Ghostcrawler Said a Thing...

[Deleted]

To be honest, I'm not a huge fan of Ghostcrawler, but I really like the title of this thread alone. It's a great mockery of these endless ill-concieved threads with stream of consciousness opening questions such as "omg, Ghostcrawler sounded a bit cocky does that mean he hates America? I mean Paladins?" that never get anyone anywhere.

[errosync]

I'm sure DO/Shieldwall was already heavily planned/completed by the time MOP was released, though.

It likely was. Similar to DLC (though MMOs are truly different from regular games), there was likely some point where most of the work they had was done and just needed fine tuning or proper packaging to make the whole transition smooth, tight and not a buggy mess like the earlier expansions. During this time, teams either can do nothing, or they can work on future projects or side projects that may be brought in at a later date into the game. That's not to say that's always the case, because ZA/ZG in 4.1 was fairly indicative of the opposite (not that it wasn't fun), just that it tends to be the case.

I made the first tweet. Things like the Upgrade system, the empty Krassarang zone, ICONS for many items, The sloppy Mind quickening on Sporebats. I am still convinced they rushed 5.0 half assed for 2 reasons:


1) 11 months of DS

Why would they hold of on releasing an expansion to keep people playing the most hated content since Trial of the Crusader? Not only that, but even eleven months doesn't top the year-plus wait between BT and SWP; I'm not saying eleven months is fine, but I hardly believe they did it just to hit some arbitrary mark and/or spite the community

2) Compete with Guild wars 2

There's nearly a full month difference. If it was a couple of days or within a week, I could see that, but a whole month? At that point, you're ostensibly inventing reasons that likely don't exist in order to justify some kind of emotion.

Its quite obvious he isn't being truthful here. I won't try to debate if 5.1 was supposed to launch as 5.0 or not, but they definitely launched mope on that specific date for a reason.

He's being tongue-in-cheek and facetious; he's not lying or anything, and he's also being fairly honest. In Blizzard's history, do you ever remember them setting a specific date for things to happen by? Hell, as much of a joke as it is, they might as well have full trademarks on the word 'Soon' considering that's usually the answer to almost any question. All Greg is saying is that even without there being competitors (in an ideal world for them), they probably would choose to not have official target dates; they have them because they have demands they need to meet, games need to be sold and shareholders they need to impress. Again, the amount of over-analysis that goes into Greg's comments is both frightening and astounding; astounding that people can and do regularly put tons of analytic thought into something but frightening that it's usually way out on some sideways plane of reality and for something that really offers no benefits or furthers mankind.

TLDR; he's making a joke and poking fun at his own company. Take that as you will.

9 months of no support on live WOW servers goes very far to just show that.

As general as this is, I'm assuming it relates to raiding in Cataclysm. Again, Sunwell Plateau was released over a year after Black Temple, which all happened in an expansion people love to 'love'. That was also during a time when developers didn't talk to the community and class balance was really, REALLY bad. I know people like to be hyperbolic to make a point, but doing so to ostensibly prove an unrelated point that one game is better than another (which isn't true when only looking at total revenue flows and subscription flows) is beyond asinine.

[Pull My Finger]

I think they got enough addicts MOP right now to be content until next quarter report. Asia has probably kept them at least at 10 mills so their next goal is to not loose more unitl 1st Q report of 2013.

To be honest, I'm not really inclined to give your arguments any deeper thought because I noticed how they consist of polemics and mud-slinging. You're basically just saying that WoW keeps on going because of inferior and second-class clientel anyway - "addicts" and Asians. Enjoy Rift, dude. Your talk is just butthurt game bashing to begin with and there's not a lot of senseful and substantial thought to come from such a mindset anyway.

You actually think that this has anything to do with other than pure buisness ?

What are you trying to say? That MoP and all the patches were/are long done and Blizzard is just monitoring their competition and holding all the stuff back so they can sabotage them fore "pure business"? Yeah, the new character models were probably also finished a long time ago and they're just holding them back, right.

[Duster505]

I am interested by this comment and it is completely off topic (good job by me for carrying it on!).

It makes it sound like you don't need different sets of gear for all the different roles in Rift which is a very interesting idea!

In Rift do the stats on your gear change when you change role? Or are all stats like Mastery in WoW which applies to all roles?

I played Rift for about 2 months at launch and it as of course changed a lot since them.

In WoW for example there is quite a big gear crossover between Shaman Resto and Elemental gear but all that gear is useless for Enhancement.

Does a Cleric - Justicar use the same gear as a Cleric - Purifier?

No - you cant use exact same gear for all. Tanking as Cleric you do need a plate set with tanking stats. DPS and Healer use mail and both rely on spellpower but other stats do make a difference - even tho you can still do fine dps in healing gear and switching souls.

Its a totally different concept tho compared to WOW. You still have to work for your gear - but your rewarded for playing many roles - rather than punished like I feel MOP has done. Also with the new soul system - you have some premade builds that help you to understand the basics. It was pretty hard for WOW players to understand the concept of RIFT souls and the freedom cause it was exact the oposite to what GC did with WOW talent systems... (removed them).

[Buu]

Wait, What? There is people reading that the ACCUSATION of 5.1 to be part of the launch was GC statement? It was written by a customer, not Greg.

Come on.... Just go search what Chilton and Kosak said prior the launch. Geez, just THINK on Beta... The Landfall would NEVER be part of the launch. They had it planned, as they have EVERYTHING ELSE planned, and reserved already.All the Geography were already there at the launch, only waiting for the chapter where they would be effectively made.

How can people think that over the whole beta phase they simply scrapped Landfall? There was NO MODEL, NO PLACEMENT, NOTHING, besides the spaces reserved for the patch in Krasarang.

Do yourselves a favor and save yourselves the shame of being pointed on the absurdity you read by mixing sources. GC never said that.


About competitors,Yeah, horrible behavior of watching and taking action to preserve their position. They should like EA that ignore everything and everyone,wearing their cool shades and making poses.

[Duster505]

Because I play during the MoP expansion, I'm an addict? >_>
Maybe, just maybe, I actually enjoy what I'm playing? Is that possible?

5.2 will release as soon as they feel it's up to being released. That's generally when things are working as intended and there are as few bugs as possible. Also, if it's not going to be released until March, then they are not really trying to outdo GW2 are they considering you said the GW2 patches would be January and February?

Blizz doesn't have any content to counter that with. They will start their PR campaign about 5.2 just before January GW2 patch launch.

[Deleted]

No - you cant use exact same gear for all. Tanking as Cleric you do need a plate set with tanking stats. DPS and Healer use mail and both rely on spellpower but other stats do make a difference - even tho you can still do fine dps in healing gear and switching souls.

Its a totally different concept tho compared to WOW. You still have to work for your gear - but your rewarded for playing many roles - rather than punished like I feel MOP has done.

Oh OK

That's a shame it sounded awesome!

I guess you mean you fell forced to spend Valor on Upgrades rather than Off Spec gear then?

I play and raid pretty casually (only 6/16 normals) and I don't really see this I am Resto/Ele off spec and I am 486 Resto 484 Ele.

I really hope they implement the idea where you can choose what Role you want your gear to come from in LFR rather than it being the role you chose to play like they have said they are working on, that would be a pretty neat solution.

[Cybran]

Why would they hold of on releasing an expansion to keep people playing the most hated content since Trial of the Crusader? Not only that, but even eleven months doesn't top the year-plus wait between BT and SWP; I'm not saying eleven months is fine, but I hardly believe they did it just to hit some arbitrary mark and/or spite the community

The expansion wasn't ready. That was my whole point. They are slow with content. The first 2 tweets were "Will patch 5.2 take 5+ months?", GC answered asked "Did 5.1 (take 5 months)?".

This why i replied, but 140 chars is not enough to formulate a decent questions. So this is what i meant: "5.1 was not a major content patch. Most of the stuff from 5.1 were things that were supposed to be in 5.0 like Energizing spores, Aspect "fix", Icons for archeology fragments, etc. 5.2 is not a patch with leftovers that didn't make 5.0 os it will take longer. A lot of the stuff in 5.1 was cut to hurry up the process of launching mists and keep GW2 from hitting the ground running"

There's nearly a full month difference. If it was a couple of days or within a week, I could see that, but a whole month? At that point, you're ostensibly inventing reasons that likely don't exist in order to justify some kind of emotion.

Launch yes. But patch 5.0.4 that brough pet battles, "talents" and other smaller stuff launched days after Guild wars 2 did. Pre-Launch patch is when most people come back.

[Duster505]

Because I play during the MoP expansion, I'm an addict? >_>
Maybe, just maybe, I actually enjoy what I'm playing? Is that possible?

5.2 will release as soon as they feel it's up to being released. That's generally when things are working as intended and there are as few bugs as possible. Also, if it's not going to be released until March, then they are not really trying to outdo GW2 are they considering you said the GW2 patches would be January and February?

Building up addiction to play (based on goals to get gear) is a common practice in MMO games. BLizzard did a dam good job making sure that ppl sorta had to log on every day for enough time to make them feel they would loose something if they didn't cap the valor for a week.

In terms of GW2 they dont have to do that cause they are not sub based game. They can make same amount of money by releasing fresh content and adding few new stuff in store and have ppl get instant enjoyment playing that way. In many ways that a better model for the players. At least less hardcore players that have RL obligations.

[Granyala]

but your rewarded for playing many roles - rather than punished like I feel MOP has done.

Hi, Duster505, you're still here?

WoW has always punished you for playing multiple roles. They made it a lot easier in the x-pacs to swap specs. As a shadow priest for example I really only need a new trinket and a few reforges if I wanted to heal, lets say normal mode.

For 5mans / LFR I don't even have to reforge lol.

[Austilias]

I'm more impressed and entertained by the masses who heartily contain with much conviction that GC definitely isn't at least a bit of a smartass on Twitter at times. A little honesty goes a long way.

[Pull My Finger]

Building up addiction to play (based on goals to get gear) is a common practice in MMO games. BLizzard did a dam good job making sure that ppl sorta had to log on every day for enough time to make them feel they would loose something if they didn't cap the valor for a week.

You seem to assume that everyone's prone to addiction just because you are.

[Duster505]

Oh OK

That's a shame it sounded awesome!

I guess you mean you fell forced to spend Valor on Upgrades rather than Off Spec gear then?

I play and raid pretty casually (only 6/16 normals) and I don't really see this I am Resto/Ele off spec and I am 486 Resto 484 Ele.

I really hope they implement the idea where you can choose what Role you want your gear to come from in LFR rather than it being the role you chose to play like they have said they are working on, that would be a pretty neat solution.

Ye - they have to get that in as fast as possible. But ye... Doing the math its pretty sad to see how far back multi-roles fall compared to other players that focus on 1 role in MOP. Players picked up on that pretty fast and Druids, paladins and even shamans are now the least played classes in MOP over the last month. Its sad to see cause the game badly needs those multi-role classes just to keep the core role balance in the game. Blizzard did not think this through and are paying the price.

[Xarkan]

Time to start taking it out of context, right?

5.1 was supposed to be launched with Mists. It was cut and "masked" as a patch to combat GW2. 5.2 isn't like that.
I think you greatly overestimate our ability to hit a target date even if we paid that close attention to competitors. (Source)

So what do we think? I think the thing the community will blow out of proportion is his cockiness? Yeah, let's go with that.

[sarcasm]

OMG BLIZZ IS SO STUPID TEHY DONT THINK ANYONE CAN TOUCH THEM ND SAY THEY DONT TRY TO RIPOFF OTHER GAMES WTF ITS OBVIOUS THEY STOLE ACHEEVEMENTS FROM XBOX

[/sarcasm]

Ahem. That hurt my heart.

GW2 release date: August 28th
MoP patch 5.1: November 27th(us)
MoP launch: September 25th

What part exactly was remotely about combating GW2

Was what i was thinking

[Duster505]

You seem to assume that everyone's prone to addiction just because you are.

Nope - some are worse than others. But the game mechanics are still built on the core of getting ppl hooked. You think ppl are playing MMOs because they have best gameplay? Nope -they offer two things that ppl are after. 1) socialising - WOW has moved from this more and more and made guilds less important than ever. 2) setting goals - this is the part where most ppl will stick. Be that gear, achivements, mounts or whatever. And at some point ppl will not quit just because they have spent so much time on it anyway.

[Cybran]

GW2 release date: August 28th
MoP patch 5.1: November 27th(us)
MoP launch: September 25th

What part exactly was remotely about combating GW2

Was what i was thinking

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/708...otes-8_28_2012

Hello?

[Duster505]

Hi, Duster505, you're still here?

WoW has always punished you for playing multiple roles. They made it a lot easier in the x-pacs to swap specs. As a shadow priest for example I really only need a new trinket and a few reforges if I wanted to heal, lets say normal mode.

For 5mans / LFR I don't even have to reforge lol.

There are more players in WOW than you. And there are also more classes than priests. I dont really consider a 2 way normal trinity class that just needs one set of gear to be a multi - role. The best possible multi-role class for Blizzard right now is tank/healer. Forcing so many to go DPS with dailes and Brawlers guild makes that combo very weak at this point. But its too late to change it now.

[Somebodyelse]

Time to start taking it out of context, right?

5.1 was supposed to be launched with Mists. It was cut and "masked" as a patch to combat GW2. 5.2 isn't like that.
I think you greatly overestimate our ability to hit a target date even if we paid that close attention to competitors. (Source)

So what do we think? I think the thing the community will blow out of proportion is his cockiness? Yeah, let's go with that.

[sarcasm]

OMG BLIZZ IS SO STUPID TEHY DONT THINK ANYONE CAN TOUCH THEM ND SAY THEY DONT TRY TO RIPOFF OTHER GAMES WTF ITS OBVIOUS THEY STOLE ACHEEVEMENTS FROM XBOX

[/sarcasm]

Ahem. That hurt my heart.

Or you could learn to read and understand basic english...He said they're not good enough to hit a target date PRECISELY...That even when they WANT TO...most of the time they can't.

What's cocky or arrogant about that ?

[Mawnix]

I don't think Blizzard pays THAT much attention to competition.

Honestly, at this point, we could all see what happened with its competition.

Rift has 300k subscribers.

SWTOR went Free-To-Play in less than a year after launch.

GW2 activity dropped extremely quickly a few months after launch.

HOLD UP, before any of the fans of this game jump all over me:

I played Rift. PERSONALLY, I don't like it. However, I do respect the speed they release content, and if that's your type of game, awesome.

Same goes for SWTOR. I loved the Levelling experience, but End Game content was just..awful. And they rarely even release Operations as well. They keep focusing on side content which is a major criticism from people.

And GW2 I liked, but I just couldn't get into it at all. I stopped around level 20. I do respect the game, though, because it is a gorgeous and well developed game.

5.1 was defnitely majorly planned. It had to be.

They probably scrapped the original idea for Krasarang and then reformatted it for a Major Patch release.

[Mad_Murdock]

I'm more impressed and entertained by the masses who heartily contain with much conviction that GC definitely isn't at least a bit of a smartass on Twitter at times. A little honesty goes a long way.

I'm sure you'll go with "That's his Job!" Even though he has stated a few times that things like twitter is completely OPTIONAL.

Have you read some of the questions and comments by the posters ? Some are amazingly rude and disrespectful. I don't expect any human in the world to just slap on a happy face and talk to those people with loving kindness. I applaud GC and company when they give back a smart ass answer to those folks that have that huge chip on their shoulders.

I can guarantee with 100% certainty that I could ask GC 100 questions on any topic and never get a smartass answer back. But I have the advantage of being an adult and knowing how to communicate with people.