BfA Patch Speculation thread (8.3 and later).

[Chickat]

It'd be nice if more people thought like this instead of a binary good or terrible. I see metacritic, anything less than a 7-8 is terrible, so it's like there's this 3 point range b/w 7-10 instead for actually rating games. Can't just give something a 5 and it be seen as mediocre. Not that I care about game scores, but I mostly think:

-Yeah it's a mediocre video game (then again what can you compare WoW to anyways)
-Subpar and in the lowest percentiles by WoW expansion standards

Personally I'm the type of player that doesn't want to do the AP grind (why am I playing a MMO though lol), and the lack of content in WoD and Cata never bothered me, but raiding was good enough for me. 3 or 4 nights a week for raiding was enough for me, and it was fulfilling to me. Looked forward to getting whatever the new tier sets were and whatever OP trinkets were. Now raiding just feels like a side activity in the game.

If I wanst super invested in the game and the story I would just quit. But I still care too much. I'm sure Ill enjoy 8.2 for a month and 8.3 for a month or two, but I'm basicly waitiung for Blizzcon to see if they plan on changing their minds on a bunch of stuff I dislike. Class design,Titanforging,Professions,world content etc.

[MrExcelion]

If I wasn't subbed far in advance with WoW tokens I'd probably be "playing the patch" more often too. 8.2 won't come until June, and 8.3 in December. If you don't plan on raiding or getting into the grinds I think you can sub once a month for every major patch and see what you want to see.

The addition of WoW Classic will be a bit of a counteractive force for some, so there's more value added to the sub, but it's nowhere near something like Amazon Prime which is tied into so much other stuff now

re: titanforging, I'm fairly certain they're going to back to a +10 ilvl cap when they add raid zone-specific tier sets back. They'll basically be like, yeah it's gone since it can't go +15 anymore. And then they'll have tokens that let you upgrade low ilvl WQ stuff with whatever rare drop currency from Emissaries. Doubt they'll apply that to many other systems, but they can with WQ because it's so low. Back on the topic of 8.2, there is some sort of gear upgrading system like this, but I haven't seen specific details yet. You can take a piece all the way to heroic ilvl, but who knows how long that'll take. Been checking up on this thread to get more details specifically about that, but I'm sure Wowhead will have a news post eventually since they have people like nonstop working on articles lately.

[rda]

Above are just some of the things I would do to "Fix" WoW to my personal liking.

No objections to your list, I would gladly take everything on it. My lists are shorter though.

For 9.0:

1. Fix classes. Make them as interesting as Legion + legendaries as of 8.3, or as WoD. DO IT DAMMIT, losing patience here. Don't you dare prune again. (You mention that as well.)

2. Solo queues. Solo queue for mythic+ (you can queue for M+5 if you completed M+4, long talk on variations / queue smarts here). Solo queue for BGs (no separate bracket for rated BGs, all BGs are rated, you are matched based on that rating, and queuing solo is enforced unlike now).

These two things can revive the game, in my opinion. Wrt solo queues, MMO-but-mostly-solo is the new everything.

For 8.2, after the news on bodyguards, too, being a little underwhelming (although I'll still ask - are they using new AI? the "new" new one, as in, improved from islands? nobody mentioned anything so it looks like there's nothing special on that front, but who knows), I really don't know what to suggest.

I guess adding a solo mode for islands (with bodyguards helping) would be both relatively easy and add something useful. But really, they need to redo islands a bit to make them work, just enabling solo is ...well, better than nothing, but not much.

I'll say this: if things go as they go now with 8.2 being a little bland here and a little underwhelming there, in the next video the enthusiasm of Jeremy Feasel will feel empty.

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The game is currently running on a hell of a lot of nostalgia, addiction, sunk cost fallacy and most of all - emotional investment.

Agree completely.

[Chickat]

No objections to your list, I would gladly take everything on it. My lists are shorter though.

For 9.0:

1. Fix classes. Make them as interesting as Legion + legendaries as of 8.3, or as WoD. DO IT DAMMIT, losing patience here. Don't you dare prune again. (You mention that as well.)

2. Solo queues. Solo queue for mythic+ (you can queue for M+5 if you completed M+4, long talk on variations / queue smarts here). Solo queue for BGs (no separate bracket for rated BGs, all BGs are rated, you are matched based on that rating, and queuing solo is enforced unlike now).

These two things can revive the game, in my opinion. Wrt solo queues, MMO-but-mostly-solo is the new everything.

For 8.2, after the news on bodyguards, too, being a little underwhelming (although I'll still ask - are they using new AI? the "new" new one, as in, improved from islands? nobody mentioned anything so it looks like there's nothing special on that front, but who knows), I really don't know what to suggest.

I guess adding a solo mode for islands (with bodyguards helping) would be both relatively easy and add something useful. But really, they need to redo islands a bit to make them work, just enabling solo is ...well, better than nothing, but not much.

I'll say this: if things go as they go now with 8.2 being a little bland here and a little underwhelming there, in the next video the enthusiasm of Jeremy Feasel will feel empty.

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Agree completely.

Jeremy was enthusiastic about Islands too. I think he means well, but he has been in charge of all of the patches for BFA. If 8.3 sucks, he will probably get demoted back to where he was.

I just want more depth. I want reasons to spend in the game that aren't just ap or titanforged world quest gear. I had more fun 10 months into timeless Isle than I have all of BFA.

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If I wasn't subbed far in advance with WoW tokens I'd probably be "playing the patch" more often too. 8.2 won't come until June, and 8.3 in December. If you don't plan on raiding or getting into the grinds I think you can sub once a month for every major patch and see what you want to see.

The addition of WoW Classic will be a bit of a counteractive force for some, so there's more value added to the sub, but it's nowhere near something like Amazon Prime which is tied into so much other stuff now

re: titanforging, I'm fairly certain they're going to back to a +10 ilvl cap when they add raid zone-specific tier sets back. They'll basically be like, yeah it's gone since it can't go +15 anymore. And then they'll have tokens that let you upgrade low ilvl WQ stuff with whatever rare drop currency from Emissaries. Doubt they'll apply that to many other systems, but they can with WQ because it's so low. Back on the topic of 8.2, there is some sort of gear upgrading system like this, but I haven't seen specific details yet. You can take a piece all the way to heroic ilvl, but who knows how long that'll take. Been checking up on this thread to get more details specifically about that, but I'm sure Wowhead will have a news post eventually since they have people like nonstop working on articles lately.

How it works from what I have seen.

Gear is either 370 or 380 from rares etc.
You can spend a small amount of currency to upgrade it to 400. 400 if LFR, so nothing great.
You can then spend a small amount to upgrade it every 5 levels all the way up to 430. 430 is Heroic raid level. So, if I do play, I will gear a lot of alts here. I think this kind of system is pretty good. I would still prefer something like valor, but Id rather buy whatever piece I need rather than hope for Titanforging. This along with the aesthetic of Nazjatar are the things keeping me even somewhat hopeful.

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Seems like you can get an alt to around 370 or 380 day one. By the end of the first week you can have them close to 400, and then maybe twice a week you can earn enough to upgrade a piece to 430. So an alt would take like 2 months to get full 430 gear which feels pretty good. Still a bit faster than Id like, but not too bad.

[MrExcelion]

@Chickat What are the ilvls for Mechagon looking like? Is it like the Legion Kara with higher base ilvls and mythic plus added down the line? I saw something that said "425 mythic" on it

Not on the PTR but maybe someone can confirm with the dungeon journal (though that isn't always to be trusted)

[Nathanyel]

After spending some time in Naz'jatar I am impressed at how many places I managed to get stuck in the terrain.

I hope you're aware that you should give feedback about that, if you want it fixed.

That's one thing that was very disappointing, the bodyguards. First off, they did not use any existing characters, just new faces from the new factions. I guess that's not that big a problem.

Indeed I don't see that as a problem. WoD champions and especially bodyguards were mostly new or minor characters. Legion followers of course were notable characters, up to former Aspects and Demigods, but Legion also cranked the player character's OP dial to 11. Guess it's somewhat understandable that people expected that to continue when we got notable faction characters as followers in BfA, too. But unlike bascially being the boss of the whole damn Order Hall, we're now merely the direct supervisors of the followers, with others above us in the chain of command: Nathanos/Shaw, Sylvanas/Anduin

[seleri]

How? The island reskins don't count. I also doing count recolors. So there's 8 sets per raid. 4 normal. 4 mythic. Are you counting the barely different warfront sets?

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Legion also had a ton of Artifact art.

I did the math in the thread that was dedicated, don't feel like doing it again. I'm not counting any recolors though, which is why Legion falls so flat. All of the PvP sets were just recolors of PvE sets. Edit: I'm also not counting normal and mythic raid sets as different sets.

[Taeldorian]

People always assume that if you criticize current wow, you for some odd reason are a vanilla fanboy. No, I want current wow to grow and be good. This is 2019, not 2005. MoP and WoD were peak enjoyment for of wow for me personally just for how well rogues were designed, even with the severe lack of content in WoD. I enjoyed Legion too, even if you needed a ton of bells and whistles to get full enjoyment. Idk what blizz's plan was for BFA though. They seemed to think that making us weaker and slower would be a good thing, but it's really bizarre to do in an MMO when transitioning to a new expansion.

I fully agree with this. I just want retail to be great, I don’t really wanna go to classic tbh. If retail dies that’s not where I’ll be going.

Their last few interviews have them talking about a lot of good changes they want to make to the fundamental issues the game has. Class design, titanforging, pruning, etc were all talked about and their philosophy about all of those seems to have changed for the better. However it’s really hard to tell if they actually plan on doing/fixing these things or if they’re just “talking” about fixing them.

If they do everything they said they want to in the recent interviews I think next expac will be good. If they don’t then it’ll be the same disappointment we’ve gotten this expansion. Only time will tell but I’m skeptical. However, removing titanforging, adding new abilities and things to the game (reverting from their pruning philosophy), focusing on class design, etc have all been things they talked about wanting to do going forward. All of that sounds good, just waiting to see if they do it.

[MrExcelion]

. All of the PvP sets were just recolors of PvE sets

Those sets were dope, especially the recolors of mythic. Many of the recolors ended up looking better than the mythic raid counterparts, to me https://youtu.be/H5HsE34mxjo?t=64 Like that Antorus Shaman Elite, or the Black TOS Mage Elite.

At the risk of beating a dead horse here, I really like vibrant color palettes. BFA has been too muted for my personal liking. But to each their own on that front.

What I miss the most set-wise is not being able to collect a Warlock, Mage, and Priest set, all from offpieces and in different colors from each difficulty. Now it's just the 1 set. I liked BoD's mythic at least. When they created Warfronts, they definitely devoted some resources towards making those sets. Warfronts were resource heavy enough (and little positive feedback from them) that I think they scrapped Warfronts for the rest of the xpac. Maybe we'll get one more.

[Shakana]

It'd be nice if more people thought like this more often instead of a binary good or terrible. I see metacritic, anything less than a 7-8 is terrible, so it's like there's this 3 point range b/w 7-10 instead for actually rating games. Can't just give something a 5 and it be seen as mediocre. Not that I care about game scores, but I mostly think:

-Yeah it's a mediocre video game (then again what can you compare WoW to anyways)
-Subpar and in the lowest percentiles by WoW expansion standards

Personally I'm the type of player that doesn't want to do the AP grind (why am I playing a MMO though lol), and the lack of content in WoD and Cata never bothered me, but raiding was good enough for me. 3 or 4 nights a week for raiding gave me enough of a WoW fix. Looked forward to getting whatever the new tier sets were and whatever OP trinkets were. Now raiding just feels like a side activity in the game. I guess there was just too much negative feedback during WoD that they moved away from the old model. Class gameplay has needed some love too and that aspect has suffered the most in BFA, and that's really important to me.

Asmongold was trying to find a game like wow but different, or better than wow. All to go himself into the conclusion that WoW is still the best games of it's franchise.
There's nothing like wow and in my opinion that's the reason why people talk so much and frenzy about the expansion being terrible, not the game, the expansions and the effort they put into it.

I agree with @Chickat makes me feel nothing. Me playing and looking into a wall irl is basically the same. And this actually makes me laugh because many times i caught myself in boralus or zandalar numb thinking in what to do, having no place where to go and saying to myself "i don't know what to do in this game anymore".

[MrExcelion]

I think Asmongold is just biding his time until Classic really, been taking a breather doing gardening streams or whatever and not mythic raiding. Just focused on cosmetic farming for a long time, but he's basically done with that. (I pretty much ran out of mounts to farm myself not counting stuff like islands) The viewership for Classic as a stream game will obviously be there at the start.

[Nathanyel]

I know I'm posting a lot, but 8.2 followers are bland. Why are they all the same race? I understand more so for the alliance, but Giblens for all? Horde faction is composed of a lot of different races. Why not 1 Giblin, 1 Sea Giant, and a murlock? Idk.

Well, it's another sign these two are candidates for playable races. Hesitant to say "Allied", as that so far has meant "subrace"/cousin race, but except Kul Tirans also reused skeleton/animations (KTs are apparently based on/were developed alongside with Rexxar's new model, so...)

Ankoan (and Vulpera) as precedent would open up more possible races like Saberon (Worgen skeleton) and Mogu (Draenei) or other races introduced from here on.

The latter are 'enemy' races, but that also counted for Dark Iron, Zandalari, and most of the Draenor Mag'har. We would certainly forgive a little lore bend to introduce a more friendly faction of these.

The addition of WoW Classic will be a bit of a counteractive force for some, so there's more value added to the sub, but it's nowhere near something like Amazon Prime which is tied into so much other stuff now

Well, Amazon is of course another beast, I guess they go at least even from the subscribers that don't do much with it, and the intangible marketing value of offering such a service.

However, you got me thinking, if WoW subs drop further, and with Classic already under the same umbrella, they could convert the WoW sub into a "Blizzard Prime" sub, which also included stuff for the other IPs - monthly loot boxes/card packs for OW/HS/HotS, access to premium features - stuff like skins would be wonky, do you keep them if you drop the sub, are they only unlockable by being subbed in the right month? Additional/enhanced game modes would fit better.
I don't like buying card packs with money, but I'd pay money (not that I'd pay more in this scenario, I'd stay subbed for WoW anyway) for an all-week Tavern Brawl that always offered a brawl that doesn't depend on your card collection, or at least 2-4 random ones, instead of one hit-or-miss brawl that's only available for 4 days a week. Mon-Wed commute (EU) feels boring after a good brawl.
Not sure what would be appropriate for D3/SC2, don't play them.

[rda]

However, you got me thinking, if WoW subs drop further, and with Classic already under the same umbrella, they could convert the WoW sub into a "Blizzard Prime" sub, which also included stuff for the other IPs - monthly loot boxes/card packs for OW/HS/HotS, access to premium features - stuff like skins would be wonky, do you keep them if you drop the sub, are they only unlockable by being subbed in the right month? Additional/enhanced game modes would fit better.

I don't like buying card packs with money, but I'd pay money (not that I'd pay more in this scenario, I'd stay subbed for WoW anyway) for an all-week Tavern Brawl that always offered a brawl that doesn't depend on your card collection, or at least 2-4 random ones, instead of one hit-or-miss brawl that's only available for 4 days a week. Mon-Wed commute (EU) feels boring after a good brawl.

Not sure what would be appropriate for D3/SC2, don't play them.

I thought about that multiple times as well - a single service to access all games - and if that happens, it is absolutely not an automatic buy from me and quite likely not a buy at all. It all would depend on what specifically they will offer. Chances are, if they do this, this will be mostly about giving you some premium currency with which you'll then buy premium-only things in games - like mounts / pets / toys in WoW. And that's a definite no for me, I am a collectioner, but the games aren't good enough to sponsor this BS. The only thing that would perhaps turn my head would be getting expansions / new games for free - and if the cost of the service is the same as WoW sub or, say, $2-5 more, I want all of what they have, because WoW is way overpriced already. Higher than WoW sub and it's an automatic no again no matter what they offer, because they just cannot offer enough, that's too much money better spent elsewhere.

[huth]

1. Fix classes. Make them as interesting as Legion + legendaries as of 8.3, or as WoD. DO IT DAMMIT, losing patience here. Don't you dare prune again. (You mention that as well.)

My primary spec already did that. It also didn't get any significant prune(i actually got stuff back in 8.0), and i can barely make room for the major essence.
It's not a global problem like some are claiming. In fact, i'd say the issue isn't that they're broken, but they're not what you like.

2. Solo queues. Solo queue for mythic+ (you can queue for M+5 if you completed M+4, long talk on variations / queue smarts here). Solo queue for BGs (no separate bracket for rated BGs, all BGs are rated, you are matched based on that rating, and queuing solo is enforced unlike now).

Look at what kind of people you usually get in queued content. Then imagine doing M+ with them. That's what you're asking for.
You're not asking for revival, you're attempting to murder it.

[Dracullus]

My primary spec already did that. It also didn't get any significant prune(i actually got stuff back in 8.0), and i can barely make room for the major essence.
It's not a global problem like some are claiming. In fact, i'd say the issue isn't that they're broken, but they're not what you like.

It's always funny when people treat class design as monolit. Every expac has some good,bad&ugly specs. Of course BfA has more broken specs than average expac, that's obvious.

Bigger problem is lack of good progression system, Azurite is really boring compared to Artifacts+Legiondaries.

Look at what kind of people you usually get in queued content. Then imagine doing M+ with them. That's what you're asking for.
You're not asking for revival, you're attempting to murder it.

Yeah, that's horrible idea. Mythic difficulty would slowly degrade every expac, like Heroic in the past. Now Mythic 0 is good middle ground: fairly easy and without timer, but require you to get out of your comfort zone and learn how to deal with people.

Dungeons (and pugs) need different thing - some kind of reputation system that would replace third-party stuff like raider.io.

[rda]

My primary spec already did that. It also didn't get any significant prune(i actually got stuff back in 8.0), and i can barely make room for the major essence.
It's not a global problem like some are claiming. In fact, i'd say the issue isn't that they're broken, but they're not what you like.

Look at what kind of people you usually get in queued content. Then imagine doing M+ with them. That's what you're asking for.
You're not asking for revival, you're attempting to murder it.

Cool, it's my problem, you have no such problem. It's also my money. So you will continue to play and I and others who also have classes and specs as their problem will stop. Good? Good.

Solo queues have a wonderful property of rewarding trying hard through the rating + fairness of queueing + multiple tries. If you try hard, you get results and on average you get queued with others who try similarly hard and get similar results. This scare of "you will get teamed with trash" is nonsense, I will get teamed with people who try about as hard as myself. That's what ratings do. Provided the rating system is sane, of course, and there are enough people.

[MrExcelion]

However, you got me thinking, if WoW subs drop further, and with Classic already under the same umbrella, they could convert the WoW sub into a "Blizzard Prime" sub, which also included stuff for the other IPs - monthly loot boxes/card packs for OW/HS/HotS, access to premium features - stuff like skins would be wonky, do you keep them if you drop the sub, are they only unlockable by being subbed in the right month? Additional/enhanced game modes would fit better.

@TheramoreIsTheBomb actually made a poll with the same idea like this this past week

https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads...-for-all-games

It ended up 85/15 which is about as big of a one-way split as you'll see on mmo-champion (polls will go 90/10 at the most usually)

I honestly thought the idea had merit but the problem is they'd use it as an excuse to raise the sub price. There's no reason to have any faith on that part. They increased the VT to 50 dollars for no reason. Xpac prices have gone up even though they could probably get away with just doing a sub in 2019. But yeah, I expected more people to vote Yes on that just because they'd think, hey free stuff.

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Solo queues have a wonderful property of rewarding trying hard through the rating + fairness of queueing + multiple tries. If you try hard, you get results and on average you get queued with others who try similarly hard and get similar results. This scare of "you will get teamed with trash" is nonsense, I will get teamed with people who try about as hard as myself. That's what ratings do. Provided the rating system is sane, of course, and there are enough people.

Solo-queue for rated PVP could work. I have read about how it can be frustrating in HOTS's version, because people will still likely do their own thing and games take longer so you're stuck with them. For Arena though? I wouldn't mind just some quick 5 min games, and Blizzard has a good built-in voice chat with BFA now that people might actually start using for that. Even if they keep the same arena bracket, it'd at least be a way for people to get to a good starter rating, and from there you can grind out conquest and progress for the seasonal mount. It doesn't affect the high end, so I don't see the problem. If anything, it'll encourage people to make an organized group once they get to that point and jump a couple hundred points easily against people that are solo-queueing in not in voice. Might have to adjust the gladiator %s and stuff if it gets too inflated I guess. Maybe they don't want to put in because solo-queue has a soft ceiling and feel it's a waste of time, idk, but it'd give more casual players something else to do and work towards.

[rda]

Solo-queue for rated PVP could work. I have read about how it can be frustrating in HOTS's version, because people will still likely do their own thing and games take longer so you're stuck with them. For Arena though? I wouldn't mind just some quick 5 min games, and Blizzard has a good built-in voice chat with BFA now that people might actually start using for that. Even if they keep the same arena bracket, it'd at least be a way for people to get to a good starter rating, and from there you can grind out conquest and progress for the seasonal mount. It doesn't affect the high end, so I don't see the problem. If anything, it'll encourage people to make an organized group once they get to that point and jump a couple hundred points easily against people that are solo-queueing in not in voice. Might have to adjust the gladiator %s and stuff if it gets too inflated I guess. Maybe they don't want to put in because solo-queue has a soft ceiling and feel it's a waste of time, idk, but it'd give more casual players something else to do and work towards.

I am asking just for BGs. Arenas are more difficult because you need picks and bans, so while yes, they would absolutely work as well, they need more done for them, while BGs need more or less nothing. What you are talking about for HOTS happens in all games, it is solved by having healthy numbers of people and policing smurfs / in-game trolling. It all has been figured out already in the last ten years, Blizzard just have to follow the boilerplate already established by the sweat and blood of everybody else.

[MrExcelion]

https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comment...g_in_nazjatar/


More hinting towards a Dragon Isles xpac in 9.0

[Loreclaw]

I love how people instantly assume you want to go back to a 14 yr old game. No thanks.

I would love to happily go back to MoP.