You know, there comes a certain point when you have to wonder if someone can actually look at things practically pertaining to game development, and not simply how a rough period of time made them feel, and it's blatantly apparent you're taking this personally and cannot do so.
Your feelings and others towards WOD, including my own (which really weren't positive), don't simply roll over into the next expansion if things aren't actually lining up similarly to it in the development process. And, to be practical, they haven't.
People seem to be under this assumption that Blizzard can just throw money at a problem. IE, in this case, "Well, if you have a better idea, I still want Thaldranath, so give me both."
Rather than waste the resources that's allocated to one of their content patches that they deemed would be, in fact, a waste, they're crafting something "better" and along the same lines. Better is of course subjective, but we don't even know what the fuck Thaldranath woul've been. There's nothing to miss involving it except a name and paranoia that "Legion will be WoD 2.0."
And please don't come at me with the "it's better to be negative and critical than mindlessly positive", because I can easily say to you "it's better to be rational than mindlessly negative or positive".
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You really don't understand how game development works do you.
I'm sorry, but do you really take Photoshopped W.I.P. Maps as an Announcement. There are literally hundreds of "features" that get removed if that's the way you're going to construct your argument. It was put down as a nice idea, probably got a little work, but unless it is announced, you can't whine and complain about it being cut.
1. I actually loved WOD since it was my first expansion on the retail servers. I don't mind Farahlon being since I was off farming older content stuff. Im just telling people not to get hopes high just because a blizz dev said something in a Q&A.
2. I understand how game development works (tho mostly only created games with my mates for game jams)
I could see the entire planet of Argus being the expansion after Legion, when we take the fight on the offensive. If you read the Illidan novel, it says the only way to permanently kill the Legion is to do it in the twisting nether, or in areas that are heavily influenced by the nether....like Argus. Illidan even planned to do that, but was stopped before he could pull it off.
And now Illidan shows up again. Where do you suppose that's going to lead?
a lot of stuff has already been cut from legion. it seems that it will become a second wod.
As far as I know, the only cut content was Tal'dranath. I suppose their reasons for cutting it were solid, the zone was just another set of elven ruins, of which there are plenty in the broken isles, so they scrapped it ,and instead, a different island is coming in future patches.
The name Tal'dranath was instead repurposed as the original darnassian name for what we know as The Broken Shore.
Por que odiar si amar es mas dulce? (*^_^*)
It's not necessarily cut content per se, but the whole of Gorgrond was changed. Its layout was very different, there were train tracks and the zone was more industrialized. The Grim rail dungeon was designed with the old version in mind, that's why it doesn't even make sense now, as there are no tracks anymore that the train could use to get to Talador.
Why is it annoying? You can mount and fly around in UC, just like Stormwind, although it's slower to navigate. Bladespire would have been nice enough as a city, provided it got the same traitement as UC. Not sure about Karabor (haven't played much alliance during WoD). Got to admit though (okay, it's subjective) that they both look much nicer than the two cities we ended up with.
I could see it being more of a few zones of a content patch, or multiple patches. In the Illidan novel they basically lay out that Argus isn't some magical world anymore, its pretty kafukt by the legion so more comparable to Outlands it seems. Probably not a whole lot left to explore.
So far I believe that is the case. And like you said, once they gave us the reasoning behind it I was on board. Azsuna and Suramar already have enough broken Night Elf ruins that you really don't need to dedicate an entirely new zone to it.
There are no zones with a huge Fel influence at this point, that's why I'm thinking they want to use the Broken Shore for that aesthetic at some point, whether that is 7.1 or not, I think that's more likely to be a 7.3ish patch as the finale at the Tomb. So for 7.1 it's kind of curious to think about what they may have come up with. N'zoth and Azshara are of course playing a part in some of the events in Azsuna (well Azshara definitely is in any case) so they may have a 7.1 where we start trying to piece together what she wants the Tidestone for. I would hate to see Azshara/N'zoth only in a patch as I feel that ruins the potential for that kind of underwater expansion, but based on what we have in the Beta now it's definitely something I could see happening.
Or of course, Argus...although I feel at this point that would cover the "Fel-Covered Landscape" theme. But of course Argus could have some cool architecture related to the Draenei so who is to say...
“The rains have ceased, and we have been graced with another beautiful day. But you are not here to see it.”
Blizzard has a long history of over promising and under delivering on features. There are times that the fan base hears what they want to hear and that isn't on Blizzard directly. Then there are things like the flying pvp that was on the Wrath cd boxes and was never even close to being in game. Too often they fall victim to over sharing, they do seem to be doing a better job with this for Legion though.
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There is evidence all over the game of them wanting to do things or starting to do things and never getting it to work out. The huge portals to the emerald dream oddly located very far from Darnasus are my favorites. I spent a long time trying to figure out what these places on the map clearly special due to the enviroment around them, the mobs of elite dragons and the size of these gates, did only to find out it was a feature that never went live. I don't fault them for things like this, WoW was new and they had no idea where they were going. As the years went on and some of those typse of things kept happening it got annoying.
"Privilege is invisible to those who have it."
Controlling expectations is something they've really needed to do for a while. One of the key principles when you are creating something is not to promise anything that you can't guarantee. Had they never mentioned Aerial Combat in Wrath and somehow managed to get it in, people would have been thrilled!
"They said there would be vehicle combat, I didn't realize that meant AERIAL vehicles! Cool!"
It's just a matter of not being silly during their advertising...
“The rains have ceased, and we have been graced with another beautiful day. But you are not here to see it.”
If it's anything like MoP or WoD (and cata to a degree) the final raid tier is gonna be connecting us to the next expansion, and if the next expansion is Argus, well that means over 5 years of demons (counting HFC 14 months, legion and expac after about 2 years each). So more realistic is 7.2 Tomb and then 7.4 Azshara.
7.1 seems to be the Kara mega dungeon, we'll find out more at Gamescom or in september when its supposed to go on PTR
Cause we've NEVER explored ruins before? I bet the Blizzard team could come up with plenty of stuff. It's virtually a blank slate, and they could fill it with anything they could think of. Crashed legion or Draenei ships, ruined cities, desecrated temples, Legion structures, who knows.
Uhm, bullshit? They said that they would like to do racial garrisons at Blizzcon. Yes it was on the table. You're the one spreading misinformation.
Yes it was. There was even a map shown at Blizzcon that said Shattrath raid on it.
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Are you literally retarded? They showed a picture at Blizzcon that said "Shattrath raid".
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And no one gives a shit. It's funny that people like you always think this matters. As if petty shit like dance studio and aerial combat is comparable to actual content like zones, quests, raids and dungeons.