Some things that have me concerned about Legion

[SirCowdog]

Sooo....what I'm seeing is a lot of warning flags surrounding Legion. Like all the rest of you guys I was super hyped to see the cinematic trailer and the huge list of cool features supposedly coming in the expansion. But I also have a lot of concerns, because the hype train from WoD and how that expansion turned out has left me just a little bit wary. Ok...a LOT wary.

1) Blizzard is no longer going to release their sub numbers? Wut? After 10 years suddenly now that subs are dropping they aren't going to tell people what the numbers are? Come on now Blizz. That's a screaming sign of weakness.

2) If you Pre-purchase(not pre-ORDER) you get 'early access' to Demon Hunters. This is another sign of weakness. You're asking people to risk paying full price MONTHS in advance for a product which has a KNOWN history of bait and switch for features. And what you're giving in return is....a week of access to the new class before launch? What a joke.

3) Upwards of 10 months of patch 6.2 of Warlords, the expansion that was cut down and so weak specifically BECAUSE blizzard was supposedly working on Legion the entire time before Warlords was even launched. What a load of un-provable nonsense THAT is. LOL!

4) Legion's launch date is mysteriously delayed until 1 month after the World of Warcraft movie, a clear attempt to increase hype in order to boost sales.

These are all MASSIVE warning signs to anyone who's been watching the way the videogames industry has been handling major releases. Rampant hype trains followed by piss poor launches of unfinished or substandard products. WoD is a prime example of this type of behavior, and it doesn't give me any confidence to see Legion showing a lot of the same signs.

I'm not going to say outright that Legion is going to be a bad product, because there's no hard data available on it yet. But holy crap this doesn't look good. Just more and more reasons not to pre-order or pre-purchase. I'm DEFINITELY waiting for the first major content patch before even thinking about buying it. I want to see cold, hard facts from trusted reviewers before touching Legion with a 10-foot pole.

DAMMIT Blizzard. Why do you have to be like this? Why can't you just be the honest game company you used to be?

I don't know. I really REALLY want Legion to be better and more excellent than anything we've ever seen before. But maybe I'm just too jaded and burned by WoD. Can ANYONE disprove the things I listed? Give me some confidence here PLEASE!

[Actarius]

1) Blizzard is no longer going to release their sub numbers? Wut? After 10 years suddenly now that subs are dropping they aren't going to tell people what the numbers are? Come on now Blizz. That's a screaming sign of weakness.

I don't recall a time Blizzard explicitly released their sub numbers outside of Quarterly earning calls. They occasionally post something like "Join over 10 million players" which can include things like starter editions. I may be wrong here, but I don't recall a subscriber's update during BlizzCon in the past.

2) If you Pre-purchase(not pre-ORDER) you get 'early access' to Demon Hunters. This is another sign of weakness. You're asking people to risk paying full price MONTHS in advance for a product which has a KNOWN history of bait and switch for features. And what you're giving in return is....a week of access to the new class before launch? What a joke.

It is exceptionally rare to pre-order games anymore. Pre-ordering is almost exclusively done through a retailer, like GameStop, and involves putting down a fraction of the total money to secure the game when it releases. Pre-purchasing involves buying the game for the full amount, usually via internet, and receiving some sort of bonus for doing so.

E.g. If I go to gamestop and pre-order the Legion X-Pac, I can put $10 on it. Come next summer, once released, I can put the last $40 on it and get it then. I also have the option of going to battle.net and buying the game, for the full price, today. For my "loyalty" I receive my level 100 boost before the vast majority, giving me a new class to play at max for a few months. I will also get early access to the demon hunter class in the future.

I really wouldn't call this a sign of weakness, every major gaming company has pre-purchasing. Hell, I bought Fallout 4 several months ago, for the full $60, just like many other people did.

3) Upwards of 10 months of patch 6.2 of Warlords, the expansion that was cut down and so weak specifically BECAUSE blizzard was supposedly working on Legion the entire time before Warlords was even launched. What a load of un-provable nonsense THAT is. LOL!

Compared to Mists > WoD, SoO lasted 14 months and held 14 bosses (Sept '13 to Nov '14). Pretty even division there. HfC holds 13 bosses and was launched June 23rd, 2015. Let's say it comes out the Tuesday after Warcraft, that's June 14th, 2016. Or the week after, June 21st, 2016. Regardless, the timeline was around 12 months. Anything beyond July 20th~ would be unreasonable given previously established timelines. I was at BlizzCon yesterday, and I'm going again today, and as a programmer, I can tell you some of the stuff they're adding is incredibly intense. The features this time around aren't, hey lets throw this together in 6 months. These features have taken years to refine and prepare. Scaling content, open-wordness, class halls, etc.

4) Legion's launch date is mysteriously delayed until 1 month after the World of Warcraft movie, a clear attempt to increase hype in order to boost sales.

We don't have the release date of Legion, just the word "Summer" in the announcement trailer. And a guarantee that Legion will launch on or before Sept 21, 2016. If you remember what they did for WoD/MoP, there guarantee date was well after their actual release date. As I said before, anything before Mid-July would still be considered early given their history. I also don't recall a promised date before the movie. They said that Legion's release date would not be impacted by the movie. Everything else was just wild fan speculation. All Blizzard said is that the movie will not impact the game's release.

It is quite possible that Blizzard gave a rough release date of Legion to the movie company, who wanted to make the movie ready before the game. Assuming Blizzard just outright lied is baseless and angering, when a perfectly logical alternative exists. I'll reemphasize, there's little reason to be getting worked up today. Let's see what the year brings. There's little use in judging Legion & it's timeframe until we see the expansion and whether or not it was worth it.

[Boxilot]

You're right to be wary. Of course you are. We've going to sit through two years with one major patch. Why would anyone trust a company that does that? Blizzard has been able to use the trust they earned early in their career, but it is becoming apparent that fewer and fewer people will let this slide.

I will vaguely follow beta. What is kept in beta, what is not? If we get another string of cut content then we certainly know what we're dealing with. For now the hype will rage on for a while because that is what's fun with a new expansion. Personally I am not hyped, but I can certainly understand those who are.

But Blizzard has proved once again that nothing has changed. They excuse a lack of content on that they're working on the next expac but when it comes to it we still sit here a year waiting for it. In any other mmorpg we'd get updates with at least various misc things such as a questchain with some lore, some event in which one can collect a pet or mount, perhaps a new dungeon or even a small raid. But for Blizzard, the largest developer for mmorpg out there with billions to their name and a huge team, that is an impossibility.

In other words: buyers should be wary. But then again it might turn out that they've managed to steer the ship right for Legion and they will be able to, like in Pandaria, give us quality content at a decent timeframe (excluding SoO ofc). But until we know more I'm going to keep my purse shut.

[endur]

Blizzard is working on lots of other games now. We shouldn't expect an expansion to have the same level of quality or content that we used to expect.

[l0nglive]

They said faster expansion which comes true as September is earlier than November. They also warned earlier that there will be less major patches each expansion. We have like 2 major raiding patches compared to the norm of three. I see no problem with what they promised.

[Terahertz]

Im pretty sure being able to play DH early means being able to play them in the prepatch. In which case I dont see the problem. You cant play the new class without the expansion anyways so if you bought it before the expansion hita, you can play dh.

[Stormspellz]

1- the cash cow of wow isn't subs anymore its micro transactions
2- its just a marketing gimmick, and bait and switch? are you still on bt being a capital..come on.
3- wow a legitimate issue, i'm actually surprised.
4- "delayed" or announced, big difference. pst there was not release date before the announcement of "summer"

[frogger237]

2) If you Pre-purchase(not pre-ORDER) you get 'early access' to Demon Hunters. This is another sign of weakness. You're asking people to risk paying full price MONTHS in advance for a product which has a KNOWN history of bait and switch for features. And what you're giving in return is....a week of access to the new class before launch? What a joke.

Or you know maybe they want demon hunters to be able to experience the pre launch stuff as well?

[Deleted]

Blizzard is working on lots of other games now. We shouldn't expect an expansion to have the same level of quality or content that we used to expect.

This is the biggest load of shit I ever seen.
Working on numeros games doesn´t mean that the quality goes down, infact, the amount of games doesn´t matter, what matters is how many people are working on wow, NOTHING ELSE.
And that number has only increased, by that fact we should in no way expect less, if any, we should expect more then ever.

Fucking logic.

[Boxilot]

Blizzard is working on lots of other games now. We shouldn't expect an expansion to have the same level of quality or content that we used to expect.

Why on earth not? They have more money than ever, and by their own words they have more people working on wow specifically now than ever. Their company gets bigger so their games get smaller? What?

[Cwimge]

Nobody will op. All this thread likely contains is a slew of white knights spamming the ever popular "its only X" argument- and we all know exactly how well that works