WoD had content, but something just wasn't right

[styil]

I feel that the content was there for WoD (albeit less than MoP), but something just wasn't right. The content just was not compelling as a whole. Breaking down the raw launch content, we have:

8 Dungeons (Normal, Heroic, Challenge)
17 Raid Bosses (LFR, Normal, Heroic, Mythic)
3 World Bosses
6 PvE Zones
Garrisons
Apexis Dailies
Treasures
5 Reputations (+ Bodyguards)
Professions
Pet Battles
1 World PvP Zone

I feel that there is a decent volume of content there. But why did I not feel compelled to do it? Looking back, I think these might have contributed:

1. Flight - for me personally, I think Draenor was just more enjoyable with flight. And it's not even about making the content trivial. I don't mind completing some content before flying, but I think waiting a year for flying is a big mistake. I don't want a 40 page thread on flight so I'll leave it at that.

2. Rewards - overall the rewards were very unrewarding and underwhelming for almost all non-raid content. There were far too many reskinned rewards, which I think would have been more tolerable had the base versions not been so ugly (boars, riverbeasts, etc.). The power rewards were terrible (650 world bosses, 655 apexis after months of farming, LFR, etc.).

3. Underutilised World - the continent was far too tame for a "savage world". Too much of the land was empty leaving me confused and breaking my immersion. How could such a savage land be so dull and lifeless?

4. 'Rushed' expansion - I know people don't like this term, but despite 14 months of SoO, it was very evident that some areas of the game simply did not have enough development time invested (professions, character models, daily quests, Gorgrond, mount rewards, Garrison Buildings, Ashran). And the lack of post-launch support only compounded the problem.

5. Story/Lore - there was very little interaction with the biggest threats of Draenor (the Warlords). Reputations were very left wing and mindless grind fests with no purpose. As a result, people just did not care about the reputations, especially with the lackluster rewards on offer. The Tanaan storyline was very left-wing and left many people perplexed (Grom final boss?), and thus found it hard to engage with the 6.2 content.

In summary, WoD had less content than MoP but still a respectable amount of content just by looking at the sheer volume alone. But for some reason, I did not feel compelled to do the content and it was not engaging. I've attempted to discuss why I felt that this was the case above. It feels like they put only 50% effort into the non-raid content and was all about ticking the boxes rather than the passionate and engaging content that we've seen in the past.

[Deleted]

Please, we had ONE major patch instead of 4, and you're saying that the xpack had a decent amount of content?

That said, while I disagree with the fact that you're saying there was enough content, you're right on spot with your 5 points.

PS: BRF was not available at launch, and, after leveling was done, we had zero PVE zone.

[styil]

Please, we had ONE major patch instead of 4, and you're saying that the xpack had a decent amount of content?

That said, while I disagree with the fact that you're saying there was enough content, you're right about your 5 points.

If you look at that list, it would take hundreds of hours to complete the content in that list. So while it was lighter than MoP, there was still a fair amount to do. But I just did not feel compelled to do it this expansion like I usually do.

[Anevers]

The leveling content was the best they've ever done in my opinion. They had some great stories, great characters, and some cool lore. Once you hit 100 though it felt like the had abandoned ship. Which I know isn't the case but it felt like the content, story and everything else dropped way off after hitting 100.

[Deleted]

hundreds of hours

Is that a lot ? I probably had 60 days of gametime on my main character in MoP, that's way more than a thousand hours.

It might still seem like "a lot" of content on its own, but it makes sense to compare it to the other expansions (that were 10€ cheaper by the way).

This expansion was simply a movie advertisement. The way things were going in MoP with the legendary quest and Wrathion showing us the legion invading, Legion should of been next. Since the movie was close to release they had to rush some unfinished mess out to get people to know the characters better.

Imo.

This is beyond non-sense, do you think they'd be willing to sacrifies the million of dollars they're earning each months with the subscriptions to support a movie where they probably didn't earned a single dollar (yeah, movie tickets are not going in Blizzard's wallet for the most part of the benefits...).

[thesmall001]

Quality control. You can tell that Blizzard usually runs any ideas through a gamut of people until it picks out little flaws in the fundamentals that become big cracks. They skipped this step, likely letting the new staff hone their instincts, and the result was things like the Shipyard which was a solid concept that contained silly traps like insurmountable objectives that over-punished you for low-chance failure beyond your control. Apexis Daily's was another thing: Combine several Daily Quests into a single cohesive task... Neglect any additional narrative; another thing that seems like a really good, efficient idea on the surface but can quickly be picked apart by anybody who's played longer than a year and knows the lessons we learn every expansion.

"Let's make the first thing you do in the expansion a bottle neck. Then let's have that bottle-neck be something you return to every 15 minutes. How do we prevent over-crowding? Instance it per player." That's a two person conversation. The third person would usually say "Won't that overload the instance servers?"

Rewards, as you point out, is something an experienced Designer would know to gauge carefully. In Rage of the Firelands we had extensive story lines and world content that nobody bothered doing because the end rewards were lower than you could get from other faster, easier content with less investment. I remember that being the first time I fed-back to Blizzard that rewards should always be rewarding for the time investment. They carried that lesson forward into Pandaria and it abruptly disappears at the start of WoD with days and days of Apexis Daily's rewarding 5-man Dungeon Gear which then has to be upgraded directly rather than through tokens (á la Baleful Gear) and it just was a "close to decent, but off" system.

[Deleted]

á la Baleful Gear

à :P

10charsftw

[Raetary]

the content was terrible, boring and most of the time completely useless and not fun.

[Deleted]

the content was terrible, boring and most of the time completely useless and not fun.

Yeah, exactly this.

OP, you said there was 5 reputations ? Well, I'd rather not have reputations if the only way of leveling them is farming stupid mobs giving 5 rep per kill.

[OrcsRLame]

I think for me the biggest disappointment was Tanaan Jungle. It's just so damn easy. Even the elites at Throne of Kil'jaeden are no threat as a tank, even if you just have normal HFC gear. With mythic gear, I think if you could somehow magically stack all the mobs in the zone on top of each other, you could AoE them down during ring if you're a DK or paladin.

Compare that to Timeless Isle, where there were challenges no matter what your gear level was, and it just seems so shitty by comparison. The mobs out there actually had mechanics that needed to be respected. Even if you had heroic SoO gear with quadruple upgrades, a single High Priest of Ordos could spank your ass if you fucked up its mechanics. But Tanaan is also imo too hard if you have no gear. Timeless Isle was great because you could go there with a fresh 90, and the weakest mobs would not stomp your ass. You could grind gear and do dailies and not get fucking raped. Then you can jump on your main that has SoO gear, and you could actually find a challenge. I had so much fun on Timeless Isle just doing random crap. I loved soloing Kilnmasters just for the rep and the fun of it. By comparison, Tanaan just feels so dull. Every mob is either some kind of spellcaster, a hunter, or they just auto attack for piss damage. No interesting mechanics on anything, no challenge for geared characters, too hard for undergeared characters, (seriously, take a boosted rogue through Tanaan and you'll know pain) and Saberon rep is just so goddamn boring compared to Shao'hao.

I loved the fuck out of the raid in WoD. Some of the finest to ever exist imo. The rest of the expansion was just so bland though, and Tanaan was the most disappointing zone ever.

[Sinyc]

3. Underutilised World - the continent was far too tame for a "savage world". Too much of the land was empty leaving me confused and breaking my immersion. How could such a savage land be so dull and lifeless?

What game did you play? My first toon, while leveling, was in combat 98% of the time. Was very annoying. And all the dazing and dismounting mobs almost made me go postal.

[Deleted]

If you look at that list, it would take hundreds of hours to complete the content in that list. So while it was lighter than MoP, there was still a fair amount to do. But I just did not feel compelled to do it this expansion like I usually do.

While that may be true, this is an MMO not a triple A weekend game. Hundreds of hours is not content for an MMO expansion for 2 years.

[Fabinas]

This expansion was simply a movie advertisement. The way things were going in MoP with the legendary quest and Wrathion showing us the legion invading, Legion should of been next. Since the movie was close to release they had to rush some unfinished mess out to get people to know the characters better.

Imo.

Agreed. /10c

[Venziir]

What's with all the "it's left wing" nonsense?

[Deleted]

This expansion was simply a movie advertisement. The way things were going in MoP with the legendary quest and Wrathion showing us the legion invading, Legion should of been next. Since the movie was close to release they had to rush some unfinished mess out to get people to know the characters better.

Imo.

No, the expansion was a 2 year long acid trip to get Gul'dan back. Instead of a 5 page webcomic in which someone rezzes our Gul'dan, we had to suffer trough 2 years of alternate universe bullshit just so Gul'dan can come back and die in 7.0

[Kazgrel]

Yeah, exactly this.

OP, you said there was 5 reputations ? Well, I'd rather not have reputations if the only way of leveling them is farming stupid mobs giving 5 rep per kill.

Having just finished the Insane title prior to WoD, then finding myself out on an island farming mobs for Frostwolf rep, 5 rep at a time, I had a serious case of "didn't I just do this?". Not long after finishing that rep, I stopped playing for a year.

I pretty much lived up to what I told some RL friends who played WoW with me, back when the Insane title was first discovered/announced: If I ever complete that, then you know I'm pretty much done with WoW. Wasn't far from the truth.

- - - Updated - - -

What game did you play? My first toon, while leveling, was in combat 98% of the time. Was very annoying. And all the dazing and dismounting mobs almost made me go postal.

Something something SAVAGE!

[Cæli]

I felt there were too many cosmetic rewards and few power rewards that you earn through skill and it was too easy to get a decent amount of power making the game length fairly short for a mmo for most casual players

[Deleted]

My own thoughts on WoD are:

1. LFR being gutted (don't hate me cause i like LFR :P). Made it unintereting to level alts to get crappy gear, crappy looking gear and no proc's (trinkets/set bonus) making some classes very boring to play - Destro lock says "hello"

2. Raids uninteresting. Highmaul was good, however blackrock foundry, though good, looked and felt too much like SoO. Helfire is really off putting with that green fel colour everywhere.

3. Terrible patches. 1 real patch, tanaan is very short lived and costs 5k gold to get there (lvl3 garrison req) means most alts have lvl 2 garrison and still make almost as much gold from missions as my main. No reason to make it lvl3.

4. Garrison Prison. Logging on should be fun, but it's not i know i have 30 mins of missions to go through sapps the fun.

5. Probably a few more i can't think of right now :P

[Deleted]

WoD class playability is lot worse than it was in MoP. Everything can be force-nuked down - mythic manno and archi included, dps-meter expansion.
Think how many manhours would have been saved from Legion economy designing, when garrisons would have been account wide. No more gold pouring (from missions and resources) and tedious chores with all alts.

[Deathquoi]

If you look at all the prelaunch hype material, it is clear that WoD was intended to be a much more significant expansion when it was originally drawn up. The problem is that they then figured they could tell the WoD story in a much shorter span of time and started cutting content assuming they'd get Legion out much faster. When it became clear that they weren't going to get Legion out as quickly as they thought, they were stuck, as they couldn't just slap together filler content for WoD and they didn't want to rush Legion.