How would you feel about a "Mega Expansion"

[czarek]

Im totally in but im sure blizzard isnt in 1000% and any developer wouldnt be.

[Ghostile]

we have official word that there are no more patches for this expac, nothing.

correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't this "official word" just Ion saying there weren't plans for 3.8.5 at the time?

[zlygork]

correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't this "official word" just Ion saying there weren't plans for 3.8.5 at the time?

It's not like they are suddenly gonna decide that they want a 3.8.5 patch and make it within 2 months. At least not if it isn't just a very quick patch fix like at the end of wotlk.

[Kaibhan]

when blizzard made wow they were still 3 guys in a garage and they made a 150 billion$ game and it took them 3 months.

youre saying that blizzard right now, a company of 100 thousand people, needs 9 months to create a single zone with a boss fight that has 2 mechanics and is just pay irl money to win lootbox and so you can farm more ap?

blizz shills

Someone doesn't work in software development I see.

[FlubberPuddy]

they need to change the entire system completely.

instead of reinventing the wheel every goddamned expansion, they need to just cap the level at 70 from shadowlands on, and use "expansions" to just expand story and add raids and other shit. let people get their character progression from a champion system that has a cap on how much power you can get from it.

basically, they need to copy eso's endgame. copy the CP system, copy the character progression. leave character progression to just fine-tuning your character's gameplay through set effects.

Something like this yeah, leveling has become pretty meaningless and a huge gateway to the meat of the content (as well as dissuading alt making when end-game systems already do that). Glad that we're getting a level squish and hopefully the increased cap will mean something in Shadowlands.

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But I think the pace of expansions currently is okay, they're 5-6 months for a raid tier (or Seasons now that they tie everything into a season -> m+, raids, pvp rewards, zone content) works because it gives people that can't play as much time to breathe within a season.

Also think their current pace of expansions are alright, any longer and it would feel even more like a drought. The time between 8.1 and 8.2 and then 8.2 and 8.3 was already feeling like a drought - even though we're going to be in this last Season for less than year unlike Legion's was.

[Monoxide]

I think we can all say that the expansion system does refresh the game, but Blizzard have only ever really minimally dipped into more extreme or larger projects. How would you feel about a mega-expansion - an expansion with huge development time (4 years) which would be able to come with a large vast continent similar to the size of original Azeroth, many dungeons, a well developed story etc. -- I think something like this would do a lot better for Blizz in the long run.

How do you feel? Vote in the Poll!

I honestly thought they could've done something like this with Ny'alotha, make it so N'zoth wins and the Black Empire reigns supreme again, and in this new twisted world Blizzard takes the opportunity to reset everyone to lv1, revamp the entire world, use the story to do it. N'zoth attacked our minds, we were all in a multi year coma or something and we forgot our former selves. None of us are heroes, just adventurers again, trying to fix our broken world.

I'm not super knowledgeable with lore, so, maybe this isn't possible? Just thought it'd be a cool way to hit the reset button.

[Shelly]

Current expansions already take 4 years of dev time.

Year 1: Concept
Year 2: Systems
Year 3: Announcement
Year 4: Beta

Right now they are working on the Alpha for Shadowlands, but they planned and conceptualized the expansion around the end of WoD at the latest. If anything I'd say them working so far ahead is detrimental to the game since they don't always do the transition very well at the end of expansions or don't telegraph things like "what are we going to do about this huge freakin' sword sticking out of the planet?"

[FlubberPuddy]

correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't this "official word" just Ion saying there weren't plans for 3.8.5 at the time?

It pretty much means no 8.3.5. Also the way he inflected his statement "I'm just going to get this out there right now" means he is trying to tell people to not expect an 8.3.5.

Wouldn't be enough time anyway since the tier just released and if we had the usual 5-6 months then it would already be June or July which means Shadowlands would probably be in November or December and I do not see this tier going for longer than 8 months from release (last tier patches tend to be longer).

Also from what's been shown with 8.3 it's pretty clear to almost everyone that they don't want to invest any more creative content resources into BfA.

[Shelly]

they need to change the entire system completely.

instead of reinventing the wheel every goddamned expansion, they need to just cap the level at 70 from shadowlands on, and use "expansions" to just expand story and add raids and other shit. let people get their character progression from a champion system that has a cap on how much power you can get from it.

basically, they need to copy eso's endgame. copy the CP system, copy the character progression. leave character progression to just fine-tuning your character's gameplay through set effects.

I actually think that's what they are gearing for with the new leveling system. It'll make each expansion it's own game with their own systems and you'll be able to level through that content with the last 10 levels always being that of the current expansion.

[FlubberPuddy]

I honestly thought they could've done something like this with Ny'alotha, make it so N'zoth wins and the Black Empire reigns supreme again, and in this new twisted world Blizzard takes the opportunity to reset everyone to lv1, revamp the entire world, use the story to do it. N'zoth attacked our minds, we were all in a multi year coma or something and we forgot our former selves. None of us are heroes, just adventurers again, trying to fix our broken world.

I'm not super knowledgeable with lore, so, maybe this isn't possible? Just thought it'd be a cool way to hit the reset button.

It's not that it's not possible. It's that the majority of the playerbase would shit their pants at everything they've done/progressed/collected being gone.

We're at a point now with WoW where people play it like a collect-a-thon game which is why we get so many RNG drop mounts/toys/pets.

So basically, a fresh start would be nice, but the majority of the playerbase wouldn't like it. And there's no guarantee if Blizzard did that, that it would be better than what we're getting now.

I think that's what sucks in all that's been happening recently. I'm still having fun, but I don't look forward to new expansions with the same enthusiasm as I look forward to say the next Elder Scrolls or Kingdom Hearts game, or the next CD Project Red or FromSoftware game or Kojima game.

But all the above is only just because BFA itself sounded good, but all its new ideas (warfronts that should've been like a mini warcraft akin to how pet battles are mini Pokemon, Islands that should've been more about treasure hunting and exploring and not kill all things cap score, azerite armor traits that were supposed to feel like legendary effects except they don't) were executed poorly along with insane levels of RNG thrown into the mix.

[Ghostile]

Also from what's been shown with 8.3 it's pretty clear to almost everyone that they don't want to invest any more creative content resources into BfA.

Yeah what with remaking vale and a pretty massive raid making it one of the bigger patches.

But if we assume SL is out on november, I can see .5 not happening.

[Reinhart11]

They could still do big continents across more than one expansion. In contrast to islands, they can add to continents if they want to. Just release a part of that massive new continent. Other parts of the continents are barred by massive mountain ranges, dessert and steppes we can't cross. In that regard, new continents would be way better than all these islands. There isn't much room for a lot more island anyway. Unless they widen the gap between Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms. Its time to open up the Veiled and the Forbidden Sea in my opinion. Get rid of this whole nonsense with Kalimdor being the only continent on Azeroth. Its idiotic.

[FlubberPuddy]

Yeah what with remaking vale and a pretty massive raid making it one of the bigger patches.

But if we assume SL is out on november, I can see .5 not happening.

Do you think SL won't come out before the next Blizzcon (ie November basically)?

[kranur]

Sounds good on paper but there are very big issues.
First, how do you keep people going for 4 years on a single expansion while the mega one is done?
Second, making a huge ass continent like EK or Kalimdor will have to ensure that it has end game content relevant for at least 3 years, otherwise it's just time wasted if people only level through it or even skip it via dungeons/bg's.

[Ghostile]

Do you think SL won't come out before the next Blizzcon (ie November basically)?

It could definitely come earlier.

[Beefhammer]

I think we can all say that the expansion system does refresh the game, but Blizzard have only ever really minimally dipped into more extreme or larger projects. How would you feel about a mega-expansion - an expansion with huge development time (4 years) which would be able to come with a large vast continent similar to the size of original Azeroth, many dungeons, a well developed story etc. -- I think something like this would do a lot better for Blizz in the long run.

How do you feel? Vote in the Poll!

We did have one with a 4 year dev time and it was regarded as one of the better ones in Legion.

Let me add that 4 years is not enough time to make content for a continent the size of Vanilla, especially with the quality of the art today. Also Something that big would be too distracting fro a story perspective. There were plenty of complaints that the story was all over the place in Wrath and Cata forward it felt too disconnected as each zone had it's own contained story that may have added to the overall plot, but was vastly different zone to zone.

So then you have 4 years just to make it, how long will it be in testing, you really want to wait 5 years for content, or is this something a super secret team is working on behind the scenes? Because you would need to redouble the team just to get something like this done.

[Lodreh]

...How would you feel about a mega-expansion - an expansion with huge development time (4 years)...

So every other expansion... like Wrath, Mist, Legion and now Shadowlands? Yeah it seems they do deliver a lot more on these expansions than on the odd ones but I doubt the player base would come back if we had a several year end of expansion lull... which seems to be what you are suggesting otherwise.

[Nfinitii]

when blizzard made wow they were still 3 guys in a garage and they made a 150 billion$ game and it took them 3 months.

youre saying that blizzard right now, a company of 100 thousand people, needs 9 months to create a single zone with a boss fight that has 2 mechanics and is just pay irl money to win lootbox and so you can farm more ap?

blizz shills

Wow was announced in 2001 and released in 2004. Development time was 4-5 years. With about 60 ppl on staff at launch.

[Resheph]

Cataclysm

making good expansions and patches.

Wow,did you use the wrong expansion as an example...

[FlubberPuddy]

It could definitely come earlier.

Then a .5 has slim to almost no chance of happening realistically. Not counting pre-patch ofc.