What have they done with this expansion?

[Jessicka]

There was a mention earlier in this thread that development of WoD suffered some sort of catastrophe. This got me wondering what could have happened.

My wild guess? It has something to do with the Warcraft movie.

The next expansion is going to come out around when the movie is released. It will need to have a plot coordinated with the movie. So this expansion's plot had to be a lead in to that. If the script for the movie was being rewritten, WoD's overall design had to be in flux. Maybe the movie tail wagged the game dog for too long.

Aside from GC and a few other devs heading over to Riot, I think the main issue was pretty much that they massively under-estimated the work necessary for what they were trying to achieve with Garrisons in giving every single player custom instances. I think that's obvious from how far they ended up reigning things back from the ideas at Blizzcon, and how catastrophic the first few weeks were in particular around the Garrison instances continually crashing. That increasing investment in them is ultimately why they got carried away in making them so central and almost unavoidable content. They got too big and simply couldn't allow them to fail.

The further hardware investment because of the failings at launch will only have served to make them even a more critical development focus. I don't think its all that much different than Cataclysm's over-investment in rebuilding the old world sucking up too many resources. Throw in the extra hiring, and redistribution of staff from Titan's cancellation and there's easily enough upheaval and over-stretch there to cause significant delays. It doesn't need to be one specific catastrophe.

[mmocc3a3dda21e]

I'm a blizzard fan boy, and this has been a real disappointing expansion.

Me too brother, me too.

Me three!!!

[Deleted]

Aside from GC and a few other devs heading over to Riot, I think the main issue was pretty much that they massively under-estimated the work necessary for what they were trying to achieve with Garrisons in giving every single player custom instances. I think that's obvious from how far they ended up reigning things back from the ideas at Blizzcon, and how catastrophic the first few weeks were in particular around the Garrison instances. That increasing investment in them is ultimately why they got carried away in making them so central and almost unavoidable content. They got too big and simply couldn't allow them to fail.

The further hardware investment because of the failings at launch will only have served to make them even a more critical development focus. I don't think its all that much different than Cataclysm's over-investment in rebuilding the old world sucking up too many resources. Throw in the extra hiring, and redistribution of staff from Titan's cancellation and there's easily enough upheaval and over-stretch there to cause significant delays. It doesn't need to be one specific catastrophe.

They had the farm from MOP working fine. I really don't see why they couldn't of used that, added racial architecture for a house you wanted and let the people who wanted housing have it in a basic form, sold furniture on the ah, add a profession for carpentry / woodwork or something to build furniture and it would of been great. Add a garden to grow things.

The people who wanted housing would of got housing and the people who didn't give a fuck wouldn't have had their expansion built around it, but nooo they had to over do it and piss both groups off.

[IntellectuallyChallenged]

I could write a 500 page book on my personal opinion of things blizzard did wrong with WoD.

Sorry had to fix that.

OT: What have they done? They have made it fun for me to play. I enjoy every single aspect of the game except PvP. But I play games that were made for PvP when I want to do that. WoW was not made to have PvP. It was an afterthought, and apparently still is. I'm cool with that.

[Tart]

We paid more money to play a half assed beta expansion. This expansions has killed WoW for me, I even now regret missing the majority of MoP.

Same here mate and i hated MoP passionately.

- - - Updated - - -

Sorry had to fix that.

OT: What have they done? They have made it fun for me to play. I enjoy every single aspect of the game except PvP. But I play games that were made for PvP when I want to do that. WoW was not made to have PvP. It was an afterthought, and apparently still is. I'm cool with that.

Good for you mate, dont let people tell you what you can and cant like. For me though im the complete opposite, 8 years and enough is enough now.

[The Yeti]

I've enjoyed the expansion thoroughly.

/prepares for assault of hate

[mmocc3a3dda21e]

Sorry had to fix that.

OT: What have they done? They have made it fun for me to play. I enjoy every single aspect of the game except PvP. But I play games that were made for PvP when I want to do that. WoW was not made to have PvP. It was an afterthought, and apparently still is. I'm cool with that.

It was fun till you hit lvl 100.

[Deleted]

I don't think the management has much to do with the direction the company has taken. This is the same direction they have been taking since the game first came out. Make things more accessible. That was fine in vanilla, when MMORPGs were ridiculously grindy. The thing is they continue to simplify the game to make it more accessible and it has long passed the point where they can do so without sacrificing depth. They are turning the game into a facebook game(well a collection of facebook games). What should be interesting is when they reach that goal, will they try and find even more ways to make it more accessible to like infants, and possibly pets.

This! Sooooo this!

[prwraith]

The kicker being we paid more for this expansion lol, boy did we get it with no lube

[Deleted]

Same here mate and i hated MoP passionately.

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Good for you mate, dont let people tell you what you can and cant like. For me though im the complete opposite, 8 years and enough is enough now.

Even though I disagreed with you in another tread.

You are correct here I am also one of the people that is kinda done with WoD and is looking to move on.
But it was fine and everyone that still plays should keep playing!

28th of feb was my 10 year anniversary and I think I will keep my sub till around may. So thats a good 10 years and a few months

[Marolen]

I've enjoyed this xpac immensely also, but it's because in the past I ignored other parts of the game because I spent so much time doing dumb**** dailies and other grinds like that that were necessary. With those restrictions gone I've gotten into xmogging, I've gotten into pet battling, brawler guilds, mount farming.

I absolutely love the jukebox. Totems of the Grizzlemaw and Invincible are absolutely phenomenal and i love just having my garrison up while I do other things IRL just to listen to that.

Leveling pets is ridiculously easy in WoD so I can get a new pet to 25 in a day.

Also being able to buy an insta-90 is great for someone with a bit of expendable income like I have and then going from 90-100 takes no time at all. It's just been a fantastic experience. However, much of that is really more of a side-effect than a feature of WoD so I understand the perspective of those who don't feel like I do.

[Deleted]

I think WoD was fucked in the beginning because of 14 months of Siege.

Think about it. We had a raid for 14 months that was mostly orcs. Then we go to draenor to face MORE Orcs.

Other than that it feels like Blizzard was really lazy. Rep factions are the proof for that. I hope WoD will end very soon so we can forget about this bad excuse for an expansion. Give us a proper storylien that moves us foward and not going back.

[Kaesebrezen]

5 or 6 guys in my guild are playing FF14 alongside Wow atm and they speak highly of it too... just saying

Just look at the amount of content FFXIV is putting out:

End of January: 1 new casual raid with 4 bosses, 3 new hardmode dungeons (they reuse some parts of old dungeons, design new areas, completely new bosses on a new theme for the dungeon), 1 new storymode dungeon, 1 trial
End of February: Gold Saucer - Chocobo racing minigame (breeding-system, several different racing tracks), Ingame Card Game, other mini-mini-games
End of March: New Story Quests, and other things not known yet.

They have been doing these for the past 2 years - while they actually developed a full addon that will be released with just 1-2 months of a delay. (the new race added in the addon was finalized roughly 7-8 months ago)

Honestly - comparing the WoW-Team and the FFXIV-Team. Then one must either be extremely efficient and overworked, or the other must be extremely inefficient und lazy.

[Deleted]

Just look at the amount of content FFXIV is putting out:

End of January: 1 new casual raid with 4 bosses, 3 new hardmode dungeons (they reuse some parts of old dungeons, design new areas, completely new bosses on a new theme for the dungeon), 1 new storymode dungeon, 1 trial
End of February: Gold Saucer - Chocobo racing minigame (breeding-system, several different racing tracks), Ingame Card Game, other mini-mini-games
End of March: New Story Quests, and other things not known yet.

They have been doing these for the past 2 years - while they actually developed a full addon that will be released with just 1-2 months of a delay. (the new race added in the addon was finalized roughly 7-8 months ago)

Honestly - comparing the WoW-Team and the FFXIV-Team. Then one must either be extremely efficient and overworked, or the other must be extremely inefficient und lazy.

Or FFXIV still needs to work for their money and WoW just sits there while its being dropped on their heads :P
WoW had to work hard as well at some point to get started

[bryroo]

Sorry had to fix that.

It's obvious he's speaking for his personal opinion. Don't be so pedantic.

[geniebsmart]

Yep for the people who are fed up with Blizz because they don't get any actual work done, and who want to try another MMO, try FFXIV. I only started a few weeks ago, but my god that game is pretty amazing, and it looks like the devs actually care about the game and are not just trying to find new ways to make money all the time.

[Linesk]

Just look at the amount of content FFXIV is putting out:

End of January: 1 new casual raid with 4 bosses, 3 new hardmode dungeons (they reuse some parts of old dungeons, design new areas, completely new bosses on a new theme for the dungeon), 1 new storymode dungeon, 1 trial
End of February: Gold Saucer - Chocobo racing minigame (breeding-system, several different racing tracks), Ingame Card Game, other mini-mini-games
End of March: New Story Quests, and other things not known yet.

They have been doing these for the past 2 years - while they actually developed a full addon that will be released with just 1-2 months of a delay. (the new race added in the addon was finalized roughly 7-8 months ago)

Honestly - comparing the WoW-Team and the FFXIV-Team. Then one must either be extremely efficient and overworked, or the other must be extremely inefficient und lazy.

It's not that I think the Blizzard devs are necessarily lazy, it's just that it seems like they over-analyze and invest too much time in trivial things. I can just see them spending so much time going back and forth on how they want a certain feature to work, then just agonizing over it for weeks/months, and everything else gets dropped by the wayside (kind of like how a lot of content in WoD suffered due to the time it took to implement and alter garrisons).

The FFXIV Team probably has a clear idea of exactly what they're implementing moving forward, and once they've made a decision they stick with it and get shit done.

That's all just speculation on my part, though...