Why did Blizzard blow their load on Mechagon?

[kaid]

My guess is everything up to 8.2.5 was all set to still be A-ok which is why it's been so polished up to that point. Somewhere after they completed 8.2.5 stuff they decided BfA wasn't worth creating content for and what we got in 8.3 is probably what they had finished up and deemed "passable".

I mean the ending raid cinematic really feels like it was cut short as it just ends to black incredibly abrupt. There's no sense of "what this means for the world now" like there was with KJ raid cinematic, Sargeras stab sword cinematic, Azshara end raid cinematic, Dazar'alor end cinematic, etc.

Basically it's obvious they've decided to switch gears to Shadowlands prolly around the time 8.2.5 finished up, thus the lack of polish and stuff at the end of BfA.

I don't blame them anyway, BfA was poorly executed in so many areas, Warfronts should've felt like their own Warcraft mini-game similar to how there's a Pokemon mini-game in the form of Pet Battles -> if they executed Warfronts well think of all the Cata zones they could've used to progress the Alliance/Horde fighting and update piecemeal at a time. Islands themselves felt nothing like treasure hunting and just a "kill as many high point targets as fast as you can" instead of being something that could've put puzzles/treasure hunting/exploring at its forefront.

I think its pretty clear that blizzard pulled the ripcord on BFA not to the extent they did on WOD but clearly it was underperforming and there was no reasonable amount of effort that would fix the issues it had. At that point unlike WOD they at least tried to deliver an ending that at least made some vague sense so they could just move on to shadowlands. Given the delays with the whole unplanned essence system basically it probably would have taken them well into spring/summer to do the ending of BFA correctly and they had no desire to spend that kind of time/money that would also push back shadowlands into next year which would just be throwing good money after bad.

[Sondrelk]

I think its pretty clear that blizzard pulled the ripcord on BFA not to the extent they did on WOD but clearly it was underperforming and there was no reasonable amount of effort that would fix the issues it had. At that point unlike WOD they at least tried to deliver an ending that at least made some vague sense so they could just move on to shadowlands. Given the delays with the whole unplanned essence system basically it probably would have taken them well into spring/summer to do the ending of BFA correctly and they had no desire to spend that kind of time/money that would also push back shadowlands into next year which would just be throwing good money after bad.

There are definitely signs of drastic cuts. Warfronts I would imagine was abandoned right as they began work on Darkshore, given how only the Alliance side makes sense, with the Horde one being the same with different NPCs.

Same with islands, they got far enough to be mostly done with the Pandaria one then decided to pull the plug when it became clear the system was unsalvageable.

And now with 8.3. where we can easily infer that they had the assets made, then decided that putting all the resources over to Shadowlands sooner rather than later would be a good idea.

[Ooid]

My guess is that sometime near the end of 8.2 development they decided to shift hard into Shadowlands. Thus, we get a comparatively lackluster 8.3 and no 8.3.5.

[Nero Duskwind]

Seems like a waste to put so many resources on Mechagon with the big dungeon and world content when that could have been used for Nzoth stuff instead. Besides giving the alliance an allied race that barely anyone wants to play what was the point? Mechagon is so isolated from the rest of the story that BFA wouldn't have really been affected if it didn't exist. Why not just do Mechagon in another expansion?

Blizzard was already chewing on too many themes in BFA already. Sargeras sword stuck in azeroth, wrathion/dragons, Horde vs Horde&Alliance, the drust, Ghuun, Azshara, Nzoth, Voljin & Bob Salami, Azerite, Sylvanus plans, exploring Zandalaar & Kul'tiras and then amputee gnomes out of nowhere?? Blizzard lost focus with this expansion and just tried to throw everything in the can and shake it up and see what holds. This led to us feeling like there's little to no resolution on many of the core themes BFA tried to explore. Why does it feel like the thing they put they most effort into this expansion was the side story?

I thought Cataclysm was a disjointed mess and then the devs had a "hold my beer" moment with BFA. And, yes, Mechagon felt way overcommitted to for something that was supposed to be supplemental to the Naz'jatar plot-line and Eternal Palace. BFA is literally the kitchen sink expansion with the amount of loosely related to outright unrelated shit that was tossed in.

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There are definitely signs of drastic cuts. Warfronts I would imagine was abandoned right as they began work on Darkshore, given how only the Alliance side makes sense, with the Horde one being the same with different NPCs.

The initial talk was that there were supposed to be three to four total warfronts but it got cut to two with what could have been the third being reduced to a handful of quests in Durotar and a cut scene that wrapped the the war campaign up far too swiftly and conveniently. And the way it was done also heavily implies it had to be done that way in order to prevent the Shadowlands Blizzcon cut scene from being a spoiler.

[Sondrelk]

I thought Cataclysm was a disjointed mess and then the devs had a "hold my beer" moment with BFA. And, yes, Mechagon felt way overcommitted to for something that was supposed to be supplemental to the Naz'jatar plot-line and Eternal Palace. BFA is literally the kitchen sink expansion with the amount of loosely related to outright unrelated shit that was tossed in.

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The initial talk was that there were supposed to be three to four total warfronts but it got cut to two with what could have been the third being reduced to a handful of quests in Durotar and a cut scene that wrapped the the war campaign up far too swiftly and conveniently. And the way it was done also heavily implies it had to be done that way in order to prevent the Shadowlands Blizzcon cut scene from being a spoiler.

I subscribe to the theory that mechagin was 8.1 or 8.1.5 content that was delayed due to some problem or the other. Mostly I find this plausible given Mechagon has no overlap with the Nazjatar reward structure, specifically giving the same trade materials we saw at the beginning of the expansion instead of a custom one, or even just the Nazjatar one.

As for Warfronts I shine the idea was to have a warfront for each raid, going by how we had Stromgarde for Uldir and Darkshore for BfD.

[msdos]

Theme of BFA: too much crap all at once in one place, the story and now Mecha and Naz together we can see was a poor decision.

Everyone was complaining day 1 about Benthic grind alongside rep and AP. That is just an unimaginable amount of stuff to grind.

[Sondrelk]

Theme of BFA: too much crap all at once in one place, the story and now Mecha and Naz together we can see was a poor decision.

Everyone was complaining day 1 about Benthic grind alongside rep and AP. That is just an unimaginable amount of stuff to grind.

The problem with benthic wasn't the grind, really. It was the items having bonuses too good for minmaxers.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

Mechagon would have been great with 8.3, and I think in hindsight Blizzard would have preferred it that way. However, I do believe they had a lot more planned with 8.3 which got scrapped for Shadowlands (8.3.5 being datamined for example). I think the 2019 layoffs completely fucked their development timeline.

No devs were laid off so it’s unlikely that the layoffs effected any thing. It could be that they had extra staff training as they hired 20% or so more devs though.

[TickTickTick]

Lol imagine if 8.2 would have been only Nazjatar and EP.

[ravenmoon]

Seems like a waste to put so many resources on Mechagon with the big dungeon and world content when that could have been used for Nzoth stuff instead. Besides giving the alliance an allied race that barely anyone wants to play what was the point? Mechagon is so isolated from the rest of the story that BFA wouldn't have really been affected if it didn't exist. Why not just do Mechagon in another expansion?

Blizzard was already chewing on too many themes in BFA already. Sargeras sword stuck in azeroth, wrathion/dragons, Horde vs Horde&Alliance, the drust, Ghuun, Azshara, Nzoth, Voljin & Bob Salami, Azerite, Sylvanus plans, exploring Zandalaar & Kul'tiras and then amputee gnomes out of nowhere?? Blizzard lost focus with this expansion and just tried to throw everything in the can and shake it up and see what holds. This led to us feeling like there's little to no resolution on many of the core themes BFA tried to explore. Why does it feel like the thing they put they most effort into this expansion was the side story?

Tehy had to give the gnomes an allied race.. eventually people woudl bitch about it, and tbh, I think Mechagnomes was a better option than leper gnomes, and I can't hink of any thing they could have done better for gnomes.

Mechagnomes may nt be the most popular.. but they have a very dedicated gnomish following.

If Allied races were based on popularity alone..then only elves and humans would get versions.

I think it is worth that every race gets at least one. Then they can give more popular races like elves, humans, trolls, orcs additional ones.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

QA IS part of Dev. That's the problem here. Everything QA can find early reduces the amount of dev time. The current shit-show with 8.3 means that devs have to fix stuff instead of working on shadowlands.

Please, learn this: QA is part of dev, and being stingy on QA costs exponentially. To give you a simple example from my company:

To quote some one who did more leg work then me it’s very unlikely the minimal QA layoffs effected any thing of note.

https://www.scribd.com/embeds/401389...zsTyPm8t95vdMf

Page 35, left column. 11 QA positions were cut out of 337.

3.2% cut.

[Newname1234567890]

Yes, what would a gnome king wanting to undo the curse of flesh have anything to do with an Old God?

Regardless that it is fitting with the theme, sort of, bfa was already juggling so many plot points. Adding another with some many unique assets did take way development time that could have been spent of NZoth (this is my view point on most of bfa though).

[GreenJesus]

Tehy had to give the gnomes an allied race.. eventually people woudl bitch about it, and tbh, I think Mechagnomes was a better option than leper gnomes, and I can't hink of any thing they could have done better for gnomes.

Mechagnomes may nt be the most popular.. but they have a very dedicated gnomish following.

If Allied races were based on popularity alone..then only elves and humans would get versions.

I think it is worth that every race gets at least one. Then they can give more popular races like elves, humans, trolls, orcs additional ones.

I mean... people wanted the northrend mecha-gnomes anyway. Could have asked them for their help in cleaning Old God influence since they had experience with it with Yogg Saron. Then they realize that their fleshy cousins aren't all bad and wish to join forces. Have some quest chain where you go seek them out and stuff. Not like the gameplay of the acquisition of the Maghar made any sense either. You kill some fat people on an island until some dude sitting in Orgrimmar says "hey! let's go back in time to an alternate world again and say hi to our old friends!"

[Tiwack]

You're not making any sense as you'd obviously have to play the game to experience resolution to the stories therein. Every post you make shows your ignorance of the lore, it's hilarious really. I don't see why you'd prefer trouncing around the same old content instead of let them create new settings/stories.

[msdos]

The problem with benthic wasn't the grind, really. It was the items having bonuses too good for minmaxers.

PITA is what it was. Not for me, because I ignored it in my heroic raiding guild, but I'm positive mythic raiders were confused by it.

[Newname1234567890]

Lol imagine if 8.2 would have been only Nazjatar and EP.

No Mechagon frees up resources to add more to 8.2 idk Naga Dunegon say.

Still zone and Raid is pretty standard as patch 2 goes

[Nero Duskwind]

I subscribe to the theory that mechagin was 8.1 or 8.1.5 content that was delayed due to some problem or the other. Mostly I find this plausible given Mechagon has no overlap with the Nazjatar reward structure, specifically giving the same trade materials we saw at the beginning of the expansion instead of a custom one, or even just the Nazjatar one.

As for Warfronts I shine the idea was to have a warfront for each raid, going by how we had Stromgarde for Uldir and Darkshore for BfD.

It feels like Brooks' Law took effect and the influx of devs from other projects actually WORSENED the development cycle and forced delays, push backs, and cuts and, from there, it's snowballed into Shadowlands being behind schedule.

[msdos]

I hate how Seat of the Triumviraate was a straight up seeing eye glass crystal scryer ball directly into BFA dungeon philosophy (too much crap all in one place at once). The moment I ran Seat I knew this would be dungeons going into BFA. Blizzard had like a snap moment and started rushing to nerf everything behind the scenes, ESPECIALLY tanks while simultaneously cramming dungeons to the brim.

[themaster24]

Was just saying this to a buddy. The worst part of BfA for me has been the story. I fly around doing world quests and forget things even happened like the Bwansamdi pact with Talanji's bloodline even happened, etc. til a voiceline pops up with some flavor text. Too much went on in one expansion, if they needed to do a horde vs alliance expansion to introduce shadowlands it should have been done after a proper Azshara/Nzoth expansion. Everything was thrown into 1, nothing got a good ending. N'zoth ending is sad and sloppy, sylvanas just yeeted away with saurfang dead, nothing about Bwansamdi in forever, dragons out of no where, plan for the sword hasn't been mentioned in ages, its just been all over the place since day 1.

What's frustrating, is they could have used all the theme's they did throughout BFA, but they needed to be handled mostly 1 at a time. Instead they overlapped all of these stories so heavily. There's no reason the faction war needed to be dragged out from pre-patch to 8.2.5 if they also wanted to tackle Azshara/Nazjatar and N'zoth/Ny'alotha in the same xpac.

[msdos]

What's frustrating, is they could have used all the theme's they did throughout BFA, but they needed to be handled mostly 1 at a time. Instead they overlapped all of these stories so heavily. There's no reason the faction war needed to be dragged out from pre-patch to 8.2.5 if they also wanted to tackle Azshara/Nazjatar and N'zoth/Ny'alotha in the same xpac.

Yeah. This is basically why people are speculating in here that they rushed out Mecha. The pacing makes no sense, hindsight being 20/20.