Venturebeat Interview with J. Allen Brack - Wow's 15th Anniversary and Future

Can't stand this guy. He's a corporate cocksucker.

Originally Posted by RobertoCarlos

Yeah I didnt mind the dailies either. The shado-pan stuff with an ally you could choose was more interesting than looting nuts for the 15th time with a world quest and the end goal was more clear rather than endless RNG with the paragon cache

For many people it wasn't the fact there was a month long grind, it was that if you wanted to be somewhat competitive you were forced to grind every faction's dailys every day until you had all the things you needed. So for raiders you were forced to basically login and do 2-3 hours of dailys every single day, before you could do anything else and for many people that was the only time they had to play so they basically logged in to a new expansion and did dailys for the first month or so and none of the other new content.

Though I do agree about the paragon cache, they need a change for badluck protection or outright removed. It's healthy to finish things, unending grinds become unrewarding and unsatisfying.

Originally Posted by Nevcairiel

Actually such factors have a huge impact on how enjoyable a game is for many people. Having a good friendly guild can make or break any expansion.

It's always the little things that makes things more enjoyable.

Originally Posted by Oncereborn

For many people it wasn't the fact there was a month long grind, it was that if you wanted to be somewhat competitive you were forced to grind every faction's dailys every day until you had all the things you needed. So for raiders you were forced to basically login and do 2-3 hours of dailys every single day, before you could do anything else and for many people that was the only time they had to play so they basically logged in to a new expansion and did dailys for the first month or so and none of the other new content.

Though I do agree about the paragon cache, they need a change for badluck protection or outright removed. It's healthy to finish things, unending grinds become unrewarding and unsatisfying.

This 100%, hit the nail on the head, it's part of the reason i quit shortly after ToT came out it was not fun to be forced to login every day to do your round of dailies just to be able to raid with some of the BiS pre raid gear being locked behind exalted rep status on a few factions was moronic, and if you were going for a server first you were forced to also do it all on alts too in order to negate the sweeping nerfs and changes blizz made in the first 'balance' pass they made shortly before Christmas that year.

I agree wholeheartedly that they need to stop adding endless grind shite to the game and have content that has a stopping point, part of the reason the 'original' paragon trait in the artifact weapons was so good (relative to what was added later) was because once you had grinded your way to 52 traits you were done, and any excess AP gains could be used on off spec weapons to get them to the same point and once finished you could then choose what content you wanted to play and weren't forced into one single form of content that you may not have enjoyed doing.

This man has never been a hardcore fan of the Lost Vikings. That's clearly his greatest failing.

Originally Posted by vevox

..... such pointless information. I wonder if he realizes none of these factors matter if the game isn't enjoyable.

..... Such a pointless comment. I wonder if you realize this game has millions of players with millions of different opinions (most of which don't waste their time on forums bitching about said game).


You may not have enjoyed Expansion X but I guarantee you there are hundreds of thousands that did/currently do enjoy it.


Me personally, I think BfA is fantastic. My main class (monk) is good, all 3 specs are fun to play. My survival hunter alt is fun. My shaman is fun. Azerite gear is in a great spot right now. The content I personally care about (End game PvE) is as good as it has ever been. Plus there is 8.2 coming soon which looks incredible.



Of course thats just my opinion. Your free to hate the game if you wish. However, don't pretend like the game "isn't enjoyable" to everyone.

Originally Posted by RobertoCarlos

Oh look its mr "you think you want it but you dont" sprouting more corporate bullshit.

Hes more hateable than Ion and lore combined and thats saying something.

You know someone cares when they keep having to tell you. "I care! Im passionate about these games! honestly! trust me!"

I think Brack is even in same hate level like EA CEO ATM. I know he is only Blizz president, but ya know what i mean. Also i start to feel that his. "You think you do, but you don't" stops working, seeing how beta classic was recieved by fans. But it is still long road, before we can say it is success or not.

Also Brack instead of puting out current fires in all blizz games, is adding it more. Vulpine Familiar mount was one of those fires.

When you make shit, and like to smell your own farts. You can say things like that.

Originally Posted by Nevcairiel

Actually such factors have a huge impact on how enjoyable a game is for many people. Having a good friendly guild can make or break any expansion.

But on the other hand, its hard to have friends or a guild to play with when everyone quits because the content is boring and repetitive. We had our local guild burnout towards the end of WoD, only a skeleton crew returned for Legion but enough to have fun with keystones, and pretty much everyone skipped BFA. It's hard to justify the monthly cost/gold grind when you're just waiting for timers constantly, and 6 months between content is a long time.

Given that World of Warcraft was made with 300 employees and this expansion with... 4,300... I know time is a factor... but like... wow...

On the other hand, I'd be super excited if Blizzard and Nintendo revisited some of the old Blizzard IPs from that era. I'd so be down for a modern Lost Vikings, Rock n' roll racing or Blackthorne.

At least we know we're getting another major content patch after nazjatar.

Originally Posted by Sonneillon

Given that World of Warcraft was made with 300 employees and this expansion with... 4,300... I know time is a factor... but like... wow...

On the other hand, I'd be super excited if Blizzard and Nintendo revisited some of the old Blizzard IPs from that era. I'd so be down for a modern Lost Vikings, Rock n' roll racing or Blackthorne.

Hey moron, 4300 people working on 8 IPs and upcoming projects, a lot more PR, CS, Esports. Sure they all most have worked on BFA. Who can take this kind of logic serious?

Too bad they are focused on mobile and consoles more than pc

I personally didn’t like MoP but hear it was good. I didn’t stick around for it, I didn’t enjoy the theme of pandaland and I wouldn’t have raided my own capital. Team garrosh.

Diehard wow fan; I’ve driven 3000 miles twice to blizzcon (05 and 09) but I don’t think the right people are in place at the company. It seems to have become more corporate and less gamer friendly over the years and there’s no turning that ship around

At least they are giving classic

The team believes the two-year expansion cycle with three major content patches is the right thing right now

This is the biggest issue I have with current WoW, a slave to a timetable guarantees that we end up with sub par expansions.

"Features" that are as buggy as hell and as boring as shit make it into live even after multiple threads of feedback posted on beta forums.

The timetable is an anathema to the past Bliz credo of "release it when it is ready"; WoD saw the death of the quality over a sub par release, and it seems that it will never be great again if the clock is in charge.

I have no faith that WoW will once again return to the game I once loved whilst this odious second hand car salesman and his team of clueless lackeys are involved.

Originally Posted by Voidwielder

I did not understand the shit MoP got when it was current. Never have, never will. It was a good expansion.

My last "I quit" was because of MoP. Looking back, that was a terrible decision, because all facts point in one direction: PvP (which is my focus) was great, and so was PvE apparently.

Personally, while I kept my opinion to myself, pandas just feel off for the World of Warcraft. And frankly, they still do. I am saying this having spent the majority of Season 1 BFA maining a Pandaren Warrior.

That said, as I leveled my monk during Legion and discovered the Monk class hall and other tidbits from MoP, I realized that whoever was on the art team back then, really did, 100% enjoy their job—creating a Chinese culture-influenced world. Just look at the Monk Class Hall. It's gigantic and full of flavor!

But yeah, this is simply me giving you an idea of the why and who.

Originally Posted by Walkerbo

This is the biggest issue I have with current WoW, a slave to a timetable guarantees that we end up with sub par expansions.

"Features" that are as buggy as hell and as boring as shit make it into live even after multiple threads of feedback posted on beta forums.

The timetable is an anathema to the past Bliz credo of "release it when it is ready"; WoD saw the death of the quality over a sub par release, and it seems that it will never be great again if the clock is in charge.

I have no faith that WoW will once again return to the game I once loved whilst this odious second hand car salesman and his team of clueless lackeys are involved.

In fairness, they were once aiming for an expansion a year, which would have been too much.

Though, when I played BFA I was left with the opinion that they should have done another content patch or two in Legion and pushed BFA back. I also disagree about Argus and think they should have made it its own expansion that the artifact weapons carried over into.

I think my thoughts can be summarized as Legion was so good that while BFA isn't terrible, it just doesn't hit the same bar that Legion did.

I feel as if they're mentioning MoP and it's "legacy" more often in an effort to subtly shift the conversation around BfA's failings towards "player perceptions".

Seriously, when is the last time they've called out 5 year old expansions repeatedly when talking about current content? Suspicious, nay?

Originally Posted by vevox

..... such pointless information. I wonder if he realizes none of these factors matter if the game isn't enjoyable.

No it definitely factors in.
A lot of people who started in cata loved it personally i think it was garbage since most of dev time was put into remaking the world instead of making end game content. But to each their own.
Playing a mmo by yourself is definitely not the greatest experience. Might as well be playing a actual single player focused game instead. Looking at wow its not hard to think of reasons why that might be the case... >_< outside of the fact its depressing.

J Allen Brack, in all his glory...

Originally Posted by Jerot

6 months between content is a long time.

5-6 months between major content patches has been the norm since forever. Even in Legion. The only difference in Legion was that they had the patches and raids on a different cycle, ie. the raid was delayed from the patch launch.

But in recent years this isn't "enough" anymore, apparently, while everyone praises the old expansions where this was just standard.