The Blizzard of WoD isn't the real blizzard.

[Chickat]

Here is their track record for patches and content from start to now.

Up until late ICC they had an incredible amount of content released. Even the latter half of ICC wasn't bad because of the real id and dungeon finder stuff. Ruby Sanctum was something. 12 months of ICC was understandable with all the work they did on the world in Cata.

Cata was fantastic until 4.3 for the most part. Sure it was a slight reduction in patch quality, and a significant reduction in quantity (raid wise), but it still was good, and I think the world revamp took a lot from the end game. Heck, Cata is the only expansion that really had a lack of raid bosses. Maybe you could argue WoD, but with only 2 tiers it still managed to have more bosses. Raiding isn't everything though. When an expansion releases they usually have the first major patch heavily in development. Stuff happened and we got Cata. We thought it was terrible, but it wasn't that bad.

MoP was a return to form imo. Lots of quality content, and a ton of it to boot. The only negatives past the first couple months of required dailys was the lack of new dungeons and the last 6 months of SoO. Even until mid 2014 Blizzard was doing well.

WoD is an outlier. Something happened between the time they launched 5.4 and 6.0/1/2 that made WoD terrible. Who knows what that was. We may never know, but only 1 expansion out of all of them plus the base game was truly terrible. The rest were good. Why not give them the benefit of the doubt one more time for Legion? I know I am.

What are your thoughts on the matter? Do you agree with me that the other expansions were good and only WoD is a true misstep, or am I wrong? Also, what do you think happened with WoD? Its obvious something happened after 5.4 that ruined WoD. I truly believe that it was meant to be a 3 tier expansion with lots of cool stuff, but they had to scrap so much that it ruined it. I think that WoD was never meant to be a 2 tier expansion, but it was easier to claim that when they realized they couldn't deliver than to tell us what really happened. Im betting Legion will be 3 tiers.

[Fawkess]

i think it was 2 things

1.new members of the team weren't experienced on working on a mmo (training is probably a lot different than actually making content)

2. People from titan came back to the team who probably clashed with the current team

i think they realized that Wod was a sink ship and they saw it wasnt working out so as planned so they abandoned it to work on legion

[SL1200]

Of course most of us will give them the benefit of the doubt. I think some new people got promoted and let the power go to their heads a bit. Hopefully they do better next expansion.

Sir Riptor's post makes quite a bit of sense to me aswell.

[Hurwyn]

Yes. I do believe we have a bunch of semi-amateur noobies getting Blizzard paychecks and yes I do believe they are riding and disrespecting the coattails of those who made an amazing product by ignoring and being hostile to their customers.

[Lothaeryn]

i think it was 2 things

1.new members of the team weren't experienced on working on a mmo and probably did not know what content we liked/disliked

2. People from titan came back to the team who probably clashed with the current

and rightfully so, glad the original devs are partly involved again, fixing shit that would have been done in one expansion before they left.

WoD was a chopping block, and yes, it was half-assed, but for good reason, there are underlying issues with the gameplay of WoW that needed to be addressed and as quickly as possible, WoD was slated as part 1 of 2 parts when it was announced, Part 1 was a re-tooling of the player kit and their abilities/mechanics, part 2 (Legion) is going to be a retooling of the lore/raiding/pvp aspects of the series, with hopefully more endgame outdoor content than was given in previous expansions.

The game has been growing stagnant since Cataclysm and gameplay aspects were being ignored that needed attention (such as PvP). Thankfully they are finally trying to fix things that are long overdue, much to the chagrin of the current playerbase who like WoW as it is.

[Chickat]

i think it was 2 things

1.new members of the team weren't experienced on working on a mmo (training is probably a lot different than actually making content)

2. People from titan came back to the team who probably clashed with the current team

i think they realized that Wod was a sink ship and they saw it wasn't working out so as planned so they abandoned it to work on legion

You have to ask yourself if that was the right decision. Im not sure it was. I think they should have stuck to their guns. Release 6.2 as the crappy apexis cesspit that it was onl iron horde themed and maybe some void influence , and launch Farahlon with the demon raid and actual dailys.

Can the game recover from that decision. Time will tell.

- - - Updated - - -

Its Sega allover again. Stop supporting your product early (even if it is inferior), and customers will lose faith in the brand.

- - - Updated - - -

I do think we should give them another chance. I'm not sure most will.

[ablib]

12 months of ICC was understandable...

It was not 12 months. ICC didn't get released in it's entirety until Feb 2010. Cata came in Dec of 2010. Meaning the end boss of the expansion was only available to be killed for 10 months.

People like to act like there was this huge content drought in the last year of Wrath, when there wasn't. Sub numbers reflect this as well. The longest content drought in Wrath was approximately 4-5 months.

But, to reinforce your point, we haven't had this quantity of content since Wrath. Every expansion since Wrath has been progressively worse than the previous one. I can't imagine how bad Legion will be with how WoD was.

[Fawkess]

You have to ask yourself if that was the right decision. Im not sure it was. I think they should have stuck to their guns. Release 6.2 as the crappy apexis cesspit that it was onl iron horde themed and maybe some void influence , and launch Farahlon with the demon raid and actual dailys.

Can the game recover from that decision. Time will tell.

- - - Updated - - -

Its Sega allover again. Stop supporting your product early (even if it is inferior), and customers will lose faith in the brand.

- - - Updated - - -

I do think we should give them another chance. I'm not sure most will.

I think it was, they had a lot of ideas that did not really work out this expansion (apexis dailies, no reason to run dungeons, ect) i would rather them work on a better expansion and improve it than them trying to save Wod

[Vulcanasm]

What are your thoughts on the matter? Do you agree with me that the other expansions were good and only WoD is a true misstep, or am I wrong?

Mostly. I think Cata was a misstep, too, but not to the degree of WOD.

Cata felt well-intentioned but the end product was tedious. The mechanics changes were based on really bad developer assumptions, and the old-world revamp was terrible (Azeroth was better before; it needed a new map, not Dragon's Age-style rail rider quest chains).

WOD, on the other hand, is a ham-fisted abomination. Quite simply, Blizzard have stopped trying. There's no attention to quality. There's no desire to make a good product or even a decent one. This feels like some kind of flippant, sarcastic joke, with a philosophy of "lol, whatever, you'll play it anyway". The only exception is raiding -- and HM/BRF weren't particularly memorable, they just aren't especially *awful*, either. The is beyond "unpolished"; some approaches Age of Conan levels of clumsiness, early-beta level content written in 1 or 2 slow afternoons and released with no QA testing.

[Fawkess]

But, to reinforce your point, we haven't had this quantity of content since Wrath. Every expansion since Wrath has been progressively worse than the previous one. I can't imagine how bad Legion will be with how WoD was.

Pandaria had really good quality content to do for everyone so i would say that it hasn't gotten worse

[Chickat]

It was not 12 months. ICC didn't get released in it's entirety until Feb 2010. Cata came in Dec of 2010. Meaning the end boss of the expansion was only available to be killed for 10 months.

People like to act like there was this huge content drought in the last year of Wrath, when there wasn't. Sub numbers reflect this as well. The longest content drought in Wrath was approximately 4-5 months.

But, to reinforce your point, we haven't had this quantity of content since Wrath. Every expansion since Wrath has been progressively worse than the previous one. I can't imagine how bad Legion will be with how WoD was.

How can you call MoP worse then Cata. Cata wasnt bad(at least compared to WoD), but MoP had a lot of content. The only thing MoP lacked was dungeons in patches. Cata was understandable.

The world being overhauled was a good choice. It will server the game for a while to come. Sure there were less raid bosses than before, but the dungeons were all fantastic. I personally really enjoyed the world content. (Molten Front for life), and found TB dailys enjoyable. The only time they really blew it was Dragon soul. No good world content, and the raid was still short like FL, but this time it was terrible. The dungeons were all great though.

[Baronthefirst]

I feel so ripped off and I just can't move past it. To know Blizzard just quit on WoD and is brushing it under the carpet makes me so damn mad. It isn't like we didn't already tell them the alternate timeline BS was a bad idea. Going to a world we have no reason to care about is a bad idea. Going to a world were nothing we do after destroying the portal will matter in our world is a bad idea.

They went and did it all anyway. Just because they had too much development time invested on a bad idea. Oh but they also cut it down to the bare minimum just so we could squeeze threw it with little more effort in the development area of the expansion. Oh WoD has forever ruined Blizzard in my eyes.

[Chickat]

TBC and Vanilla quality wise today dont stack up. They sure did for their time though. If I were to rate each expansion for their time it would be something like this.

Vanilla-9
TBC-9.5
Wrath 9.5
Cata-8
MoP-8.75
WoD-5

- - - Updated - - -

I feel so ripped off and I just can't move past it. To know Blizzard just quit on WoD and is brushing it under the carpet makes me so damn mad. It isn't like we didn't already tell them the alternate timeline BS was a bad idea. Going to a world we have no reason to care about is a bad idea. Going to a world were nothing we do after destroying the portal will matter in our world is a bad idea.

They went and did it all anyway. Just because they had too much development time invested on a bad idea.

You would rather they keep developing content you hate? I have mixed feelings about it, but im seriously asking.

[ablib]

Pandaria had really good quality content to do for everyone so i would say that it hasn't gotten worse

Read what I wrote again. I wasn't talking quality. I was talking quantity.

[Vulcanasm]

The world being overhauled was a good choice. It will server the game for a while to come.

Careful, here. Most people will agree that an overhaul was a good idea. The content contained in that overhaul was terrible. Nobody asked to replace all the old quests with Dragon Age-style rail riders; in fact, had Blizzard polled players with just those two options, I strongly doubt "rail riders" would've won. At most, people wanted a 3-dimensional map, the removal of a few terrible quest rewards (e.g. cloth gear with Str), maybe replacement of a couple garbage quest chains like Helcular. What they did was completely unnecessary, and it wasted resources that would've been better spent elsewhere.

[Fawkess]

Read what I wrote again. I wasn't talking quality. I was talking quantity.

Ahh, well Mop did have a lot of content too

3 battlegrounds
2 arenas
9 zones at the end (10 if you count isle of giants)
9 dungeons
16 scenarios
5 raids
9 world bosses
12 reps for each faction (14 in total)
Brawlers guild
monk class
Playable pandaren
Challange modes
Pet battles
and many other minor changes/additions like Flex raiding or the farm

its such a sad shame that Mop was one of the best expansions and it was followed by one of the worst

[Baronthefirst]

TBC and Vanilla quality wise today dont stack up. They sure did for their time though. If I were to rate each expansion for their time it would be something like this.

Vanilla-9
TBC-9.5
Wrath 9.5
Cata-8
MoP-8.75
WoD-5

- - - Updated - - -



You would rather they keep developing content you hate? I have mixed feelings about it, but im seriously asking.

No but I would feel better if they would come out and be straight with us. Saying this and that was a success when most of everything they did in WoD was a failure beyond the leveling experience and the raids.

I don't think it is crazy to expect a company to be honest with it's customer base. Even when they "F" up. It still never had to get to this point. They just refuse to listen to the customers it seems. Just like this leader of your class hall is going to blow up in their face. Every player in the World of Warcraft can't be the leader of their class hall. It just can't work in an MMO. The leaders need to be established characters of lore for the story to work. PERIOD!

[Chickat]

No but I would feel better if they would come out and be straight with us. Saying this and that was a success when most of everything they did in WoD was a failure beyond the leveling experience and the raids.

I don't think it is crazy to expect a company to be honest with it's customer base. Even when they "F" up. It still never had to get to this point. They just refuse to listen to the customers it seems. Just like this leader of your class hall is going to blow up in their face. Every player in the World of Warcraft can't be the leader of their class hall. It just can't work in an MMO. The leaders need to be established characters of lore for the story to work. PERIOD!

They arent going to trash their work while its still live. They will be more critical when Legion is out. They are being fairly critical atm. More so than normal.

[RobertMugabe]

Careful, here. Most people will agree that an overhaul was a good idea. The content contained in that overhaul was terrible. Nobody asked to replace all the old quests with Dragon Age-style rail riders; in fact, had Blizzard polled players with just those two options, I strongly doubt "rail riders" would've won. At most, people wanted a 3-dimensional map, the removal of a few terrible quest rewards (e.g. cloth gear with Str), maybe replacement of a couple garbage quest chains like Helcular. What they did was completely unnecessary, and it wasted resources that would've been better spent elsewhere.

I actually really like the overhauled zones. The quests are more scripted (vehicle combat etc.), the story is told much better (more dialogs, videos...) and aren't too time consuming.

[Meaux]

Hilarious how much everyone loves MoP now. Back then every other post on these forums went, "Blizz sux so much every1 needs to be fired into the sun too many dailies, gated content, forced content and lolkungfupandas im going to gw2 it will kill wow"

Now every other post rambles on like this about WoD and MoP is the Holy Grail of MMOs. And people still say the rose-colored glasses aren't real.