to SI:7 makes me abhor him.
I loved Saurfang in Northrend and even at Crossroads during Legion's pre-event when he led the forces against the Legion but they have assassinated his character as much as any other, Sylvanas included. It is one thing for her to be "self-serving" and so forth, but a whole different ball of wax to become mustache twirlingly evil for the sake of evil. It's just stupid villain batting and it feels bad. I'm sick of hearing the "honor, honor, honor" crap from everyone. It's as bad as hearing "light, light, light" from Allies. Far, far too unidimensional. What made Horde exciting and interesting was that it wasn't so cut-and-dried and that it had differences on the outlook on life and everything else between races. Boring homogenization is boring.
Look at the story through the lens of Allies attacking Undercity first. When you do, the rest of the story makes a LOT more sense. As it came to us at launch, it's a convoluted pile of manure.
I would like professions that matter, and grinding them gives you a sense of accomplishment. Well, I guess I would like that feeling for all things in this game, so if something doesn't give that feeling, then they need to fix it....
I would like professions that matter, and grinding them gives you a sense of accomplishment. Well, I guess I would like that feeling for all things in this game, so if something doesn't give that feeling, then they need to fix it....
Gut Out!
Pretty much professions are useless compared to vanilla through WOTLK
The only ones that are good is mining/herbalism. and that is just sad
Every other profession is junk. Most professions by time you can craft an "upgrade" it becomes a "downgrade". Pathetic
My Skyrim, Fallout 4, Starbound and WoW + other game mods at MODDB:
I would like professions that matter, and grinding them gives you a sense of accomplishment. Well, I guess I would like that feeling for all things in this game, so if something doesn't give that feeling, then they need to fix it....
Gut Out!
Pretty much professions are useless compared to vanilla through WOTLK
The only ones that are good is mining/herbalism. and that is just sad
Every other profession is junk. Most professions by time you can craft an "upgrade" it becomes a "downgrade". Pathetic
Alchemy is good for money-making. Every progression guild needs pots. I made millions in the first couple months of BfA.
I would like professions that matter, and grinding them gives you a sense of accomplishment. Well, I guess I would like that feeling for all things in this game, so if something doesn't give that feeling, then they need to fix it....
Gut Out!
Pretty much professions are useless compared to vanilla through WOTLK
The only ones that are good is mining/herbalism. and that is just sad
Every other profession is junk. Most professions by time you can craft an "upgrade" it becomes a "downgrade". Pathetic
Alchemy is good for money-making. Every progression guild needs pots. I made millions in the first couple months of BfA.
yeah alchemy, and enchanting are the only good ones. Sorta engineering is fun, but engineering isn't nearly as fun as it used to be...blizzard used to do so much amazing stuff with engineering
But yeah, alchemy/enchanting are pretty hard to make actually useless.
My Skyrim, Fallout 4, Starbound and WoW + other game mods at MODDB:
We can't re-write history though...the Horde provoked this fight...for what? Azerite??? Sylvie was triggered and burned the tree down. Clear horde victory. Alliance retaliated. We fought to a stalemate and everyone lost the Undercity. Where were the Horde druids during the burning of the tree? Why didn't the Alliance pack gas masks (the same used by horde players) to spread plague? We know the undead use it from their sacking of Gilneas. The writing is SO SO BAD. That's what I'm having a hard time with. They're going to rez the elves killed in the darkshore fight prior to the buring of the tree...and they automatically go horde??? The horde murdered you. It's just so bad. This whole expan sucks.
We can't re-write history though...the Horde provoked this fight...for what? Azerite??? Sylvie was triggered and burned the tree down. Clear horde victory. Alliance retaliated. We fought to a stalemate and everyone lost the Undercity. Where were the Horde druids during the burning of the tree? Why didn't the Alliance pack gas masks (the same used by horde players) to spread plague? We know the undead use it from their sacking of Gilneas. The writing is SO SO BAD. That's what I'm having a hard time with. They're going to rez the elves killed in the darkshore fight prior to the buring of the tree...and they automatically go horde??? The horde murdered you. It's just so bad. This whole expan sucks.
While topic is mostly about PvP...I do bring up other good points
But for those who don't want to read through that.
I pointed out that nothing feels natural in BFA. In a GOOD story, book or movie...a war or massive conflict always feels natural. In BFA, it feels incredibly forced and contrived.
There is also no consistency with the characters
One second jaina is godmode Next second she can't do anything Right after back to godmode
And also the way they animated jaina with dead lifeless eyes that look like the animations came out from a 2001 game made me laugh at how sad and cheap it looked. Legion animation/in-game cinematics looked vastly better.
Other problem
Why didn't sylvanas make sure malfurian was dead? Forced unnatural writing by blizzard to keep malfurian alive
Why didn't anyone HURT (at very least) sylvanas when she was face to face with anduin when they attacked undercity and got to the throne room? Again, forced unnatural writing by blizzard to keep sylvanas AND the conflict of horde vs alliance alive
Its all forced, non-consistent and very unnatural.
My Skyrim, Fallout 4, Starbound and WoW + other game mods at MODDB:
Close down. Just run a vanilla F2P no strings attached but perks and cross marketing other games like live in game Hearth stone amtches linked to your hearth stone account.
Charge xpansions in cash shop. With more cash goodies non p2W.
Watch your population quadruple, servers crash like it is 1999 due to huge success, and watch revenue pick up.... or stay ignorant and cater to the chineese market.
uh stfu with your vanilla wow. why would we want to screw 14 years of development? bc some cry babies don't like em?
sorry, but those who play like em.
uh and for those who don't like it, as always, over there is the door. bye.
you want classic servers? pathetic, you have NO idea what you ask for there.
what exactly do you want? those 3 instances or that one raid where you actually had to farm for several months so you could enter and fight the firelord for real?
most of you guys would INSTANTLY start crying with the ammount of grind needed to put your weapon skills to the reqiured lvl alone.
If Blizzard opted to screw 14 years of development it would be because of money. I agree with you though "closing" the current version of WoW isn't something they should do. Nor do I see them doing it. There are people who play current WoW and enjoy it and they shouldn't just be "dumped".
That said Blizzard are going to launch vanilla - whatever that means. Vanilla will have an impact on current WoW - based on every single game that has gone down this road previously; some current players will leave current WoW and some will stay with vanilla, some will return to current and some will unsub. There will be an impact though.
And so Blizzard will have two versions of WoW running and a decision to make. Do they: - launch vanilla, never touch it again and go back to pushing out expansions for current? - launch vanilla and support both versions, new expansions for each on alternate years? - launch vanilla, leave current WoW as is, and do expansions for the vanilla?
Wouldn't surprise me if they are trying to hold off on making a decision.
Blizzard only cares about 1 thing... subscriptions. They don't care what game you are playing so long as you are still paying a subscription.
They already said Classic WoW will NOT include any expansions. It will be 1-60 and that's it. So there is no maintaining one over the other. They also said they weren't going to have a bunch of servers either. It is not going to replace an expansion in the expansion cycle, more likely be like Diablo... released during an existing expansion.
If Classic ever killed WoW, it would be because Blizzard did the ultimate fuck up in their current expansion. Totally possible considering their track record as of late.
Classic won't save WoW any more than a new expansion will. They've given us a lot of reasons to leave lately... very few reasons to stay... and lets' not forget the whole hardware upgrade fiasco that came with BfA that didn't improve the game, just screwed it up.
BfA is what it is. It's not going to get better... just less worse. That's all they can even hope to give you and surely why they will put all focus on anything and everything NOT BfA at Blizzcon this year.
I don't agree its a filler. That suggests that next time will be better. Really?
My take on it would be an expansion with no "sparkle".
My take would be that its because WoW is an old project - dating back to when development started years before its launch. And as such its now a "sunset" project.
A "sunset" project is one that no longer gets the big budgets, no mentions in company reports, no longer the big money earner, runs on old systems, is in decline etc. People working on such a projec struggle to make a mark, the big problems have been tackled and getting money for new stuff faces the "will it pay for itself" question. Motivating people on a sunset project is a real challenge. The excitement and "sparkle" has gone.
With that said professionalism will have kicked in so I am sure the devs believed the expansion was "good". And they had come up with the idea of a staged rollout of content designed to get people to stay subscribed "longer".
At the end of the day though bad champaigne is bad champaigne. Doesn't matter how many you sell - which is heavily influenced by marketing.
And I think "good but no fizz" is a better summary. With no reason to think that the next will be better.
Which makes no sense, because if including all the regions its still #1 most subscribed MMO
If taking the account of subscriber link (if true or not), that only accounted for europe and north america...not any other region.
So it'll still be #1 most subbed MMO. Which means its making a ton of income every month for Blizzard.
Doesn't make sense at all for blizzard to "sunset" it just because of its age, when its still #1 if include all the regions
Let me expand a bit - try and keep it short though obviously.
Its not about WoW - in this case - not making money. What matters is revenue today, future projections and a plethora of finacial measures like payback periods, return on investment, discounted cashflow analysis and so on. Basically if a company spends X will it get X back and more money than is being made today. Get X back but no extra money = do nothing as this is less risk.
WoW used to be touted by Activision Blizzard as a billion dollar a year franchise. It no longer is.
WoW is an old - very old - game. It won't run on the newest systems - not just computer software either. As far as the computer software side goes though if you are a young programmer would you want to work on the current software - good for future employment - or old stuff? Its a no brainer. So staff tend to be older on average - more mature, less fiesty! Oh and getting new staff gets harder.
There is more to it but its just the way it is. And it happens to all projects that have been around a while and - almost always - have made tons of money and are now only making a lot of money. Its not something a company "decides" to do.
And as I said above motivating staff on a sunset project is a real challenge.
Note: As to most subbed mmo - so what? WoW has more subs than .... DAoC? Last number they announced was 5.4M worldwide. A quarter later they announced WoW revenue which implied 3.8M worldwide (dividing revenue by average sub income wasn't rocket science). A quarter later 3M max based on Blizzard income - 3M based on other games not growing but since they talked up e.g. Hearthstone it was probably under 3M. But - as I said - so what. Its not about WoW not making money its about trends, projections and simple age.
I'm a classic player to the core, but my humble opinion is the game needs new leadership. Lets be honest, WoW has been all over the places since Cataclysm launch. Obviously they wanted to modernize the game to suit better for ARPG and MOBA gamers but that hasn't really work as planned, has it? I could even say it has failed miserably.
What they have to do is ask themselves what made WoW such a popular game. Was it Farmville and Pokemon kind of features, or was it something else. As long as that question remains unanswered there's no hope for World of Warcraft. I'm not saying they need to go back to vanilla or TBC but the game has to be more than a collection of features taken from asian grinders and mobile games.
I think the shooting of that rabid dog Greymane would be a good starting point.
/Cheers, Lahnmir
He is the only Alliance character that isn't completely devoid of flaws, though.
Anduin - worst flaw is what, the teenage king is inexperienced?
Jaina - even her "mistake" was a John Lennon "give peace a chance" kind of thing iirc
Velen - the dude is literally the embodiment of the Light.
Alleria - you mean the one being in the lore that chills with void beings and make deals with them, without ever failing to completely control said Void?
Tyrande? Ha!
Malfurion? LMA fuck he's perfect O.
I agree with Suzie; Halford damn Wyrmbane would make for a more interesting character than those above. Wyrmbane would at least be good for a few genuine chuckles at his gung-ho "CALL IN THE ARTILLERY!" General Patton personality.
Genn at least could be written to have real and damaging character flaws, but instead they had him join the Boy Scouts with Anduin, and now he's all "we can do this if we just stick TOGETHER!"
Blizzard is like an overly strict father who has created a long list of rules that seem designed to suck all of the fun out of life. He's convinced that it's for your own good, so he refuses to hear any talk suggesting otherwise.
Blizzard is still amazingly skilled at the technical side of the game, but I feel as if they are drifting away from understanding their players. They've become too paternalistic and overbearing, IMO. Too controlling. I hope they come to their senses before it's too late.
Comments
Know what's funny? So many of the things that have happened that make literally NO sense whatsoever would have been more understandable had the Alliance attacked Undercity first, with Horde reacting that led to the burning of Teldrassil. Narratively, if you look at the story as it is now with a different start to the conflict, things are somewhat more palatable.
I honestly believe that that was the original narrative that the dev team "chickened out on" because they were afraid of backlash from the Allies community.
I also think that they really believed that the majority of the Horde would be totally down with the whole "muh honer" Saurfang narrative and that they are surprised that many simply are not. "We obviously know that hasn't been as easy a transition as they thought (or liked). So it feels like, in an attempt to make players turn against the current Horde, they've just submerged the entire narrative in a river of sh!t to try and dislodge Sylvanas loyalists."
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
They need an ESO style review and fixing crew to come through and fix the problems.
They need to start with the armor problems.
Then they need to fix the class specs they have ignored in order to rush out the expansion.
There are serious holes in the design of many specs in classes that have been neglected for far too long!
They need features such as housing and house decorating.
They could add a whole new series of things to the game such as event items that could be placed in the house which could be linked to special events in the game like the battle of the lich king. They could also add to several already existing craft systems, the ability to make furniture decorations and lighting.
They need to add a group that give rewards to the dungeoneers and raiders for raiding such as the dauntless in ESO.
We need mounted combat.
We need glider mounts or flying mounts given glider abilities in zones that you have to earn flying in.
Additionally I totally agree with these:
Reforging
Profession bonuses (belt buckles, leatherworker-only enchants, specific upgrades, etc.)
Enchants for most of the gear
Secondary stats
Glyphs that changed how abilities work (cosmetic glyphs still remain)
Tier sets & PvP vendors
We need ALOT of updates to this game to make it a modern game.
But do the devs listen to their playerbase?! nope!
I got onto one of the support people in reddit and twitter because they claimed that posting the wow forums would make a difference. I pointed out the sheer years of being ignored by the developers in the forum, which makes them liars.
I could easily ignore the lackluster Azerite armor thing...the lackluster designing and lack of it...hell u were leveling a hunter from 1 to 30 back in the day and u would use dozens of different looking armor and stuff. The laziness of this departmement the last few years is mind boggling, But all of that could be ignored if they improved a few basic stuff and thats, but no they didnt they made it worse.
A:)Classes ...absolutely horrendous in every aspect, i first leveled my DK... and it felt so empty..but not entirely bad i did like the auto hitting aspect they added, who would've thought that leveling my shaman and hunter woiuld have caused my such a trauma afterwards. There are no classes atm, just buttons that activate skillshots with different graphical presentation.
B:) Proffesions Omegalul. Literally engineering and Jewelcrafting must have taken 1 day to be designed by the devs. Like it is incredibly hilarious how shallow they are.
The only enjoyable thing(once again) was the leveling expirience(quests and lore, yes..i had no issue with the lore) and areas, buty tbh no1 cares and its almost very little to compensate since leveling is extremely fast and has become a routine.Nontheless they did a great job on that departmement. I dont want to be 'that guy'' but u would literally spend a day or 2 to arrange and keep your proffs on track with your level back in the day.Everything mattered. Nothing matters now, I wont go any further back, cause we will again deviate from the main issue which is BFA, but some1 cant just ignore how fundamentally the game has changed to the worse. And not just the fundamentals as WoW but the aspects of being an MMORPG. 1 Character and class Individuality 2 Social aspect of the game Basic principles of every MMORPG,in WoW's case both were declinging expansion by expansion
And yea, the story in general went from adequately intriguing to downright absurd in like 4 seconds flat. I'm just not sure inviting players into the illusion will do anything but make the backlash worse once they realize it is, in fact, an illusion.
Good: Art - the world is beautiful and amazing. I mean they really stepped it up a notch.
Story - Like it or hate it, the story packed an emotional punch for most people. It sets them up to make changes to the capital cities. The blood god ststuff in Nazmir was intriguing and overall pretty enjoyable.
Raid Encounters - Fun and unique themes with raids.
Bad: Classes - feel slow and awkward before Azerite armor and haste cap, feel awkward and still fairly slow as you near the haste cap. Many classes aren't even close to evenly balanced in damage, heals, or tanking. Some classes are so easy you just hit a couple of buttons with no meaningful choice of which to use.
Armor - pacing is a horrible joke. HORRIBLE. Devs claimed to add in "bad luck protection" and RNG. However, it's clear that most players get new items that fill duplicates slots of their existing pieces at a higher rate than they get slots they don't have high level. Ex. You have 1 ilevel 370 cloak and 1 ilevel 370 wrist, then proceed to get cloaks and wrists for the foreseeable future. It feels like reverse bad luck protection used to slow down progression.
Tradeskills - Alchemy, enchanting, and jewelcrafting are currently the only professions useful at end game. Other professions offer you armor pieces that 80-90% of players will never use due to the "fail rate" of discovering the next level recipe. Even though you craft bop items it's expected that you spend at least 30 expulsom per creation in addition to other mats only gathered from very high level dungeons and raids. By the time the player has the mats they don't need the item. I really don't understand what they thought would be useful about these professions. The follower items? For followers items you don't need and won't use once you hit exalted with some reps? I don't get it. As a player that leveled up Leatherworking and raids I can say that it's not likely or viable that you'd ever use profession boots. 2-3 pieces of expulsom per purple isn't worth it and that's roughly 90 purple items that you didnt get gold for, cycled through to get enough mats to make the cheapest recipe one time. I made the boots once used them for a week and didnt get the recipe upgrade. Think I will waste time and gold to make bop boots I can't use again in the hopes I will "discover" the higher level recipe and then start all over again at a higher mat cost? Haha. Yeah right.
TLDR
Fun to start, no depth in characters, professions, or loot. Meaningful and fun things are removed from game for mystical reasons. Can't wait for a new mmo to come out and try. I'm tired of having 4 ilevel 370 pieces out of 15 slots and still only getting the same 4 slods I have
Classic
(For me anyway)
the alliance couldn't have started the conflict because Anduin is too much of a mary sue and graymane would be trying to reclaim Glineas not Undercity. Everyone with any real connection to Lordaeron has been undeaded or dead at this point. That being said sylanas's reason for the burning of teldrassil doesn't make much sense either ..... because of the existence of portal magic.
also everyone likes Saurfang….even the alliance view him in a favorable light.
My Skyrim, Fallout 4, Starbound and WoW + other game mods at MODDB:
https://www.moddb.com/mods/skyrim-anime-overhaul
My take on it would be an expansion with no "sparkle".
My take would be that its because WoW is an old project - dating back to when development started years before its launch. And as such its now a "sunset" project.
A "sunset" project is one that no longer gets the big budgets, no mentions in company reports, no longer the big money earner, runs on old systems, is in decline etc. People working on such a projec struggle to make a mark, the big problems have been tackled and getting money for new stuff faces the "will it pay for itself" question. Motivating people on a sunset project is a real challenge. The excitement and "sparkle" has gone.
With that said professionalism will have kicked in so I am sure the devs believed the expansion was "good". And they had come up with the idea of a staged rollout of content designed to get people to stay subscribed "longer".
At the end of the day though bad champaigne is bad champaigne. Doesn't matter how many you sell - which is heavily influenced by marketing.
And I think "good but no fizz" is a better summary. With no reason to think that the next will be better.
If taking the account of subscriber link (if true or not), that only accounted for europe and north america...not any other region.
So it'll still be #1 most subbed MMO. Which means its making a ton of income every month for Blizzard.
Doesn't make sense at all for blizzard to "sunset" it just because of its age, when its still #1 if include all the regions
My Skyrim, Fallout 4, Starbound and WoW + other game mods at MODDB:
https://www.moddb.com/mods/skyrim-anime-overhaul
That said Blizzard are going to launch vanilla - whatever that means. Vanilla will have an impact on current WoW - based on every single game that has gone down this road previously; some current players will leave current WoW and some will stay with vanilla, some will return to current and some will unsub. There will be an impact though.
And so Blizzard will have two versions of WoW running and a decision to make. Do they:
- launch vanilla, never touch it again and go back to pushing out expansions for current?
- launch vanilla and support both versions, new expansions for each on alternate years?
- launch vanilla, leave current WoW as is, and do expansions for the vanilla?
Wouldn't surprise me if they are trying to hold off on making a decision.
I loved Saurfang in Northrend and even at Crossroads during Legion's pre-event when he led the forces against the Legion but they have assassinated his character as much as any other, Sylvanas included. It is one thing for her to be "self-serving" and so forth, but a whole different ball of wax to become mustache twirlingly evil for the sake of evil. It's just stupid villain batting and it feels bad. I'm sick of hearing the "honor, honor, honor" crap from everyone. It's as bad as hearing "light, light, light" from Allies. Far, far too unidimensional. What made Horde exciting and interesting was that it wasn't so cut-and-dried and that it had differences on the outlook on life and everything else between races. Boring homogenization is boring.
Look at the story through the lens of Allies attacking Undercity first. When you do, the rest of the story makes a LOT more sense. As it came to us at launch, it's a convoluted pile of manure.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Gut Out!
What, me worry?
The only ones that are good is mining/herbalism. and that is just sad
Every other profession is junk. Most professions by time you can craft an "upgrade" it becomes a "downgrade". Pathetic
My Skyrim, Fallout 4, Starbound and WoW + other game mods at MODDB:
https://www.moddb.com/mods/skyrim-anime-overhaul
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
/Cheers,
Lahnmir
Kyleran on yours sincerely
'But there are many. You can play them entirely solo, and even offline. Also, you are wrong by default.'
Ikcin in response to yours sincerely debating whether or not single-player offline MMOs exist...
'This does not apply just to ED but SC or any other game. What they will get is Rebirth/X4, likely prettier but equally underwhelming and pointless.
It is incredibly difficult to design some meaningfull leg content that would fit a space ship game - simply because it is not a leg game.
It is just huge resource waste....'
Gdemami absolutely not being an armchair developer
But yeah, alchemy/enchanting are pretty hard to make actually useless.
My Skyrim, Fallout 4, Starbound and WoW + other game mods at MODDB:
https://www.moddb.com/mods/skyrim-anime-overhaul
https://forums.mmorpg.com/discussion/comment/7396990
But for those who don't want to read through that.
I pointed out that nothing feels natural in BFA. In a GOOD story, book or movie...a war or massive conflict always feels natural. In BFA, it feels incredibly forced and contrived.
There is also no consistency with the characters
One second jaina is godmode
Next second she can't do anything
Right after back to godmode
And also the way they animated jaina with dead lifeless eyes that look like the animations came out from a 2001 game made me laugh at how sad and cheap it looked. Legion animation/in-game cinematics looked vastly better.
Other problem
Why didn't sylvanas make sure malfurian was dead? Forced unnatural writing by blizzard to keep malfurian alive
Why didn't anyone HURT (at very least) sylvanas when she was face to face with anduin when they attacked undercity and got to the throne room? Again, forced unnatural writing by blizzard to keep sylvanas AND the conflict of horde vs alliance alive
Its all forced, non-consistent and very unnatural.
My Skyrim, Fallout 4, Starbound and WoW + other game mods at MODDB:
https://www.moddb.com/mods/skyrim-anime-overhaul
They already said Classic WoW will NOT include any expansions. It will be 1-60 and that's it. So there is no maintaining one over the other. They also said they weren't going to have a bunch of servers either. It is not going to replace an expansion in the expansion cycle, more likely be like Diablo... released during an existing expansion.
If Classic ever killed WoW, it would be because Blizzard did the ultimate fuck up in their current expansion. Totally possible considering their track record as of late.
Classic won't save WoW any more than a new expansion will. They've given us a lot of reasons to leave lately... very few reasons to stay... and lets' not forget the whole hardware upgrade fiasco that came with BfA that didn't improve the game, just screwed it up.
BfA is what it is. It's not going to get better... just less worse. That's all they can even hope to give you and surely why they will put all focus on anything and everything NOT BfA at Blizzcon this year.
Its not about WoW - in this case - not making money. What matters is revenue today, future projections and a plethora of finacial measures like payback periods, return on investment, discounted cashflow analysis and so on. Basically if a company spends X will it get X back and more money than is being made today. Get X back but no extra money = do nothing as this is less risk.
WoW used to be touted by Activision Blizzard as a billion dollar a year franchise. It no longer is.
WoW is an old - very old - game. It won't run on the newest systems - not just computer software either. As far as the computer software side goes though if you are a young programmer would you want to work on the current software - good for future employment - or old stuff? Its a no brainer. So staff tend to be older on average - more mature, less fiesty! Oh and getting new staff gets harder.
There is more to it but its just the way it is. And it happens to all projects that have been around a while and - almost always - have made tons of money and are now only making a lot of money. Its not something a company "decides" to do.
And as I said above motivating staff on a sunset project is a real challenge.
Note: As to most subbed mmo - so what? WoW has more subs than .... DAoC? Last number they announced was 5.4M worldwide. A quarter later they announced WoW revenue which implied 3.8M worldwide (dividing revenue by average sub income wasn't rocket science). A quarter later 3M max based on Blizzard income - 3M based on other games not growing but since they talked up e.g. Hearthstone it was probably under 3M. But - as I said - so what. Its not about WoW not making money its about trends, projections and simple age.
What they have to do is ask themselves what made WoW such a popular game. Was it Farmville and Pokemon kind of features, or was it something else. As long as that question remains unanswered there's no hope for World of Warcraft. I'm not saying they need to go back to vanilla or TBC but the game has to be more than a collection of features taken from asian grinders and mobile games.
Anduin - worst flaw is what, the teenage king is inexperienced?
Jaina - even her "mistake" was a John Lennon "give peace a chance" kind of thing iirc
Velen - the dude is literally the embodiment of the Light.
Alleria - you mean the one being in the lore that chills with void beings and make deals with them, without ever failing to completely control said Void?
Tyrande? Ha!
Malfurion? LMA fuck he's perfect O.
I agree with Suzie; Halford damn Wyrmbane would make for a more interesting character than those above. Wyrmbane would at least be good for a few genuine chuckles at his gung-ho "CALL IN THE ARTILLERY!" General Patton personality.
Genn at least could be written to have real and damaging character flaws, but instead they had him join the Boy Scouts with Anduin, and now he's all "we can do this if we just stick TOGETHER!"
TLDR : BFA is like talking to your Dad.