This game has a big problem now, and here is why

[Deleted]

Disclaimer: Yes, I made a new account just to post here. I used to have an MMOC account a long time ago, but no idea what its password was, and in any case my old EMail address doesn't exist any more. I lurked as a passive reader for some time now, but this is something I really want to discuss with the community.

So, since the Cory interview, we know that 6.2 is the last major content patch for the Warlords of Draenor Expansion.

Sure, there is the "But they could bring something else then a raid!" - Argument, but lets stop for a moment and look at the non-Raid content this expansion gave us so far. The leveling experience. Apexis grinds. Trashcan. That's it. Other then the first, which lasted only for a limited time (at some point you run out of characters to level), none of them inspired much joy and happiness in the playerbase (That's a very polite way of saying that all this so-called content sucked very very hard). So yeah, this is the last major patch in WoD that contains something that can actually be called "Content".

Now, where does that leave Blizz? What Options do they have in the future?
And as it turns out, there are only two.

Option 1: They rush the next expansion to prevent another draught as we had in 5.4

Well, what do you think, would the end product of a rush look like? Bear in mind, it took them SEVEN MONTHS to "develop" 6.2...and this patch contains a raid tier (Which is admittingly very good, but raiding was never a problem in WoD), a most likely re-used area (because in my opinion, Tanaan already existed in some state of development but was simply cut due to not being finished in time for christmas sales) filled with apexis-grinds, and another facebook game.
Lets say they pumped out the next expansion in...well, lets be fancy with our fantasy here and say, 6 months. What would it look like? How many dungeons and BGs would there be? How well thought out and exiting would the quest areas be?

So yeah, rushing it, would lead to an expansion which makes the impossible happen: Being even more dissappointing than WoD.

Option 2: They take their time developing a new expansion in-depth

Lets make a gross-estimate here: Announcement at Blizzcon, which is in November, lets say at this point we are 2 months away from the closed Beta. Then 4 months of Beta-testing, another month of final polishing and whatnot. So even if we are very very VERY generous, we would look at 11-13 MONTHS of draught-time until the next expansion if they take their time with it.

Eleven months. Eleven months during which we have all the content of 6.2 to sustain us. Do I really need to explain what would happen to sub-numbers if that is what happens?

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Bottom line is: There is no good option for this game to go on. If they rush it, it will be crap. If they don't rush it, they force their playerbase to eat a year of crap. And if you force someone to eat worms for a year, he will still hate you, even if you serve him nothing but the finest foods afterwards. "But we had this in 5.4 and survived"...did we now? MoP, not exactly the greatest expansion, had much more content to hold on to then WoD. WoD has nothing but its raids, and over-sized catchup mechanics make even most of them nil and void now. Yes 5.4 was a bad experience, but not because it was bad content, but because it lasted for ages. Imagine the reaction to BAD CONTENT THAT LASTS AGES (Yes, "non-existent" = bad in an MMO).

What's your thoughts on that? I really want this game to get better, I want it to become worthwhile again, but at the moment...I simply can't see how that can happen.

Edit: Yes, typos happen It shows that I am a human being. If you find a typo, you may keep it ^^

[TheLittleBeast]

I'm positive the development of the next expansion has been underway, for many months, prior to patch 6.2's release.

[MasterHamster]

WoD suffers tremendously because all tangible rewards were moved to garrisons and raids. Due to feedback from players, we lost pretty much everything inbetween hitting 100 and raids.

Do players particularly enjoy doing dailies to unlock "mandatory" items from factions? No, but it's something that feels worthwhile and gives a noticeable reward once you've attained it.

Professions got gutted because players don't want it to rely on luck/rare materials, and together with garrisons it's all unlocked from the go, which is poison to longevity and interest.

WoD is a melting-pot of good intentions, trying to give players everything they think they want, and it just ends up in apathy.

When was the last time you felt like you had truly achieved something ingame, that wasn't raid-related? All that is gone in favor of keeping 20min/day players happy.

Blizzard needs to remember what it is that kept players interested in the game. Controversially a lot of these things aren't what players ever would say they "wanted", such as getting a faction to exalted taking weeks for a great trinket, for example. But it keeps players motivated.

[Feali]

I'm positive the development of the next expansion has been underway, for many months, prior to patch 6.2's release.

Many people WANT to believe the reason why WoD is so shit is because they took their whole new, bigger development team to focus on 7.0.

[Sierra85]

I'm positive the development of the next expansion has been underway, for many months, prior to patch 6.2's release.

they've been working on the expansion that is coming after WoD, while they were developing WoD. Alot of the scrapped features simply got pushed to the next expac.

[Thage]

Sucks to be Blizzard. Maybe this time more than just the art department will put some actual effort into the game.

[Stacyrect]

I canceled my sub after the ion interview, they pretty much confirmed what we've known for years about class balance.Aside from that, they've been putting out less content every single expansion since activision took over. You can argue the semantics of content, but compared to what we've had in the past it just isn't worth playing anymore at least to me. With the way things are being run, it's only a matter of what straw is going to break each camels back.

[SL1200]

I get the feeling that 6.2 was complete a long time ago, and they've been working on the next expansion since the release of wod. I think the next expansion will come sooner than we think and the typical content drought between expansions won't happen.

[Deleted]

I'm positive the development of the next expansion has been underway, for many months, prior to patch 6.2's release.

they've been working on the expansion that is coming after WoD, while they were developing WoD. Alot of the scrapped features simply got pushed to the next expac.

Features will get pushed into the new expansion? Like what? The faction-capitals? Faralon? An actual questing zone called Tanaan? The trial of the gladiator? Actually customizable garrisons? (Yes, all these things were originally announced for WoD)

Sorry, but I don't believe that. I want to, but I can't, because all these features, which they cut from the product in order to get it out for christmas sales (btw. TBC was pushed back to January simply because it didn't meet their quality standards in November, that's how things used to be done at Blizzard) are tied to THIS expansion. How do you pack Faralon into a...I don't know, south seas expansion? Why should we care about this alternate universe again, while we are busy batteling Naga in our own?

As to "they were already working on it"...they were also working on WoD since 2013 (they announced it at the 2013 Blizzcon), and developed it all the way through the run-time of 5.4,...and it still came out...well, as it is, with no content to speak of outside of raids. I do not doubt that they are working on it and were working on 7.0 already. They most likely have people working on the expansion AFTER the successor to WoD as well.

But is that what we get then? Half baked expansions they cook up with half a team, while the other half makes content-less patches for the running one, which gets half its features cut? Because, if that is the strategy, I don't see how quality can improve.

Thanks for all replies so far in any case. Keep 'em coming =)

[TheramoreIsTheBomb]

Sucks to be Blizzard. Maybe this time more than just the art department will put some actual effort into the game.

I agree. The art (including music) aspects never fail the game but the PvE failed miserablely and PvP failed the most this expansion. The game is so damn unbalanced it makes no sense. We shouldn't have devs telling us what to and what not to play.

[MoanaLisa]

You forgot a few options:

1. There might be a 6.3 or more. No one knows. It won't have a raid in it and frankly, that's fine if it doesn't. About time actually.

2. They won't announce the expansion at Blizzcon. They'll announce it much sooner.

If they ever intend to get down to anything less than 18 month expansions, they won't always be able to announce at Blizzcon and have everything done in time.

It's questionable how soon they can do that but any idiot can see that with a stated target of much less than 18 months they'll need to abandon announcing at Blizzcon. I'm quite sure they've figured this out. I don't know why people have such a difficult time getting their head around this. Blizzcon as the only event where they announce WoW expansions is going to stop and probably sooner than most think. Realistically, it has to.

[Gimlix]

You forgot a few options:

1. There might be a 6.3 or more. No one knows. It won't have a raid in it and frankly, that's fine if it doesn't. About time actually.

2. They won't announce the expansion at Blizzcon. They'll announce it much sooner.

If they ever intend to get down to anything less than 18 month expansions, they won't always be able to announce at Blizzcon and have everything done in time.

It's questionable how soon they can do that but any idiot can see that with a stated target of much less than 18 months they'll need to abandon announcing at Blizzcon. I'm quite sure they've figured this out. I don't know why people have such a difficult time getting their head around this. Blizzcon as the only event where they announce WoW expansions is going to stop and probably sooner than most think. Realistically, it has to.

Seems like only person with a brain on these forums.

[Feali]

You forgot a few options:

1. There might be a 6.3 or more. No one knows. It won't have a raid in it and frankly, that's fine if it doesn't. About time actually.

2. They won't announce the expansion at Blizzcon. They'll announce it much sooner.

If they ever intend to get down to anything less than 18 month expansions, they won't always be able to announce at Blizzcon and have everything done in time.

It's questionable how soon they can do that but any idiot can see that with a stated target of much less than 18 months they'll need to abandon announcing at Blizzcon. I'm quite sure they've figured this out. I don't know why people have such a difficult time getting their head around this. Blizzcon as the only event where they announce WoW expansions is going to stop and probably sooner than most think. Realistically, it has to.

Gamescom would be plausible.

[Deleted]

Since blizzard dont care about sub numbers i hope they take there time.

We have funded there hearthstone and heroes of the storm.
Just put more micro-transactions in them to fund for this timeskip for WoW this time around.
As for the sub number i see them go under 3 mil at the end of WoD but it is blizzards own fault so they can only blame them selfs.

[MoanaLisa]

Gamescom would be plausible.

It would. Also plausible is that they'll just run their own two-hour event in LA somewhere to announce it. They're Blizzard after all. It's not like it won't get covered in depth. People really need to get off the "It has to be at Blizzcon" thing though. The only way that will stay the same is if Blizzard completely abandons their plans to do new expansions in less time. I don't see that happening at all.

[Gimlix]

Since blizzard dont care about sub numbers i hope they take there time.

We have funded there hearthstone and heroes of the storm.
Just put more micro-transactions in them to fund for this timeskip for WoW this time around.
As for the sub number i see them go under 3 mil at the end of WoD but it is blizzards own fault so they can only blame them selfs.

Haha under 3M, cmn, I bet you also think FF14 reaches 10M subs one day? Right? Right?

[Deleted]

Haha under 3M, cmn, I bet you also think FF14 reaches 10M subs one day? Right? Right?

Whats wrong with 3M? they lose 1 mil per month atm and now we dont even get content anymore.
What reason do you see for the sub-losses to stop instead of getting into hyperdrive?

[Hitei]

Whats wrong with 3M? they lose 1 mil per month atm and now we dont even get content anymore.
What reason do you see for the sub-losses to stop instead of getting into hyperdrive?

They don't lose 1 million per month "at the moment". They lost 3 million quickly after gaining 3 million.

When you are trying to predict how a graph that goes up and down will look in the future, you don't just choose one point and draw a straight line continuing in that direction.

[Nerraw]

I'm positive the development of the next expansion has been underway, for many months, prior to patch 6.2's release.

They confirmed last Blizzcon that 7.0 was well underway at the time.

[threads]

I'm positive the development of the next expansion has been underway, for many months, prior to patch 6.2's release.

this is the new trend. provide no content for current xpac because they're busy making the next one -_-