A Lesson Learned

[Aehl]

If they can slow--not stop--the drain of players from the game with patch content, that likely makes up for what happened to them with Warlords.

Moana, they have already blown it.

This "no flight till xxx patch" will be okay for maybe two to three months. Then people will start to get sick to bloody death of it and walk away.

Scaled mobs. No flight. Running everywhere. Bad terrain. Running backwards and forwards trying to find a way up a hill. Trying to do arch when the digsite is at the top of an impassable and unclimbeable hill.

Fishing where you are constantly under attack

Quests that will take an hour to do along with a nice large repair bill that negates the very purpose of the quest. Yeah I REALLY want to do a quest that awards me 35 gold with a 100 gold repair bill.

This is WOD 2.0 and Blizzard have learned NOTHING.

It will get real old real fast.

[rda]

"..... The team has learned their lesson and accepted that they can't produce an expansion faster, so the plan moving forward as they start working on the next expansion is to make sure Legion has a lot more patch content."

Glad to hear that. But am I the only one who thinks that they should have learned this lesson a long time ago? It took Legion to learn it??? Really?

We hear something like this every time. It used to be "the team has learned their lesson and is committed to have no big periods of no content" with them sometimes talking about releasing expansions more often. Now it's more or less the same with a new twist in that the bit on releasing expansions more often got lost and instead they go with just "a lot more patch content".

All these words mean precisely nothing.

No, they didn't learn jack shit, what they are doing in Legion illustrates that plenty (no, it does NOT have a lot of launch content, the few changes from WoD are NOT worth the huge development time, in several notable cases Legion is a step BACK, not forward, etc). Yeah, someone is going to say that it should be apparent that they learned their lesson LATER when they come with these big and juicy patches full of content. Let's wait until that happens first, because the juicy content might easily turn out to be not so juicy, and the number of patches and total amount of content in them not so big.

And just wait until the next expansion gets even smaller than WoD or takes even longer than Legion to develop. They will be all too happy to tell you that this was because that "new" grand idea of having "a lot more patch content" was flawed and detracted them from fulfilling their goals. Same as how they are pinning all their failures now onto supposedly trying to make expansions faster.

Sum total: talk is cheap, we can tell that they learned something when we see it and so far all we have is a delayed expansion that looks bleak.

[ComputerNerd]

You're obviously the type that LFR is for. "Out of touch"? It's a video game, man. I don't care if it's popular or not with the masses. That wasn't the point I was trying to prove or disprove. Nice try, though. Also it appears you didn't play Vanilla much. Epics were far more challenging to acquire. Any mention otherwise further shows how, well, out of touch you are.

I had had virtually every world drop epic from vanilla through MoP drop for me at some point.
That alone kills the argument.
Simply being "epic" never meant anything consistent.
You can't make a good argument, so claim I didn't play vanilla.
Typical rubbish.
You ARE out of touch.

You did nothing to disprove my argument, instead trying to make claims which have nothing to do with the argument in question.
If I had or hadn't played in vanilla would have had no relevance on my argument.
Changing the subject is the behaviour of someone who has no argument.

[Dvaldin]

It's one of the things that made vanilla so refreshing. There were many significant and highly memorable patches while we waited on BC. BC also had a lot. The time gap between content started in Wrath, but it was sufficient save for after ICC which might have spurred the "faster expansion" thinking. I've never wanted a new expansion every year. But I have wanted more frequent content patches, even if it's a little something like 6.1, but without the time gap between that and 6.2.

[ComputerNerd]

Dude, you seriously have a complex. Prove you had "virtually every world drop epic" or it didn't happen, that simple. Your words carry no more weight than any other idiot trying to troll these forums. There IS no argument. I don't give a **** about you or your experiences in game. Furthermore, I have no idea why you're trying to instigate me or argue or whatever gets your rocks off. You're trying to put words into my mouth and I honestly don't have time to entertain you. GDIAF.

And for the record, next time someone makes comments about LFR and how it destroyed the feeling of Epic quality items, don't bring up world drops like it's comparable. Therefore, if there was an argument, it's all in your delusional little mind.

There is no proof of that, and you know that.
Dismissing my view with an impossible request proves I am not the one with the problem.
You made a statement about how epic used to mean something, and instead of actually proving that argument you started making unrelated accusations about when I apparently started playing.
That I am a "certain type of player".
You made a statement and cant back it up.

I backed up what I said.
You can't.

Epics were never consistent.
There were world drops with NO skill requirement, sheer dumb luck.
There were crafted, and there were multiple tiers from raiding with many different difficulty levels.
So exactly which of those do you actually pick out as being the definition, without all the others being counter to that definition.
Because of that wide variety there is no definition of them once "being epic", as they are as much epic now as they have ever been.

As I said, back up your argument instead of attacking me.
But you have proved repeatedly you have nothing.

If you want to disprove my argument, define EPIC in some way that takes into account ALL the sources.
You can't arbitrary discount specific ones because it suits you.

[PuffyPussy22]

"When the team set out to make Legion, the goal was to solve the content drought problem by making expansions faster than they have before.
The team made sacrifices along the way to try and make Legion faster.
They discovered along the way that there is a certain amount of time that goes into making an expansion that is up to par with what players expect and deserve.
If an expansion was just some new zones and dungeons, like a bigger patch, they probably could make them faster.
When the team starts adding new systems or classes, it takes time to iterate on the new things and get them right.
The team was too ambitious with their targets when planning for Legion.
The team has learned their lesson and accepted that they can't produce an expansion faster, so the plan moving forward as they start working on the next expansion is to make sure Legion has a lot more patch content."

Glad to hear that. But am I the only one who thinks that they should have learned this lesson a long time ago? It took Legion to learn it??? Really?

Like Sargnagel said, they say this everytime. The fact is the understanding that this was an impossible task and that patch content was the better option was discovered in Burning Crusader and Jeffrey Kaplan had a huge interview about it if you want to look it up. He discussed every aspect of nearly every problem the current Dev team seems to "suddenly" be finding in the game. It is as if the team didn't bother to make any notes, play any previous expansions, or really just gleam or learn anything from the history of this game and the developers that got it to the state it was in before the current devs ran it into the ground.

It is embarrassing to think someone could come in, run into the exact same problems that had already been encountered within the exact same game, that had already been figured out btw, and to then refigure nearly everything out, yet again, nearly a decade later. How would our society actually ever progress if it went about things the way Blizzard is atm? Simply put, we wouldn't. Its a joke at this point honestly, I have no hope at all for this game anymore.

[Felfaadaern Darkterror]

From GC on, people have noted that Blizzard does design by consensus. While there are advantages to this in that people feel heard and you don't exclude as many ideas, the lack of someone (or a few someones) saying "THIS is the direction. Work within that" seems absent. Design by committee never produces quality.

I think it would be exaggeration to say they've never produced quality. If players weren't enjoying the game, no one would care about content drought lol. Everyone who complains about content drought is essentially saying, "I enjoy playing WoW can I please have some more." If Blizz wasn't producing a quality game, most players would quit out of boredom without ever playing through the content.

- - - Updated - - -

BRF? Did you even clear BRF? It was the worst raid of all time, worse then dragon soul.

I thought Dragon Soul was epic! Other than being cheapened by LFR. So maybe it's all a matter of taste? We haven't even talked about what criteria to use.

[purebalance]

Tanaan was released alongside HFC, one of the best raids Blizzard has produced in recent memory. A lot of people shit on it nowadays because it's been out for so long but it was a pretty decent raid tier with plenty of memorable and unique bosses, particularly on Mythic difficulty.

I mean the same thing happened with Dragon Soul. Dragon Soul had nothing wrong with it, but it became the cool thing to hate on like Nickelback and the prequel SW trilogy.

[Deja Thoris]

I'm done talking to a brick wall. Blocked and reported for harassment.

Translation: I'm too dumb to argue my point coherently so I'll end this in the most immature fashion possible!

[PuffyPussy22]

I mean the same thing happened with Dragon Soul. Dragon Soul had nothing wrong with it, but it became the cool thing to hate on like Nickelback and the prequel SW trilogy.

Well, it may of been that the entire experience was ruined by the pop out book version of the real book and since you already knew what happened it was essentially ruined for anyone who was interested in reading the book to begin with.

Ill let you decipher what that means, but hopefully you get my point.

[Dhrizzle]

You need to read some books, or go back to school. You're incredibly hard to understand with your butchery of our language.

I do have one question for you, how did Heirlooms ruin the game for people? I'm a long time WoW player, since Tier 2 raiding in Blackwing Lair. Leveling your main was an arduous, lengthy task if you maintained a life outside of WoW. However, when it came to experiencing a new class, I believe this opened up a nice avenue to level alts. What detrimental effects does it have? Please list me some so I can understand.

I do agree that LFR should be burned to the ground. At the very least, make it to where it doesn't provide any rewards other than valor or something. If people desperately need to see content let them see it without getting rewarded for it. As far as I know, that's the only reason Blizzard keeps it implemented. "For the players who can't dedicate time to traditional raiding." Why the hell those people need gear, then? Let them see the content and be done with it if that's what it's for. Epics don't feel epic anymore because of this trash system.

Epics started thinking lose their epic feel in TBC when anyone could get a full set by losing 10 arena matches a week. Their epicness was completely dead when you could grind a full set in WotLK heroic dungeons easier than Vanilla or TBC allowed you to get a set of superior gear. That's when "purple is the new blue" became a thing

[PuffyPussy22]

Epics started thinking lose their epic feel in TBC when anyone could get a full set by losing 10 arena matches a week. Their epicness was completely dead when you could grind a full set in WotLK heroic dungeons easier than Vanilla or TBC allowed you to get a set of superior gear. That's when "purple is the new blue" became a thing

Yeah, this is correct. I don't think people who see "epics have no value" as an issue seem to realize is that when epics become baseline as an entry point to the game then the end point becomes that much more in sight and some people dont like the apex of a game to be ended to quickly, nor do they like that previous items and colors become essentially useless, which means an entire progression system has been nullified and replaced by something, something quite terrible, something quite hollow. The color isn't the issue, its what it represents. It represents a game going into decay and relying on cheap tricks, such as a purple color, to entice people because they have lost sight of why people cared to begin with.

It doesn't really matter at this point though.

[purebalance]

Epics started thinking lose their epic feel in TBC when anyone could get a full set by losing 10 arena matches a week. Their epicness was completely dead when you could grind a full set in WotLK heroic dungeons easier than Vanilla or TBC allowed you to get a set of superior gear. That's when "purple is the new blue" became a thing

If you lost every match in arena in TBC you would literally take months to get 1 item.

[Osmeric]

If you lost every match in arena in TBC you would literally take months to get 1 item.

Does that take into account dissolving the team and creating a new one every week, so the rating didn't get too low? Remember it was only team ratings there; personal ratings came in later.

[WowIsDead64]

The problem is in fact, that pace of development hasn't been changed since Vanilla - it's all about distribution of content in time. I.e. it's: 1) One big patch and then 2 years of nothing 2) Two smaller patches and 1 year of nothing 3) Three medium patches and 8 months of nothing 4) Four small patches and 6 months of nothing. Etc. I don't know, what is better. From one point of view I would prefer smaller patches with quicker pace of rewards once in 6 months, that would allow me to play on 2-3 favourite characters only, instead of one super-big xpack and then almost nothing in 2 years. But from other point of view I'm "Achiever" and altoholic, so sometimes I want to have time to finish all my business, so I would prefer one big patch, that would contain enough amount of good content, and then long content drought. Biggest Blizzards' problem - is that they release one "big" patch, that doesn't contain any content, that is suitable for me, and then they abandon this xpack and have year long content drought, that forces me to simply skip this year. Smaller patches with different kinds of content would be better in this case. May be their approach with more content at the beginning of xpack and long content droughts at the end - is rights, but overall I think, that Blizzard need to produce more content with better pacing.

[reasonstolike]

Oh oh, that's classic

[Deleted]

Its like when you people ask blizzard for an "apology" Blizzard says sorry, so what? Its just words. What does an apology do?

[Deja Thoris]

Boy, you're so clever. Because you quoting my post for no other reason than to instigate more off-topic b/s is so mature. Man, it must be lonely up there on that horse of yours. Enjoy your probable infraction for being a d*****bag.

Well stop telling people you've blocked and reported them for harassment because you disagree. Thats pathetic. I stand by what I said there. You're giving him the internet equivalent of "speak to the hand" combined with "I'm telling on you!" Seriously, learn to communicate so you can fight your corner or get off the internet.

[reasonstolike]

Reminds me of my childhood