Do you think 8.2 will save BfA?

[Zandalariprelate]

Nothing will save BfA or WoW - because the problem isn't BfA or WoW.

So the playerbase?

[schwarzkopf]

So the playerbase?

Not all of it ... if Blizzard can go back to building games and stop listening to the vocal minority, then the game might be saved.

[Chickat]

BFA is a lost cause. Many of us realized this 1 month in and decided to not waste our time on something that'll die out fast and be replaced.
Blizzard will use classic as a strong buffer to rework wow and develop the next expansion.

I wouldn't be shocked at all if the next expansion mimics the ideal of "wow" being a world again and not just raids that your port to and zone in.
All the mechanics of "daily this, weekly that, endless progression ,etc" will all be removed. The design of the game will get back to what it was upon classic release. A GAME... not a money printing machine.

Idk, there will still be 14-16 months of the expansion left after it releases. Thats plenty of time to save the expansion. MoP was rough at launch, and 5.2 imo along with a good 5.4 saved MoP and its not in my top 2-3 expansions.

[Soon-TM]

WoW 2.0 is not the solution so long as the design philosophy doesn't change dramatically.

Indeed. If a hypothethic WoW2 is designed with the same mindset and/or by the same folks who came with BfA... It will be a waste of development money.

[Weallscream]

8.2 is the final blow. Le Grand Finale.

[Chickat]

many of this issues of bfa are long standing issues with WoW since wrath.
>epics tossed out like candy and ruined their meaning
>killed normal and heroic dungeons
>lfd / lfr - helped bring the downfall of the community by taking out another avenue that made people engage in the MMO in MMOrpg
>slowly killed off the RPG in mmoRPG by doing such things as removing ammo from hunters, needing to feed pet for happiness, mats for certain abilities like light feathers for slow fall, stuff that gave a certain RPG element to classes
>class homogenization made classes feel lifeless. removed certain class "bling" by giving them to other classes starting with shaman by giving mages a blood lust ability
>made professions nearly worthless. practically killed jewelry and inscription
>destroyed the talent tree system all in the name of wanting to stop "cookie cutter builds and have more variety in players builds so everyone wouldn't be running around with the same build for their spec." which failed miserably as everyone runs around with cookie cutter builds and most people use the same build for their spec. all they achieved was ruining the leveling experience and gave people who enjoyed theorycrafting less to do. if anything most specs now just have one or two builds while before with pre-cata tree each spec had more than one or two builds even if most people just used one or two of the most popular builds.
>did i mention they butchered leveling? getting rid of class trainers and the destruction of the talent tree helped make leveling more boring than it was.
>many of the things i stated where for "quaility of life" improvements that just ended up taking life out of the game and made it boring. removing ammo from hunters for "QoL" took, as stupid as it sounds, as ridiculous as it sounds, just life away. and its utterly pathetic that ammo for hunters would even be considered life but that's the state of WoW. it was one of the things we had and blizzard took it away WITHOUT GIVING US A REPLACEMENT.
>slowly killed off other capitals and forcing everyone to either orgrimmar - stormwind because some how taking the five minutes to put things like transmog vendor in ironforge costs a raid tier
>story has been shredded and pooped on so horribly it makes you want to leave the game sooner if you try to pay attention to it.
>faction balance is just awful.
>its one thing to prune, its another to prune to the point it caused classes that already felt bland due to homogenization, feel even worse. then toss in "bring the player, not the class" to add more insult to injury. it further helped make classes feel dull. and it didn't help that some classes where only sought after because of their bling. take that away and not fix the class made it well yeah, the player, but the class is so awful its not worth it. which meant that it didn't fix their issue of wanting "bring the player, not the class."
>players, and toxic guilds care about minuscule 1% damage increases. even if one talent is 0.5% over the other, that 0.5% will be default and taken. goes right back to the talent tree debacle reasoning and to "bring the player, not the class" dilemma.
>catch up system ironically makes content irrelevant which leads to people complaining about lack of things to do. also helps make gear feel worthless as it took you months of farming raids and content to get something that some new player or alt gets without the effort that you put in due to a catch up system.
>talent decisions also don't matter much anymore when there are talents to actually debate about when you can swap them at will without penalty or repercussion. same go for spec swapping.
>hybrid gear, strength swapping to intellect, extra helps improve QoL but also adds yet another form of content to work on meaningless. especially without a replacement.
>making previous expansion content irreverent helps kill content that people can do. like raids. when a new expansion comes out, the previous raids are irreverent outside transmog / achievements. same goes when a new raid comes out, with the catch up system, makes the previous raids IN THE CURRENT EXPANSION IRREVERENT. thus, content players can do IRREVERENT. for a short while i use to play perfect world and apart of the leveling experience where raids. why not make previous raids apart of the leveling experience? even if you downsize the player count and difficultly. don't just abandon raids, dungeons and such. don't waste content you spent months on working.
>add challenges similar to the challenges in path of exile during the leveling process. bring back mandatory class quests again to get certain stuff. there was absolutely nothing wrong with needing to do a class quest to obtain your class mount. or an ability.

and bfa did nothing to fix any of those things. just amplified them and made them worse.

I'll read this if you fix the wall of text.

Btw I don't really agree that people popped in and out of WoD. It had a day resurgence in 6.2, but it was dead all but maybe 3 or 4 months of the expansion.

[BlakeArt]

World of Warcraft isn't the problem, neither is BFA, internet is. Be an adult, you don't like what you do anymore ? Do something else.

[Alkizon]

--- snip ---

1) Rather - delete completely. Alternative is to make it absolutely insignificant (within 1/2 levels, or without level increasing = without increasing basic stats, but only a slight increase in secondary ones (characteristics), and this should be completely controlled by players (some currency/professions, anything, but not RNG)).
2) MoP is decent, WoD isn't, but better something middle of WotLK/BC (talents system are metter, not specs = perks one).
3) No, no, no, NO! Better add back 3d weapon slot to make back universal equipment system... which would entail a more universal talents component redistribution in relation to class tree branches (within one class) and their design as a whole *silently points at hunters/paladins/shamans/druids* In this sense, class staff should be in minimal presence (if without taking into account PvE sets (which are raid's "carrots"), then there're very few items during the whole expansion and with insignificant impact on their classes (design&gameplay)) - for not to be a mandatory, but just a nice addition.
4) I don’t like especially fast games, better tactics, and I don’t play now, so I can’t say anything concrete (positive/negative) about this current part. This is too private and requires direct participation, although I agree with them on “not to give away all bursts/CD at once”, but I don't think that everything have GCD is the only solution here (may be much bigger CD overall or less beneficial if being combined with each other, so it will be more valuable and much less desire to give away them all together at once). Therefore, I don't know, better skip this point.
5) Classic? Do you know what classic says about it? It says: "No M+ (short multi-difficulties-separate-levels dungeons&everything being brainless timer haste)! Dungeons should be at least an hour or two for passage, tons of strong trash, which (trash) is also involved in boss fights, which (fights) mostly happened on same territory (with this trash), most of which (bosses) are showing up not through “cut scenes” or triggers, but located and active on same territory with trash, which (trash) isn't much weaker than boss itself, but sometimes (even being weaker) represents a much greater danger." That what classic is.
6) Yes for "time bound events" and no for "multi-phase world" (not sure if I understood this point correctly).
7) Vendors aren't enough, system of PvP currency and characteristics have to be return, but this isn't all, since it also requires return of natural PvP activity conditions. Yes, yes. What are you smiling? Of course I'm about PvP servers.

I don't expect at all that you will agree with me, but somehow you will have to admit that not everyone shares your opinion on way of "2nd Golden Age"... isn't it?

--- snip ---

I read that and mostly I like it.

ps. I'm not going to load this message with additional links, because not going to argue with anyone in this topic, it's clearly not intended for this, but I note, that I have a sufficiently detailed justification for each of the above points

[Zka]

1) no need to save BfA, it's fine. 2) even if it would be the best patch ever with all your wishes fullfilled, this community would find minute things to blow out of proportion and whine about, pretending the game is dying and it's the worst ever.

[Luxeley]

I seriously doubt it. Fans have lost quite a bit of trust in Blizzard and pretty much all trust with the xpac/ brand BFA. Too much went wrong with BFA and most of the things that did go wrong could've easily been avoided by opening Blizzard's playbook of things they learned not to do about 4-5 years ago. That's not to say Patch 8.2 will not be good, it's possible Blizzard hits the bricks and does what they know they need to do. But, I strongly believe at this point, any remnant or promise about BFA needs to be off menu before players give WOW a "fair" shot and open mind again.

[rda]

I think 8.2 will make things better, but can totally not make them good enough to call BFA "saved". Most of that depends on the azerite rework and whether they can revive specs enough - because right now most specs feel uninteresting (to a lot of people, I am sure someone enjoys them in their current state and that's fine).

[Asaliah]

Honestly to me just flying will make it lol

Happy too that the azerite gears is finally modified, it was frustrating to get a piece of gear and not being able to unlock anything on it before grinding 10 necklace levels .

[sam86]

I dare to say the class order halls alone took more development time AND imagination than all of BFA combined. Let alone that i persoally think Suramar smokes both of the new hubs. But that may be subjective.

it isn't, seriously just trying to make that many artifact designs alone was massive work, also we did get HD of existing tier set, there was a lot more variation in gear in Legion than BFA, or any exp i'd even say due to how many artifact design was out
heck i literally subbed back to wow when i saw the many druid forms, and i don't even play druid
Legion had the most work, even its most hated can't deny that legion had a lot of work

Nothing can save Blizzard at this point, Classic is going to flop and EA will buy both Activision and Blizzard. Grind out some shit games from them then kill all their franchises as they seek their next victim.

activision is bigger than EA even now, being the most greedy ruthless assh8le in business make profit as long u can cheat ur way in law and sh8t
activision is biggest gaming company, while the massive gap between them and EA is diminishing (ironic how much dmg 'don't u have phones' did), activision still lead the world of gaming, and as long edgy teenagers exist and ppl buy recycled trash like COD, doubt they will fall anytime if at all

[rda]

Nothing can save Blizzard at this point, Classic is going to flop and EA will buy both Activision and Blizzard. Grind out some shit games from them then kill all their franchises as they seek their next victim.

They are hoping to live and prosper by going to the phones. That's where even those analysts who are positive about ATVI's chances are putting (nearly) all their eggs. However, the success there is not a given. And more importantly, that's not an area of interest for WoW players who are predominantly into PC, so even in the greatest and rosiest plans wrt ATVI, WoW is just getting sidelined.

[Pua]

I think 8.2 will make things better, but can totally not make them good enough to call BFA "saved".

Don't forget, 'saved' is a term that changes dramatically depending on who you're talking to.

A lot of people think Battle for Azeroth is already good, and doesn't need saved at all.

I'm not one of those.

The snag is the list of what the priority should be. There are perfectly solid arguments that think the biggest problems are among bad questing, poor class design, broken professions, dreadful gearing, dead systems like missions, badly set story-telling, hopeless levelling or world PvP. So much should be done on all of these things, to the extent where you could probably rewind to previous iterations and leave the game there.

I personally doubt 8.2 will save this expansion, because it's effectively built in too many ways that alienate players to the point where they just unsubscribe.

Warlords of Draenor performed very similarly, meaning so little appears to have been learned.

Do you (or me) believe that Warlords of Draenor and Battle for Azeroth have "Team 2" for designing? "Team 1" built Wrath, Mists and Legion, and will build 9.0? It's hard to say, but the evidence appears to largely support it depending on how you view things.

I just... I don't know. I mean, I can make all of the complaints and issues that I've experienced with Battle for Azeroth, yet communal disagreements simply ruin them regardless of how organised or persuasive they are. If I say class design is busted, a chunk of people will say how great their warlocks or druids are. If I say the number of difficulties for endgame PvE are unnecessary, a chunk of people will say how well it covers everyone. If I say gear proccing is broken, a chunk of people will say how the randomness is rewarding.

Perhaps the problem is that Blizzard just don't have a vision of their own that builds the type of community they want, and solely tries to keep a bit of contentment with this huge pile of different groups that have different priorities and different wants. And perhaps that's the right approach.

I just don't think so.

I believe World of Warcraft should be built with its designers vision (as the original was), it should be clear and deep, and Blizzard should accept those who aren't part of that group and unsubscribe.

Alas, that's not the choice they've made and it looks like any attempt to keep everyone happy, keeps nobody happy.

Classic cannot arrive quickly enough.

[Sencha]

As long as they don't reverse the casualization trend, the game won't get better and the bleeding won't stop.

[Bigby]

No.

The main thing I've heard from people who quit, which also happens to be my reason, is that the gameplay and classes are just not fun. I've said it before, but I even managed to slog through WoD because I was still enjoying the actual gameplay of things like my Death Knight.

BfA is swimming in things to do compared to WoD but so many of the classes just feel awful to play. It's not even about the usual terrible balance - although it doesn't help - and they don't perform sweeping mechanical changes until the next expansion anyway.

[Eleccybubb]

Not a chance.

The game is flat out bleeding subs right now due to the quality of the game. And 8.2 brings nothing of interest to the table that will help remedy that quality.

It'll be decent content at it's core ruined by either timegating or rng aspects.

[Pua]

Voted no because BFA does not need saving. Community does.

While I disagree with the first part of this sentence, I certainly agree with the second.

Largely because World of Warcraft doesn't have one 'community' - it has several. And the problem is that several in this group of communities have absolutely nothing in common, and have completely different command sets. They are, quite literally, opposites.

It's why I keep saying Blizzard needs to choose what they want the game to do.

[rda]

The main thing I've heard from people who quit, which also happens to be my reason, is that the gameplay and classes are just not fun. I've said it before, but I even managed to slog through WoD because I was still enjoying the actual gameplay of things like my Death Knight.

BfA is swimming in things to do compared to WoD but so many of the classes just feel awful to play. It's not even about the usual terrible balance - although it doesn't help - and they don't perform sweeping mechanical changes until the next expansion anyway.

I'll comment a bit on that.

I agree that specs being boring to play is the #1 issue. We've lost way too many things (artifact, legendaries, tier sets - all with many great abilities / modifiers) and azerite traits just do not compensate - even if we don't talk about the meta things like acquisition (boring), choices between items being bad by design (once you get the traits you want your best upgrade is the same thing but higher level = completely boring), etc. Azerite traits are just not interesting enough, they are way too tame and samey. I cared about the legendaries and wanted specific ones because I wanted specific effects. With azerite traits I care 100x less - I still have preferences, but...

But I will say that there are other big problems apart from that. Eg, that sea of things to do in BFA has big swaths of completely uninteresting content that is uninteresting because of the design. Islands are uninteresting, they are just boring to play. We can say that the concept is fine and it's the execution that is bad, but with the concept being so utterly primitive (hey, we have an instance for a small group with no roles and no hard-set bosses, with mobs and rewards generated dynamically), the execution becomes the concept - and the execution is bad. Suppose specs start to feel fine - will I do islands? Heck, no. I'll wait until after BFA when I can solo them, because then I would have means to make them less boring - like creating an optimized spec for speed-running, etc. It's only after BFA that I will start caring about islands - in a very limited way, because they have tons of rewards and I am a collectioner. But not before. This happens because islands are just bad. And BFA is full of such things.

It's more than just specs feeling completely watered down.