9.0 General Discussion

[Asphyx22]

I want him to return and I want all of the players in the in game characters to think that he is our new best friend and our new hero only to find out that he’s actually still fucking evil

That'd be interesting. Thinking Arthas has redeemed himself, only to be unwittingly helping him achieve some nefarious goal.

[Asphyx22]

Watch Locke & Key on Netflix.

Listen here, Bob. I only watch Netflix for chilling. I'd rather sit on this forum doing nothing other than obsessing over and being wrong about when we'll get alpha.

[Edward Wu]

There's 0 reason to believe Arthas will still be evil. 99% of the reason Arthas was a villain after being a DK was because Frostmourne literally reaped his soul, and he became an immoral being afterward. If we are going to see Arthas in SL, it will literally be Arthas' soul that we see, aka the true Arthas. Unless something massive happens to change him for the worse, I don't see why he would be evil?

[George Costanza]

cant wait for alpha forums to be available, usually that is the first sign.

[therumblings]

I think preach mentioned we might see something in a few hours on allcraft regarding alpha, either that or it was something else about blizzcon 2019.

source on this btw? I don't think preach would make this up.

[George Costanza]

https://www.twitch.tv/richwcampbell

he was on allcraft there.

[Merryck]

yeah - preach doesn't know when the alpha is coming out. he scoffed when rich said hopefully it comes soon, and went on to say he has no idea

[razorpax]

There's 0 reason to believe Arthas will still be evil. 99% of the reason Arthas was a villain after being a DK was because Frostmourne literally reaped his soul, and he became an immoral being afterward. If we are going to see Arthas in SL, it will literally be Arthas' soul that we see, aka the true Arthas. Unless something massive happens to change him for the worse, I don't see why he would be evil?

arthas did not have frostmourne when he made the decision at strat

honestly the more compelling choice storywise for him would be "you thought the sword had turned me...it simply cut off my inhibitions. You believe a prince incapable of tough and immoral choices. I wanted revenge and for that revenge i sought power. I gained power but saw that my vengeance had a bigger target. Did you not see me die?? In those moments did you see a single tear of regret?? I accepted the darkness within my soul while you still cling to the light."

compared to "the sword made me do it...but i must repent because edge"

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yeah - preach doesn't know when the alpha is coming out. he scoffed when rich said hopefully it comes soon, and went on to say he has no idea

nobody other than blizz knows

preach never claimed to know anything about datamining or alpha dropping

[Aeluron Lightsong]

arthas did not have frostmourne when he made the decision at strat

honestly the more compelling choice storywise for him would be "you thought the sword had turned me...it simply cut off my inhibitions. You believe a prince incapable of tough and immoral choices. I wanted revenge and for that revenge i sought power. I gained power but saw that my vengeance had a bigger target. Did you not see me die?? In those moments did you see a single tear of regret?? I accepted the darkness within my soul while you still cling to the light."

compared to "the sword made me do it...but i must repent because edge"

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nobody other than blizz knows

preach never claimed to know anything about datamining or alpha dropping

"You lied to your men, betrayed the mercenaries that fought for you, whats happened to you Arthas, is vengeance all that important to ye?" Stratholme was big but.... even in Northrend he acted like a dishonorable jerk.

"this entire city must be purged" was a rationale and justified decision given the circumstances. arthas did nothing wrong

Oh to hell with this. Even with just killing all innocent civillians that were infected(Along with children), the fact he was so adamant about it and not even being sorry or even showing some sense of reluctance, no he was committed to do it and god forbid you question the prince.

[Merryck]

"this entire city must be purged" was a rationale and justified decision given the circumstances. arthas did nothing wrong

[FlemmMinis]

"this entire city must be purged" was a rationale and justified decision given the circumstances. arthas did nothing wrong

I would have done the exact same thing tbh.

[Edward Wu]

Ah, it's 2020 and people are still trying to pretend the purging of stratholme was completely evil and not a perfect depiction of moral grey area.

If Arthas hadn't done what he did just then, the city would have been consumed by the Scourge anyway. Anyone who did the actual mission in WoW knew that the city was swarming with Scourge almost immediately after you enter it. Uther was the coward who left and abandoned the city completely. Arthas at least saved some from undeath.

[formerShandalay]

According to Rise of the Lich King, Arthas was in full control of his decisions right up until he killed his child soul-splinter. After he took up Frostmourne he saw Muradin lying on the ground and his first instinct was rushing to his aid, the light rushed to his aid and he was going to heal him, until he decided to rather go with the power Frostmourne gives him and just let Muradin die. The Light part of his soul was with him all the way and he killed it, knowingly and willingly because he chose the Lich King's power over everything else. And he wanted to rule alone, without his 'weak' part and without Ner'zhul.

[Voidwielder]

Containment works and Arthas proved it.

[Yarathir]

I would have done the exact same thing tbh.

You might have to, soon..

[Chickat]

Have to agree on this. Considering every new feature since MoP has been mostly a fail for me, perhaps nothing game-changingly new is better. Still hate the covenant rentals though.

Well, for MoP its obvious all of its features were successful in some way.

Pet battles while not a huge success have their own small dedicated audience.

Scenarios while completely different were very important for WoD and onwards. Id say Scenarios are one of the most important features/techs they ever made.

Challenge modes had a niche audience, but they led to the uber-successful Mythic+

Monk. Need I say more? While they are the least played class, I think that is more to do with them not being a hero class than being a bad class. I suspect a lot more monks will be made in Shadowlands since dh and dks only start at 10 now normalizing the gap.

Legendary Quest. While the implementation could have been better, this gave players a reason to log on every week. I did more raiding in MoP than I have in any other expansion do to this quest, as well as LFR imo being better back then.

LFR- While I know this launched in Cata, It came into its own in MoP and was originally meant for MoP. Lfr was at its best in MoP. It was actually worth doing and had some challenges for a player like me back then. I actually enjoyed doing lfr in MoP, and I attribute it to a harder difficulty which helped players move into higher levels of raiding if they wanted, plus the gear was much more competitive than lfr gear is today. Bring tier sets back and put them back into lfr.

Outdoor content/something to do every day. This one is important and lays the ground work for Legion and BFA world content. While a lot of people complained about having so many dailys to do, MoP was a massive step up in world content design. I also really enjoyed the Lite reps. Reps like Tillers, Anglers, and Cloud Serpents are a fantastic idea. Bring back more fun reps blizzard.

While a patch feature im giving flex/normal raiding a special mention here. Flex more so really changed the raiding game more than most other changes in its history. Flex mode was just what I needed to move into more difficult raiding. I also really enjoyed the amazing trinkets from SoO. But this was a patch feature, so we probably shouldnt count it as a launch one.


For WoD

New character models were a game not specific feature but were for the most part very successful/needed.

While not necessarily a feature, I would argue that WoD still 6 years later has the best leveling content. They way they used Scenarios carried on into Legion and made the storys feel very meaningful.

Bonus Quests, I think were mainly invented do to redesigns of the story/leveling zones, but I do enjoy doing them on alts each expansion to level faster. Its cool to be doing quests in a zone and having a bonus to complete feels nice.

Garrisons/mission tables while bad as the only major feature were successful imo. They were fun at least the first time through, and had a lot of systems/tech carry over into Legion. Still as the biggest feature of WoD they were not as good as they should have been.

Leveling perks. Something they should have carried over imo, but getting something new every level is important, and I think this is the main reason leveling feels bad in bfa. In legion the artifact helped mitagate that, but while these arent a major feature, I think they were very important.

Chest and rare design. Chests in Legion and especially BFA feel pointless and unrewarding, but chests in WoD were all unique and fun. They weren't just chests, but hundreds of other glowing items in the world with jumping puzzles etc to get to with much better rewards. Rares started spawning faster in WoD, but there were so many of them that it was cool seeing so much to hunt for outside regular questing.

Legendary campaign. This is good, though I would argue not as good as MoP version.

Garrison campaign maybe should be part of garrions, but it was okay. Nothing too good but worth mentioning. It lead to the class campaigns and the current war campaigns.

Legion

Pvp honor updates. I do think pvp talents was a good idea, but the removal of pvp vendors was a terrible idea. Blizzard I dont even pvp and please bring back pvp vendors. Talents were a good idea, and I was one of the ones who liked normalization of gear, but they went too far in Legion. Luckily they pruned that back some in bfa.

Suramar. I know its a zone, and other expansions have had more end game oriented zones, but Suramar is the best zone they have ever made. A sprawling zone with hundreds of nooks and crannies, a very long and genuinely good story, and good rewards. Suramar is the best end game content they have ever made hands down. Special mention to Withered training scenario and later on Chromie. Withered training while nothing too big was a fun distraction a few times a week that changed things up and had its own progression systems and great rewards. This system lead to Islands and now in Shadowlands Torghast.

Mythic+. Maybe the single best feature they have ever implemented, it owes its existence to challenge modes from MoP, so special shoutout to challenge modes. Mythic+ is responsible for making all of the fantastic dungeons blizzard creates relevant all expansion, and is a whole new way for non raiders to challenge themselves and progress their characters. The reward system for Mythic+ isn't perfect, but they seem to be fixing that in Shadowlands.

World Quests are another extremely important feature. They were likely created from a mix of Bonus objectives and apexis dailys ideas from WoD, but World quests are so much better than either of those. I realize they are getting kind of stale now 4 years on, but World quests were another massive evolution in giving players more ways to spend time in the beautiful world blizzard creates, as well as giving non instanced character progression to non raiders. Emmisarys aren't perfect, and I think reps/world quest design could be improved, but Legions World Quests were a hugely important and impactful feature.

Demon Hunters are one of my favorite classes, and almost more than any class fit their expansion like a glove. They make less sense to exist today, but they are still a blast to play and are extremely flavorful/cool looking.

Profession updates and quests. I think they took it a bit too far with Profession questlines and stories, but professions felt important in Legion even if they weren't. Either way they were a massive upgrade overt their WoD counterparts and the removal of easy to get prof mats meant they were more impactful/ profitable too.

Artifact weapons were an amazing idea, and still vastly superior to anything BFA offers even at the end of its life. There were around 100 skins to collect per class give or take and lead made all of Legions content feel important. The power progression while always ending in the same place felt meaningful at least for the first half of Legion. They were also super flavorful and a lot of artifacts had events tied to them like npcs asking to hold it, recognizing it etc.

Class halls/campaigns. The class campaigns for the most part were all fairly long and had good stories. They made you actually feel like your class should feel. They had good rewards including an armor set and the artifact skins, and a mount at the end to boot. The mission table while not as impactful as WoD's counterpart still felt important, and had a ton of good rewards as well. It also was a super-easy way to make gold. My only gripe with the mission table was how it gated the story, but I suppose they had to gate it some how. The class hall perk trees were also interesting in certain situations, and being inside your hall always felt amazing to me at least. I wish Blizzard wouldn't have abandoned the class hall in BFA. They really had something magical there.

Transmog updates while minor vastly improved the whole system. Everything being Boa was a huge quality of life increase, and im not sure ive ever heard a louder cheer at blizzcon than when they announced this update.

Legendary items. While this is a contentious topic, I do think Legiondaries brought all the systems together and made them better than the sum of their parts. The acquisition of the items was terrible until 8.3.5, but you can't deny that the items were super impactful to day to day gameplay, and made a lot of specs feel complete. Emmisarys in BFA were so pointless and unrewarding without the chance at a legendary, that blizzard had to massively buff the rewards. Thats how important Legiondaries were to Legion end game as a whole. I'm glad they are bringing the feature back in Shadowlands, with a hopefully fixed acquisition system.

And finally for BFA

Islands while a cool idea have been a huge failure for Blizzard. They are a lot better today than at launch, but still nothing like they should be. Remove the timer, add keep the progress bar as a solo or 1-5 scenario with friends thats more about exploration than a time rush. Those above things would have been Islands a lot more fun, and coincidentally a lot more like Torghast will be too. The rewards and broad selection of Islands is a highlight, but thats not enough to fix the broken game loop of actually doing them.

Allied races. This is BFA's best system. I would argue that over half of the races are very minor additions/pointless, but we got much more customization than you typically get from the normal 2 races per expansion thing. Great feature. The transmog sets and mounts are cool too.

War Mode- This is good for those that enjoy it I have heard, but its not without its problems. Overall probably a net positive over it not existing.

Warfronts. Oh boy, arguably the worst feature ever added in any expansion. It beats garrisons handily for that spot. These are nothing like they hyped them up to be. They should have been either big open pvp zones with dailys, or 1-5 man scenarios and more like the Warcraft 3 they were described as. The idea is solid, but the execution is laughably bad. The one thing that could have salvaged the system would have been pvp warfronts, but they didn't even do that. Its cool that the zones in the overworld got updated, but the actual gameplay of the feature is mind-numbingly boring. Now, the transmog from them is a positive thing, but seeing as there is no tier sets, there wasn't enough of it.

Azerite armor- Where do I even begin. We all know these are bad. Cool idea in concept, but blizzard should have realized they weren't going to work as is before actual implementation even began. They are supposed to replace tier sets, legiondaries, removed abilities, AND Artifact weapons. In their launch state they barely succeed in replacing tier sets let alone all the other things. These are what you would have expected the predecessor to Legion Artifacts would have been, but they were actually much worse instead of being an evolution like one would expect.

Heritage armor is mostly a patch feature, but this one is great. Mostly good sets with a usually good bit of race lore. Keep doing them in the future blizzard.

War campaign- Pretty bad stories overall. The good stories of BFA are mostly in the leveling zones. These at least kept some kind of narrative going the whole expansion even if they were rather meh. Special mention to the Saurfang cinematics throughout the expansion. A bright light on such a dark expansion.

I feel like I have to mention the bad things BFA did too, which might not be fair, but it is what it is.

The GCD changes don't even need an explanation. They slow down the gameplay and make playing ANY class feel worse than Legion classes did.
Removal of Tier sets. Horrible decisions which they seem to be repeating in Shadowlands.
Removal of Legendary gear. Makes some sense with Azerite existing, but it gutted the whole rewards scheme of Emmisarys.
Lack of Max level zone like Suramar really hurt BFA for me. I could forgive most, but this is just sad. Suramar was so good, why not continue its legacy in future expansions?
The mission table in BFA might as well not exist. Its nearly pointless.
Im tired, but I feel like im missing more than BFA removed?

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My bad, forgot that 7.3 and Antorus released months apart. I should have said that we might get a longer final tier/content drought then.

For most players, the zone release is the start of a content draught not the raid.

[plz delete account]

Nah we just have to speculate about the game in that year

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Does he say it’s a void expansion?

He claimed this expansion would be heavily void themed and that he had a source at blizzard prior to blizzcon.

[Grand Phoenix]

If we don't get anything tomorrow, I want to say we'll hear some news on the 23rd. Otherwise it probably won't be until April.

[Rhlor]

Here, have a snack.

a delight!

[razorpax]

He claimed this expansion would be heavily void themed and that he had a source at blizzard prior to blizzcon.

uhhhh mine was the dragon one bro
void can bite me its not interesting and to me its like shadowlands.....annoyingly lame
nothing in the post about the shadowlands info i had saying what was in that specific post said it was void

let the hate boner die....or gimme yo digits gurl