A Word on World of Warcraft

A Word on World of Warcraft
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Greetings Azeroth,

2024 is underway and it’s a big year for World of Warcraft as the game reaches a milestone 20-year anniversary!

To think that 20 years ago Facebook launched, MySpace was cool, and many of us were playing on a Nintendo DS and a Playstation Portable. Friends aired its final episode and Lost delivered its first. And that same year friends, family, and coworkers started playing a game called World of Warcraft!

It fills my heart that Azeroth has become home to so many different types of people and players around the globe who have shared memorable moments these past two decades. *hugs* As Morpheus cried in Matrix Reloaded (2003, but anyway) “WE are STILL here!” I’m glad I chose this rabbit hole and have never regretted how deep it goes. WoW is my wonderland – all day, every day.




Thinking about the year ahead, and our roadmaps we remain committed to, we want to share with you three things we’re focused on as a development team:

  • #1. Continue to evolve the living world for all players.
    • Build on our learnings from 2023 to deliver content regularly for Dragonflight and Classic.
    • Update and modernize your experience and quality of life in all flavors of WoW.
    • Listen to your feedback and keep improving.

  • #2. Deliver the first installment of our most ambitious story with The War Within.
    • World of Warcraft: The War Within is preparing to invite players for testing in the coming months, and we are working hard to deliver on the epic journey of our Worldsoul Saga.

  • #3. Try new things and take risks to bring you new experiences.
    • Our development team is trying new approaches. Invention and creativity are critical to this ever-evolving world of Azeroth we craft for—and with—all of you.


All that in mind, immediately ahead of us we have WoW Classic: Season of Discovery Phase 2 launching on February 8 at 1:00 p.m. (21:00 GMT) globally. For more details, get the full scoop from our overview. You’ll notice some new approaches mentioned there that we’re trying out and (as always) we will listen to feedback. (“New runes, a new PvP experience, skill books, and more!)

WoW Classic Hardcore’s Self-Found mode is coming in late February, followed shortly after by the Beta for Cataclysm Classic. More news on that will be coming soon.

As many have noticed, this is the first period of time since Dragonflight launched that we haven’t had an active PTR and we understand that it is creating some curiosity.

For the 10.2.6 patch for Dragonflight, we created what we think is a unique event inspired by past musings from the community. We can say that it is open to anyone with a WoW subscription if they want to participate (Classic or Dragonflight players). That's all we’re going say. Sorry, not sorry? Our goal is to continue to keep it secret— and keep it safe. The speculation is great! We watched the reaction to the surprises in Season of Discovery and thought we’d try a similar, but different, approach for Dragonflight.

That means there will be no PTR (Public Test Realm) for a portion of the next content update as we have traditionally done. What we can say is that it will be coming in March. A finer point, but the update will also include everything that’s needed for Dragonflight Season 4 but will be hidden. Around (after) the launch of the update we will make Season 4 available for testing on a 10.2.6 PTR before it goes live.

Why are we doing this? We like the idea of releasing content that has some surprises and isn’t datamined or revealed in advance. We also like to see the joy the community gets out of uncovering it all together as they all jump in to play. We look forward to seeing if the community likes this type of surprise and look forward to hearing your feedback. This is risky experiment and could be a bit bumpy, though we are doing everything we can to ensure success.

The WoW team prides itself on ensuring a solid, quality launch. We are sensitive and reactive to problems and issues that can and might arise, so I hope you can forgive us if we experience some hiccups with this experiment and work alongside us as we try this out in March. ALL WILL BE REVEALED THEN!


With gratitude and excitement for the new memories we create together,

Holly Longdale
This article was originally published in forum thread: A Word on World of Warcraft started by Lumy View original post
Published on 2024-02-06 06:05 PM
59 Comments
Comments 53 Comments
  1. Insaniam's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by johnnyd2 View Post
    maybe it will be Retail/Classic collection integration or something like that? We did see the "Bugs" of the Arborwyrm mount and some other REtail only things appearing in Classic as well.
    I've been saying for a while that they'll eventually do something like this with Classic. I'm glad that they didn't early on so that we could have a good experience without (even more) retail tourists, but I wouldn't be surprised if they did it now with Classic seasons or something.

    Honestly, as someone who's abhorred the way they've handed out old (and in some cases prestigious) unobtainable items (e.g. freebies, Twitch promos, and BMAH), this would be the only acceptable way for them to go about reintroducing these items as obtainable again. While it's not as difficult now, people would still have to go out of their way and put in a considerable amount of effort to earn them, and I can't really see a problem in that.
  1. Lolites's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by VoidSeeker199X View Post
    All that content will be made obsolete in a few months time. So why should anyone care?
    this will be shocking to you i guess, but people play to HAVE FUN, and to have it WHEN THEY PLAY, not bcs of what will be in months/years...
    and wow has always been like this, so if thats dealbreaker to you you took a goddamn long to notice it and complain...

    Quote Originally Posted by VoidSeeker199X View Post
    And why is the game still called WORLD of Warcraft when only a small fraction of that world is being played on?
    which was always a thing... arguably little less so in vanila, but 100% after that...
  1. heinz0r's Avatar
    "Listen to your feedback and keep improving."

    When did that ever happen? Those devs are so funny... WoW devs are notorious for completely ignoring player feedback.
  1. doledippers's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by heinz0r View Post
    "Listen to your feedback and keep improving."

    When did that ever happen?
    for the majority of dragonflight, actually. several core systems plus many minor things have been iterated on based on community feedback. To name a few..

    -class talent trees / pathing
    -warden color changing mog set
    -crest acquisition rate and bag space concerns
    -follower dungeon XP increase
    -letting the community decide tier sets for s4
  1. Daronokk's Avatar
    Why this post? All of this was already shown at BlizzCon. Sounds to me like Holly just wants to appear in charge by making a hollow statement. Pathetic.
  1. doledippers's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Daronokk View Post
    Why this post? All of this was already shown at BlizzCon. Sounds to me like Holly just wants to appear in charge by making a hollow statement. Pathetic.
    the roadmaps and 10.2.6 details were not shown at blizzcon.
  1. Myradin's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by VoidSeeker199X View Post
    Why are players and devs alike so obsessed with patch numbers? All that content will be made obsolete in a few months time. So why should anyone care? And why is the game still called WORLD of Warcraft when only a small fraction of that world is being played on?
    Over the course of the game, you visit various parts of the world.
  1. Ereb's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Daronokk View Post
    Why this post? All of this was already shown at BlizzCon. Sounds to me like Holly just wants to appear in charge by making a hollow statement. Pathetic.
    Almost none of this was shown at Blizzcon lol. Is Holly now the new person everybody is going to blame everything on?
  1. Doffen's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by heinz0r View Post
    "Listen to your feedback and keep improving."

    When did that ever happen? Those devs are so funny... WoW devs are notorious for completely ignoring player feedback.
    I would rather say they listen to much now making WoW to a place where you don't really have to work towards any goals as so many things are handed to you.

    Made WoW less interesting to play. "They do listen to feedback, but is it improving?" Is a more accurate take.
  1. ablib's Avatar
    Why are people drawing conclusions that the big surprise has anything to do with Classic?

    RE:
    "We can say that it is open to anyone with a WoW subscription if they want to participate"

    and

    "We watched the reaction to the surprises in Season of Discovery and thought we’d try a similar, but different, approach for Dragonflight"


    It's kinda clear it's something to do with Dragonflight, but you don't need to own Dragonflight to be able to participate.
  1. Relapses's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Doffen View Post
    I would rather say they listen to much now making WoW to a place where you don't really have to work towards any goals as so many things are handed to you.

    Made WoW less interesting to play. "They do listen to feedback, but is it improving?" Is a more accurate take.
    It's important to consider no two players will ever agree on what improving the game actually constitutes. You may hate the game but the game that it became may be someone else's wish come true. I think Blizzard tries to be mostly egalitarian with their development process with minor caveats for pet projects which do not always pan out.
  1. Doffen's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Relapses View Post
    It's important to consider no two players will ever agree on what improving the game actually constitutes. You may hate the game but the game that it became may be someone else's wish come true. I think Blizzard tries to be mostly egalitarian with their development process with minor caveats for pet projects which do not always pan out.
    Not sure where I said I hate the game at all(passive aggressive, did I do it correctly?). I still play WoW, and if I hated it I wouldn't! The base WoW gameplay is the same as always. Personally I have been tired of it, but then I just didnt play it until I found it fun again.

    But I think the alt-gameplay is dumbed down a lot, and rng is no existant almost. I know these are QOL but I dont think WoW needed this much. It was part of the game before and I do like to progress my characters properly. So I have been against the waves on the forums on that topic for years.

    Anyway, said it before and saying it again, they had to choose a direction and thats a good thing.

    And personally I am looking forward to TWW. Will make it better. And the changes are decent so far, even though it more Alt QoL in Warbands I like that kind of packaging.

    I have found out that playing WoW is very relaxing. To sit at the computer playing World of Warcraft now and then is tip top for my soul. So changes or not, I dont mind much.
  1. rrayy's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Daronokk View Post
    Why this post? All of this was already shown at BlizzCon. Sounds to me like Holly just wants to appear in charge by making a hollow statement. Pathetic.
    10.2.6 was not shown in any way.
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