WoW 2.0: What Blizzard MUST Do & How It WILL Happen

[TwoMana]

Can you give an example of how those spheres can affect game design? "Well, our new art employees are from Germany so we have to add a Cross-realm Sharding tech to let Germans play with English server players?" I mean, it probably doesn't work like that, so please enlighten me.

More like "which data center should we place our German servers to minimize the latency effects on combat when they zone into a BG that runs in the localized Russian cluster?".

They didn't have the tech and the people back then. Now they do.

Yep, they're 5000 people strong today they're not a 3-man team. What's your point?

[Catscratch]

There's no saving WoW after time traveling and parallel universes. That was the crappiest idea ever.

If I want one thing, get rid of class balance. No class should be the same. Certain classes stomp others, get on with it.

[paralleluniverse]

Yeah, I was trying to tell him that but you did it better, thanks for explaining it to him, my english is kinda bad and maybe he didn't understand what I meant. Cataclysm was very poorly received, in fact the pre patch of it still during Wrath angered a lot of people.

Indeed, Cata was poorly received. Because the dungeons were too hard!!!

[Malikath]

Indeed, Cata was poorly received. Because the dungeons were too hard!!!

no, they weren't.
but scrub-trash complained on the forums until they got nerfed in week2 after launch.
after all blizzard just spent the last year and a half nerfing ICC so casuals could see it before dropping RS and just making it a joke.

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

Stop calling it 2.0, WoW 2.0 happened already, it was Burning Crusade, what you are talking about is WoW 2.

2.0 denotes version, 2 means sequel, they are not the same thing.

We need a term for "New game but not new game. Just a sweeping away of all the old game content and a major revamp of what's left behind."

Maybe...................

Reboot?

[Zantera]

I think in the beginning I used to enjoy some Bellular videos but I saw this one pop up among my recommended videos and it made me facepalm so hard. What a load of crap.

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

Bellular or how I learned to stop worrying and make a youtube channel off of weeks old forum threads.

Can't blame the guy; if it works, it works.

T&E went from nobodies to one of the most popular WoW youtube channels in about 2 years with this strategy.

[Wangming]

I like the ideas he puts forward but I'm not sure I'm buying the idea that the current ancient engine can actually do all of this.

[Shinrael]

More like "which data center should we place our German servers to minimize the latency effects on combat when they zone into a BG that runs in the localized Russian cluster?".



Yep, they're 5000 people strong today they're not a 3-man team. What's your point?

1) And how is that related to game design? Combat, questing, character progression... it has nothing to do with these RPG elements lol.

2) While Bellular's team doesn't have 5000 people they do have access to all the tech our era has to offer. You said "look at how the games Blizzard made 25 years ago looked" as an argument that someone (Bellular in this case) who is merely getting started in game development shouldn't be playing armchair dev. Which makes no sense because even 25 years ago Blizzard made revolutionary games (for their era obviously). So just because they were inexperienced doesn't mean their ideas were bad. Same goes for Bellular and anyone else.

[Nefastus]

Indeed, Cata was poorly received. Because the dungeons were too hard!!!

As Malikath said as well, that was not the reason. The expansion was filled to the brim with problems.

In fact, dungeon dificult was hardly a concern for players that were playing since vanila, Cataclysm dungeons were far from being as hard as vanilla and TBC dungeons.

[LuminaL]

And you still cling to your "WoW2" catchphrase without realising that it's that phrase we are trying to debunk. It's not WoW 2. It's just an expansion. One bit more revolutional than Cata/Legion. But sure, call it WoW2 and then tell me we don't need WoW2. That will certainly get us far.

Im saying wow2 cant be, and you just quot me back and say: "NO you are wrong, there cant be a wow2 only world revamp." basically just saying what Im saying in a different way but somehow disagreeing with me!

No, I didnt watch the video, because I realized its a clickbait title. its very click baity!

Yes, if we can sure use a world revamp and not in a destroy and rebuild kind of way but more on a update on visual and for some zones, maybe lore update.

a world revamp as I think we both agree is not in anyway a wow2, but if you also want a full destroy and rebuild of class and gameplay systems in a single patch of a single expansion, then its nothing less of a wow2 and tho it may not deal the damage an actual wow2 will do to the game, there will still be players hating on the new system and therefore leave the game. It wouldnt be a problem for a young genre still absorbing new players, but for an old game and an even older genre, this will result in a hard crash, because there wont be new players to replace leaving ones.

[tehdef]

Extremely good video from BellularGaming.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mwVv6e0ovM

Very worth watching, especially if you're interested in what could come.
Interesting to see how Classic wow gets compared to what blizzard needs to get back to.

Please Note- I am not affiliated with this Youtuber at all and by no means am posting this to drive traffic to this video.
I watched the video and shared it here as it's an EXTREMELY good video and discusses a very meaningful topic that we're all curious about what happens with wow.

Bellular is getting extremely hard to want to enjoy. He's making wide sweeping generalizations about how and when Blizzard will go about doing something, and supposing they will even do it in the first place.

I'm honestly kind of sick of him. He started out as a great reference point for WoW content, specifically relating to lore. Now he's just firing off more non-sense that isn't coming from the perspective of Blizzard, and only just a random Joe who know more about the Lore than 95% of players.

To speak towards your Classic comment. Classic is doing "okay". In the last week the amount of hype has subsided CONSIDERABLY. While Twitch isn't the best metric to address the number of players (which has gone down, do not deny it, you will be lying), there is something to say for Classic viewership going from over 1 million to cresting 300k at prime time.

While nobody here will read/care, I still have plenty of internal contacts at Blizzard after working there from 05-12. I've talked with a few who have gone out of their way to re-visit the Classic experience. The thing I've noted from a majority of the discussions is the term "Social friction". What is this? It's the point in which someone has to enter into a dialogue and mutual relationship to achieve a goal. In World of Warcraft, must of social friction is removed due to group finder.

Now, my thoughts are this. Blizzard KNOWS this is something that is an issue, but isn't sure how to fix it. They've made some steps towards increasing the social friction by disallowing auto group mods found in Legion, allowing players to queue into a public group for all of their world quests automatically. This went against their stated intent of at a bare minimum trying to find a group manually. I suspect that Blizzard will try to find some ways to increase the social friction, requiring more help from those around you. I don't know how they will currently get this done as their systems do not readily allow this without changes.

When it comes to gameplay, most of my friends ranging from dev to QA agreed that the gameplay just isn't there. They point towards the act of questing being one of the biggest things they iterated on. When they say questing, it is more than just pick and turn in quest, but every step through a quest. How and where it tells you to go, the threat posed by the mobs you will be interacting with is managed, and they've tried to cut down on quests that feel bad due to how slow they move.

I get that a lot of people like Classic, and I think there is some value to the old systems they had. However, retail is the better game hands down. It has something for everyone. It has massive collections to work towards, tons of reasons to login a few times a week, dungeons that increase in difficulty allowing a user to really feel challenged, and flexible raiding groups for 8-30 people for current content, and a find tuned 20-man raid.

Like, I get all the silliness that people are sharing regarding classic. I'm playing. I'm level 18 Warrior atm, and I'm slowing down because leveling a warrior from 1-55 is one of the worst experiences ever. Constantly needing to bandage or eat after 1 mob is simply not compelling gameplay, and having another mob spawn and surprise you will usually end in your death, resulting in a 5-10 minute run due to the lack of graveyards.

There is a reason why iteration exists. WoW has 15 years of iteration on classic. Are some changes bad? Yes. Are most changes good? Absolutely.

At the end of the day I do not think you will see much change with WoW, regardless of how well classic does or does not perform.

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

As Malikath said as well, that was not the reason. The expansion was filled to the brim with problems.

In fact, dungeon dificult was hardly a concern for players that were playing since vanila, Cataclysm dungeons were far from being as hard as vanilla and TBC dungeons.

Cata dungeons' biggest problem was the two biggest poster children for them being bad were simply clunky. Grim Batol was designed around you wiping out half the packs on the bombing run, and if you messed that up you were screwed. And that one Blackrock dungeon had a room where you basically had to pull everything and the boss because of how it was designed.

[Tyze]

I don't think a "2.0" is directly referenced to a sequel, but intended as a rebirth of what is now.

It's a bad play on phrasing, since technically we're nearing WoW 9.0 soon enough.

Classic isn’t the future for wow though, actually the opposite lol

[Theangryone]

When does Bellular's game come out? I hear he's not just a YouTuber.

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

Classic isn’t the future for wow though, actually the opposite lol

Classic's features could well be. It certainly seems like the kind of fan this 2012-2014 era design was made for has flushed out of the MMO genre entirely in favor of games like Destiny 2 or Fortnite. The genre's reset to the somewhat harder core fan.

[rrayy]

Yeah and once that dies down and people are bored to death with how trivial it is and will never evolve, we have to return to reality and fix retail instead of sticking our heads in the sand.

Right. I would substitute "tedious" for "trivial", though.

[ConstantinetheGreat]

Last time I took an extended break from WoW was Cataclysm. I didn’t reappear until the later stages of MoP. If this is true, I’ll probably take another break until they do something to intrigue my interest again. Perhaps this story has just run its course and it’s time for it to end.

[TwoMana]

1) And how is that related to game design? Combat, questing, character progression... it has nothing to do with these RPG elements lol.

I guess you've never been part of software project. How your software operates in runtime is quite important part of design and the devs frequently interface with systems engineers (watch the engineering talks from Blizzcon). So how about invisible bunnies? https://kotaku.com/the-invisible-bun...aft-1791576630

2) While Bellular's team doesn't have 5000 people they do have access to all the tech our era has to offer. You said "look at how the games Blizzard made 25 years ago looked" as an argument that someone (Bellular in this case) who is merely getting started in game development shouldn't be playing armchair dev. Which makes no sense because even 25 years ago Blizzard made revolutionary games (for their era obviously). So just because they were inexperienced doesn't mean their ideas were bad. Same goes for Bellular and anyone else.

Sure. Everyone can have good ideas and every regular joe can act as a armchair dev on youtube - we also have lot of armchair CEOs and angel investors in this forum every time ATVI releases a quarterly report. It doesn't mean the ideas are bad. But it also doesn't mean they actually know anything worth a shit about developing a persistent game with 15 year old legacy tech. And that goes for Bellular and anyone else. I often find his videos miss the mark and come off as naive (like they would from someone who doesn't have the experience to talk about such things).

[Shinrael]

I guess you've never been part of software project. How your software operates in runtime is quite important part of design and the devs frequently interface with systems engineers (watch the engineering talks from Blizzcon). So how about invisible bunnies? https://kotaku.com/the-invisible-bun...aft-1791576630



Sure. Everyone can have good ideas and every regular joe can act as a armchair dev on youtube - we also have lot of armchair CEOs and angel investors in this forum every time ATVI releases a quarterly report. It doesn't mean the ideas are bad. But it also doesn't mean they actually know anything worth a shit about developing a persistent game with 15 year old legacy tech. And that goes for Bellular and anyone else. I often find his videos miss the mark and come off as naive (like they would from someone who doesn't have the experience to talk about such things).

1) Mate, wtf? You aren't following the topic at all. Are you okay? Look. In his video Bellular talks about improving leveling/questing experience, combat, talents, endgame, outdoor content, etc. I didn't know they used bunnies but it isn't that surprising. It is very interesting though. However it just has nothing to do with the topic. I have no idea what you are arguing about at this point.

2) Um... So you are basically saying that neither Bellular (indies in general) nor actual companies (Blizzard for example) have the right to toss ideas? Maybe we should just scrap the entire concept of Gaming in general and sit on our chairs watching empty black screens ? His ideas maybe miss the mark, but some will hit. Take the best and improve it on your own. Speculate, fantacize about it. If that's your thing that is. If not just.... let us have our fun?