Ok, Hazzikostas, listen..

[SirCowdog]

Why is your feedback the only feedback that matters? Who's to say that all the shit you hate is feedback given by... get this: Other players! (I know, hard to believe.) It might actually shock you but the people you see bitching constantly on this forum do not constitute a majority and most of the people who play the game never even bother to navigate to fan-run websites, much less post on them obsessively demand the company bend their knee to their individual specific needs. The entitlement you're displaying is truly awe-inspiring.

I always see this excuse get trolled out whenever someone criticized the game: This magical silent majority that somehow justifies everything Blizzard does, and yet can never be defined or measured. You DO realize how bad of an argument that is?

The opinions of people who don't even care enough to express themselves one way or another is not a shining endorsement of the game. You make the argument that there all these people who never bother to navigate to a forum, but you also forget to mention that those people could be playing the game out of sunk cost, addiction, habit, FOMO, or social pressure from peers to not quit. They could also not even be playing at all, but have a 12 month subscription they're locked into that's just ticking away.

Passive acceptance of the state of things is seldom a powerful motivation, and shouldn't be given much weight.

Don't be so quick to ignore the people who care enough about the game to actually come to these forums to express themselves. Generally speaking, they're not doing so out of hate, but out of a desire for the game to be better.

[Drusin]

Well...it still avoids telling us what "alt friendly" means.

Now that is quite tricky and something I will have to think on as the game isn't simple anymore where high ilvl = (in theory) more performance. There's "systems" now that have to be accounted for.

I can level up 110-120 in 24-36 hrs played

That's actually a long time bro lol, I think my fastest was 32 hours 20-120. I personally don't have a problem with current leveling speed, you can level fast as hell right now but I do have a problem with how it feels while leveling which is where scaling comes in.

and there is a ton of Benthic / Assault gear on my mules. So...you kinda need to establish what the alt friendliness score of 100 in WoD means that they did 5 times better than your score of 20 in BfA....

Now those numbers and xpacs were just an example to show a decrease in alt friendliness over a period of time and then an increase in alt friendliness which is still lower than the point of peak alt friendliness, maybe in the future I'll say "xpac A, xpac B, xpac C". I'll use an example from the official forums which also happens to be WoD but I promise I'm not saying WoD was the greatest time for alts :P

In WoD, when I dinged level 100 I would head to Ashran and run around for 2 hours and come out with 700 ilvl <3 Mythic HFC dropped 740 gear so that would be 94.59% of the max ilvl you could get. Of course you wouldn’t have set bonuses though. It would be about 460 ilvl in BFA.

Imagine dinging 120 and within two hours you had a 460 ilvl. Not a 475 cloak and assortment of 410 benthic pieces but 460 in the majority of your slots. But like I said above it's not that simple with "systems". You could be 460 and perform worse than someone 440. And there's more to alt friendliness imo than just how fast you can get gear.

[Kallisto]

Oh yeah, he is such a social hero. Oh please, spare be with your fandom. I cannot really bellieve he still has fans after he dared to deliver BFA and patch 8.3. Also, he just wants the people to play what he plays. Which does exclude a thousand other playstyles, which are as viable in a computer game as your idea everything should be about organized groups.

Because every game designer in the history of forever designs games with the purpose of being played the way they design it.

[cparle87]

1. so you want them to remove artifact/azerite/anima power...
but you also want an ongoing character progression accessible solo and group content?
so... artifact/azerite/anima power...

2. if you dont want to play an MMO, dont play an MMO "be less greedy, remove multiplayer form this game" he is not the one being greedy, you are. he wants to let everyone play together, and we all agree. You want the game to be single player so no one can have fun with eachother.
You are the greedy one mate.

I made almost the exact same arguments to him a few pages ago. He just ignored me and repeated his argument back to me again as if that refuted my argument.

[TheLucky1]

I always see this excuse get trolled out whenever someone criticized the game: This magical silent majority that somehow justifies everything Blizzard does, and yet can never be defined or measured. You DO realize how bad of an argument that is?

The opinions of people who don't even care enough to express themselves one way or another is not a shining endorsement of the game. You make the argument that there all these people who never bother to navigate to a forum, but you also forget to mention that those people could be playing the game out of sunk cost, addiction, habit, FOMO, or social pressure from peers to not quit. They could also not even be playing at all, but have a 12 month subscription they're locked into that's just ticking away.

Passive acceptance of the state of things is seldom a powerful motivation, and shouldn't be given much weight.

Don't be so quick to ignore the people who care enough about the game to actually come to these forums to express themselves. Generally speaking, they're not doing so out of hate, but out of a desire for the game to be better.

This doesn't really matter that much since the vocal community is actually often split on topics, the contrast from a forum like this (elitist-like) to the cesspool of general discussion NA, to twitter, to memetastic reddit the opinions and feedback on a lot of stuff is very varied and hard to filter a common census.

I really hope in a future QnA they talk about how they process feedback and evaluate on it, that process must be quite complex.

[Gonfer]

Because every game designer in the history of forever designs games with the purpose of being played the way they design it.

With the difference he entirely focused on the few components of this broad audience game he plays himself. In all his communication.

[Mellrod]

There is no amount of content they could possibly add that you wouldn't be able to no-life it in a week. And then you are still out of content.

This has been the same argument for years. It doesn't matter how much content an expansion really has, only how its delivered. If its all available day 1, then on day 2 most of it will already be consumed. Gating content behind unlocks and/or making it repeatable is the only way to give it more lifetime.

Well I wouldn't say it's the only way. Look at how other MMOs have done it. From procedural generation & rogue-like mechanics to player-made and sandbox content. It's not to say all of WoW's content should be like that generally Natural longevity > Time-gating in terms of life-span and player enjoyment. Furthermore, there's something to be said about the focus on forcing content to last longer. Replayability often removes any need for that entirely, where the focus is less on completing the content and more on a fun experience every time. Because no matter what it will be finished eventually, better for it to be fun. These are key reason why a lot of people prefer Sandbox MMOs to Theme Park MMOs.

Which would you consider longer-lasting and more enjoyable?
- Leveling alts through the same boring quests & zones over and over?
or
- Leveling alts through quests with alternate stories, choices, endings, rewards, different effects on the environment, being able to experience it from another perspective, etc?
- Working with friends to harvest materials and build your own town hub from scratch, which you can always continue expanding as a pet project?
or
- Grinding for [Crafting Mats]x20 to give to an NPC which fills up a month-long progress bar, allowing you access to the same phase other players already unlocked and giving you access to a pre-built town full of generic models?

A good game may have a mix of both kinds of content in there for variety's sake, but I don't think it takes a genius to surmise that players will often prefer being limited only by what they can do with their time versus being made to wait. Experiencing new things every time content is played vs running the same grind.

Blizzard has begun wising up to this in small ways, yet they are still limited by the grindy theme park systems WoW has run on for a decade and a half. People expect it and Blizzard can't quite think outside the box they've created. Personally, I feel like their best chance for fresh content people complain is sorely lacking, is if they started entirely new. Whether it be as successor to WoW, or just a brand new IP, they sorely need a new MMO with a new engine, game systems, etc. One that incorporates lessons learned from WoW and other MMOs.

[nekobaka]

Number 10 kinda kills many of your previous points. The reason those systems are there are to provide on going character progression in content that historically doesnt last as long as less accessible content. To bring back that grind to the more accessible content makes it less alt-friendly short of account wide reputations which kills off progression for alts.

[Monolithi]

.. if you want to keep me as a player:

1.) Make Shadowlands alt friendly
2.) Do not hide Thorgast behind a grind
3.) Make reputations account based
4.) Add a ton of content instead of a a ton of time gates or effort gates
5.) Make LFR bearable, and not a wipe party
6.) Add back PVP vendors instead of bar filling games
7.) Remove Azerite Power / Anima Power / Artefact power / whatever power and do not replace it by a new label
8.) Remove Titanforging / Corruption / <new name for Shadowlands> and do not replace it by a new label
9.) Make pvp fair again
10.) Make my playtime worthwile, give me an ongoing character progression from accessible solo or group content

and

11.) Be less greedy, Ion, listen? LESS greedy. Let me play what i want to play, and do not try to force me into your wet dream of gameplay. I will NEVER join a premade group for raids or dungeons.

But as i know that you, Ion, would rather troll your customers than to listen to their feedback, it is very likely i will not going to play Shadowlands. As i know you and your alikes reactions to feedback already. You know, people asking you to remove Titanforging, and you adding Corruption. Or people telling you they like flying and you removing it. All those little meanies you thought would be funny.

Well, if he wants to keep me as player, he should do exactly the opposite of all things you mentioned. Ok, except no.1
Now he got his feedback from forums.
Now, what would be his course of action?

[munkeyinorbit]

1. Done.
2. If you think a 2 hr questline is a grind then I don't know what to tell you.
3. No. Blizzard may unlock rewards and access that require reputation but having one rep bar per rep per account is just stupid.
4. No. Time Gating is far preferable to mediocre content. Especially if it gives you power. People don't like being "forced" to grind.
5. Git Gud.
6. No. PvP is a little side game and the less time Blizzard spends on this the better.
7. Then what are you going to do in the days you want to play where you are not getting gear? Do that then, let others advance their characters while you stuff around with not getting whatever power.
8. No. Blizzard likes giving the possibility of upgrades because it keeps people subbed longer. It just needs to be reigned back and balanced better.
9. PvP is fair. This sounds like a L2P issue. Stop being a baddie.
10. See demand 7. You can't have 7 and 10. Luckily 7 will not be implemented and you get this one.
11. No one is forcing you to do anything. Play with others, don't play with others. Queue, don't queue. You play the game the way you want to.

Don't like it? Quit. I dare you.

[Kaver]

Then maybe those players should focus on such games then? PvP in WoW was never just about skill. Gear always mattered and when they minimized influence of the gear, people cried about it. WoW is ultimately mmorpg so gear vendor will probably not come back again.

The point was more about making people play repeatable content because they actually enjoy it and not just because they need to do it

[Doctor Funkenstein]

We are quitting. Why would you tell people who quit to quit? Do you like the ever shrinking subs? Curious if you are one of those people who are concerned about "WoW" dying, which would make me even more curious that you are actively telling people to stop playing, or if you think that WoW dying is good for the game?

These are the people who think "nice blog" and "y u on foraum 4 game u no play??!?" are witty retorts designed to put you in your place. Having a solid argument isn't exactly in their wheelhouse.

In fact, I'd say that 9 times out of 10, most of these people--as well as those who adamantly try to defend things like World of Warcraft in its current state--are doing so to rationalize things to themselves. They have to convince themselves that, in this case, the game is great and they're not wasting their time, money, or life supporting complete and utter trash. It's the only way they can process their world.

[Kaver]

Fair point. Add Tetris and Candy Crush to that. I played several times through Dungeon Master or the Sierra City Builders. Incubation I loved. Same with game like Doom..Quake...

But funny thing is...the moment Blizzard added elements of those games to WoW (like several difficulty level to chose from) - Forum went "Whaaaaa...this is not how an MMO is supposed to be)

So yeah...fair point, but really comparing apples and oranges. Picking the best things out of entirely different genres and thinking this will just work in WoW? Nah..I don't think so. It is kinda like all this "FFXIV did this great" "GW did this great" "Wildstar did this great" "Rift did this great" - yeah..but as a trade off, they also did a lot of shit badly.

If it was so easy to just pick the best stuff from every MMO and put it in a blender ....and out comes the perfect game...surely somebody would have done that.

A good example of enjoyable repeatable content in WoW is of course M+. I use multiple hours everyday pushing high keys, and I do it because I actually enjoys playing M+. Not because of gear. I do it for the same reason as someone who uses multiple hours everyday playing CS GO

[Mojo03]

.. if you want to keep me as a player:

1.) Make Shadowlands alt friendly
2.) Do not hide Thorgast behind a grind
3.) Make reputations account based
4.) Add a ton of content instead of a a ton of time gates or effort gates
5.) Make LFR bearable, and not a wipe party
6.) Add back PVP vendors instead of bar filling games
7.) Remove Azerite Power / Anima Power / Artefact power / whatever power and do not replace it by a new label
8.) Remove Titanforging / Corruption / <new name for Shadowlands> and do not replace it by a new label
9.) Make pvp fair again
10.) Make my playtime worthwile, give me an ongoing character progression from accessible solo or group content

and

11.) Be less greedy, Ion, listen? LESS greedy. Let me play what i want to play, and do not try to force me into your wet dream of gameplay. I will NEVER join a premade group for raids or dungeons.

But as i know that you, Ion, would rather troll your customers than to listen to their feedback, it is very likely i will not going to play Shadowlands. As i know you and your alikes reactions to feedback already. You know, people asking you to remove Titanforging, and you adding Corruption. Or people telling you they like flying and you removing it. All those little meanies you thought would be funny.

I agree with most

7) It's better to have some kind of alternate progression than none.
8) It's better to have some kind of incentive to re-run stuff for potentially better gear than none. It's also a moment of happiness for most when they get a proc. If your taking it too seriously and need to have ALL gear be titan-forged or whatever, thats more of an issue to me with you taking the game too seriously and probably needing to re-examine how you spend time in your life. If you look at it as an extra thing that happens, it's fine. It's when you actively seek out the procced gear that it starts to suck. Just don't do that and its fine.
9) Vague. Be more specific.

11) I doubt he really cares how much money the game makes outside of enough to keep his job and keep his bosses happy. I doubt he really sees any of it. Also it's an MMO, how do you expect to play without joining groups? It sounds like you honestly want a solo game.

[Osmeric]

Fair point. Add Tetris and Candy Crush to that.

Candy Crush is time gated. You get a certain number of failures per hour. You want more tries after that? You wait, or you pay $$$.

Eventually, they throw in levels that are nearly impossible, to sell more lives and boosts. It's the F2P business model.

[Aphrel]

aight my wishlist for shadowlands (not gonna quit or anything, ill still be here regardless):

1. get more/better servers. Its laggy as fuck now. Even with fewer players online than ever be4. Stop being cheapasses and fix your hardware.

2. Remove the rediculus restrictions on mythic raiding. Its impossible to pug on alts because of the lockout fucking you up whenever a random in the raids decides to leave after hes gotten the boss hes needed or due to server restriction. Id like both removed.

3. No more grinding outdated content. If you introduce powerup called X in the 2nd patch, dont end us doing the same world Qs weve been doing for half a year to unlock it. Make it a reward from new content.

4. Make more stuff availible at launch. m+, arenas, assaults, warfronts, thorgast.. there was way to little to do at bfa launch...

5. Put rewards behind reputations that are actually desirable. Etc, exclusive crafting recepies (not just a rank, the entire recepie), herb/mine/skinnign skills and so on.

6. Make profession related materials scrace, its so boring when everyone gets all the mats they need from just doing fuckall. The stuff should come from doing things you normally dont do! Stuff thats not in your path but out of it!
If you want inspiration, look at vanilla wow. Where mats came from all over the place, from other professions..

7. Less timegatings. I absolutely despise the current exponentially scaling ap grind, wich comes hand in hand with an equally exponentially scaled catchup mechanic. It absolutely kills my motivation to grind it. because regardless how much or little we play, we are stuck between these two mechanics its like two waves, and regardless how much we swim, we wont get over the one infront of us, and if we do fuckall the one behind us still carries us along... always keeping us in the same pace... one rank per week...

[SirCowdog]

This doesn't really matter that much since the vocal community is actually often split on topics, the contrast from a forum like this (elitist-like) to the cesspool of general discussion NA, to twitter, to memetastic reddit the opinions and feedback on a lot of stuff is very varied and hard to filter a common census.

I really hope in a future QnA they talk about how they process feedback and evaluate on it, that process must be quite complex.

I don't disagree that the forum and twitter feedback is all over the place. I was just pointing out that the argument of "Well there's a silent majority of players happy with the game" has almost no actual value.

I'm sure Blizzard tracks various metrics or what content people are interacting with, and for how long. They might even monitor various in-game chat channels to see what people are saying about the game. But it also seems abundantly clear that they are VERY bad about misinterpreting that data, or the little feedback from the community that they can make sense of.

I absolutely agree there needs to be a better way to provide feedback. And I absolutely think Blizzard needs to emphasize their focus in that area. The trainwreck of systems and changes that happened across BfA speaks loudly on that topic.

[Osmeric]

Activision has ZERO to do with WoW. That is strictly Blizzard. People need to stop perpetrating this myth.

Except, you know, Kotick can fire (or order fired) anyone in Blizzard he wants to, from the top person there on down. So anyone working on anything in Blizzard has to worry about what's happening pleasing the CEO.

[Kaver]

Well...that is great. Not sure what x-pac it was, but I remember ppl asking for an alternative to mythic raiding. You know..do difficult content with a tight knit group (ideally with friends). Seems Blizzard found that for you with mythic +

(ofc there are also threads how "mythic+ killed WoW" - but that just fits perfectly with what goes on in this forum)

I think Blizzard should focus more on "luring" people with great fun content that players actually enjoy to play instead of forcing them into boring content by gating powerful rewards behind it

- - - Updated - - -

aight my wishlist for shadowlands (not gonna quit or anything, ill still be here regardless):1. get more/better servers. Its laggy as fuck now. Even with fewer players online than ever be4. Stop being cheapasses and fix your hardware.

Preach described in one of his videos that the current lag in the game was mainly due to all the different procs in the game right now. If you have a raid of just 20 people which all have 100 different proc abilities with 10000000000000000000 different possible outcomes, then lag will happen.

[kaminaris]

The point was more about making people play repeatable content because they actually enjoy it and not just because they need to do it

Tons of repeatable content in WoW, if nothing fancies you, you search for other games not demand from a game to do content you like.