Patch 8.0.1 Hotfixes - Sept 26, Blizzard Responds to Azerite Armor Concerns

[gallon]

It almost feels like blizzard forgets that players will always try to min max and obtain the best possible items possible. Even if they only a little bit better. So even if the azerite traits were much more balanced, players would still be farming for their best traits as that is the nature of this game.

[Cavox]

They seriously think Azerite Armor is a good system and players are overreacting.
This is not a joke. They really think this way.

[Gadzooks]

It almost feels like blizzard forgets that players will always try to min max and obtain the best possible items possible. Even if they only a little bit better. So even if the azerite traits were much more balanced, players would still be farming for their best traits as that is the nature of this game.

It's not them forgetting, this is their new stance after spending several days sitting around the office "discussing" the issue, talking to the devs who made this hot garbage, don't have the talent/ideas to fix it, so this is the new stance - "we want you to not care about the number one selling point and path of progression for the entire expansion. We might fix it later, but we have "discussions" to do, yammering endlessly that doesn't get us anywhere, and hopefully you'll just get used to this shit on a pretty platter we sold you."

WoW needs new management and leadership. Period. I hate to go there, but it's true. Maybe not firing, but moving whoever is making these decisions to a different team. They burned up what dregs of respect and faith left long before this, and I have zero faith they can design their way out of this. Again, not even mad at Lore, but I suspect he may be one of the first real victims here, because he's got a big red target on his back anyway, and it's now 10 miles high in blinking neon defending this trainwreck.

Morhaime needs to step in on this, soon. At the latest, opening Blizzcon with an apology, introducing the new Game Director and Producer, and talking about the path forward. It's that bad. They have to sell this awful nonsense for two more years - this could literally drop subs to the point they can't justify a budget - or force massive budget cuts, making the game even worse. Lore is just telling us what Ion's attitude is, and it's clear, Ion doesn't give a wet fart for what players want, and doesn't going forward. He's trying to retrain and micromanage the players to some vague "grand scheme" he won't reveal, because the whole secrecy issue with gaming is getting out of hand. They're going to double and triple down on stupidity for ego, and it's going to require a boxcar of popcorn until Morhaime fixes whatever is wrong over there in Irvine.

Unless they're revealing a new franchise or game that will replace WOW sub money at Blizzcon, they have a serious issue with their bread and butter money maker here.

[Zyrosis]

This isn't actually known yet, at least to what extent.

Of course new items from the next raids are going to require higher and higher levels. Are you really that delusional to believe that what we've seen so far from raid 1 is really the highest that Azerite gear is going to go level wise?

[Weeps]

They seriously think Azerite Armor is a good system and players are overreacting.
This is not a joke. They really think this way.

This is exactly how Democrats feel in today's political climate.

I agree with you, though.

[sirmalta]

This is pretty disheartening...
The entire player base is saying Azerite gear is broken.. and this is the single most tone deaf reply they could have made.

I defended blizz through WoD.. but they're losing me here.

[Xykotic]

"(seriously, I can't be the only one who remembers farming level 30 dungeons for AQ40 resistance gear)"

No, you can't. But apparantly you remember this 20 minute farming session as some kind of grand problem with the loot system. A 20 minute farm (you can just spam farm it like you would boosting low levels) that affected less than 1% of the playerbase. Possibly even fractions of a percent. Makes it sound like the person stating this has no idea what they're talking about. Not saying that's the case, but that's certainly how I perceive it. Do not compare flaws in nearly every single piece of Azerite gear this Expansion to this tiny niche that was solved with 20 min of farming, which I might add sounds more fun and RPG centric than what we have now. I'd welcome that system again with open arms, Blizzard.

[sugarfree]

Blizzard is out of touch. It’s not shocking anymore, people just need to accept that. They will shove everything that doesn’t work because they worked on it. They are too proud about their abominations.

[Deleted]

At this point i get the impression most of the WoW Team these days consist of Destiny and Diablo 2 devs, who destroyed their own games because they're arrogant, entitled and clueless. And now they proceed to turn WoW into an unfun clone of Destiny/Diablo. Seriously, this game was never that boring, bland, stressful, pointless and unfun. Its ridiculous. It looks like these Dev try to put as much effort into systems players don't enjoy and have no fun with. And they seem to not be able to think logically. Unbelievable.

[kaintk]

They seriously think Azerite Armor is a good system and players are overreacting.
This is not a joke. They really think this way.

blizard are like this since a few years, i dont know why they change like this, but they are so stubborn now, they always think they are the king of all, that they are right about everytime, they said: oh, we will listen to you ! what a joke, they dont listen to fans since a long time, they always think they are so perfect, its what anger me

you will se that at the end of the expansion and beginning of the others, they will tell us : oh, yeah our system was not perfect and WE WILL NOT MAKE THE SAME MISTAKE AGAIN, we WILL listen to you this time

lol

[cparle87]

It's almost like they could have avoided all these issues if beta testing was actually testing and not just some hype bullshit machine. A lot of people knew about these issues months before release and Blizzard subbonly knew best as always. So here we are... shit system for the rest of an expansion..

This embodies what 99% of "beta testers" are:
http://darklegacycomics.com/631

- - - Updated - - -

The entire player base is saying Azerite gear is broken..

If MMO-champs has had 500k users across its entire history I would be surprised. But suspending my disbelief let's say all of them logged on in the most giant megathread in history to say azerite is bad. That would be half a percent of the number of people who have played WoW across its history.

Whenever anyone tries to argue "the entire player base" is saying something we know where they're talking from.

[Deleted]

Blizzard is out of touch. It’s not shocking anymore, people just need to accept that. They will shove everything that doesn’t work because they worked on it. They are too proud about their abominations.

I really feel sorry for the idea of this game. I had so much fun in Vanilla, BC, WotLK.
So much potential in MMOs yet not even one company wants to be part of it (by hard work). Most of the MMOs are just money grabbers out there.
Full-VR in MMOs are the future.

[Mhyroth]

The 2nd blue post he made in the thread has some funny answers too. Especially the last paragraph:

"And as for "this conversation should have happened during beta," you're right. It should have. I'm sorry it didn't."

[Deleted]

I really feel sorry for the idea of this game. I had so much fun in Vanilla, BC, WotLK.
So much potential in MMOs yet not even one company wants to be part of it (by hard work). Most of the MMOs are just money grabbers out there.
Full-VR in MMOs are the future.

The thing is, MMOs are a money pie, and every other company wants a part of that pie. Besides mobile games, MMOs are the most profitable game gender, this way of thinking is basically what brought the gender to it's knees and made it merely the ghost of what it was. It is what brought trash games that had only the goal of milking the cow until death such as Neverwinter, ArcheAge, BDO, ESO and a lot of others.

Honestly, the prospect of having full-VR MMOs is terrifying to me. MMOs are already buried under tons of QOL improvements and cosmetic options hidden behind a paywall, Jesus Christ, what will it be in full-VR ?

- - - Updated - - -

The 2nd blue post he made in the thread has some funny answers too. Especially the last paragraph:

"And as for "this conversation should have happened during beta," you're right. It should have. I'm sorry it didn't."

Lore is merely the guy sent as sacrifice by Blizzard. They know they screwed from start to end and he probably just drew the short straw.

[Mijati]

maybe the whole player base should start to think about wow and blizzard a bit mroe deeply ....
blizzard will never ever take into concern what the player base say, do or want ...
blizzard does what ever they want to do ....

a short example :
noone so far mentioned the increase of dismounting, slowing from low lvl mobs to max out lvl players .....or even the fact that mob increasement at places where u have to make a WQ or kill a quest mob, by 250% compared to other expansions.noone mentioned so far that wow turned into a korean farming game and became a lineage 2 clone ( compare mats for pots and flask for example since WOTLK untill now ) increase of arround 300%...
when blizzard want, that players need 1 hour to go the way to a quest mob, by killing 100 other mobs they fill find a way to make that happen.
just take a look at suramar, court of stars as example ...

the only way blizzard will EVER listen to the players, and start to truly communicate with them. even outside the USA ( we all know that blizazrd ONLY act,react to the US forum, and players ) is if the whole player base will not play wow for arround 1 month ......this 1 month without players will make blizzard listen and hear what we say .....
people are demonstration for all shit arround the world.. why it should not be possible online for a game than ?
when blizzard dosent have players for 1 month, they will know something went realy wrong, and they pissed of the players ...

90% of the player base is not happy on the how wow turned out since legion, and the crapp blittard is always bringing to the game....
the only good thing so far was reforging at cataclysm .. but blizzard removed it.....

that in the last 3 months blizzard is forced to explain almost every single day something, to defend themself, and always says it different should make the players at last start to realize that something is wrong ...WQ, content blocker, reputation grinding like hell, on every fucking char, the fact that players in legion could not play a 2nd or 3 rd charakter untill the end of expansion ( because of AP farming grinding, what became almost a job each day to not fall behind there raid and guild members so much ) noone mentioned.the monster increase and mass at argus ( increase of 700% and even more ) als this doiesent matter now .....they all cry that azerith traits arent powerfull enough , got uned, nerfed,buffed whatever ....
the only solution is , to remove the azerith traits completly from the game, give us our old sets back, change setbonus from skills to utilitys, and all is fine.

[Deleo]

I like how the main thread on US forums got to page 60 in under 24 hours. And guess what everyone hates the Azerite system.

From my own experience everyone in my guild is crossing their fingers during raid boss looting. We are all 360+ on most slots except for azerite slots which alot of people are wearing 340s.

[Nizah]

They could just let them drop in m+ aswell and alot of the issues would have been fixed.

But the blue post as a response is the worst fkn thing i`ve read in awhile, he avoided the subject by a mile. Does the guy even play the game ?

[Deleted]

From my own experience everyone in my guild is crossing their fingers during raid boss looting. We are all 360+ on most slots except for azerite slots which alot of people are wearing 340s.

There are 14 people in my raiding team and we are full hc geared, 371+ expect the azerite gear.... it is a joke system.

Blizzard should be glad that there are people who are willing to sacrifice their time to give them some feedback about their game. I know a lot of people who just don't care and if the game is sh*t they just move on to another game.

[MiiiMiii]

I agree with Blizzard that the Azerite system issues has been way too highly complained about in the PvE community. As long as all the traits are fairly close in performance, what is the issue?

The biggest problem with this system is PvP being way to dependent on having the correct traits. And hearing Ion saying that the traits will get more and more powerful during the expansion, with more and more gamechanging traits, it will become a nightmare for PvPers. Good luck farming PvP RNG for the FOTM Azerite Traits for your spec.

When everyone has 2 bags full of Azerite Armor "just in case", it's a problem.

Guess what. We had a system that worked a long time ago. It was called talent trees.

[Deleted]

blizard are like this since a few years, i dont know why they change like this, but they are so stubborn now, they always think they are the king of all, that they are right about everytime, they said: oh, we will listen to you ! what a joke, they dont listen to fans since a long time, they always think they are so perfect, its what anger me

you will se that at the end of the expansion and beginning of the others, they will tell us : oh, yeah our system was not perfect and WE WILL NOT MAKE THE SAME MISTAKE AGAIN, we WILL listen to you this time

lol

I can't speak for Diablo but at least in Destiny2 the armor and weapon traits actually affect how you play. In WoW that would be the equivalent of having traits that increase the range on your Charge or Blink, or increases the total amount of soul shards by 1, etc...

The traits we have now are entirely passive and useless and don't affect your gameplay. Blizzard always said that "+1% Crit" talents were bad design but the entire expansion is now made around that. Really out of touch :|