Thal'Dranath scrapped

[TheTaurenOrc]

Meanwhile, normal people will take note and come to their own conclusions: it's not always smart to pre-order, Blizzard looks like they are trying very hard to not talk about stuff that isn't going to happen (noted that they've never really talked about Thal'Dranath and have shown nothing so getting all wrought up about it is faux outrage trying to look like the real thing).

I am sorry but Blizzard is a S&P 500 company not some two-bit Kickstarter and with that comes a sense of decorum and reliability.

And they know "promises" or not they are standing up in front of 10's of thousands of fans showing off features for their next product. The words promise doesn't need to come out of their mouths, showing it and effectively marketing it sets an expectation.

[Redroniksre]

I am sorry but Blizzard is a S&P 500 company not some two-bit Kickstarter and with that comes a sense of decorum and reliability.

And they know "promises" or not they are standing up in front of 10's of thousands of fans showing off features for their next product. The words promise doesn't need to come out of their mouths, showing it and effectively marketing it sets an expectation.

We knew nothing of Thal'dranath, absolutely nothing other than it wouldn't even be in the game at launch. Now we know it will be replaced with something else. If you think everything Blizzard says is a promise then i am surprised you are not outraged about everything since vanilla. Old troll models please.

[MoanaLisa]

I am sorry but Blizzard is a S&P 500 company not some two-bit Kickstarter and with that comes a sense of decorum and reliability.

And they know "promises" or not they are standing up in front of 10's of thousands of fans showing off features for their next product. The words promise doesn't need to come out of their mouths, showing it and effectively marketing it sets an expectation.

A circle on a map at an initial preview is not a 'feature' by my lights. YMMV.

[boyzma]

My god...didn't read all 32 pages but read enough to know people really need to calm down. I would like one smidge, one dot (besides a picture of a map) of evidence what exactly was on Thal'Dranath. Did it have hubs? Did it have dungeons, a raid? No body knows because Blizzard never said....so why all the butt hurt? I would much rather have something better than the same ol same ol. It wasn't scrapped...how can you scrap something that didn't exist? Was the idea, plan, dumped? yes, because they had a better idea. Just chill ffs. Good day!

[Melkandor]

Lol, this is going to turn into the players getting shafted out of more content yet again, then y'all will whine once Blizzard gives their half-assed excuse on why they didn't deliver anything in place of Thal'dranath

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Um... With the way this community reacts to anything Blizzard says (as in, taking anything shown or talked about as the absolute truth) and raking them over the coals if things change... No, they shouldn't say anything about what is being changed. There is no bad PR here because it won't matter what Blizzard says... All that will be focused on is that "Oh noes content is being scrapped". Besides, if we get hints about what is replacing Thal'Dranath, and it gets changed again... Blizzard gets raped again by this lovely community... because fuck a dev team that decides to make changes pre-launch after showcasing something at a convention, or talking about the idea in interviews, right?

Look at WoD, can you really blame the people that love the game but dislike the direction the devs are taking it (which their direction seems to be wandering around with their thumbs up their asses.)

[TheTaurenOrc]

A circle on a map at an initial preview is not a 'feature' by my lights. YMMV.

You know very well that it was much more than that, mentioned at both Gamescon and Blizzcon being featured in the zones preview.

And if you don't consider zones to be features, well I don't know what to say. If them being on the top of the feature list on the pre-order site isnt enough, I don't know what is.

[Therikan]

For the people saying the island would be where N'zoth's prison is. I dont think so.
I personally think its quite obvious that his prison has sunk beneath the sea, and its not on land since we have clues all over the game about the "drowned god" and a "sunken city" ..or a place so deep in the sea that even the light cannot reach etc etc. Hell there is way too much evidence to support this instead of it being in Thal-Dranath, so chill out people.

[Aucald]

Um... With the way this community reacts to anything Blizzard says (as in, taking anything shown or talked about as the absolute truth) and raking them over the coals if things change... No, they shouldn't say anything about what is being changed. There is no bad PR here because it won't matter what Blizzard says... All that will be focused on is that "Oh noes content is being scrapped". Besides, if we get hints about what is replacing Thal'Dranath, and it gets changed again... Blizzard gets raped again by this lovely community... because fuck a dev team that decides to make changes pre-launch after showcasing something at a convention, or talking about the idea in interviews, right?

True, but there is still an element of market strategy in the pitch process - you need to soften the blow of perceived content removal with the sizzle of something else, even if you don't have a firm idea of what it is. In this I think the interviewee missed the mark because he stated "we've got something better planned" but didn't provide even the merest glimpse of what that might be. Even better than this, though, would be ensuring that proto-content isn't exposed to the masses like Farahlon or Thal'dranath were. Either you need tighter control over the release of an Alpha or Beta product's NDA, or you need to ensure your staging of "future" content is in such a manner that you can somewhat control whose eyes are viewing it.

I agree the WoW community is, well, kind of unhinged when it comes to these things. But I also continue to feel Blizzard does themselves no favors by their fairly loose control over visible content in unfinished products.

[Fenzha]

Just think of Thal'dranath as Tanaan Jungle and their new idea is anything else. I would give anything now for them to have had a better idea for Tanaan.

[Unholyground]

Just think of Thal'dranath as Tanaan Jungle and their new idea is anything else. I would give anything now for them to have had a better idea for Tanaan.

Tanaan should have upgraded over time and got more difficult with better rewards, it could have been interesting to see. Or even have had a system where you could push back the corruption and then cycle in different rares at random every few days to freshen everything up.

[Mytheros]

I'm glad some of you aren't just joining the "let's all freak out now" movement of people already doing the "Here we go again more cut content"....

How about before we get the pitchforks out -- we have some patience and see what the idea that is "better than Thal'Dranath" actually is? I mean expansion is only a smidge over 2 months away now....surely we can wait 2 months.

[Sylv_]

We've had Facebook access since the armory app launched like 7 years ago. We have access to the Video portion like Twitch.

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Hold onto that amazing Dance Studio idea. You realize it didn't make the game because it was a stupid idea? We can try out our racial dances in a studio? No longer dancing randomly in Stormwind you can now coordinate in a room to do the same thing!

That really is the only one that people stick on for years because it's the only feature that was printed on the box and not delivered on.

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The only place Thal'Dranath was mentioned was nowhere. It was on a picture of a map during the reveal at their event. That's it! It never made it to the website promoting Legion and it most definitely isn't on the box.

One lie, of many. I also think the dance studio was stupid AF and I'm glad it was scrapped. Blizzard are skeezy when it comes to going back on content that they said would be in the game. They only got smarter about how they lied.

[Tharkkun]

You know very well that it was much more than that, mentioned at both Gamescon and Blizzcon being featured in the zones preview.

And if you don't consider zones to be features, well I don't know what to say. If them being on the top of the feature list on the pre-order site isnt enough, I don't know what is.

No, you are incorrect. The only mention of it outside of the map is "That leaves Thal'Dranath. We're still working on this zone and will be released later in legion similar to Tanaan." That's from the Blizzcon presentation. No preview, screenshots, or anything like all the other zones were shown.

It was a flat piece of land in Alpha and removed soon after. Yesterday was the first mentioning of the zone since Blizzcon.

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One lie, of many. I also think the dance studio was stupid AF and I'm glad it was scrapped. Blizzard are skeezy when it comes to going back on content that they said would be in the game. They only got smarter about how they lied.

Nah, not really. Again, people see sketches, maps, etc at Blizzcon and jump to conclusions. 99% of the time it's covered in the Q&A at Blizzcon which people don't read. Just like Flying, Transmog system, Follower Customization, Garrison placement, etc. That was all covered in the QA but people refuse to accept that since it differs from the initial announcement which was less than 2 hours prior. But yet people still accused Blizzard of promising it would be in the game when they clearly said no. If you want to keep saying they lied then back it up.

[MoanaLisa]

I agree the WoW community is, well, kind of unhinged when it comes to these things. But I also continue to feel Blizzard does themselves no favors by their fairly loose control over visible content in unfinished products.

Communication with an unhinged community that demands to know everything and takes every single word or phrase as gospel truth is difficult. I can understand why they say as little as they do. Understanding of course that if some creative type had never written in Thal'Dranath on that map it probably never would have been much of anything except an object of curiosity. Which only goes to show how ridiculous the whole thing is. Because we don't really know much more about it than that. Yet you've got people acting as if they need a fainting couch due to their outrage about something not on a map any longer.

It'll teach them to name their small islands next time around. It will.

[Aucald]

Communication with an unhinged community that demands to know everything and takes every single word or phrase as gospel truth is difficult. I can understand why they say as little as they do. Understanding of course that if some creative type had never written in Thal'Dranath on that map it probably never would have been much of anything except an object of curiosity. Which only goes to show how ridiculous the whole thing is. Because we don't really know much more about it than that. Yet you've got people acting as if they need a fainting couch due to their outrage about something not on a map any longer.

It'll teach them to name their small islands next time around. It will.

I don't personally have any outrage over the losses of Farahlon or Thal'Dranath - you can't miss what you never had and all that. But Blizzard should, at this point, know their audience pretty well, even if that audience is as unstable as a roomful of hyperactive children with unfettered access to amphetamines. It wouldn't have taken much foresight to think that iterating on Thal'dranath in an Alpha or Beta without an attached NDA could generate the wrong idea. Especially in light that Thal'Dranath barely received textures or anything approaching the work on the other areas. Better to keep it isolated and in-house, and if you have to drop then drop it and no one would be the wiser for the most part.

I know it's kind of a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" consolation prize with the players - but I think Blizzard has a well-deserved reputation at this point for teasing content it can't deliver on (whether or not that failure to deliver is due to external and/or uncontrollable factors). As Ion himself noted in the interview, actions speak louder than words.

[Gambit5555]

I am sorry but Blizzard is a S&P 500 company not some two-bit Kickstarter and with that comes a sense of decorum and reliability.

And they know "promises" or not they are standing up in front of 10's of thousands of fans showing off features for their next product. The words promise doesn't need to come out of their mouths, showing it and effectively marketing it sets an expectation.

And its bullshit link this that leads to communication shut downs. In every single one of these presentations, they cover very loudly and clearly " this is still in production, things will change, etc" so this bullshit about them advertising is just morons ignoring everything except what they want to hear

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Lol, this is going to turn into the players getting shafted out of more content yet again, then y'all will whine once Blizzard gives their half-assed excuse on why they didn't deliver anything in place of Thal'dranath

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Look at WoD, can you really blame the people that love the game but dislike the direction the devs are taking it (which their direction seems to be wandering around with their thumbs up their asses.)

Then quit the game please, for the love of God quit this game.

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You know very well that it was much more than that, mentioned at both Gamescon and Blizzcon being featured in the zones preview.

And if you don't consider zones to be features, well I don't know what to say. If them being on the top of the feature list on the pre-order site isnt enough, I don't know what is.

Tell us all about it then. Because its preview was a circle on a map with a handwritten name. If you consider that a feature then imagine they erased the name and replaced it with "something cooler"

[Absintheminded]

Gonna go ahead and speculate they are going to add a Throne of Thunder style patch later in the expansion to give us a Troll raid

[Gambit5555]

True, but there is still an element of market strategy in the pitch process - you need to soften the blow of perceived content removal with the sizzle of something else, even if you don't have a firm idea of what it is. In this I think the interviewee missed the mark because he stated "we've got something better planned" but didn't provide even the merest glimpse of what that might be. Even better than this, though, would be ensuring that proto-content isn't exposed to the masses like Farahlon or Thal'dranath were. Either you need tighter control over the release of an Alpha or Beta product's NDA, or you need to ensure your staging of "future" content is in such a manner that you can somewhat control whose eyes are viewing it.

I agree the WoW community is, well, kind of unhinged when it comes to these things. But I also continue to feel Blizzard does themselves no favors by their fairly loose control over visible content in unfinished products.

If they go that route, which I wouldn't blame them, then they would either cancel Blizzcon, or only have Blizzcon a month before expansion release. The community can't bitch about not enough communication, then bitch ever time something in development changes

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One lie, of many. I also think the dance studio was stupid AF and I'm glad it was scrapped. Blizzard are skeezy when it comes to going back on content that they said would be in the game. They only got smarter about how they lied.

You should probably never read about any game ever in development then. Ever

[Nibelheimy]

True, but there is still an element of market strategy in the pitch process - you need to soften the blow of perceived content removal with the sizzle of something else, even if you don't have a firm idea of what it is. In this I think the interviewee missed the mark because he stated "we've got something better planned" but didn't provide even the merest glimpse of what that might be. Even better than this, though, would be ensuring that proto-content isn't exposed to the masses like Farahlon or Thal'dranath were. Either you need tighter control over the release of an Alpha or Beta product's NDA, or you need to ensure your staging of "future" content is in such a manner that you can somewhat control whose eyes are viewing it.

I agree the WoW community is, well, kind of unhinged when it comes to these things. But I also continue to feel Blizzard does themselves no favors by their fairly loose control over visible content in unfinished products.

I agree, but maybe there's a reason why he hasn't mentioned a name. Thal'Dranath for example, we've never heard of it before, or had any idea of what it could of been. But if say they're now planning Kul Tiras, that might be giving away more than they'd like.

[SkyTides]

Last time they replaced something with something else was moving capital cities from Karabor and whatever fortress in FFR to Stormshield and whatever Horde hub, so I wouldn't keep the hopes up.

It would be PR suicide if they pulled another WoD At least they've admitted that they 'wasted' karabor/shattrath.
I'm hoping for some kind of Naga themed isle - as long as it's not some dark, dingy depressing place like Tanaan