World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth: The Reduce, Reuse and Recycle expansion.

[Nnyco]

Why play Bfa with classic on its way? Forget about such petty games and focus on the impending return of the true world of warcraft game...

because im not masochistic enough to go back to the shitshow that was vanilla

[rda]

They’re returning pvp gear to pvp vendors in BfA. What else would that mean? It was in the last QA. They stated they went too far with stat templates and will allow you to customize secondary stats through pvp gear.

Could you please link that Q&A? Thanks in advance.

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Added: this one?

https://www.mmo-champion.com/content...-Developer-Q-A

(Going to re-parse it now in case the answer is yes.)

[Eeram]

I’d like to start off by stating the obvious, this is an opinion. You’re entitled to yours, but let me explain to you why I’ve mine.

It starts with that first word, Reduce. The removal of artifacts, the restructuring of leveling and the streamlining of class gameplay has gone to great lengths to decrease the perceived ‘bloat’. These go hand in hand with measures taken that nerfed or otherwise dismantled methods of gaining gold that were deemed ‘harmful’ to the token. Now that leveling and even gameplay itself can be given a dollar value, it will be Reduced to the bare minimum requirements for a consumer product. It's a bit shameless and underhanded, but rather an inevitability of Blizzard's endless goal to appeal to efficiency among their players (even though they still can't manage to fix their own management problems circa end of expansion content droughts.)

The second word, Reuse, outlines their uncanny ability to take themes, plots and narrative structure not only from other cultures and media, but from their own. Case and point, the faction war. Yet another expansion with a story entirely focused on the conflict between the Alliance and the Horde. They call it a persistent theme. I call it an easy scapegoat to reuse the exact same elements and plots over and over again for maximum effect, just change the names of the characters and the plot devices. Perhaps there are new stories to tell, small grains of 'new' among the constant Reuse of themes already exploited and experienced over and over, as if this version is going to attract new people. Though, this Reuse doesn’t even begin to touch upon the elements they are pulling from previous expansions with a slightly new spin.

For that, we move onto Recycle. The bulk of Battle for Azeroth’s problems. But first, a history lesson: In Blizzard’s desperation to refine their systems to an acceptable state in which their game can have meaningful progression while also maintaining profitability, they discovered the largest and most expensive department by and large was the Art and Animation team. People wonder why WoD was a shitty expansion? Look at the graphical quality increase of literally everything from the start of MoP (logically when they would have started working on WoD) and the launch of WoD. They remade every single race into a universal skeleton rig, the graphical quality of the zones, sky boxes, enemy models, enemy animations all of it doubled in quality. I imagine their art team spent overnights for months trying to make it even work. They put literally everything they had into WoD’s graphical superiority keeping players (Not raiders) subscribed forgetting non-raid gameplay entirely into what resulted in objectively the worst expansion the games ever had.

What does this have to do with Battle for Azeroth? Everything, actually. Everything from Allied Races to Warfronts to Azerite gear. They are recycled systems of the last two expansions with shiny, new names on them and new selling points. Except it’s not really new. The Allied races are the same races we have had for a decade with alterations and changes pitched to be sold under a grind for kickstarting the expansion they’re being released in. Warfronts are reused Garrison assets in a reused RTS format in various reused zones across the game. Sure it’s inclusive, but is it really that interesting? Azerite is literally 3 different Legion systems tossed into one and shamelessly so, while also somehow providing less overall progression and customization than what the Netherlight Crucible itself got us. Even the little randomly generated islands they will be having us go to is reminiscent of both the Scenario and the Legion Assault systems.

In short, Battle for Azeroth and it’s alpha have proven one thing to me: This is Blizzard’s design direction. They are looking to monetize what they have already created rather than creating anything new or interesting. This is what they spent the entirety of Legion coming up with next, and it’s not that impressive.

There’s still time to refine it, but I’m calling this expansion for what it is: A second Warlords with an obsessive focus on selling what Warlords failed to sell in their foolish endeavor to appeal to raiders alone.

I am only going to call you out on one thing and that being the whole expansion is NOT based on faction war. We dont really know what its based on but considering the fact that there is alot of things being said that can be perceived in a multiple ways i think this expansion will be one of the most interesting.
and when i say things being said that can mean multiple things i mean the name itself Battle for Azeroth are we fighting for who controls the planet? seems like a faction war again or are we fighting against the void lords/old gods to defend Azeroth. in the Alpha theres lots of text about prophecy among other things that are so vauge you dont know who they are talking about. Sorry its like 2 Am im super sleepy so ill elaborate more in the morning if this is still up

[Taeldorian]

Could you please link that Q&A? Thanks in advance.

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Added: this one?

https://www.mmo-champion.com/content...-Developer-Q-A

(Going to re-parse it now in case the answer is yes.)

Yep, that’s where they talked about gear mattering in pvp again. It was mentioned somewhere before that pvp gear will be added back to vendors, forgot where I saw that though. I think it was from an interview post blizzcon but not 100%.

It’ll be on alpha or beta eventually so not worried about digging through the 9 million interviews. I’ll check wowhead real quick but you’ll see it eventually.

Okay I found it: http://www.wowhead.com/news=275922/b...erview-roundup it’s Hotted and Asmongolds interview. From the interview: “They were talking about adding PvP Gear Vendors back to areas in Kul Tiras and Zandalar”.

It’s also in bullet points for you to see too.

So, gear mattering in pvp again+pvp gear vendors=gear progression in pvp. Might not be as crazy as it used to be with pvp power and resilience but it’s much better than how it is in legion.

[Ophenia]

2. Incentive to mythic raid. We haven’t had this in a long time and legion completely lacked it, however with Azerite Armor not being able to titanforge means the mythic level gear will be the best. The traits in the gear are also better based on ilvl which makes the mythic versions even better..

How do you know that MM+15 will not reward items higher than Mythic raids ?
Most of the incentive to Mythic Raiding, nowadays, is through the Trinkets and Tier Sets. 50% of them will disappear.

Mythic Raiding in BfA, as it is advertised, is a glorified raid-Transmog run.

[rda]

Yep, that’s where they talked about gear mattering in pvp again. It was mentioned somewhere before that pvp gear will be added back to vendors, forgot where I saw that though. I think it was from an interview post blizzcon but not 100%.

It’ll be on alpha or beta eventually so not worried about digging through the 9 million interviews. I’ll check wowhead real quick but you’ll see it eventually.

Okay I found it: http://www.wowhead.com/news=275922/b...erview-roundup it’s Hotted and Asmongolds interview. From the interview: “They were talking about adding PvP Gear Vendors back to areas in Kul Tiras and Zandalar”.

It’s also in bullet points for you to see too.

So, gear mattering in pvp again+pvp gear vendors=gear progression in pvp. Might not be as crazy as it used to be with pvp power and resilience but it’s much better than how it is in legion.

OK, I saw that interview as well and just to be sure I rewatched the fragment of the last Q&A on PVP again.

First off, when we are talking about PVP gear on vendors, we are talking about that as a mitigation to several things. Obviously, PVP gear on vendors lets you pick and choose the gear in a targeted fashion, without RNG. But much more importantly, PVP gear on vendors is presumably bought with PVP currency and that means that you can get gear for PVP by doing PVP. And the overarching question for this is how PVE gear fits into the picture. As in, how powerful the PVE gear is in BGs and arenas compared to the PVP gear and how difficult it is to obtain compared to the PVP gear. Ideally, we would have PVP gear be THE ABSOLUTE BEST gear in BGs and arenas and BETTER for BGs and arenas than any PVE gear possible, or at least EQUAL to the best PVE gear available. We had that before, just in case, and this system actually worked in that if you want PVP, you do PVP and if you want PVE, you do PVE, and if you want to switch, you can, but you will have limited success due to dual ilvl / PVP power / etc. It's Legion that came and destroyed all of this.

If that's going to return in BFA, it will be a good change and I will applaud it. But I am not sure I am seeing them even talking about anything like that.

In the interview that you linked, all there is about PVP vendors is a girl dev looking at a boy dev and saying "yeah, I think we talked about maybe having PVP vendors in Kul Tiras / Zandalar" with zero further details about what would they even sell and no notes whatsoever about the gearing model being different. She did say that they were discussing that maybe these vendors will attract people who would go to them and hang out. That seemed to be the purpose of them - to create a point for the PVPers to hang out. She said nothing at all regarding gear and ilvl caps and boosts and regarding putting a wall onto the PVE shit entering PVE, etc, etc, etc. The boy dev said that they don't have any details on anything because it is too early.

And in the last Q&A please note that the entire PVP section - which took 15 minutes or so, it was really long - didn't even mention PVP vendors again. If they had a big change to the gearing system coming, one would have thought they'd have mentioned it, no? But they said nothing about that, so perhaps that girl from the first interview that you linked was right that "yeah, we talked about it", but this resulted in nothing, or maybe something else happened, but in any case, I don't see any mention of any big changes in that area in the last Q&A whatsoever. (All I see is boring mumbling about how they don't want to do solo queue because it would supposedly not work, with the arguments being kindergarden-level. But that's a different story.)

So, I am not sure you can count on that item 3 in your list. I am not seeing anything about PVP gear at all so far and I am certainly not seeing anything terribly promising or good about it.

Maybe they managed to convince you that PVP is going to be great because they talked about it positively in the Q&A, but I will humbly suggest that they were talking very positively about PVP before Legion as well (and tons of people got fooled without thinking, look up the threads), but in the end it turned out a complete disaster - entirely as predicted.

[Deleted]

I think they made some progress with some systems. The world events and world quests for example. I would like it, if they could build up on these, make them more interesting and diverse, use them for leveling etc. So i don't think building and reusing systems which work is bad in general. It should open up time and ressources for new things. The Improved AI and the Island would be improvements, if these things really work. If that will be the case, they could use these newer things for more content in the future, for example Mobbs in the world, who are actiing more interesting, following plans, having agendas, instead of standing around like a retard all the time, waiting to be farmed. You could also combine this new, improved behaviour of the mobbs in the level zones with world events and world quests. These two system are kind of a waste for the endgame alone. Leveling would benefit from this greatly and probably bring more players into the game. I know a lot of people who stopped playing WoW while still in the level process, saying it is super fucking boring and not exciting at all. And it certainly is. Same goes for Trash and Bosses in Raids, who could show new behaviour, which would mean the players would have to adapt to that, which could not just feel new, but really be something new. So it can have potential. We will only know after BfA.

The allied races are a money grab, but seriously, is that even surprising? Of course Blizzard is eager for as much money as they can get out of the players. They always were. They only give us the allied races now, because they figured out a system to keep players in the game, and they see that things like race changes and faction changes will give them loads of money with allied races. They can help with content wholes too. It is what it is, i guess. I still won't play the game if it isn't interesting for me. Allied races won't change that.

A point you have forgotten in the startpost are all the abilities from the older days of WoW, which they try to sell us as brand new abilities sometime. Thats a real rehash. The constant taking away of abilities, instead of improving the mechanics of classes is something that gets on my nerve immensely. Also destroying mechanics of classes players have a lot of fun with is one the absolute worst design concept that exist. It is fucking atrocious. Instead keeping good mechanics, tweaking the numbers of such classes and speccs, so they aren't op, they dismantle them and the new stuff is a lot of times not as good. They also don't bring up classes, who are boring or underpowered to the level of classes who're fun and have good mechanics. No, they bring the classes with good mechanics down.

Warfronts i hope will be a successful feature. I like the RTS, i like the faction conflict more compared to world ending threat nummer 9999, which will still not end the world and who will be as incompetent as any villain in WoW. Warfronts could also tell a interesting story, they could mean change in the world outside of phasing too, maybe.

In the end, everyone can only wait and see. When Beta comes out and is played for a while, people will know if BfA has potential or not. Thats the moment they can decide if they want to play the game or not.

[Taeldorian]

How do you know that MM+15 will not reward items higher than Mythic raids ?
Most of the incentive to Mythic Raiding, nowadays, is through the Trinkets and Tier Sets. 50% of them will disappear.

Mythic Raiding in BfA, as it is advertised, is a glorified raid-Transmog run.

Does mythic+ currently reward items higher than mythic raiding from mythic 15 base ilvl? No. So based on that and the fact they’ve said they aren’t changing anything about m+ it’s safe to say it’ll have the same pattern it had in legion.

Tier sets are being replaced with Azerite Armor, so 50% of that isn’t disappearing. Even if you can get AA from mythic+, since it can’t titanforge your best pieces will come from mythic raids. Considering the AA pieces have 9 (or 12) traits that are better based on ilvl that’s a huge reason to raid mythic if you care about character progression.

Base ilvl will be lower than mythic but the weekly chest will give loot on par with mythic. However since it’s automatically titanforged Azerite Armor will not be able to be obtained from the chest.

This is based on how mythic+ currently works and the fact they said there’s no changes to it in BfA. Anything is subject to change of course.

[owbu]

I dont think the "its all just the same" critique ever really worked. Most games are build on other peoples ideas (WoW is bascily just everquest done right), what counts is that your particular selection of mechanics, that you stole from somewhere, work well together and are fun.
So if BFA is nothing but a better version of current WoW mechanics, I will be quite happy with it.

[tikcol]

because im not masochistic enough to go back to the shitshow that was vanilla

Sorry





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Yeah in three years. Have fun playing a shittier version of retail.

I've waited around a decade. You underestimate my power.

[Segus1992]

Why play Bfa with classic on its way? Forget about such petty games and focus on the impending return of the true world of warcraft game...

Eh, I'm excited for Vanilla and I raided up to the first boss of Naxx back then. Tons of fun memories, but "impending return of the true WoW"? Prepare to be disappointed.

[tikcol]

Eh, I'm excited for Vanilla and I raided up to the first boss of Naxx back then. Tons of fun memories, but "impending return of the true WoW"? Prepare to be disappointed.

Why would I be disappointed with classic WoW ?

[Deleted]

This just in.

Dungeons, raids and pvp should have been removed after vanilla as its just copy pasted from then.

[Deleted]

I tried to take your post seriously, but this:

? Azerite is literally 3 different Legion systems tossed into one and shamelessly so, while also somehow providing less overall progression and customization than what the Netherlight Crucible itself got us.

You have exactly no information about how the system will work. You are literally bullshitting people.

If you're not interested, go away. No one cares about your depression.

[Deleted]

snip

Long running products thrive on iteration. If they can take ideas and assets previously tried in WoD and Legion and improve upon them, it is a good thing, not bad. Arguably a lot of those things NEEDED this refinement. Garrisons were their first attempt, failed. Class halls were better, at least for a time. Let's see what they manage now.

Same with scenarios: added in MoP, people did play them initially, but quickly got bored. Readded in Argus, people got bored even faster. Solution? Replayability via modifiers and randomization + more interesting AI. Maybe it works.

Same with artifacts and Legion legendaries. The design had many flaws, which they might be able to improve upon. Hell, they already *have* if you consider even the simple fact that Azerite gear is exempt from WF/TF as well as spec agnostic.

A game that's been running for so long and added so much shit needs this refinement, and I'd rather see the refinement than them just kneejerk throwing stuff at us and then letting it fade to obscurity when it fails. It's better to improve things like gearing or scenarios.

I also can't say I fully agree they're in lazy mode when it comes to assets. Allied races are lazy, but the general feel of zones and the assets we've so far seen aren't. Zuldazar looks interesting. Hell, even Kul Tiras manages to look interesting, where my initial reaction was "yet another human kingdom, woooow, how original".

Granted, I'm not saying BfA will be great or even good, but it will be determined by the final quality of those iterations. Will the island randomizations be varied enough? Will the "intelligent AI" in them be intelligent enough to even matter? Will they develop their Warfront ideas and integrate it well? We don't know the answers to these questions, and won't know for months.

[Deleted]

Two way more important broad questions and indicators for me personally, deciding how good an expansion BfA will be in my opinion are for example:

How much RNG will there be? How much endless grind and timesink?

Those were two things who were very much exaggerated in Legion in my opinion and they sucked the fun right out of me more often than i could count. If these things would be toned down to a reasonable level, it would be nice i think.

[rda]

Two way more important broad questions and indicators for me personally, deciding how good an expansion BfA will be in my opinion are for example:

How much RNG will there be? How much endless grind and timesink?

Those were two things who were very much exaggerated in Legion in my opinion and they sucked the fun right out of me more often than i could count. If these things would be toned down to a reasonable level, it would be nice i think.

I am absolutely sure the answer is: a lot. Maybe there will be less RNG and maybe there will be no RNG at all, but there will absolutely be one or more huge grinds, and some will perhaps be infinite.

It's all they have to keep people with - grinds. This was true for Legion and this is true in spades with BFA. So, they will talk the big talk about how it all is going to be great and remind everyone that MMORPGs are about repetition and say that their real task is making the repeated activities enjoyable and bla bla bla, but in the end they will absolutely have one or more infinite grinds built on a relatively small amount of original content. (And no, there is no way to make this enjoyable without additions / changes in gameplay, because the gameplay became damn stale after 10+ years, and they aren't making any additions or changes worth talking about.)

[Deleted]

Gotta love "critics" who criticises something still in development and 7 month away from release.
Do you remember when stuff was judged when it was released, because Pepperidge Farmremembers!

[Deleted]

Another shitty thread from a MMO c troll.

Mods sleeps instead of closing.