Reading between the lines

[haxartus]

So, here are a few points about the presentation, that are not immediately obvious:

1. None of the presenters was actually excited about what they were talking about. The whole thing was very awkward, it looked like they just don't want to be there. In some of the interviews they didn't want to even look at the camera.

2. They had no idea about some of the things they were talking about. This is more visible during the interviews, but literally, nobody had any idea how the Vanilla thing is going to work. Or the Warfronts. We basically know nothing about them. And I think they don't either.

3. From the previous point, it almost like the decision to bring Vanilla back was made like a week before Blizzcon, after some subscription numbers came out or something like that.

4. The other guy was talking about what they "could" do with the new pvp switch, and he admitted to just fantasizing and actually having nothing in development.

5. During the interview they tried to avoid questions, and then when asked a second time (thanks to the interviewers), they acted like they never thought about it, like the garrison/class hall missions.

6. The sub races start at level 20 because they don't want to create new starting zones for them.

From all of this, I think a few conclusions can be made:

1. Subscription numbers did not increase during Legion. The subscription numbers declined less than in WoD, but nevertheless it is a decrease in active and paying subscribers. The expansion did not bring many new players either.

2. WoW is their biggest project with the largest development cost and most development time, and yet games like Hearthstone have like 10 times more active players with development costs 1/10 of WoW's. Blizzard is starting to feel like the whole thing is not worth it.

3. Everyone on the team who was good was moved to other projects or is going to leave the team soon.

4. The current team knows that the entire game is on life support at this point. You can feel how tired they were out of all of this during the presentation.

5. Everything that they are doing has the exact goal of squeezing as much money out of the players as possible before it's over.

[Deleted]

Mike wearing a shirt with Overwatch logo should tell you everything, damn loot boxes are printing money.

To be honest, as a RTS player, Warfronts sounds intriguing for me, but if I have to go inside with other 19 randoms who have no idea of RTS, will be a disaster. Mixed feelings.

Fact is, the "artifact" is still here, is not the weapon is the necklance, so nothing really change from Legion.

I am also trying to identify the selling points of this expansion, because I can't find any.

[Kuntantee]

This expansion will turnout a catastrophic failure. I will try it regardless, but that's how I feel. Their last chance is WoW: Classic.

[ryanmahaffe]

The what's next panel was great, they seemed about as ready as they are for every expansion. The other panel was done by new people, they were clearly nervous, except the first guy. He had plenty of energy.

Get out of here with the conspiracy theory bull shit. Do you even know what life support means? Wildstar is on life support, RIFT is on life support. Wow has literal millions of subscribers and is still easily the biggest mmorpg on the market.
They have literally said Legion had more subs than WoD and was doing better than WoD. They said that, guess they are dirty liars.
Wow isn't their biggest title anymore, but it isn't dead or dying and anyone who thinks so really needs to go back to playing whatever else.
Damn.

[Deleted]

My problem is that the expansion doesn't seem to adress the problems with wow.

Races have too few customization optioon:
- Unlock variants of those races with less class options, but more racial cosmetics.

Some starting zones are decades old
- Leave it at that

People have been waiting for Worgen/Goblin models since WoD
-Let them wait

Story flow in leveling is a complete clusterfuck
-Let's let players skip over continents to make the story even more confusing

The game is not alt friendly
-Let's force the players to make even more alts

Class design in Legion was the opposite of popular
-No info regarding any change

WoW is the only high profile MMO without housing
-And will continue to be



Another thing that's bothering me is, what will it be about? Blizzard doesn't write faction war very well, yet this time it seems that it will be faction war from beginning to end. With us not knowing what said beginning and end will be.

[Deleted]

I have to agree... the whole presentation/announcement stank of blizzcon 2013(?) when they announced WoD with the same excitement (or lack of it!).

[Sorrior]

The what's next panel was great, they seemed about as ready as they are for every expansion. The other panel was done by new people, they were clearly nervous, except the first guy. He had plenty of energy.

Get out of here with the conspiracy theory bull shit. Do you even know what life support means? Wildstar is on life support, RIFT is on life support. Wow has literal millions of subscribers and is still easily the biggest mmorpg on the market.
They have literally said Legion had more subs than WoD and was doing better than WoD. They said that, guess they are dirty liars.
Wow isn't their biggest title anymore, but it isn't dead or dying and anyone who thinks so really needs to go back to playing whatever else.
Damn.

Honestly between gw2, ffxiv and eso wow has competition now and blizzards poor choices are driving people to other games

Frankly i think blizz needs to seriously consider moving wow to eother b2p or f2p at this point. And maybe make a watcraft 4 already if they plan to do a wow 2.

To put it another way wow right now is king menethil all that is needed is an Arthas to come and succeed it. It's ghost will be around but it is an old ass game and showing it.

[Deleted]

..old ass game and showing it.

disagree, Tetris is still played and loved Age is just a number ( for a good game ).

[Sorrior]

disagree, Tetris is still played and loved Age is just a number ( for a good game ).

Oh agreed PLENTY of old games are actually FAR better then modern ones imo.

Issue is they are regularly destroying what made wow so great to so many

Their are good reasons older players want vanilla-tbc style wow back and vanilla wows world while old is a VERY big part of that. It felt more real and alive less like a go here then here ride. We built up to epic moments not riding dragons at what 22 tops with malfurion by our side?

It also was not as pop culture in your face. Still had it but far less then cata zones.

I mean frankly..I think cata did more damage then any other expansion..WoD was just bad but it didn't completely mess up the old world.

Essentially some games are timeless current wow is not..old wow just may qualify.

And not rose tinted i have played private servers and i prefer it to current wow

[Dakara]

Feels a bit like the MOP announcement.... focus is Horde Vs Alliance with no "Big bad guy at the end" (or words to that effect).

Not writing this expansion off just yet, but I've been un-subbed for probably 75% of Legion. My honest opinion,is Blizzard need to Focus on a few key aspects of gameplay and cut out the fluff. Sure, they might lose some subs if "Pet Battles" get written out of the game, but they could also reduce their development costs at the same time.

Opinions are like arseholes of course, we all have them, but to me, WOW was at it's best during the TBC - > CATA era when there weren't so many side attractions attempting to keep players busy. People complained about not having anything to do outside raiding, but guess what? People have said that every expansion! Logging off WOW and playing another game, or, god forbid, going outside once in a while is not a bad thing, provided the game gives you a reason to hold onto a monthly sub. For me, that was raiding 3 nights a week and messing around with PvP when the mood struck.

[Cosmic Janitor]

Races have too few customization optioon:
- Unlock variants of those races with less class options, but more racial cosmetics.

Is it confirmed then that the new ones can't be DH/DK then? I was really thinking about joining the alliance for a casual stroll (will probably not bother with more than the leveling experience), but I don't like the alliance models for the most part and the void elves would have been a great bridge if I could have played my belf as that.

[Soulsinger]

[...]
I mean frankly..I think cata did more damage then any other expansion..WoD was just bad but it didn't completely mess up the old world.

Cataclysm felt like the B-Team saying, "screw the legacy and the sunk fanbase, the world's ours now, let's make everything over OUR way!", and it was a colossal garbage fire that you could stand in for an achievement and then it was never spoken of again.

[Wilfire]

Feels a bit like the MOP announcement.... focus is Horde Vs Alliance with no "Big bad guy at the end" (or words to that effect).

Not writing this expansion off just yet, but I've been un-subbed for probably 75% of Legion. My honest opinion,is Blizzard need to Focus on a few key aspects of gameplay and cut out the fluff. Sure, they might lose some subs if "Pet Battles" get written out of the game, but they could also reduce their development costs at the same time.

Opinions are like arseholes of course, we all have them, but to me, WOW was at it's best during the TBC - > CATA era when there weren't so many side attractions attempting to keep players busy. People complained about not having anything to do outside raiding, but guess what? People have said that every expansion! Logging off WOW and playing another game, or, god forbid, going outside once in a while is not a bad thing, provided the game gives you a reason to hold onto a monthly sub. For me, that was raiding 3 nights a week and messing around with PvP when the mood struck.

No one will quit WoW because of Horde vs Alliance them or because they dislike trolls and / or pirates. I play WoW because I like raiding and playing arena to 2k for elite sets. Getting together with a large group of people to tackle challenging bosses is always fun. What really ticked me off is that they didn't address the issues with ToS (bad, overtuned mechanics) and didn't showcase the new raids. I'd like to see what's coming after Antorus and stay excited for it. Raiding is not very fun right now and until they address the current boss and class design philosophy it won't get any better. The game is excellent up until the end of heroic raiding but then the fundamental issues with boss and class design become very apparent once you start mythic. They should have talked about the changes being made to classes in BfA and new raid design philosophy instead of loreloling. Yes the Alliance and the Horde have beef with each other we all know that.

[Deleted]

Is it confirmed then that the new ones can't be DH/DK then? I was really thinking about joining the alliance for a casual stroll (will probably not bother with more than the leveling experience), but I don't like the alliance models for the most part and the void elves would have been a great bridge if I could have played my belf as that.

Well it is not confirmed that those are the only options, but neither is the opposite. We work with what little information we have. But I guess this sort of makes sense as a tradeoff. The allied races look better, have stronger racial and skip the first 20 levels of the super outdated and boring leveling. Having less classes available makes sure people bother to roll the other races as well.

[Ashkiman]

Honestly between gw2, ffxiv and eso wow has competition now and blizzards poor choices are driving people to other games

Frankly i think blizz needs to seriously consider moving wow to eother b2p or f2p at this point. And maybe make a watcraft 4 already if they plan to do a wow 2.

To put it another way wow right now is king menethil all that is needed is an Arthas to come and succeed it. It's ghost will be around but it is an old ass game and showing it.

They don't need any of those things to sell WoW, only void and black empire stuff would've been enough to make the playerbase grow bigger than ever.
But instead they went with this lame ass Horde vs Alliance story which we know will be completely pointless at the end of the day, since none of them will ever win this war and will just decide to "team up" for bigger baddie at the end of the expansion.

[Sorrior]

They don't need any of those things to sell WoW, only void and black empire stuff would've been enough to make the playerbase grow bigger than ever.
But instead they went with this lame ass Horde vs Alliance story which we know will be completely pointless at the end of the day, since none of them will ever win this war and will just decide to "team up" for bigger baddie at the end of the expansion.

Honestly i just do not trust blizz anymore. And alot of that would helpo so would an actual warcraft 4 but i doubt we get that either

[Grimfrost]

No worgen/gob model updates

[ryanmahaffe]

Honestly between gw2, ffxiv and eso wow has competition now and blizzards poor choices are driving people to other games

Frankly i think blizz needs to seriously consider moving wow to eother b2p or f2p at this point. And maybe make a watcraft 4 already if they plan to do a wow 2.

To put it another way wow right now is king menethil all that is needed is an Arthas to come and succeed it. It's ghost will be around but it is an old ass game and showing it.

Why? Wow even in the lowest it ever was (WoD, estimated 4ish million subs) was still far more popular than FFXIV, GW2, or ESO.
Legion had the highest concurrent user number since Cata, and that was probably more than the total of Gw2 players monthly

Legion is still performing much better than WoD which was doing much better than other mmorpgs.

[Sorrior]

Why? Wow even in the lowest it ever was (WoD, estimated 4ish million subs) was still far more popular than FFXIV, GW2, or ESO.
Legion had the highest concurrent user number since Cata, and that was probably more than the total of Gw2 players monthly

Legion is still performing much better than WoD which was doing much better than other mmorpgs.

The other mmos ARE gaining players as wow is regularly losing them. Lets be honest wow is not an unkillable juggernaut anymore. It is getting old it is losing it's players little by little(at times a suicidal rate) am i saying it will die or be put on lofe support? No but frankly the other games are gaining traction and stealing a decent chunk of it's players. Others are retiring from mmos.

As for full on sub numbers nobody knows them but right now 3-4 million is probably a massive highball.

I DO wish all the games released player numbers though as in actual subs would be useful. But i know for a fact ffxiv us growing gw2 swaps between stable and unstable and eso seems to be growing as well. All while wow loses/is sttabilizing in subs meaning sometime sooner then later a game WILL surpass it.

And WoD was not doing much better it saw obscene sub drops to the point it basically a suicide attempt. At the SAME time ffxiv startedg aining massive numbers of players as did ESO.

I really think you are not aware how well other mmos are doimg tbh

[lanesia24]

The other mmos ARE gaining players as wow is regularly losing them. Lets be honest wow is not an unkillable juggernaut anymore. It is getting old it is losing it's players little by little(at times a suicidal rate) am i saying it will die or be put on lofe support? No but frankly the other games are gaining traction and stealing a decent chunk of it's players. Others are retiring from mmos.

As for full on sub numbers nobody knows them but right now 3-4 million is probably a massive highball.

I DO wish all the games released player numbers though as in actual subs would be useful. But i know for a fact ffxiv us growing gw2 swaps between stable and unstable and eso seems to be growing as well. All while wow loses/is sttabilizing in subs meaning sometime sooner then later a game WILL surpass it.

And WoD was not doing much better it saw obscene sub drops to the point it basically a suicide attempt. At the SAME time ffxiv startedg aining massive numbers of players as did ESO.

I really think you are not aware how well other mmos are doimg tbh

So basically you don't really know anything at all but continue to pretend that you do. Got it.