How The Hell Could WoD do Worse then Cata!?

[Kahmal]

I remember the hype for WoD, we all did. After the panda expansion we were going back to a far more proper "Warcraft" theme. Sure the time travel nonsense seemed silly but who cares, it's Draenor baby, uncorrupted Outland!

Watching videos from the community that highlighted the problems in MoP normally had "But they're fixing this in WoD." I'm thinking this it! WoW is making a comeback, they've learned from their mistakes in Cata and MoP, they got this!

And you know what.....they did! WoD at launch was awesome. While leveling my friends were saying, "this is the best expansion since WoTLK" some even saying "Best since TBC!" The leveling experience initially was awesome, the dungeons were good despite scarce. And when I hit max level and geared up I started doing Challenge Modes for the daily epic.

I tell you I haven't had such a blast running Dungeons since TBC. Grouping with strangers, going on voice comms because the level of difficulty required it. Wiping like crazy while trying out strat after strat, most of us veteran players loving the challenge laughing "We did ask for harder 5 mans!" Then after clearing the CM after 2-3 hours friending people so we could do the next one tomorrow. I haven't friended someone from 5 man group content since early WoTLK. (Seriously Blizz really dropped the ball on these and shoulded upgraded the rewards with each tier).

WoW bounced back to 10 million subscribers. And this remained constant for 6 months to many people's surprise as the next raid was unlocked. And then Blizzard literally made the same exact mistake they made in Cataclysm, that they never recovered from. WoD was released in in November and we didn't get a real content patch until June.....-_-. And about that yearly expansion!

I mean yes WoD was riddled with fundamental problems but this is the core of it, but screw Garrisons, we got jack for post launch content. In MoP they learned from this mistake in Cata and had a seperate team to handle smaller content patches, and another team for big raids. I mean I wasn't there for all of MoP but I seriously feel that it's an extremely underrated expansion due to the "Panda Theme" Was BRF really supposed to tide us over? Not everyone likes raiding, especially when they can just LFR clear the place, and we get so much gear from our Garrison anyway.

Also in Cata Blizz at least seemed to care about the sub loss, seeming to scramble out content. (This is before D3, Hearthstone and Overwatch hype tho).
Most importantly, I haven't heard Blizzard address this issue in Legion. Come out with all the shiny new features you want, are we going to get one content patch again?

[Granyala]

They admitted that 1 content patch in WoD wasn't such a good idea.

Whether they will change much in Legion remains to be seen.

[Alvito]

Cata at least added things to the game mid expansion. RBGs and new dungeons beat out reskinning the same 8 dungeons over and over.

[Pull My Finger]

The trick to yoghurt is to have it while it's good. But don't have yoghurt when it's gone sour. Don't go past the expiration date. the You'll just end up whining about yoghurt.

WoD was good. It just wasn't good for very long. Don't play something you're not enjoying for months and months, kids! You just end up wasting a lot of time and money on not enjoying yourselves and then you bitch and whine. The trick is to sense and know when to back off. That's called being smart with your time and your gaming.

[Armourboy]

Actually by the 6 month mark they had already lost several million subs, WoD was failing out of the gate and I honestly think that is why you saw them do what they did with Cata, ship out what was mostly done in some form or fashion and get to working on the next. Still think the reason both expansions really crapped the bed is because they were received relatively poorly and Blizzard basically abandoned them.

Lets think about Dragon Soul, the only thing that kept it from completely burning in flames was LFR, which is something that was slated for MoP and was pushed out early.

WoD was even worse, they abandoned this sucker almost from the get go.

[Alvito]

They admitted that 1 content patch in WoD wasn't such a good idea.

Whether they will change much in Legion remains to be seen.

Showing how out of sync they are, 2 days after saying 7.1 was a major patch Holinka started saying it was. Even in house they are out of touch and fragmented. The team has split into so many minor groups and off to other games people aren't on the same page or in the loop at all anymore.

[Hey There Guys its Metro]

They admitted that 1 content patch in WoD wasn't such a good idea.

Whether they will change much in Legion remains to be seen.

That won't change. What they admitted was that 6.1 was a very big disappointment. Which is was. 6.2 was amazing though, and 6.2.3 was easily the biggest addition to ever come with a sub-patch like that.

ANYWAY, Cata was shit because they spent all their development time fixing 1-60 which everyone either hates or loves, but regardless can be skipped through easily.
This was needed.
To some degree, WoD did the same. They spent so much time updating the player models as well as other visuals, that there was little time left for art assets for dungeons or even potential extra raids. You remember the "cost a raid tier" post right? That is a direct reference to what has happened here.
Even more so, WoD spent all its time investing into the Garrison as the main source of player content outside of groups.
It flopped because so many of the proposed ideas simply didn't enter the game, or failed because of poor incentive.

So this is why WoD was so underwhelming compared to MoP which added more tech and content paths than the entire game had thusfar.

And that's an important distinction.
Cata was horrendous coming of Wrath, and then came MoP - the single most expansive expansion in the game's history.

So, here's hoping to a repeat here for Legion.
Let's just hope that this odd trend doesn't then continue where the expansion after Legion is a let down.

Although, I must say, its going to be hard to top Legion. Once again, adding a few MAJOR pathways of content.
Ah well, focus on the now.

[Deleted]

They admitted that 1 content patch in WoD wasn't such a good idea.

Whether they will change much in Legion remains to be seen.

Assume the worst and hope for the best has always been the raiders saying to what blizzard does.

[Kahmal]

To some degree, WoD did the same. They spent so much time updating the player models as well as other visuals, that there was little time left for art assets for dungeons or even potential extra raids. You remember the "cost a raid tier" post right?

I remember a very long time ago in maybe Cata where they talked that rehashing the player models would take a lot of time that they would rather use making new content. I mean honestly I'm normally in full armor anyway so it's not like I cared.

I think that doing the player models was more for the sake of presentation to newer players. Often getting turned off by the dated models.

[PrairieChicken]

Cata had (probably best) progression model, WoD was null if you don't raid.

[Toppy]

I dont remember much hype for WoD outside of the first few months after blizzcon.

The hype started to die very VERY fast once the alpha/beta started.

[Caolela]

Confucius say: "Man who walk through airport turnstile backward going to Bangkok." = WoD.

[Kokolums]

Here's my experience with WoD:

1. leveling was meh.
2. Then i hit max level and went straight into Molten Core 10th anniversary! THAT was a BLAST! 40 people in a raid again, with everyone talking and just having FUN!
3. Ran Molten Core about 30x.
4. 10th Anniversary ended.
5. Tried garrisons and it was the worst thing in WoW I've ever experienced. So boring and skill-less.
6. Quit in February 2015 and never returned.

I'd guess by the huge subscriber boost during the 10th anniversary and the collapse in subs afterwards, my experience was a common one.

[Bosen]

I enjoyed Cata.

[Breccia]

They admitted that 1 content patch in WoD wasn't such a good idea.

Whether they will change much in Legion remains to be seen.

They would have to be paid to change. They lost half their subs; hopefully that's a lesson learned. But I doubt it.

EDIT: Er, strike that. They lost half the subs they had at launch, but not half the subs they had before launch. It's not as big of a drop as I suggested.

[Sithalos]

People tend to forget that the first half of Cata was pretty good.

[Kahmal]

People tend to forget that the first half of Cata was pretty good.

Meh. I had no problems with the first half of Cata, smoothest launch ever. Not enough zones or new continent but w/e, dungeons were challenging but no where near TBC levels. Decent first raid tier.

The problem arose with Wrath Babies unable to handle the ramped up difficulty. 5 mans along with the LFD tool were a disaster for most people to pug. As a tank as long as I queued up with 1 DPS buddy I would be fine. And the first tier may have been to hard for many people, considering how easy Naxx was.

Also the 10 and 25 man shared lock out was a disaster. First of all it essentially cut raid content in half, though I hate running the same place twice it was something to do. And 10 man wasn't tuned properly at all.

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

I'll just let Gul'dan explain.

But honestly, probably the only thing WoD did better than Cata was not screw up the Old World. I even find WoD's raids boring compared to Cata and MoP.

I won't whitewash Cata as people are want to do now that 4-year nostalgia is kicking in, though. Second worst expansion for WoW, and WoD had to really excel in the fail department to beat it.

[Breccia]

Erm, what? They had more subs at launch than before launch. Unless you go back to WotLK of course... In which case they lost more than half what they had at peak over the last few years.

Let me clarify. WoD launched with about 10M subs, but they didn't have those a few months before. They're down around 5M now, half what they had at launch, but not half what they had at this point in the previous expac. In that sense, a long-term view, they didn't lose half their subs -- they lost less.

[Aigilas]

Wod failed with it's 0% endgame outside of raiding and 0 content patches outside of raids, what was there to do when BRF hit, only raid brf, no new content, ok HFC launches what was there to do 3 quests and 2 grind factions with no rewards but some skins + shipyard which is horrible. Was there a new daily hub yes (3 quests per day ......mmmmmmmmmmm eh) 80% of that "content" patch was a wait for a rare to spawn and kill it, whats that there is 80 hours worth of content, no there is 2 hours worth of content and 78 hours of wait for the rare to spawn

i really liked mop, the whole panda and pokemon thing aside (pet battles are not that bad, i like them) they had a GREAT content cycle , raid patch, lore patch, raid patch with content, lore patch with new hub, i mean they had a good thing going, SoO lasted wayyyyy to long but HFC will be worse, and worse still since there has been no real progress content (outside of raids) added since wod launched