BfA Patch Speculation thread (8.3 and later).

[huth]

Unless they work on the classes. Bfa won't get any better. It's just that simple. Since they said they won't. If cements bfa as being a horrid xpack. If you agree or not is up to y'all. Even with me being casual AF I just found many of the classes to be boring.

So take a break, then? You won't get 9.0 any sooner either way, so you're just wasting your time and ours.

[Alga]

Better not respond anymore, when looked through his posts, there he seems more like a troll.

[Dreen]

clips.twitch.tv/ LachrymoseEnthusiasticTitanOneHand (remove the space after slash, im not allowed to post links since new acc)

Anyone know if this Nzoth voiceline is from something else? or is it from the encounter only? this only played during the try whichafter testing was ended so maybe it somehow bugged voicelines from later on in the fight into the current wipe since they had her despawn after?
could be the end of fight voiceline, since he wants us to win ? so we finally embrace in the shadows or im just completly off

[rainhard]

Yeah BFA has had more content than all of WoD, and once 8.2 hits, it'll have far more content than wod ever dreamed of having.

Tanaan Jungle I think was smaller than Nazjatar, if not around the same-ish size.

But mechagon is also there. And we're only partially through the xpac.

Besides we still have 8.2.5, 8.3 and 8.3.5 to go, theres a lot of BFA i'm fine exploring to see if they salvage the xpac, and 8.2 looks pretty good tbh.

Now that you mention it, how will they top 8.2 with two new zones in 8.3?

[Alga]

Now that you mention it, how will they top 8.2 with two new zones in 8.3?

Did 8.3 have to top 8.2? Compare it with 5.2 and 5.3 + x.4

[Alixie]

My theory is that the people arguing for a quick end to BfA just want to ruin the experience for everyone else, i refuse to accept that anyone is dumb neough to think that if Blizz suddenly cancelled BfA patches now, 9.0 would come out any quicker, or even be necessarily better.

Im hoping the next expansion comes sooner than later because major class changes wont happen until then. You can have all the content in the world, but if the gameplay is boring, then it doesnt matter. Every spec right now is 4 buttons. The talent system is a barebones boring replacement for the Legion artifact/legendary system.

And the story is so painful. It needs to end and pretend it never happened.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

Im hoping the next expansion comes sooner than later because major class changes wont happen until then. You can have all the content in the world, but if the gameplay is boring, then it doesnt matter. Every spec right now is 4 buttons. The talent system is a barebones boring replacement for the Legion artifact/legendary system.

And the story is so painful. It needs to end and pretend it never happened.

We're only getting to the middle and classes aren't nearly as bad as people put it and this forum is only one small opinion bowl and acting as if your own is the only one that matters(Not really and considering what I've seen mine isn't the only one either).

[George Costanza]

Classes are the worst they have ever been.

And that is putting it Extremely mildly.

I hope 9.0 arrives sooner than pre-patches usually arrive. Because the gameplay is sooo bad now.

[Lights Vengeance]

Regarding the dates, this would be my ideal schedule:

- July 2019: 8.2.5 PTR
- October 2019: 8.2.5 release
- November 2019: 8.3 reveal and PTR at Blizzcon, quick look at 8.3.5 and teaser for 9.0.
- January 2020: 8.3 release
- February 2020: 8.3.5 PTR
- April 2020: 8.3.5 release
- November 2020: 9.0 release

As for the content, I'm expecting 8.2.5 to put the emphasis on Sylvanas plan or endgame as they like to call it, 8.3 to focus on stopping or hunting down Sylvanas only for us to get screwed over by N'zoth in the end, 8.3.5 to be the aftermath of this and finally 9.0 to be the Return of the Black Empire.

See, teaser for 9.0 does not work for me. What I'd hope is
Q&A on July 11-12 for 8.2.5.PTR
8.2.5 PTR by July 20
8.2.5 Release in September
8.3.0 PTR in Octomber so we can have at least 2 builds before Blizzcon

Then we can have a proper expansion announcement in Blizzcon since the story of 8.3 will be largely spoiled already.

Cleaned up the schedule for readability and realism:

8.2.5 PTR: August 2019
8.2.5 Release: September 2019
8.3.0 PTR: Mid/Late October 2019
8.3.0 Recap / 8.3.5 Info / 9.0 trailer at Blizzcon: November 2019
8.3.0 Release: Late December 2019
8.3.5 PTR: February 2020
8.3.5 Release: March 2020
9.0.0 Beta: April 2020
9.0.0 Release: September 2020

[huth]

Every spec right now is 4 buttons.

No, they're not. I have more than that baseline, and i'm using all of them constantly. Getting a little tired of people massively exaggerating class issues.

Balance Druid might even be my favourite incarnation in BfA.

[Traveler Voltin]

why does everyone think there wont be a 8.4 patch?

[rrayy]

why does everyone think there wont be a 8.4 patch?

Because there will not be one. the new expansion will release Aug/Sept of next year. There is no time the way they space patches out for their to be 8.4

[Traveler Voltin]

Because there will not be one. the new expansion will release Aug/Sept of next year. There is no time the way they space patches out for their to be 8.4

i highly doubt it. since they are doing a level squish they need massively more time to not fuck it up(they will anyway) so 9.0 will be November.

[Eurhetemec]

Classes are the worst they have ever been.

And that is putting it Extremely mildly.

I hope 9.0 arrives sooner than pre-patches usually arrive. Because the gameplay is sooo bad now.

No, it's exaggerating it ludicrously.

There's no possible argument that classes now are worse than they were in Vanilla or TBC. It is absolutely impossible to rationally argue that in non-relative way (and if we get into relativism, the whole thing becomes even sillier than it already is).

I personally don't think, and haven't seen a rational argument that suggests that the classes now are worse than Wrath or Cata. I've seen rational explanations of why people preferred specific classes or specs in Wrath or Cata, but not the whole thing. And some of those reasons are ones that are very bad for the game (principally being that they enjoyed a spec when it was broken OP).

I've seen decent arguments that class design in MoP was better - though not universally. WoD it's hard to argue was better, but not impossible.

Legion's class design is objectively worse if you leave out Artifact weapons, or assume a very low-level Artifact weapon. If you factor in the Artifact weapons, though, and assume they had 30+ points in them, then yeah, Legion is pretty much objectively better.

And that's the real issue. People always want absolute maximum turned-up-to-11 drama. Everything always has to be most dramatic, the most over-the-top, the most throwing yourself to the floor weeping levels of drama. So people say wildly exaggerated nonsense like "ITS THA WURST EVAR!!!!". It isn't. It's worse than Legion, because we're missing the Artifact weapon stuff. And that's the truth. It's maybe worse than MoP (though not for all specs). But unless you joined in MoP, that's not even the worst you've ever experienced.

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i highly doubt it. since they are doing a level squish they need massively more time to not fuck it up(they will anyway) so 9.0 will be November.

I don't think this holds up to any kind of examination. I don't think we've seen Blizzard hold off on releasing stuff to avoid fucking up rescaling-type mechanics. On the contrary, they know that they're going to fuck it up. It's inevitable in a game this size, with this much content. But most of their fuck-ups will need to be caught by players massively testing the content - which they won't do on the PTR, because it's not max-level content (which is the only kind players are interested in testing in-depth).

So I think September remains very likely.

[Raysz]

No, it's exaggerating it ludicrously.

There's no possible argument that classes now are worse than they were in Vanilla or TBC. It is absolutely impossible to rationally argue that in non-relative way (and if we get into relativism, the whole thing becomes even sillier than it already is).

I personally don't think, and haven't seen a rational argument that suggests that the classes now are worse than Wrath or Cata. I've seen rational explanations of why people preferred specific classes or specs in Wrath or Cata, but not the whole thing. And some of those reasons are ones that are very bad for the game (principally being that they enjoyed a spec when it was broken OP).

I've seen decent arguments that class design in MoP was better - though not universally. WoD it's hard to argue was better, but not impossible.

Legion's class design is objectively worse if you leave out Artifact weapons, or assume a very low-level Artifact weapon. If you factor in the Artifact weapons, though, and assume they had 30+ points in them, then yeah, Legion is pretty much objectively better.

And that's the real issue. People always want absolute maximum turned-up-to-11 drama. Everything always has to be most dramatic, the most over-the-top, the most throwing yourself to the floor weeping levels of drama. So people say wildly exaggerated nonsense like "ITS THA WURST EVAR!!!!". It isn't. It's worse than Legion, because we're missing the Artifact weapon stuff. And that's the truth. It's maybe worse than MoP (though not for all specs). But unless you joined in MoP, that's not even the worst you've ever experienced.

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I don't think this holds up to any kind of examination. I don't think we've seen Blizzard hold off on releasing stuff to avoid fucking up rescaling-type mechanics. On the contrary, they know that they're going to fuck it up. It's inevitable in a game this size, with this much content. But most of their fuck-ups will need to be caught by players massively testing the content - which they won't do on the PTR, because it's not max-level content (which is the only kind players are interested in testing in-depth).

So I think September remains very likely.

I totally agree with everything you said. But well, that's MMOChampion for ya, maxed out on hyperbole and lacking in nuance. It's why I try to avoid responding to threads in general, it's not worth it and just plain annoying to deal with. Every news post is met by a lot of negativity as well. People are so toxic in general here, it's sad really.

[Nyel]

Eh I would say the have to hype the blizzcon to compensate the previous one, besides 8.2.5 probably is already on live server and 8.3 is just around the corner, after all Argus was released in January/Feb.

Argus was released in September, the raid was released in December.

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Ppl need to stop moaning about ending BFA quickly, we don't need to repeat WoD(Even if I enjoyed more then most ppl here). I mean jesus....... classes aren't THAT bad.

Classes are that bad or why do you think Blizzard stopped every class design / balancing for BfA and is shoving all of that into 9.0? Come on, you wouldn't do that when classes were not the worst they've been for a very, very long time.

[Eurhetemec]

I totally agree with everything you said. But well, that's MMOChampion for ya, maxed out on hyperbole and lacking in nuance. It's why I try to avoid responding to threads in general, it's not worth it and just plain annoying to deal with. Every news post is met by a lot of negativity as well. People are so toxic in general here, it's sad really.

I think it's a problem with a lot of the internet in general.

People like to talk about "outrage culture" and stuff, but I don't think that's really the issue. The issue is more like a sort of "competitive complaining" or something. People feel like unless they massively dramatize things, unless things are "the worst ever", they're basically saying "it's fine". And this is a cycle, because when one person exaggerates, other people feel the need to exaggerate to make their issues seem more important (not talking about social/political stuff here - mostly just games issues). And then there's peer-pressure as well, where if a bunch of people are saying it's "The worst ever", and your instinct is actually "It's not great", rather than an exaggeration, then you may well just say "It's the worst ever!" to fit in.

Plus a lot of people want attention - you see this on reddit - a good example was /r/Freefolk when the sub-par last couple of episodes of GoT came out. They were sub-par. No-one is really arguing they weren't. But they weren't "hot garbage" or "trash" or "utter rubbish". They were just sub-par. However on /r/Freefolk, which is basically low-moderation, the whole board turned from a meme-y silly sort of place to one which was just a massive whinging competition for a few days.

Everyone who had a problem with GoT seemed to feel the need to start their own thread, and explain in their own, wildly, insanely dramatic way, why this was "TEH WURST!!!!!", basically for upvotes and attention. And it totally worst. Posts which made intelligent, reasonable criticisms, looked at why and how it went wrong, got a few hundred upvotes. Posts which were the internet equivalent of throwing yourself on the soft dramatically, sobbing in a totally theatrical way, and crying "WOE IS ME!" with your hand on your forehead, just ridiculous, laughable over-drama, got thousands of upvotes and vast engagement both from people saying "Oh u r so right!" and "Ur dumb".

I think we need a societal shift where people who dramatize weak-ass game-related shit start getting sneered at (and to be fair, twenty years ago, they were), but that ain't happening any time soon.

TLDR: The problem is that most game forum people seem to think unless they say "ITS THE WORST EVER!!!" everyone will read their post as "It's fine".

[Nyel]

Wod also had 1 real content patch. 6.1 wasn't a content patch

8.1 barely offered more than 6.1 so... I know 6.1 is branded as the Selfie Patch and that's deserved but 8.1 was far from being a meaningful content patch to the game either.

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Now that you mention it, how will they top 8.2 with two new zones in 8.3?

It won't and it doesn't have to. 8.2 is the big patch this expansion, 8.3 will be rather medium if at all.

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why does everyone think there wont be a 8.4 patch?

Extending the duration of an expansion with failed features like the Heart of Azeroth, Island Expeditions and abysmal class design doesn't make any sense. The last expansion that had a .4 patch was MoP and before that only TBC and WotLK.

And besides that, just look at a calendar: 6 months between 8.1 and 8.2. From end patch of an expansion to intro patch of new expansion it's usually 11-12 months. Let's say it will be just 8 months this time which already brings us to February 2020. And you have to fit 8.3 / 8.3.5 somewhere between February and the expansion release (and no tier lasts usually less than 5 months).

They're already late several months compared to Legion's schedule and if they don't delay the next expansion until Oct/Nov it will be quite a tough schedule until 9.0 with 8.3 and 8.3.5.
_____

I'm still curious what Azshara meant with the "Rise of the Black Empire" line. Still hoping this is foreshadowing the next expansion and N'zoth unleashes his full power instead of wasting him in 8.3.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

Someone somewhere is gonna foolishly think "Classes aren't that bad" to "Classes are fine and have no problems" even though thats not what people are saying.

[Motso]

Someone somewhere is gonna foolishly think "Classes aren't that bad" to "Classes are fine and have no problems" even though thats not what people are saying.

I think the issue now is that there are so many people with such varied opinions on how to make classes 'better'. It has become pretty apparent that there isn't a way to 'fix' class design really, because there is no actual goal. Its just 'make this better' 'make this more fun' and that is impossible to do anything with.
The solutions offered on this and other forums tend to be based around making things like they were in (insert my favourite expansion) for the most part. The ones that aren't are wildly inconsistent.