About the negativity

[lanesia24]

Oh yes, I'm obviously just a big bad biased broken clock because I found the premise to be ridiculous, the teased features either uninspired or lazy, and am betting against the expansion's success.

The fact that you think it's "very unlikely" that this expansion flops tells me all I need to know. <3 I honestly almost miss WoD. the Blizzard Internet Defense Force got really quiet.

You're better off not wasting any of your time with Wildberry. Trust me. Just pretend he's not there and you'll thank yourself later.

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The power decrease isn't the problem. I welcome that. What I don't like is the fact that they decided to end the faction war, only to reignite it later. What kind of writing is that?

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They cut content regardless. The same excuse was made for the Legion announcement (Which was far meatier than this), yet we had a zone get cut. Cut content is, sadly, an inevitability at this point.

The faction war has existed as long as there has been Warcraft. Was that a serious question? People seem to be conveniently forgetting that the horde and alliance aren't the ones taking down the Legion. It's the class order halls and the army of light that are banding together to take the fight to the Legion. Somehow though all these geniuses that are ripping on red vs blue somehow haven't quite clued themselves in on that slightly important fact.

[corebit]

The only thing weird about this expansion is how it's been:

Wrath- both sides unite to fight a common enemy
Cata- both sides unite to fight a common enemy
MoP- both sides sort of tolerate each otherto fight a common enemy
Legion- both sides unite to fight a common enemy
Cata- both sides tolerate each other to fight a common enemy
BfA - SUDDEN TOTAL WAR BECAUSE REASONS

The zones seem (at first glance) smallish, and for the love of god, the troll fest on the horde side really is going to make me roll alliance. Still, we'll see what happens. Anyone playing this game long enough will know to keep a bit of an open mind.

Why leave out TBC and Vanilla? Because it doesn't fit your narrative? And it's funny how you describe Cata and MoP as "both sides tolerate each other" when pretty serious battles and events have been waged in those expansions. Just because there were big baddies to kill doesn't mean the bombing of Theramore, Camp Taurajo, Ashenvale, etc are going to be forgiven or forgotten.

Also, the "reasons" have been already explained to you. The heart of the Warcraft series whether it's the RTS series or the MMO is the faction war. Red vs Blue, Orcs vs Humans. It's what makes it Warcraft.

And finally, that "common enemy" excuse gets repeated so much, but Blizzard can pull world-ending bosses out of their asses anytime. Does that mean that Alliance and Horde should just sing "Kumbaya" and merge into one faction to defeat that enemy?

[Wildberry]

That's some amazing revisionist history right there. When WoD was announced, almost everyone was hyped that Warcraft was finally "returning to its roots" and that there would be no more Pandas running around.

It's not hindsight actually. Most (intelligent) people were criticizing WoD. Morons were hyped, but morons are always hyped.

[sethman75]

It's not hindsight actually. Most (intelligent) people were criticizing WoD. Morons were hyped, but morons are always hyped.

See the OP for evidence.

[Bas Prime]

You are getting South Seas... Zandalar and Kul tiras with island hopping... We are getting an Azshara raid.. like wtf are you smoking.

I know we know not a lot at the moment, but when they said Azsahra was the second raid, I was like, oh, we take one of the most powerful beings on Azeroth and turn it into one patch? Even Deathwing was the big bad. So imagine what could have been (if we really kill her, because I hope she escapes and THEN we get the "south seas" expansions many would like to see); Nagas attacking the shores of Azeroth as a pre event like Invasions. Beautiful Islands, some we already know, old gods and nagas, pirates. Azshara is the big bad together with Nzoth or the Boss before Nzoth. (just the way I imagined it, just as an example.) I think that the horde makes peace with the Zandalari is...weird, too. They were built up as villains on Isle of Thunder, and now they are allies. Thats kinda ok and kinda meh at the same time. It could have been the last troll patch, that ends all storylines for the troll empires. Like some dungeons just for trolls, (what we get with blood trolls i guess) a raid defeating Rastakhan, and a whole lot of story around the trolls like in ZG and ZA. They could have turned Jinta Alor into something new, give it new story, could do something with Tanaris ans Zul Farak.
And to clarify something, I have always been pro Blizz on their announcements. I wanted this Azsahara I discribed ealier since before MoP. I was surprised by MoP and WoD the most, and I was hyped for it, I loved it (when they announced it). BfA sounds solid. But my hype was dead at the announcement.
The races they add to the factions are solid, and I am sure there will be more coming, but honestly, Mag'har, Taunka, Undead Humans (like Nathanos) or undead Trolls / Bloodelfs come to mind first.
And another thing, yes, in real history wars ignite a lot after they were settled. But I no war we have had a fricking Universal Threat punch a hole in our world with a sword, or had old gods or a space crusade make us band together to survive. And after all this, we need to stick together, class hall (shit) and the like, we get another war. Fine. But then let this be it. no sorry excuses for a peace that will be more like a stalemate. If they want wow to be WAR then let it be WAR. There. Will. Not. Be. Peace. Anymore!! LOK'TAR OGAR!
I wished for xfaction join, grouping, guilding raiding, being able to talk to each other, but still be able to have this skirmish war. But this blows us back so far, I dont see a good way of them making us work together again besides the obvious, oh heck, well while we are stabbing each other there is a bigger threat emerging. Oh dear, if we could just have had time to prepare for that and not go at each other like little kids in a sandbox.
Oh and the King died? how about our Warchief died trying to defend your six (or nine). Yeah, that was totally deliberate shit we did there, getting smoked and use that as an excuse because we just wanted your King to die. We sneaky bastards, we.
Still, looking forward on how the story will play out, but the feeling right now is hype is dead

[ryanmahaffe]

This. Honestly, people are capable of seeing a good design idea when they see one. Yes, we don't have the fucking game in our hands, but it's retarded to say that we shouldn't express due concern if we feel that they're making mistakes. You're free to avoid the internet if you want to see positivism for that matter.

Well, Wild is wrong, WoD was one of the most hyped up expansions of all time.

[Eurhetemec]

I don't know that I would say that. Some expansions promise adventure or something mysterious. This one promises more of an ongoing and never-ending faction war that I've never found all that interesting to begin with. So first impressions do matter.

I feel like you're conflating "first impressions don't matter that much" and "your opinion doesn't matter", and I'm sorry if I gave the impression that it's the latter, because that's not what I'm saying. If something is not to your taste, that's fine, and I don't entirely disagree re: adventure vs. HvA, a truly "wondrous adventure" expansion (which I feel like only TBC, Wrath and to a limited extent MoP ever promised), a journey of discovery, would have been ideal for me.

However - we're months and months out from release. Eight or nine if we're lucky, frankly. Over that entire period, more and more information will come out about BfA, and people's own feelings and thoughts will shift considerably, in both directions. Systems will be revealed, class and design changes will come out. Stuff will get cut or get added, we'll find the zones are giant or tiny (via beta), and there will be a response to 8.0's mechanics, before the expansion launches, as well as to the run-up events like Silithus.

Any or all of that could change people from being excited to depressed, or bored to hyped, or whatever. I've just seen too many times where, when an expansion was revealed, someone was super-hyped, and by the time it released, they were practically bitter about it (often because some peculiar, minor, feature they liked got cut or modified), or yes, where someone was spitting tacks about the expansion but when they actually got the pre-patch, tried the X.0 systems and so on, suddenly started being very positive about it.

Honestly for me, I'm pretty positive because it has a number of "Features Eurhetemec would have put in WoW years ago":

1) Scaling etc. for the Old World and expansions, they even put in the whole "pick what expansions to do" feature (though why we can't skip WoD I dunno, hopefully they change their mind on that - just make Cata and MoP scale 80-100!). This is more important to me than you might guess because, at least for significant level ranges, it will let me and my wife and my friends play characters of fairly large level differences together because the ranges are fairly generous - we'd have been able to play a lot more together if say, an L20 could play with an L48, or an L62 with an L75.

2) Small-party PvE with randomized content and advanced AI opponents. Sure they, may fuck this up, but conceptually this is huge, and this is something I've wanted for years.

3) Larger-group co-op PvE against an AI force in an RTS-style environment - I'd love to see them extend this to a sort of AV2.0 with actual PvP was well, but this is very exciting.

4) Races outside the selection we already, but that aren't ridiculous (to me) stuff like Naga, Ethereals, etc. - I don't like the selection, to be 100% honest. Nightborne for the Horde is a good choice, but the Allies do not need another bloody Elf that isn't a High Elf, and Dark Irons are a okay but Wildhammers would have been a lot cooler. However, the system is open to expansion and they say they intend to expand it*. Zandalari trolls though! Zandalari and Nightborne together have me thinking of switching to Horde.

On top of that, I see WoW as having the most solid "base" of a game it's had since Wrath - more solid than Wrath in many ways, in fact:

A) The way dungeons are handled in Legion is excellent, and M+ is brilliant, and this is continuing. A younger Blizzard might have casually abandoned this system in favour of needless novelty.

B) WQs are coming back - again, I love these, they work so much better for me than Dailies, and hopefully Blizzard can improve them further (making them easier to unlock on alts would be a start - I would suggest just making them auto-unlock if your main has unlocked them and an alt hits 110).

C) Whilst Legion has some "SOAK!!" issues and a few raid design issues, particularly in Mythic, raid design in general seems to be in a fairly decent place, with Normal relatively accessible, but Mythic significantly challenging. Hopefully we can see some more "fun" raids in BfA.

D) Quest design and writing in Legion are pretty much as good as it's ever been in WoW. There's always some bum stuff, but always has been and always will be, there's just a lot LESS of it in Legion, with a stronger balance of serious and funny, better tonal shifts, better story-telling, less excessive use of phasing (some bits of Cata, Wrath and MoP particularly are totally maddening to do with more than one person because of phasing), and much better ways of delivering information.

All of that seems to be continuing, and it doesn't look like there's random novelty or change for change's sake, which I know some people love but... I don't. I like it when MMOs hit their groove.

There are also promised features we haven't seen yet, which should be good - like a new UI. I am surprised we haven't seen it, but potentially it could be huge because if done right could be better than anything but the most elaborate UI setups. I know, I know, people are all "But I have addons!", and I do too, I'm all WeakAura'd, Elvui'd, DynamicCam'd, CatchTheWind'd, etc.

So I understand reservations - reservations, not lengthy whining, "WOW IS DOOMED!", or "Ugh I hate it all!", and maybe I'll change my mind - it could happen, but I think there's a lot of overwrought people hyper-focusing on the theme or the like and ignoring the gameplay and so on.

I will say one thing - the strong reaction to the theme suggests that, basically a lot of people ARE role-playing, and do see WoW as a role-playing game, even if they never use emote or say anything in-character or whatever. I think that's why it offends so many people - there's a role-play element in the mind. That's kind of a good thing but the devs might want to think about embracing it and giving us actual CHOICES in this "War Campaign" we have. And no, Blizzard "Do you build a Gun Battery or an Orbital Laser" is NOT a choice lol!



* = I don't actually trust them on this. I'm not assuming we'll get any races beyond these, because all it takes is the prevailing thinking to change a bit and we'll never see another one, or not see one for several years. But... if they do, and if we see one or two within, say, a year, this could be a big feature for me.

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I know we know not a lot at the moment, but when they said Azsahra was the second raid, I was like, oh, we take one of the most powerful beings on Azeroth and turn it into one patch? Even Deathwing was the big bad.

What I don't get is that literally half the prediction/expectation post about the patches were for the raids were "8.1 some dude who cares, 8.2 Aszhara, 8.3 Nzoth", sooooo how are people surprised Azzie is second?

Likewise I hope she survives - and I'm fairly sure she will. I'd be very unsurprised if it was "8.1 some dude, 8.2 Azzie's First Raid, 8.3 Azzie Gets More Allies, Tries Again", maybe with a face-heel turn and stuff. I'd also be super non-shocked if Illidan managed to get time off from staring at Sargeras to get involved with the Azshara stuff.

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It's not hindsight actually. Most (intelligent) people were criticizing WoD. Morons were hyped, but morons are always hyped.

Even though this classifies me as an "intelligent person", I have to say, this is BS. It's total hindsight, and your criteria for whether people are "intelligent" or not is "Do they agree with Wildberry", which well, jesus wept frankly. Have you considered a career in politics? That's the sort of place where that attitude is prevalent.

[Bas Prime]

What I don't get is that literally half the prediction/expectation post about the patches were for the raids were "8.1 some dude who cares, 8.2 Aszhara, 8.3 Nzoth", sooooo how are people surprised Azzie is second?

Likewise I hope she survives - and I'm fairly sure she will. I'd be very unsurprised if it was "8.1 some dude, 8.2 Azzie's First Raid, 8.3 Azzie Gets More Allies, Tries Again", maybe with a face-heel turn and stuff. I'd also be super non-shocked if Illidan managed to get time off from staring at Sargeras to get involved with the Azshara stuff.

Unless they want to avoid the "8.2 was just a setback." outcry. I mean we really have not seen a lot and there is of course the possibility that the 8.2 patch will be start with massive lore around Azshara, in the past, and in the present, and we have new Nage themed dungeons, and maybe she really raises 1-3 zones above the sea level and we get to Nazjatar where the raid is. If it is done right, I could live with that. But I kinda hoped for a more prominent role for her. But again, we are basically Jon Snow right now

[Eurhetemec]

Unless they want to avoid the "8.2 was just a setback." outcry.

True but we love that "outcry" and so do Blizz. "It was just a setback" is a charming meme, not a hateful rage-causer.

[bufferunderrun]

I'm already seeing a running trend of whine and bitch threads, about lack of content, lack of information, and a litany of other "problems". How about you wait more than 6 hours to complain about an expansion that hasn't even been announced for a full day?

because what they announced is already enough to form a general opinion on many aspect of the new xpack, they say the main focus is alliance vs horde and everyone with a bit of brain know what that mean; we have already seen that.

[Bas Prime]

True but we love that "outcry" and so do Blizz. "It was just a setback" is a charming meme, not a hateful rage-causer.

Yeah, it would totally be ok for me, if she tries something and fails, but tries again. But I would prefer that she just uses attack a as a bait move, and the second thing is her real plan. XY was just a .... ruse

[Eurhetemec]

Yeah, it would totally be ok for me, if she tries something and fails, but tries again. But I would prefer that she just uses attack a as a bait move, and the second thing is her real plan. XY was just a .... ruse

That'd be ideal.

[Bas Prime]

That'd be ideal.

See, when I saw the cinematic, I was in a weird state, and as far as i can read in this forum, i am not alone. The cinematic was the best they ever did. I even though "STAND AS ONE!" would be THE Alliance shout from now on. Would be awesome. Sylvanas FOR THE HORDE and Saurfang screaming...man...thats beyond legendary. Just the best cinematic they ever did. And many where really really epic.
Then again, I am not a fan of the faction war. Because, a) I wished for xfaction raids/guilds/groups and the options that would result out of it (race specific hero classes) and b) because at the end of BfA we will be putting our differences aside and work togehter again (or they keep it that way, but they did not before, and I highly doubt that) and that makes this war kinda meh. It will be fun, it will be awesome, I am sure, but I think, It is weird, because we just worked together.
Ah well, I have faith in Blizz. And I can see the "south seas" as I hoped for in a close version to be done by them

[Ilir]

You can tell the faction war arc of this expansion come out of nowhere when in the entire legion expansion they made it seem like horde/alliance were allies for good.

Now all of a sudden its "take back Lordaeron" when the writers never built anything up to it at all.

Yeah Alliances and Horde were such allies in Stormheim kappa

Or all the dialogue between the 3 elven races in Suramar kappa

or the "what Sylvanas is horde leader - impossible ¨" from alleria kappa

Do you still have bs to tell us ?

[Deleted]

Same whiners as always.

I wish MMO-C would do something to lose some of the negativity and constant moaning on this forum. Such a negative vibe here always. @chaud

[Hallowseve17]

I'm actually excited to resub for this expansion! I can't wait to unlock the allied races (and see what other ones are planned), I'm excited to see how our beloved Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms will look like. Haven't been this hyped for a WoW expansion in a while. Also, I've always been a fan of the Alliance-Horde conflict, I'm interested to see how that will play out and if a "third party" (Old Gods, Naga, ect.) is involved.

[Sanguinerd]

This is MMO-CHAMP, whining and complaining is what people do.

Also everyone is the best, knows everything, can travel through time(or straight up predict the future) and generally be a miserable person.

[Dragon ANX]

I'm already seeing a running trend of whine and bitch threads, about lack of content, lack of information, and a litany of other "problems". How about you wait more than 6 hours to complain about an expansion that hasn't even been announced for a full day?

If you look my post history, you can see there i'm a very positive guy, but this Blizzcon annoucement is lacking information very hard if you compare with WoD or Legion.
I will not say that it is lacking content as i agree that they just annouced it less than 24 hours ago, but first impressions are not looking good.

[rda]

Same whiners as always.

I wish MMO-C would do something to lose some of the negativity and constant moaning on this forum. Such a negative vibe here always. @chaud

I have a recipe!

Tell Blizzard to make an effort for a change, and do something worthy of being called an expansion and being shown on Blizzcon.

Easy.

[Jastall]

That's just first impressions. Usually the success of an expansion lies in the details, not in its theme. Cata was a nice concept for an expansion with terrible execution so it flopped. MoP was panned for its concept but the actual game systems were possibly the best in the game's history so it was redeemed. WoD had tons of people pumped up and yet it was, well, WoD. BfA could go either way at this point.

My distaste for the expansion's faction war theme, and how undersold it seemed to be at Blizzcon, could very well vanish completely if it's polished and fun to play.