BfA Patch Speculation thread (8.3 and later).

[Fred Skinner]

I think i will reevaluate my decision to unsub until end of BFA if Blizzard should decide to remove the dungeon prerequisite for Kul Tirans.

Not that they care, but.. well..

[Eleccybubb]

I think i will reevaluate my decision to unsub until end of BFA if Blizzard should decide to remove the dungeon prerequisite for Kul Tirans.

Not that they care, but.. well..

Doubt they will mate. Most you'll get is a WQ rep increase at the end of BFA or just after.

Allied Races in general is just a poor system and it shows when only 3-5% of the players are touching them. But of course to Blizzard it's money from boosts/race changes so I guess they consider it a "success"

[Gurmech]

I think i will reevaluate my decision to unsub until end of BFA if Blizzard should decide to remove the dungeon prerequisite for Kul Tirans.

Not that they care, but.. well..

You can do it on heroic.

[Queen of Hamsters]

I think i will reevaluate my decision to unsub until end of BFA if Blizzard should decide to remove the dungeon prerequisite for Kul Tirans.

Not that they care, but.. well..

And what if they never remove it?
Wouldn't it be much easier to just do it...?

Allied races are such a popular feature with people pursuing them that I don't see major changes being made anytime soon to how they're unlocked. They haven't changed how you obtain the OG Allied races neither and won't as long as enough people pursue them, and they're popular. Every zone I'm in with my own (Zandalari Paladin) is packed with people leveling Allied races.

- - - Updated - - -

Is it? BFA released in aug 2018, and every expansion has been released about 2 years after the last one. Blizzcon isn't until November.

Yes, I'd say it's too early to really concern oneself about Blizzcon and the next expansion right now. You said it yourself, Blizzcon isn't until November. We're in May.

[Alga]

5,6% Void Elfs vs 8,1% Dwarfs on Alliance (on my server), cant see the problem, I mean we have a wide diversity and this is fine.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

This thread is like a haven sometimes.

[FlubberPuddy]

This thread is like a haven sometimes.

This thread is the best. This is thread and obviously the High Elf one are the only 2 I pretty much frequent. Most of the other threads are complaining about the same things over and over (I understand the irony there with my participation in the HE thread).

But still, I can usually only read a few posts in other threads before calling it quits.

This thread's got a lot of different conversations going on at times, all centered around WoW or what's coming next for WoW. That could be why I like it.

And the posters that frequently post in this thread too

[Chickat]

They had time to change some stuff for 8.2, but 8.3 should see even more changes/shifts in philosophy. 9.0 is where its at.

[Eleccybubb]

They had time to change some stuff for 8.2, but 8.3 should see even more changes/shifts in philosophy. 9.0 is where its at.

I disagree.

I don't see them switching this design philosophy as it generates the most profit sadly.

And there's one of the huge issues. Sacrificing players to chase the extra dollars.

[Chickat]

I disagree.

I don't see them switching this design philosophy as it generates the most profit sadly.

And there's one of the huge issues. Sacrificing players to chase the extra dollars.

They have said a lot of positive stuff in interviews recently. Let us see where it takes us.

[Eleccybubb]

They have said a lot of positive stuff in interviews recently. Let us see where it takes us.

Debatable. From recent interviews they've said nothing other than "we are aware" despite the fact they were told of the issues since Beta.

I just don't see there being a huge shift in design philosophy at Blizzard while Activision are whispering in their ears sadly. Just my 2 cents of course.

[Chickat]

By the way, I didn't see this being discussed here. https://www.mmorpg.com/world-of-warc...ght-1000013602

What does an executive producer do?

JH: I get to be the caretaker of the World of Warcraft franchise. So literally all things that we do, all decisions that we make, whether it’s new things we want to go about or old things we want to resurrect, I get to weigh in on all of that. But more importantly, I get to work with the entire team. As a Production Director, you’re pretty centered on the development team alone, which is still significant. As Executive Producer, you’re responsible for the brand, the franchise, new projects that we take on, the scope of what we do for WoW. I get to make decisions about who gets to make things, who gets to pursue things. I get to weigh in on how we present the game, how we market the game.

My job is to represent the player experience to see that we at Blizzard are making decisions that are in the best interests of our players and that we’re always taking the long-term view on that. It’s easy as individuals to want to do something, to add something or subtract something from the game to meet the needs of what we feel capable of doing now or if it’s something within our charter. But somebody has to step outside that and listen to all the different and competing ideas and weave the thread of what’s the right thing for our players. It’s something I learned from J (Brack) and something he, in turn, learned from Mike Morhaime, that if you take that long view, that you’ll always prevail.

Having to compete with Blizzard? Some companies that didn’t always take that long-term view or that care for their players -- it’s the timing of the game. We’ve been here for 15 years. I’ve worked on games that attempt to compete with what Blizzard does and, while we all remember them, we’re not all playing them today. And the big reason is just that: There were people given these responsibilities who knew they had to be responsible to the players first and everything else second.

Being a nearly 15-year-old game, it seems as if it would be difficult to attract new players. What are your plans to grow the community with a new influx of players and to entice returning players? What plans are there for retaining players longitudinally?


WoW has evolved over 15 years. We’re continuously upgrading graphics in the game, improving the look of the game, updating gameplay mechanics themselves to be more sophisticated and so that’s an important aspect. We have to keep adapting because our players are adapting.

When we first came out with WoW, there was no social media. The idea that you come together and you meet people online and you do a thing together was new and cool and it still is. But as WoW has developed, some really awesome games have also been developed -- some awesome RPGs, some cool games that are on the fringes of what WoW does, and so it’s challenged us to always make our game better. We invest pretty heavily in WoW. It’s not a game that we are putting in any kind of sunset mode -- if anything, it’s been the opposite. We’ve continued to build more and more.

All that being said, we need to have new players coming in, young players coming in. One of our greatest opportunities is with families. I just go from my own experience. My youngest son and I started playing when he was 13. The Lich King had just come out and it was this incredible bonding experience for us. For anyone who has raised a kid up until 13, that’s the transition point where they want some independence, they want to do their own thing and they can start to move away from their parents. That’s healthy and natural but in an era where kids are using technology and forms of entertainment that are foreign to their parents, it creates a division between them. I’m so thankful we had WoW to play together. We still play today. It’s something we have together.

I think that’s a great place to start. For parents who love the game and see how fun it is -- WoW is, at its core, about meeting people online, playing and doing things together, it’s not heavily competitive. There’s a lot of content about cooperative play and each of us taking on a role. So we can start there.

We are doing things today to make the game more fun for new players. That’s stuff that we’ll be talking more about later on in the year. It’s a lot of discussions now, there’s some development going on, but I think until such time as we’ve got things that we’re really happy with, we’re not going to make any announcements.

What are the biggest challenges being an executive producer on a game as huge as WoW? What are the biggest rewards?

JH: One case in point: When I came onto the WoW team for the second time (after working on Diablo console and Reaper of Souls), we were just about to ship Warlords of Draenor and as we got into it, we released 6.2, we didn’t really have much planned in terms of content updates for about a year. I kind of freaked out. I mean, as a player, I’m like, “What? Raid Hellfire (Citadel) and...that’s it?” I mean, I understand why. We had a lot cooking for Legion but it just struck me as, “This is bad.”

[Queen of Hamsters]

They had time to change some stuff for 8.2, but 8.3 should see even more changes/shifts in philosophy. 9.0 is where its at.

Yeah, they literally have more developers coming their way as well.
As much as the usual suspects like to pretend otherwise, there's no money to be made if players give up on the game, so where the hell does it make sense to alienate a playerbase loyal enough to stick with a 15-year old title? Individuals stop enjoying and start enjoying the game all the time, that's a fact. Even during whichever iteration the usual suspects happened to enjoy.

Those same usual suspects were equally loudmouthed during WoD, yet we got ourselves Legion once all was said and done. They already had a bigger dev team than ever for Legion, now they're getting more.

[George Costanza]

Because it is just blizzard getting brownnosed and thus not interesting unless you are a drone.

[Chickat]

He joined the WoW team and was told they weren't going to produce content after 6.2 and he was like wtf.
They also have something planned for Blizzcon most likely that will attract new players? @Fahrad Wagner World revamp?

[Queen of Hamsters]

We are doing things today to make the game more fun for new players. That’s stuff that we’ll be talking more about later on in the year.”

Please be a world revamp, please be a world revamp, please be a world revamp!!!
It's just a fact that by now, we've had the Cataclysm 1-60 content for longer than we had Vanilla, with many models and textures also still remaining with 2004 looks. Racial mounts, the first mounts most people encounter and claim as their own, are horribly dated, the questing is dated as hell with story that's left in 2010, then jumps to 2006, 2009, back to 2010... As an old goat having leveled 50 characters by now, it'd be downright exciting! That's before considering the effects on new players.

Or perhaps it'll be step-by-step "skip teh content" like FFXIV does... LOL!
That'd be a bummer.

[Alga]

As long it's not a Level Squish. I mean I would survive it, but I don't really think this would be a thing that big to advert for new players, so World Revamp would be awesome. Spinning the wheel further, why not? After all the allied races, we've got a ton of new folks to roam over the world and build things.

[Eleccybubb]

He joined the WoW team and was told they weren't going to produce content after 6.2 and he was like wtf.
They also have something planned for Blizzcon most likely that will attract new players? @Fahrad Wagner World revamp?

Better be something big then. Because the game has barely been attracting new players and if anything driving long time ones away.

Another world revamp won't work.

[Nathanyel]

Having it random now whilst queues are so quick (I wait like 4 minutes tops) and the cycle is consistent is one thing, but eventually the content will become old and less populated meaning it'll be a pain in the proverbial ass.

Oh, the items from repeatable content are less of an issue, it's the "Tier 3" I'm worried about.

Although it's weird how the Appearance tab doesn't properly list these sets, with varying results even between the two Warfronts, let alone the exact sources - nothing ingame explains how you get each Tier.

[George Costanza]

I am calling it: Battle royale mode for warcraft.