Do you want yearly expansions?

[atredies]

The WoW storyline needs to be made epic again, 2 yearly expansions sounds right with more content in each one.

[SirBeef]

If I knew 100% that 12 months after an expansion was released a new one was being sold I would love it. Twelve months between expansion releases means no 12 month of nothing. Like the last two expansions had at the end which in my opinion has been wounds bleeding the game out. But I know it is never going to happen. Blizzard has always moved like molasses in the winter and I have no idea how they fooled themselves into thinking they have any hustle in them to make yearly expansions. Beyond the greedy cash blind of course. WoD really proves what you get from this type of thinking even though it will miss the mark by nearly double. So with all that said all I can really say is fuck yearly expansions. It's impossible for people of their mindset and just makes a weaker product.

Two different groups within Blizzard. You have the devs that I'm certain want to make the best game they can for the players and the executives that only care about the money side of things. That being said, if they could release an expansion every 12-14 months I'd be fine with it.

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I'm not sure Highmaul could last a full 6 months though. So there is that.

Hell BRF could not last 6 months.

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I want expansions released every two years on the dot, with four months of content for each content update.

7.0 > 4 Months
7.1> 4 Months
7.2> 4 Months
7.3> 4 Months
7.4> 4 Months

That 20 months. Three more for beta hype, and one month for preexpansion content.

Truth is, I like a little lull at the end of an expansion. Not a year long, but 7 months id be totally happy with.

MoP had the best delivery system for content. They need to go back to that schedule IMO. I can see why the last tier usually lasts longer, to get as many peole as possible to experience it, but that being said, maybe plan for some 5 mans or story content to tie people over until the pre patch.

[Jessicka]

That's not what I'm talking about.

I'm describing tiers seven and eight, and how they provided content for players without the need for a heroic switch. Tier seven is actually one of the best examples of what a raiding tier should look like because it had an introductory raid in either Naxxramas or Sartharion, an intermediary raid in late Naxxramas and Malygos, and a challenging raid in the form of Sartharion with drakes. What's important to note here is that the proportion of players that got the correctly tuned encounter was far more proportional than it is now.

Out of the raiding community, most players are "beginners", a smaller percentage are "intermediate" and the smallest percentage are "excellent". More tier seven bosses than ever since were appropriately tuned because there were more "easy" bosses than there were "a bit harder". In turn, there were more "a bit harder" bosses than there were "challenging". The real magic of tier seven was that players could complete the tier without necessarily being hardcore, and there's a lot to be said for that design.

Ulduar went about it differently via hard modes, but you get the point.

Tier 7 was also relatively short lived. Hardly anyone repeated EoE once they'd got that kill, and same with Sarth 3D; although there were always Pugs ready to line up for 'normal' mode. I don't think that tier would have had the legs for a couple more months, and again it was at a point in the life of the game where there was still a significant influx of new players to fill the place of burnouts. You could also do something to progress your character, in the form of VPs, every night outside of raids.

I've argued before that I don't think every boss needs a Mythic mode (that didn't go down well here), that they could be reserved for end-wing and tier-end bosses. So I see what you're saying. My feeling is that in the current system, most of the Mythic bosses are just 'filler' with a very few actually creating a new and more interesting encounter, and it just serves to exacerbate the inflating item levels by virtue of their need to drop loot and stretching out the gearing process. You could of course make what was left much harder, more intricate and more meaningful with some of the time you've saved on others' to drag out the progression and keep the prestige of killing them hard mode.

[Tradu]

People were screaming for yearly expansions, then WoD happened...

No, they weren't. They were screaming for better content pacing within the current expansion cycle length.

[Jessicka]

No, they weren't. They were screaming for better content pacing within the current expansion cycle length.

This. Blizzard were the only ones talking about faster expansions; the players were talking about not having 12+ months in the last tier and only 6 in each of the previous 2.

[The One Percent]

I want two year expansions with a major content patch every 4-5 months.

[Deleted]

I'm more than happy to have a bit of a content drought for each expansion, i'd rather have a new expansion every 2-3 years with fewer issues than a rushed expansion every year with potentially a lot of issues each time. Every launch has it's issues but i think rushed expansions would show that rush and pressure far more than anything else.

[SirBeef]

The WoW storyline needs to be made epic again, 2 yearly expansions sounds right with more content in each one.

I think the story is fine. I think too many people don't like the direction and go to the easy it's crap argument. Like my wife with the Simpsons. She hated a Halloween episode with talking dolphins back in 2000. Refused to watch the show since saying it's garbage and not funny. While the show is not nearly as funny as it was in it's prime, there have been plenty of top notch episodes since then but she refuses to watch any because she believes it is garbage.

As an avid comics reader for the last 40+ years, this time travel/alternate universe story of WoD made sense to me and I had no issues with things being similar yet different. Many people couldn't understand it or just dislike TT/AU stories. But that didn't mean it wasn't good. Likewise with Cata and MoP. I see a lot of personal dislike for the stories or settings equating to bad lore or writing which is not necessarily the case. We could easily get a good story in 12 months and a crap story in 24 months. According to these very forums one of the better liked expansions, TBC, is also known for having some of the worst story. Length doesn't always equal epic.

[Deleted]

2 years / expansion, and 4-5 months/major content patch

[Echo of Soul]

2 years / expansion, and 4-5 months/major content patch

If you're gonna have 4-5 month patches you probably need a lot longer expansions than 2 years.

[Pua]

Tier 7 was also relatively short lived. Hardly anyone repeated EoE once they'd got that kill, and same with Sarth 3D; although there were always Pugs ready to line up for 'normal' mode. I don't think that tier would have had the legs for a couple more months, and again it was at a point in the life of the game where there was still a significant influx of new players to fill the place of burnouts. You could also do something to progress your character, in the form of VPs, every night outside of raids.

All valid points, but none undercut the points I was making about tier 7. Could it have lasted a couple of months longer? Sure, given that we had far worse tiers last for a lot longer because of designer laziness.

I've argued before that I don't think every boss needs a Mythic mode (that didn't go down well here), that they could be reserved for end-wing and tier-end bosses. So I see what you're saying. My feeling is that in the current system, most of the Mythic bosses are just 'filler' with a very few actually creating a new and more interesting encounter, and it just serves to exacerbate the inflating item levels by virtue of their need to drop loot and stretching out the gearing process. You could of course make what was left much harder, more intricate and more meaningful with some of the time you've saved on others' to drag out the progression and keep the prestige of killing them hard mode.

You and I agree here. The requirement for a separate Mythic mode just doesn't have any justification, when barely 3% of players go into Mythic content during its patch cycle. A 12-boss raid, with four or five Mythic modes, would be more than enough.

I'd have previously said there's no way that'll happen, but... I don't know. I think the designers are finally coming to terms with the fact that the raiding gig is up. The shove to create meaningful world content and professions is a big thing for Legion, but also the dungeon set up. The Maw of Souls is a class apart from anything we saw in Pandaria or Draenor, and could easily have been a raid instance; it looks fucking fantastic.

That alone leads me to think times are changing, because previous incarnations of the game post-Cataclysm would have simply made that instance a raid and argued that it was too much work for something that'll be consumed quickly.

No, they weren't. They were screaming for better content pacing within the current expansion cycle length.

I've had a good look around this forum, the 'fishul site and indeed the Twitterverse and blogosphere; the quoted text from Tradu is accurate. There's no clamour, whatsoever, for faster expansions - only faster and more voluminous content.

[Septik]

i may have already said this in this thread, but i dont care how long the span of an expansion is, as long as theres enough content to fill that span, to date this has been blizzards biggest hurdle and i cant, for the life of me, figure out why they havent done something about it.

[Echo of Soul]

i may have already said this in this thread, but i dont care how long the span of an expansion is, as long as theres enough content to fill that span, to date this has been blizzards biggest hurdle and i cant, for the life of me, figure out why they havent done something about it.

It has to have something to do with bad planning or too much experimenting and reinventing the wheel. A content patch doesn't really have to contain all that much as long as the content is gated in some way, either directly with time/and or currency contraints or indirectly by use of difficult content.

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That alone leads me to think times are changing, because previous incarnations of the game post-Cataclysm would have simply made that instance a raid and argued that it was too much work for something that'll be consumed quickly.

I like a lot of the Legion things in theory. What I'm afraid of is that Legion will go full diablo and just have you repeating the same thing over and over and over again without variation for a small chance of that perfectly rolled piece of gear.

Diablo is a geargrabbing game in its essence. Melt faces and collect loot.
WoW is an mmorpg, the gearing and combat should be a biproduct or a bonus at best, not it's sole focus.

[Deleted]

The thing i would want is not having to do the same content for over a year. It doesn't matter if its an expansion or just more patches.

[Solarnova]

Seeing as how Blizzard refuses to make content during expansions, selfie cameras and missing zones like Tanaan don't count, I'll take a new expansion a year.

[SirBeef]

Seeing as how Blizzard refuses to make content during expansions, selfie cameras and missing zones like Tanaan don't count, I'll take a new expansion a year.

They made plenty every expansion except this one. That is the exception not the rule if you look at their history. Why is it so hard to believe they tried to do something they though would last and work but didn't, instead of they are Bli$$ard, just greedy lazy fucks? Tanaan was always intended to be patch content. Big seal it was on the map. Pretty hard to remove a big zone from the middle of the map. They mentioned we would eventually face off against Grom and his IH in Tanaan after we dismantle his horde. We also knew there were other raids before HFC. So anyone with half a brain could figure out it was level 100 content.

[FroggyChaos]

IMO, this is a silly question. Hey do you wanna pay less or more money for WOW?

[Pua]

IMO, this is a silly question. Hey do you wanna pay less or more money for WOW?

Yeah, that would have been a silly question; luckily, it isn't what I asked.