Patch 8.2 Polygon Interview, Mythic Dazar'alor Cross Realm, Darkmoon Faire Live

[THEORACLE64]

i hope 8.2 is the last content patch in bfa..

lets us moving to 9.0 fast and forget this trash of work from "the team"..

It won’t be. There’s no way they’re wrapping the story up that quick and creating another WoD - this expansion has only been out 8 months so it’s not over yet. The next expansion won’t be out for another good year and a half yet.

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"There will not be a trial where Sylvanas is in chains. She is not a character that would find herself in that situation ever."

Lol okay, didn't know that was just something you could choose to avoid.

Garrosh got out of it eventually, so yeah, it is something avoidable.

[Averrix]

"We've learned"

I totally believe that.

Yeah, I love it when they says that kind of stuff, "Oh we learned from last expansion that......" And then they just do the same exact thing but worse.

[Kemsa]

Sadly its seems more and more that 8.2 its actually the big patch and 8.3 will just be an introduction to 9.0

Yes they made a lot of mistakes. But AP wasnt, ap was a refined system from the legion version and it worked, it did what it was ment for, giving the player the "grind" of an rpg beyond max lvl. BUT the problem, the Azerite gear, few talents, few combinations not many ways to obtain it, they mess up everything. The Laser matrix stacks, the one trick traits, traits that were better independent from ilvl, i still remember resto shamans using 340 gear because one talent was better than the 375 ones. WHats the point of grinding something if the reward its lackluster, bad, unnisterested. I preffer level up new characters for the Heritage than grinding my neck lvl 48.

Yes they tested a lot of new mechanics and systems, trying to make better older systems, and finally they just saw that the old systems were better. 3 man scenarios were better than the midless Island Expeditions. Grand open scale BGs (Wintergasp Tol Barad even Ashran) were better than instanced Warfronts (wich literally are BGs vs the lower tier of AI)

I have high hopes for 8.2 to being the start of the "reseting" of WoW, the backlash from the community, from the content creators that Blizzard supported in many of their videos, the overall negativity surrounding BfA becase they tryi to use this expansion as a Big Beta for new Systems and its seems they are still doing it on 8.2 with the knowledge of the failure of 8.0 and 8.1.

They even experimented with Story and Lore and ended with what?, people dont even know whats the difference between the Honor that the orcs talk and the Honor for a Troll or a Belf, night elves lost their identity and merged within the Souther Stormwind Human Kingdom.

Reading all of this Interviews makes me feel uneasy and a bit of "men they f* it up so badly, you know when shits go real when Ion says " may have gone too far" you know that, they didnt prepare BfA, maybe this expansion was made 3 years ago and they didnt use anything else, maybe blizzard didnt expanded the systems because why? they just work on Draenor on Legion? Or maybe this is old development from years ago and it actually ended on 8.1. Who knows.

I really cant wait for the Ptr, to see if i will be dissapointed or very proud to say that i played Bfa from start to end.

[Thedrun]

"One of the ways the team has fallen short this expansion is realizing that the Heart of Azeroth isn't as important to players as the Legion weapons, which were a part of the player's story from start to finish."

This seemed fairly obvious from the beginning. Just for obtaining the Legion weapons each one had their own storyline tailored to the class and/or spec using it (sometimes being completely unique to a single class+spec, like Guardian Druid), sending you to various places across the world to retrieve it. When you were leveling the choice of which traits to open first in your weapon had a sizeable impact, but ultimately with no "wrong" decision long term because you'd eventually get everything, or could respec. Each weapon had an extensive storyline that opened up as you researched the weapons history at your class-specific base. Also you could get a different weapon for each of your specs, experiencing even more story.

On the other side, the neck was obtained in what felt like maybe 5 minutes of Magni talking at you and some light combat, and that experience was the same for everyone. Not particularly landmark. As far as I can tell there hasn't been any effort within the story to really expand on the origins or purpose of the Heart of Azeroth either - I guess those few times we revisited the chamber for the ilvl bump might count? Hopefully things expand here in 8.2 as they've hinted.

Mechanically speaking the neck benefits in BFA are more indirect, and thus feel less important. The neck accumulates up AP just like the weapons did, but this in and of itself provides little benefit, just an ilvl bump on the neck. On top of racking up the AP you have to go and track down azerite armor to see the really tangible benefits, and for many class/specs it has to be very particular armor pieces in order to see good benefits. Then there's re-earning the same trait unlocks but at a higher ilvl - there's been plenty of feedback about how bad this idea was so I won't go into it. Also as one more slight, if you want to flip traits on your armor frequently - to fine tune or to switch specs or whatever - the respec system this time around was much more costly as well. Either get duplicate armor pieces or shell out piles of gold. The weapons were a bit painful here as multi-speccing meant multiple weapons to grind AP for, but at least once the benefits were earned they were always available and didn't require being nickel-and-dimed with respec costs. The Artifact Knowledge system helped ease the grind for multiple weapons as well.

With all these differences it seems pretty apparent more consideration and work was put into the weapons than the neck and that the weapons had a more distinctive and clear impact on the player. So it shouldn't come as any surprise that the neck wasn't as appreciated by the players.

Edit: Forgot one other point - it's a neck piece. You don't even see it = P

[vsb]

You cant be serious right? This is the worst state blizzard/activision has ever been....and so is wow.....

Worst state was in Legion. They recovered by now.

[Preach07]

I just realized something. I think I've heard the "we're taking the talents no one's picking and redesigning them TO GIVE THE PLAYER A REAL CHOICE" like once every expansion. And that made me realize, every other expansion it's like "we're getting back to the HORDE VS THE ALLIANCE, WHAT WARCRAFT IS ALL ABOUT" and then every other expansion after that they go in some crazy new direction, then the next expansion again it's like "BACK TO WHAT WARCRAFT IS ALL ABOUT". It's starting to sound like there's like a cycle for people's interest in the game, and we've gone through it a few times and it's just turned into this pattern now. Like forget all about the game and what it used to be about, this is like a biological pattern in people's brains now, the ones that stuck around for long enough to still be around, and like.... that's all this is... a cycle of emotions damming up in one end until they break the dam and it starts building up in the other end.... until they break the dam and so forth and so forth.

This is why I quit WoW all those years ago. And understanding this now I can finally leave WoW behind me completely. Until Warcraft Reforged sucks me back in. Which is another cycle of already-had experiences. God damnit. Growing old is a bitch.

[Rogalicus]

There will not be a trial where Sylvanas is in chains. She is not a character that would find herself in that situation ever.

Hope that means they'll outright kill her instead.

[Briselody]

Worst state was in Legion. They recovered by now.

It's the subtle trolls that really demonstrate the art form.

BfA is garbage. Ion knows it. Everyone knows it.

[Themerlin]

I have opinions.

[baseballfan]

" The reasoning behind not adding a new row of talents for level 120 was that many classes didn't need three new abilities " Didn't need them. SURE LOLOLOL. What is wrong with passives anyways? Like a 120 row would've been amazing.. It could actually alleviate the horrible class design in the game...

[Khaza-R]

Nope, it's right now, this expansion. War campaign is current content, not past.

You realize the story isn't over and hasn't even branched yet, but okay.

[Sigxy]

Hope that means they'll outright kill her instead.

If not that, at least have her blow herself up to try take something important down - in a way Blizzard thought was epic but everyone else just gets giggle out of it because it's done bad.

[The BrewCity Monk]

Forgot one other point - it's a neck piece. You don't even see it = P

But yet, there's a model of it. ONLY SEEN DURING THE CUT SCENE WHEN YOU GET IT!

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Worst state was in Legion. They recovered by now.

ARE YOU FOR REAL!? LUL

BfA is flat down terrible. And I started playing at the start of WoD for crying out loud.

I left WoW for FF14 two months ago, and I never look back. How can anyone can still play WoW in this state with all that empty and broken promises behind it? And the fact that they're still using the same stale mechanics within the game for 15 years while other MMORPGs can allow you to at least scale you character size.

[Tupolew519]

And what about thrall's come back?

[Skirdus]

Garrosh got out of it eventually, so yeah, it is something avoidable.

There's a difference between getting out of said situation and not getting into it in the first place.

Sylvanas has literally deities and god-like entities who want her dead right now. She'd be lucky to be granted the mercy of a trial at this point. Why the other leaders of the Horde haven't just overthrown her yet is beyond me.

[Freeasacar]

In the past, talent trees had filler talents that felt mandatory to play the class, and they weren't infinitely extensible.

Many classes still do. Try playing a Rogue with no talents selected. It doesn't just drop your DPS but makes the class nearly unplayable. This is why both Outlaw and Sin have been using cookie-cutter specs since the start of Legion. You don't enhance your class by selecting talents as a Rogue, you literally build it up from nothing. Meanwhile other classes like Hunters mostly only have talents that boost their existing abilities and you can play the class just fine without them. Abilities like Slice and Dice and Leeching Poison should not still be on the talent tree.

Garrosh had different motives than Sylvanas. We still don't know what her true goals are.

We do though. If you talk to Nathanos on the Banshee's Wail he says her goal is to turn as many Stormwind humans into Forsaken as possible and get Anduin to kneel before her. Assumedly the rest of the Alliance would follow after. That's already a pretty hefty goal to strive for. If there really is something else then she's just getting greedy.

[vsb]

ARE YOU FOR REAL!? LUL

Of course I'm for real.

BfA is flat down terrible.

No, it's not. There are some problems, but overall it's one of the greatest WoW addons ever, along with Cataclysm and Draenor.

I left WoW for FF14 two months ago, and I never look back. How can anyone can still play WoW in this state with all that empty and broken promises behind it?

How could anyone play chinese anime game?

And the fact that they're still using the same stale mechanics within the game for 15 years while other MMORPGs can allow you to at least scale you character size.

Those mechanics are not stale, they are solid and fun. I have no idea why would I want to scale my character size, but there are numerous toys and other ways to do that in WoW. You can play Gigagnome or microtauren if you want.

[oathy]

If they bring back my rifts for destruct lock will be very happy.
When I saw they werent even a talent in BFA was just crazy, Thing is there's already traits and trinkets that give
shields so why add more? Its like the concept of actually adding brand new abilities is alient to them.
remove a load of things then bring them back like its some amazing step forward.

[Gadzooks]

Instead we have self-contained content-seasons.[/I][/B]

World of Diablo 3 Craft strikes again.

They even refer to tiers as seasons now.

Yep.

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If I'm being honest, it kind of feels like every interview with Ion, he seems aware that something is "off" with Battle for Azeroth, but the team doesn't really know what exactly it is, or how to fix it.

I don't get that feeling at all. With the access to date that they have internally, I think he knows exactly what the problem is, it's just he and "the team" are unwilling to fix the core issues, and instead shuffle the deck chairs around to try and make it look like they fixed it. Class design is THE issue, and he just said "Yeah, we're not changing it until another expansion." Either he is too timid from pushback from the class team, or he's all in with how it stinks on ice. Or if he pulls the class team off working on 9.0, 9.0 is delayed. They can't touch GCD, because they'd have to retune the entire game to match it. Not happening. So let's drone on and on about azerite and the necklace, which nobody has any fucks to give for, so you'll all forget how bad the GCD is, how piss poor the classes are, how warfronts were an utter failure, how Islands are hated, etc.

This is the third interview where it's supposed to be about NEW content, but he spends most of his time rationalizing past mistakes, and making vague, hand waving comments about how [eyes squinted] "they just don't quite get what the problem is".

I'd buy that, if this was the first time he'd said something like that. But it's not. Which is why I think it's just more patronizing and placating.

When the wave of activity over allied races and leveling dies off, "the team" is in deep shit.

[LionSinMaikeru]

Ion admits that the culling of abilities, loss of legendaries, and lack of endgame talents makes your character feel less fun to play at max level from Legion.

Uhh...you think? This is something players have been saying for YEARS since the MoP talent overhall. It was a dumb idea and terrible when it comes to character customization and fun. One of the fun parts of the old talent system was how at endgame when new content came out, you could completely change your talents and playstyle if you wanted / needed.

The current system is way more set and forget.



For the rest of Battle for Azeroth, the team will be looking at talents from a tuning perspective and a diversity perspective. Talents no one picks may be designed and improved.

Bandaid.


Changes to talents as a whole will be something for a whole other expansion.

When? Two expansions from now? Three?


In the past, talent trees had filler talents that felt mandatory to play the class, and they weren't infinitely extensible.

Lies and falsities.

The reasoning behind not adding a new row of talents for level 120 was that many classes didn't need three new abilities, and so the row would have been filler or shore up weaknesses in classes and remove counterplay. Ion admits this may have gone too far though.


Bad reasoning. Next.


The team is looking at ways for characters to improve meaningfully and permanently at the endgame, and Nazjatar and Mechagon will be new ways to try rewards that aren't tied to core gameplay loops for each class.

There are several ways to do this. Not EVERYTHING needs to be linked to progression. People would be happy with new cool gear aesthetics, new pets, new mounts. People would love to go on a storyline for a new form like the Night Elves did. Or maybe a Hunter / Warlock could get a new pet quest chain. There are so many ways to give incentive for players to do content.