Do you guys think developers will come "clean" about the development process?

[M1r4g3]

Their goal is to milk the game as much as they can with the least effort possible, why would they publicly admit to that, i mean then they might actually lose the support even from the blizzard guardian group on this forum!
Why else would they keep removing things and making them more and more simplified if its not for the cheaper balancing cost, easier to balance 3 buttons you can press in any order than actual meaningful ones.

[Deleted]

To cover all the consoles:
RPGs - Persona 5/Octopath Traveler/ Nier Automata
Platformer - Mario Odyssey/Rayman Legends
Shooters - Wolfenstein or Doom
Sports? - Mario Tennis is great if you're into that.

Bunch more if you're looking for something specific. I have all the consoles and my job lets me get off work around 2 PM, so I spend that time with my fiance playing games and stuff after the gym.

Seriously, enjoy the other games the industry has. WoW is great if you enjoy it, but miserable if you don't. And this is to anyone not just OP. If you don't enjoy the game, start moving on.

Nioh, Bloodborne, Demon Souls, the Dark Souls trilogy, God of War, AC Origins, Horizon Zero Dawn, Mad Max, the Bioshock trilogy (replaying this right now), Dragon's Dogma (dark arisen), Fallout 4, Skyrim, the Uncharted series, The Last of Us, Lords of the Fallen, MGSV, FF12, The Witcher 3, etc etc etc etc!!

SOOOOOOOOO many games out there and each one of them is better than WoW and you can singleplay (some of them have multiplayer options but generally all of them can be played alone) them without bothering with assholes who populate 99% of multiplayer-only games.

There I said it, WoW sucks because it's a MMO and I hate multiplayer-only games.

Thing is I keep on playing it 13 years later because I love the design of it and the overall setting.

If I still play it, I don't complain (aka whine).

[Estherna]

I am always impressed by the number of people who equated complexity with difficulty, and tediousness with challenge. It is not a challenge to spend several weeks farming the same mobs in order to get enough gold to have a mount. It is tedious. It is not difficult to have to redo the same raid countless times in order to grind the rep needed to buy the water to extinguish the runes to be able to fight the last boss.

Is WoW more casual than it was when it was released? Not really in fact, it is just more refined and done so that when you log, you can actually do something, and that this time invested will reward you something. Will it be gold, AP, an improve on your gear or whatever else. We tend to see Vanilla as a game for hardcore gamers, but most people forgot (or didn't really played) what video games were in 2004. At that time, WoW was already pretty casual.

Of course there is always the long and constant argument related to class design. Honestly, looking at the other MMO available, WoW isn't more simple. Kudos to Wildstar and Guild Wars 2 who kinda restrain the number of abilities you are able to equip at a given time. They just try to make the rotation less a chore and more of a decision making game. It's a given that they don't succeed every time (but then after, there is now 12 classes in the game, for a total of 36 specs, each which should have a somewhat specific gameplay and all to be balanced between them at some extent). But honestly, I have as much fun playing my paladin today that I had during BC.

I began to play WoW when I was in Highschool, at a webcoffee next to my school, and continued to play since then. Now that I am working a full-time job, I clearly don't have the time to play as I used to play back then. And I'm pretty sure that it is the same situation for most of the players that joined the game back then. The ones who have the opportunity to sink that much time in the game are fewer and fewer, as highschoolers nowadays seems more interested in playing Fortnite or PUBG. But, then, again, those kind of players can still try Mythic raiding no? Or Mythic+ Dungeons.

It is not like there is nothing to do for hardcore players. It is just that now, there is as much to do for the rest of the playerbase, who also have the right to play the game.

[RadiationWoW]

This has to be the most sound post I've seen in months.

But to reply to your question though... I don't really know tbh. I feel like if they wanted to make money they'd make a good game, but then again Activision has no idea how to make good games anymore lol. I know they're not the ones who develop games, but I'm pretty sure they have lots of final says in things. I feel like they're now more about how a game can do good in long term rather (micro transactions)than do good at launch. Kinda like what EA did with Sims 4 (Million small DLCs).

[Zandalarian Paladin]

Blizzard will not and cannot come and expose their development process.

The issue? The playerbase.

And please, don't get me wrong. I've worked at a AAA studio for a few years before and I can tell you this much: If you say something - no matter how sound or genuine - you'll face a tremendous backlash. Past communications with the devs have all shown this and I think the closest we'll get are the Q&A.

[Deleted]

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oh
my
god

A reasonable post in MMO-champion!!

[Soon-TM]

(snip)

After Ghostcrawler's failed attempt at honesty and direct communication, I don't think anyone in the dev team (or anyone in the company) wants to go through the same ordeal. Especially when the guy currently at the helm is a specialist at lying.

[RadiationWoW]

After Ghostcrawler's failed attempt at honesty and direct communication, I don't think anyone in the dev team (or anyone in the company) wants to go through the same ordeal. Especially when the guy currently at the helm is a specialist at lying.

Failed at honesty and direct communication? How? I personally can't really remember much from those times.

[exochaft]

Blizzard will not and cannot come and expose their development process.

The issue? The playerbase.

And please, don't get me wrong. I've worked at a AAA studio for a few years before and I can tell you this much: If you say something - no matter how sound or genuine - you'll face a tremendous backlash. Past communications with the devs have all shown this and I think the closest we'll get are the Q&A.

Exactly, and this extends well beyond the gaming industry as well. Those that currently complain about these issues claiming Blizz is hiding something would likely still be just as vocal in their complaints if Blizz told them the exact process, down to the smallest detail, of their design process. It's a group of people you'll likely never make happy, and no matter what you do someone will not be happy (aka, it's a fool's errand to try to make everyone happy, and a waste of their time). Such outrage has been around well before WoW, but I think the internet and social media has made it much easier for people to be visible to others.

[Zandalarian Paladin]

Exactly, and this extends well beyond the gaming industry as well. Those that currently complain about these issues claiming Blizz is hiding something would likely still be just as vocal in their complaints if Blizz told them the exact process, down to the smallest detail, of their design process. It's a group of people you'll likely never make happy, and no matter what you do someone will not be happy (aka, it's a fool's errand to try to make everyone happy, and a waste of their time). Such outrage has been around well before WoW, but I think the internet and social media has made it much easier for people to be visible to others.

I remember exposing a small behind the scene of how game dev went on another game's forum. One dude in particular didn't digest it and decided to find who I was from my username and figured where I worked and started exposing my information on the forum. The moderators were quick to remove the post, but I can tell you this much: I don't do that anymore.

And as you say, it's not just the video game industry. Whenever you come out publicly, you basically put a large target sign over your head, because it turns out you cannot possibly please everyone.

[Xodiac]

I read the whole thing, but stopped taking it seriously near the beginning. Activision has zero control over anything Blizzard game related. This has been conveyed time and time again. I understand your hatred for Activision and Bobby K, it is well founded. But literally everything you tried to point out is silly at best. The mounts on the store have always been pretty shitty, with the raid mounts and raid achievement mounts being way better looking that anything for sale. I am sure the tokens make them some money, but there are waaaay more people playing the game effectively for free due to it.
Is wow easier? Yes. I raided from molten core to ICC before I hung up my raid hat. Great times. However the storytelling has improved tenfold from the early days. And while I liked the community in Vanilla way more, you cant argue with the qol all the changes have brought. Wow HAS become more of a casual game, but the internet is flooded with good games these days, so you need your game to be more accessible to survive. Most if not all of the "hardcore" games have died away. As someone with gamer add I actually enjoy that wow is more casual as I don't have the time to invest like I did in 2004(lets face it, the games out then sucked and there was very little to distract you).
I don't see these as negatives for the game, I see it as a natural progression with the gaming world around it.

[SirBeef]

They do. They just want guaranteed numbers and sometimes that requires the developers to go outside the boundaries of what will make it's player base happy. At some point, they will realize that at certain times, pleasing the community might net more income in the long run too.

Attention to detail (which is something I used to associate with Blizzard) requires more resources and doesn't necessarily equal more profit so they will cut corners wherever they can and people will still swallow. That's why we see boss fights like Xavius.

Boss fights have, for the most part, gone up in quality every expansion. Sure there will always be stinkers, and loot pinatas, but raids have become more difficult from a mechanic and player responsibility aspect. Despite your insinuations of shareholders having sway over devs.

[Osmeric]

Shareholders just want to make money. They don't care nor have sway over development.

Well, except that if the people in charge of development do things that don't make money, eventually shareholders cause staffing changes, by way of the chain of command from the board of directors on down.

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Failed at honesty and direct communication? How? I personally can't really remember much from those times.

The failure was that honesty and direct communication weren't well received. That's because honesty doesn't help if the content of the communication is something the players don't like. Example: GC's "Wow, dungeons are hard!" Players that didn't want dungeons to be hard didn't go "well, I dislike this content, but it's ok because GC was being honest about it." They more went "GC honestly told me the game is going in a direction I don't like, so I'm going to honestly unsub. Thanks for the tipoff, Mr. Street."

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I read the whole thing, but stopped taking it seriously near the beginning. Activision has zero control over anything Blizzard game related. This has been conveyed time and time again..

The management of Activision-Blizzard, led by the CEO Kotick, has total control over Blizzard. They may not EXERCISE that control, and very reasonably may choose not to micromanage Blizzard design decisions, but that's a voluntary decision on their part, not something forced on Kotick by any rule or law.

You have probably misread comments of the form "ATVI doesn't tell us how to design our games" as "ATVI is prohibited from telling us how to design our games."

[msdos]

The fact that we even have to ask this question makes me think Blizzard is shady, not to mention every other practice.

You even get to see into Bethesda's design processes and Todd is way more of a master liar and the following for his games are way more cult-like.

[therealbowser]

You lost me around the time that your argument started devolving into something that conspicuously sounded like "OMG dirty casuals". I'm not saying that is what this thread is, but I was hoping to read something insightful, not the same nonsense I see posted by everyone where "omg, Blizzard made a QoL change, game ruined!"

Most definitely Blizzard's development team has changed and they are obviously interested in pleasing shareholders over players, but I'm more upset about things like forcing cross-realms to make the game appear more 'alive' when most of the community is against it, or forcing various changes just to make the game artificially feel more active or even just more time consuming. The worst culprit lately is definitely the leveling changes -- a transparent attempt to get players to either buy boosts, spend more time playing the game (which in and of itself is not as bad as the others), or to start selling what will end up being their newly introduced +300% experience potions on the Blizzard store.

One of the defining moments of World of Warcraft's development team being something I could truly respect was when they pushed back* the TBC launch because it wasn't ready; and not only did they push it back, they pushed it to being after Christmas and the big holiday rush. They may have lost short term sales doing this, but ended up with a far higher quality end product in doing so. Such a notion would be ludicrous to the current team, I think, and that's disturbing to me, too.
*: They literally had a release date set in stone and pushed it back -- with an apology -- because the game wasn't ready.

But nah, if we go by the forums, it's probably just those filthy casuals ruining the game.

PS: I might give the massive OP another look later, but I doubt it would affect my opinion on the developer team either way.

[micwini]

They avoid questions as like why they don't listen to player feedback and you want them to come clean about development process? No way man, not ever going to happen.
It's obvious that activision decides where this game is going, since it has so many players and is a big constant source of income. I suggest to watch the Q&A today. It becomes obvious that Ion actually loves the game and has passion for it, but the only reason he's at the head right now is because he does not have the capabilities a lead developer needs to have. This means that he's more likely to do what the people above him say, without adding much ideas of himself.

For a comparison, look at Overwatch. The dev team is actively communicating with players. The blues post way more often on the forums, eventhough overwatch is way smaller as a game. Imagine wow only having the pvp battlegrounds.
They also do developer updates often, giving insight into their development process. They even make a post on the subreddit regularly. Not just about topics of balance, but sometimes they even compliment some fan content, which is actually amazing that they do that.
Lastly, they do way more with feedback than the WoW team. Granted they aren't perfect on that either, but I get the feeling they are actually kind of listening, even going as far as to add meme sprays into the game.

WoW's dev team needs to just copy the OW dev team regarding communication. Secondly, how much as I love Ion and his passion, he needs to go. Loving the game is not enough to be a lead dev. You need to have the capabilities to do so as well.
They are not going to come clean about the development process. When you compare the size of the team and the available budget with the content and the pace it releases in, you can just tell that something is very amiss in that process.

[digichi]

I really just think the devs have a struggle on their hands. Everyone has their favourite iteration of WoW, but you can't just stop progress on a game like this.

Sometimes features get implemented cause it sounds cool in theory. Sometimes because another game did it and its fun, maybe it could work in WoW too. A lot of times, changes are made in answer to a problem, and usually devs have their own opinion on what should/shouldn't be in the game. People come and go, different creative visions come through, old ideas that were throwaways are explored.. There's no telling how it turns out until a bunch of people play through and give their thoughts.

Sometimes devs even have to co-operate with eachother / might get miscommunication between different departments. Its a team effort, remember. People who are too harsh on the process forget what its like doing a project with 3 people, let alone 100 +.

[tankbug]

You've changed, and gotten bored with the game. So yes, the game isn't for you anymore.

[Deleted]

First of all, maybe the gleam in the eye is just gone, but I just don't believe it, nor do I think they are unable to hire competent people. Newly graduated developers have to start somewhere, Blizz would be a good reference, so they have to get a decent amount of good new ideas coming in, but does it matter?

Since Activision got involved (long time ago now I know), which wasn't apparent how except for in the name until the amount of subscribers declined, it's been pretty obvious that they game has taken a different direction in how they wanna develop and sell the game. Suddenly Blizzard became a part of a even bigger thing and making shareholders happy suddenly became much more important (Thanks Bobby!).

As someone who has no problem with making that extra effort to get somewhere in the game I am stunned that I literally do not need to do anything to get what I want anymore. Do I want an eye-popping mount? No problem, just buy it off the real money store, it will glow more than yours! There is this really nice equipment on the AH that I want, but I have no gold? What do I do? Sell a game token, no problem. But Haxlax, I want that really nice title and weapon transmog from this really strong raid boss? They just nerfed the boss by 20%, go and get it stud! But... but... I don't know what to do. Nooo, it's still too hard, my group falls off the platform and disband. No problem, just buy a boost. Sure, boosts are a player created market? but is it really though? If things weren't such an inflated mess by now, people wouldn't depend on others to do the work for them.

Maybe I'm just too old and stubborn to understand? Maybe the game is not for me anymore? That's probably the case to be honest and why I cancelled my sub, but is it really for the casual either? That would be the easy explanation and that is to make everything accessible for everyone who pays for the game, fair enough. There were cheat codes for old PC/console games back in the days too if the game was too hard, that's why you have buy things with real money, wait until the next patch and get everything for free because the content you had to go through was either disabled or in one way or another disincentivized for you to do. That's why people say that they have nothing to do in the game, it's not that far off from being a reasonable truth. What makes a patch last? For starters, longevity is achieved by giving people the incentive to do something again, assuming that people play out content before new is released. The boring, a bit overused way is to let people farm currency to buy new equipment, vanity items and what not. It's maybe not THAT fun half way into the expansion but it's at least something to do. The problem lies within the idea of following such a patch up with a smaller patch that focuses on lore rather than actual game play while disabling/making the old currency system useless in one way or another. Suddenly you have less things to do than a patch before. Blizz, what's wrong with diversity and options? People will always play the new content you make but maybe if people actually had something to do to progress their character, maybe people wouldn't complain. Why force people to play the game a certain way? It's an MMO, that is successful if the player base makes it successful. If you create an MMO, you need to let the community be creative and create their own way to play the game, within the boundaries of what you put fourth as a developer. That's why single player content like Garrisons and what not (that prevents people from interacting with each other) won't work.

As far as raiding goes, for someone who has been raiding a lot over the decade and some I've played this game I'm disappointed in how raiding content and encounters are made these days. At first I was disappointed at the reuse of old bosses but maybe that's what Joe Public wants? Maybe they want that warm and cozy feeling of being able to related to old memories and having that nemesis that never dies. Fair enough. when they make brand new encounters I'm still disappointed. Why is that you think? Tell me how Lei Shen was designed... a boss with a lot of environmental game play. What I mean with that is that the boss is interactive with the area where you fight him. You can fall off the platform, not only by your own doing but from the spells that the boss cast. The platform is divided into 4 quadrants, do you have things to do in all of them? Yes you do, all of the sudden you need team work and the ability to adapt to some extent. Heck, we can even take an irrelevant boss like Ji'Kun for example, that doesn't even have any significance to the lore at all, Blizz still made sure the fight made sense. You are up against a bird, wouldn't it make sense if some of the encounter is based in the air or at different latitudes. You bet. Would be pretty weird if the boss just spawned a random pile of adds beside him and also created circles for you to soak because why not, right? It's not a brilliant fight by any means, the raid would move on without Ji'Kun, but for a tweener, it trumps most bosses these days as far as raiding experience goes and that should tell something since that was probably a weak point of that instance. These days we have cool fights like Xavius, right? He spawns cool adds, lets you stand in circles so you don't spawn more adds. Oh, once it gets tougher, he is going to pull even more adds out of his nose, ears, anywhere. Maybe even pull an add or two out of nowhere, quite literally so, because there are no environmental graphics at all when fighting him. That's sooo cool by Blizz, they shocked us so much that we fell off our chairs in an unimaginable way. Hey, fellow developer, instead of putting our solid art team to work to get something memorable together, why don't we just create suspense by making our players enter this intimidating swirl of doom just to enter a room with nothing there... let's not put anything there, just a boss that spawns adds and circles to stand in just like all our other bosses. Our players would be so stumped, ho-ho-ho.

At least I have the option to do PvP among all this diversity of content in this game. Maybe they have created new battlegrounds now. What's this... Twin Peaks? Oh, don't think I have seen this before, glad I picked up that expansion when they sold me on the new battlegrounds. Battle for Gilneas? Pass... what's going on here? I wonder what the Arathi Basin haters think about this one. Whatever tactical element that Arathi Basin had, we just removed it and renamed it Battle for Gilneas... but Haxlax, have no fear, Deepwind Gorge is here. You wanted diversity? No problem, we just took all battlegrounds we had and put them together into one! Absolutely brilliant! No but seriously, what is this abomination? I'm so eager for the next battleground... maybe capture the flag... WITH VEHICLES!!! Make it happen Blizz!

In all seriousness, I've come to the terms with the fact that I've stopped enjoying the game and that it's not for me anymore but who is it really for? We all thought Blizzard was catering to the casual but is it really doing the game any justice and is the game really becoming more profitable? I'm not sure, the people who the long time players perceive as "casuals" wants instant gratification, not a long term relationship. That's why apps like Tinder and moba games and battle royale games have proven to be so succesful, you can go in and do your thing and be done with it, without any commitment and still have the same leverage the next time you want to play.

That leads to my final point and the reason why I created this thread, how much leeway do you guys think the developers have? Do you guys think they have to make decisions against their own will for the sake of the shareholders and what not? If that is the case, do you guys think, once the game has naturally died down (sadly not as gracefully as you want but it's Blizzard, a known graveyard), some developers who have since quite will come out and tell us what an unfavorable working environment it was? The old guard must have left for a reason. They build everything up on their own but lost control of how they move things forward. Another thing that potentially puts some weight to this is the mess of Diablo 3. While it initially sold very well, it was received very poorly by the community and as such, the player base is lacking and they have not found a way to make a sizeable income from the game without putting in resources to either redevelop the game in a financially profitable way or continually release expansion. That's why the development team for that game is a ghost town, they just don't have a steady income from that game for them to continue developing it.

It was nice to read this. First of all I agree in a lot of things you mentioned. It really feels that all this comes from person that has played a lot. Indeed I think that game is designed for shareholders now. Reason why I think so is that Activison clearly made strategy ''Game for everybody'' and by this game lost the soul. Yes, game has many improvements that I personally appreciate, like auto queues or world looting system (hated so much to wait so long to see how other player kills my mob) but by this game lost the flavor. It is just not the same experience. Game is not about the actual world and that is the problem. By pleasing every type of gamer company gets more casual customers and I believe that is the main strategy for them. I do believe that it is one of the most logical steps for such an old game. At the end this is business so they somehow have to stay on the water.

[Super Kami Dende]

No, because people like yourself OP wouldn't listen to them anyway and would still try to somehow find deeper meaning in what they said or take everything out of context.

It's why Game Devs don't communicate as much with Gamers anymore, too many self-important assholes that think they know everything about Game Development.