Which is better for Warcraft?

[ComputerNerd]

It was fixable they just didn't bother because they preferred to do a squish. There was no technical limitation forcing a squish. That was misinformation. I know you guys don't like it, but it's the way it is.

Considering the difference in the amount of work I find that hard to believe.
I didn't say it was forcing a squish.

[ComputerNerd]

Regression isn't the best option. If they can't upgrade the engine to deal with larger numbers, they need to abandon it for a new iteration.

And where was it said they couldn't ?
Nowhere.

The tweets if you bother to read all of them, rather than just select words then you will see it was stated that they could, but chose not to.

[Marquize]

Well I just don't see the point in subsequent squishes when they can take some extra time and fix the problem once and for all.
WoW2 would likely never work because of the installed user base in the current game that have sunk so much time into their characters that would just give up on the franchise when they have to start from scratch.
Taking those 2 things into consideration I would say that the Engine update would make most sense.

[Goondicker]

Update engine? No, that's similar to what we had with Cataclysm, and we all know how that went. Until WoW 2 is truly ready, I'd say squishes.

[hrugner]

What possible benefit to the game would there be by stitching together characters for super long numbers and constantly patching in new digit ranges because the game's power growth is exponential? That would have been the stupidest course of action. Of course they wanted to do the squish, going the other way would have provided no benefit and required near constant upkeep.

[Airwaves]

The squish has nothing to do with technical limits... Why the hell do people keep insisting on it?

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Update engine? No, that's similar to what we had with Cataclysm, and we all know how that went. Until WoW 2 is truly ready, I'd say squishes.

Hopefully there is never a wow2. I love warcraft but after it being around for 20 and 10 in an MMO I want to see what else blizzard can do. I have gotten bored on wow one and I sure as hell will not play wow 2.

[Knough]

Regression isn't the best option. If they can't upgrade the engine to deal with larger numbers, they need to abandon it for a new iteration.

In a perfect world, yes.
However squish might take a few weeks or months, and everyone continues happy after a short mental adjustment.
I reckon a whole upgrade probably takes a lot longer, will come with way more teething problems, and will have higher system requirements?

[Itisamuh]

It was fixable they just didn't bother because they preferred to do a squish. There was no technical limitation forcing a squish. That was misinformation. I know you guys don't like it, but it's the way it is.

You're remarkably opinionated.

[Chickat]

What would a WoW2 achieve, besides throwing players progress out the window and fragmenting the community even more.
I could hope for engine updates, but the squish is more realistic at this point and despite the noise is being done for a good reason.
Blizzard will even be including buffs to ensure that old content remains as soloable as it has been, so really there is no reason for all the stupid fuss over it.
If there are issues come beta, well that is what beta is for.

This. I dont see a wow 2 happening until wow servers shut down.

[hrugner]

I think WoW2 would be a good move, they could:
-unify the art assets
-hammer out what current canon is
-allow freedom in art asset updates by unhooking them from current content
-redesign classes from the ground up with the current play model in mind
-rework their reward model so content doesn't lose value as quickly

[Hellhowl]

I don't necessarily think it would be best, but if blizz took everything they knew from wow and made wow 2 with an updated engine, all new graphics and lore and in x amount of time in the future they could probably make it really really badass.

[Deleted]

I believe one encounter actually bugged out due to excessive health, and therefore had several heals introduced into it.
So yes, there is a technical limitation.

I'l take the word of Blizz employes over yours. Especially when there isn't an indication it would have limits.

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The squish has nothing to do with technical limits... Why the hell do people keep insisting on it?

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Hopefully there is never a wow2. I love warcraft but after it being around for 20 and 10 in an MMO I want to see what else blizzard can do. I have gotten bored on wow one and I sure as hell will not play wow 2.

I wouldn't play it either, why would you hope there wouldn't come any...that's just silly.

[Aspect of Death]

Well i would say engine update. However WoW 2, (from scratch) sounds nice.. But that would probably mean you start from scratch without all the stuff (Items,mount,achievements etc) you have gotten over the years? If so, not really a fan of the idea.

[Deleted]

What would a WoW2 achieve, besides throwing players progress out the window and fragmenting the community even more.

If it would be basically just an updated version of WoW, they should allow people to transfer their characters with all their unique and no longer obtainable stuff to the new game. Especially if it would be just continuing from where "WoW 1" ends and skipping all the Vanilla-TBC-Wrath content.

Those bank vaults contain infinite amounts of memories.

[Thandorr]

If it would be basically just an updated version of WoW, they should allow people to transfer their characters with all their unique and no longer obtainable stuff to the new game. Especially if it would be just continuing from where "WoW 1" ends and skipping all the Vanilla-TBC-Wrath content.

Those bank vaults contain infinite amounts of memories.

If they were to make everything transferable, they wouldn't be starting from scratch. It would be an update. Can't have it both ways.

[Deleted]

total engine overhaul.
at the same time as doing this they can implement a lot better scaling so a squish would never be needed.

[Hyve]

You do realize it's only the combat engine, not the entire game engine?

True - But you say that like it's a small task. The Combat Engine is one of the major factors to World of Warcraft' success. No other MMORPG has even come close to developing a Combat System that is as smooth and fluid as theirs, while still being reactive and fun to use.

I agree that a squish every few few years will be annoying, but it's been ~9 years since the game launched, so if we assume that future expansions wont see our power grow so much each time, it could be another ~12 / ~15 years before this'd need to happen again. Look at it like that, and what value is there for them to potentially harm one of their most powerful assets?

[hrugner]

True - But you say that like it's a small task. The Combat Engine is one of the major factors to World of Warcraft' success. No other MMORPG has even come close to developing a Combat System that is as smooth and fluid as theirs, while still being reactive and fun to use.

The game hardly knows where your character is or the direction it's facing, it isn't so much smooth as really mushy. I guess it gives players a higher feeling of success though...

[Deleted]

Squishes and Engine update. It shouldn't inflate as much as it does now.
A whole new wow is way too much.

[Yuyn]

There's an astounding amount of misinformation and misunderstanding in this thread...

(1) The primary reason they decided to squish was to make the numbers smaller. Smaller numbers are easier to visually distinguish, and easier for people to understand. Suffixes don't fix this.

As an example, try to quickly order the following two lists of numbers from smallest to largest:

100
10000
1000
1000000

100K
100B
100M
1000
100T

If you're like most people, the first was easier because the quicker visual distinction. When numbers are different by at least an order of magnitude, the full number is much easier to deal with.

(2) There is a technical limitation that encouraged doing so. Re-read Watcher's tweet carefully... He said there is a technical reason, it's just not an insurmountable problem. What this means is they could have spent the time to re-architect the combat engine (without needing to scrap the entire thing), but doing a squish means they don't urgently have to.

This is not an issue of laziness or anything. It's an issue of semi-arbitrary limits, which you'd have no matter where the limits stood (well, unless you made some parts of it horrifically inefficient -- and since it runs solely on Blizzard's servers, this would be a bad choice). Currently, if I remember correctly, a lot of the limits are 32-bit integers. They would have to make some changes and do a lot of testing to increase that, likely to 64-bit integers (as anything above 64-bit numbers gets worse to deal with in terms of processing complexity, since 64-bit processors use 64-bit registers -- larger numbers require twice or more the CPU cycles to deal with), which would then be another arbitrary limit.

At the exponential increases we see, it'd likely only be another 3-4 expansions until that limit was also hit, meaning doing a squish is a immediate solution (which kills two birds with one stone) and can be used as a template for repeating in future repeats of this occurrence.

So to summarize:

(1) They want small numbers. They're easier to read, distinguish, and identify quickly for average people.

(2) There is currently a technical limitation. That limit could be increased with some effort, but it was the limiting factors in encounters like Garrosh in this expansion.