Beta for Azerite : The Gatening
Today is popcorn and butter day for me.
It is going to be very, very interesting.
Lets hope that he doesn't say patch 8.1 is delayed till after Blizz con.
Ama done, key core issues not addressed. Nice one.
I think what a lot of white knights and Blizzard super-fanatics forget is that in some cases players have been playing their class for the better part of 15 years(if you count early vanilla alpha/beta). While players don't have access to the same kinds of data as Blizzard does with their internal systems, players DO have VERY good tools for measuring performance and balance.
Logs and sims are a thing. Temper that with over a decade of experience with the various classes in all kinds of situations and environments(PVP, raids, dungeons, etc) and players can have a VERY good idea of how things should be working, and when they're not.
The idea that only the devs know what's best, and only the devs can have valid opinions on anything related to the game is pure fanaticism.
- - - Updated - - -
BFAFK if you count warmodes. ;D
You mean how
Wow reached a record sale for BFA
how overwatch took FPS by storm and has become the most well known FPS, and to this day still has tons of players (Counter strike will always be the face of more hardcore, but overwatch took the world by storm, and other then some very recent releases, and... fortnite... has always been the most viewed FPS on twitch)
How hearthstone has always been in the tip top of twitch, and has an insane amount of players, how heros of the storm hit a new side of Moba's even leading to their competitors changing a few things to help compete, it never outranked dota or lol
How starcraft 2 was an overwhelmingly amazing success but oh yeah like 10 years later has teetered off, but still pulls great numbers
and how diablo 3 has alwauys done very well, other then a few kinks
This will go the same way as WOD went, 2 raid tiers and an upcoming great expansion by team a
That's not how it works in most cases at all. Game director is responsible for the marketing, supervises the whole thing, makes decisions regarding the game's direction, and gives out tasks to senior/lead designers/producers. Gamedirs don't micro-manage anything.
And said senior/lead designers/producers of each aspect of the game, e.g, encounter design, profession design, etc, are the ones who actually shape up features they're told to work on, they decide how they do it. Quite often producers have almost ultimate creative control over their domains, the only time gamedir gets involved is when producers need to get their major ideas/features approved.
I used to call MMO Champion the "Sanctum of depressed hardcore WoW nerds with My Little Pony avatars" back in the day due to this phenomenon, but I must say that the negativity seems unusually high this time around even for this forum. I have enough free time to subscribe again since WoD and I'm kind of torn on whether or not it's actually worth it...
Tigole and Alex were the top 1% of the community. I don't know them well but I highly doubt they were whining on the forums 24/7.
It would be more accurate to say that ~5% (being generous here) of the people complaining might know more about the developers on some things, 10% make valid points and understand the game (not at developer level), maybe 15% actually try to look at the issues they are complaining about in some way, while the other 70% will whine about anything that mildly irritates them or actively look for bandwagons to hop on to complain about issues they aren't even a part of.
I'm not saying I like Ion or he's perfect, but acting like he's an idiot and the players know better is a total joke. BFA has issues -- I am taking a break from it for a reason -- but the game isn't remotely as bad as people are making it out to be. I will argue very strongly that I feel the developers have not been receptive of feedback for a long time now, but that doesn't mean all feedback is necessarily useful. This is a balance, but it's currently swayed far towards ignoring the playerbase -- denying that bugs repeatedly reported in beta making it to live "couldn't be helped" is complete bullshit, for instance, let alone tuning for certain content, but the core content (island expedition aside, and I haven't tried warfronts yet) is solid so far.
Jeff was actually bitching and raging on EQ forums A LOT, and not only there, the same could be said about the in-game chat. That's how he became known to a broader audience.
Heck, even to this day he sometimes lets his true character slip and snaps at users. And then he's forced to make the "I'm deeply apologising for my unprofessional behaviour" post due to his position in the company.
/facepalm
this two team thing needs to die.
Legion had all of Diablo 3's staff working on it. In partiuclar John Wang who worked on the legendaries, some of which the effects/ideas are straight out of diablo 3
Now those Diablo staff have moved back to working on diablo projects.