I'm not giving them a break, or the opposite. I was just pointing out that 'longest expansion' or longest developing time won't translate in content\polish since overall loss of productivity due to convid, confinement, etc.
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Yea, because day 1 of confinement everyone (person, company, etc) just hit the ground running with no loss of productivity whatsoever! Business as usual!
sigh
Also, i'll throw in a big example of something that can just delay things a lot by itself.
Voice acting.
You know the voices you hear in the game? Sylvanas, Jaina, Uther, etc? They're recorded by voice actors, who need to go to the recording studio, and you know, record their lines. And that takes a complete break if people aren't able to, you know, do that. I sincerely don't understand how people think the confinement in the early days of covid-19 had no impact... geez.
Last edited by hulkgor; 2020-09-09 at 01:47 PM.
Funny. This is the first expansion EVER for me that my friends list is packed full of people every night (10+) still playing this late in the expansion. Usually a ghost town until the pre patch. Perhaps Covid played a big part in that. But in reality, the game is simply much better than the cesspool of negativity would lead you to believe.
Actual developer here. Smoothly working from home since 4 years prior to covid.
Blizzard's fault if they didn't have this set up already way ahead of time. They have more capital than my company, yet my company had the infrastructure to let everyone in IT work remote THE NEXT DAY. The only hiccup we had was one of our 3 gateways getting maxxed out. 1 day and a different load balancing algo later, and everyone was 100% again.The transition from office work to WFH is not a smooth one. It takes time to set up a home office. It takes time to get remote VPNs working properly.
Amateurs if true.There are more distractions at home. Loved ones do their best not to disturb you but it can take a while for them to get used to you being there.
Like I said. Amateur. My org had about 10% WFH pre covid, and they skipped up to 95% basically over night. Now, getting adjusted was probably something for some people, but... like I said... a company like blizz that should be bleeding edge? How tf were they not already majority WFH? That's the bleeding edge of the industry.Source? I am an actual software developer that now WFH in a large organisation and I actually played Vanilla.
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What types of players are you and your friends? I bet it's what I think blizzard's current prime audience is.
Timeless Isle gear was quickly made obsolete with LFR gear.
The "story" in Timeless Isle was done in a flash.
There was only a single daily added in the patch, IIRC.
Dungeons were useless once you reached max level. (With the exception of Challenge Modes, but once you reached gold, they became useless, IIRC)
Scenarios were useless past the first one of the day, as only the first one gave Valor.
Valor points, again, became useless once all your gear was upgraded. And if you didn't raid, you had no gear to upgrade, as the ones you bought with valor weren't upgradable, IIRC.
I have never seen anyone requesting for the return of scenarios. On the other hand, I recall people being rather content that they were removed.Scenarios weren't endgame, you're right, but considering that's not at all what I said - You could queue for it as a DPS while sitting in an LFR queue, and the queue wasn't insanely long as a DPS so you could easily stomp a couple out for some valor while also getting your LFR queue out of the way. Nothing was put in place that supplements this system, and it has been sorely missed since.
That's BS because that's the purpose of LFR. If you could get into Flex, you definitely could get into LFR, and you could do LFR since the previous expansion.Flex raiding let tons of people into content that might never have seen it otherwise.
• Wrath added 3 dungeons, a raid, automatic cross-server LFD, and a fishing event in its last ".0" patch. And then added a new, small raid with its last ".5" patch.So as I said prior: It had more to do for more of the playerbase than ever before. It finally gave some fun stuff to non-raiders for a change, and without sacrificing on raid quality. It was a nice change of pace.
• Cataclysm added 3 dungeons, a raid, transmogrification, LFR, and Darkmoon Island on heir last ".0" patch.
• MoP added a raid, timeless isle, proving grounds, and flex raiding.
MoP was clearly lacking in content compared to prior expansions.
"Brown colored glasses" at least allow my eyes to see. You, on the other hand, keep your eyes closed shut, AND covered with your hands.So feel free to go put on your... What would it be, brown colored glasses in this case?
I think Shadowlands will bad as well, instead of going back to how things were and are in most mmos blizzard keeps on moving from 1 borrow power to the next. I might end up skipping SL for the fact that, its another borrow power expansion & all my time will be wasted for something that does not even carry over; in the past even though most gears get replace mid way through a new expansion, at least it is only gears & the progression relating to abilities are still there. At this point I would rather have a duel system of talents, 1 like wrath talents & the other with what we have now similar to SWOTR.
If they were smart they would had kept with legion artifact weapons being the last form of it & just build on that. Instead of building on it they toss the system out so everything we did before was a waste of them and ruin the lore because why would any1 throw away such powerful artifacts. Even if the power was loss, why not simply find a new way to regain that power. Blizz could had kept artifact weapons so we have 2 types of character progression similar to SWOTR; where they have talent choices like wow has but has another progression chart that gives more abilities as you level, where I think blizz got the idea for the artifact weapon in the 1st place. Then for new weapon looks, mobs & bosses beyond legion can simple just drop weapon skins, similar to how GW2 have items that skin over other items & once use or obtain it goes into your xmog collection.
And?
Correlation does not equate causation.
If TBC was a 9 out of 10 and Wotlk was an 8, then Wotlk was the "worst expansion" so far.
If you then follow up with a 7 or 6, then the 8 looks good by comparison.
In comparison to BfA perhaps, not on WoW as a whole.
I think almost any expansion is worth replaying for the raid content, doesn't mean i'd play every expansion to the same degree.
Actual engineer here (not software specifically although I do have a number of software engineers in my team): Different people react differently. The fact that you are able to do it perfectly is not evidence that everyone can.
I would expect that their biggest challenges would have been people-centric rather than due to access to technology.
Spoken like someone who doesn't have a family of his own.
Depends on what you're doing. Collaborating with other people in a creative endeavour is a lot harder to do/less effective using virtual communications than actually having people in the same physical space. Like I said, some people take to it better than others, but most don't. That is just part of being human. Maybe if you're talking about a generation of people who grow up in an environment where virtual communication is the norm, this might change. But that isn't what society is.
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Flex raiding serves a very different purpose from LFR. Flex was awesome because it made what is now normal and heroic raiding a lot more accessible and friendly towards casual guilds as well as pugs. Flex means you almost never need to bench players. Not only does that mean that players don't get the negative experience of being sat out, but it also means that guilds can keep a bigger roster and there is less risk of raids not happening because of a few no-shows. It really revolutionised the casual-organised raiding scene.
I would agree that it contributed towards keeping people busy at the end of MoP (and has continued to do so since then).
Here’s the thing, it should though. They could have pushed the release date back, many games have, they could have taken this extra time to really look at their systems to see if they are even healthy for the game before even testing.
I love blizzards games but they simply do not care about the quality at which shit is being released anymore. Any problems that occur day one of it being released is on blizzard, and has nothing to do with the pandemic. Look at games like cyberpunk. They knew the pandemic might slow some of their progress so they delayed the game. Simple as that. They had a hurdle, they worked around it.
Blizzard isn’t going to do this because they just want to make as much money with the most minimal amount of effort, which is what we will get.
The poster I responded to wrote, and I quote: "Flex raiding let tons of people into content that might never have seen it otherwise." and that is false since LFR already existed for over a year, and that was its purpose: to let people see content that they might never see otherwise.
That is the problem though. Not everything is a retcon just because it gives new information. Not everything is a retcon just because it changes what we knew with past events. Kael'thas reappearing in Magisters Terrace was not a retcon even though we last saw him die in Tempest Keep. It was new information. You are arguing that it was a ret con.
Shadowlands doesn't retcon the things you've stated here. It explains those things in further detail. Chronicles may have retconed a little but it still works with in the prior lore regarding Shadowlands, the helm, and the blade.
"Man is his own star. His acts are his angels, good or ill, While his fatal shadows walk silently beside him."-Rhyme of the Primeval Paradine AFC 54
You know a community is bad when moderators lock a thread because "...this isnt the place to talk about it either seeing as it will get trolled..."
The fact they put so much emphasis on the ways you power up your class on covenants, something that will completely go away with a new expansion, tells me no. The emphasis should be on talents, specs, spells, all of that in general. Some specs and classes themselves have barely changed at all, and some have basically, until recently, just gotten some very minor changes. Sorry, but while this expansion *looks* amazing, now that all the information is out there it simply looks like a big let down. There are some good things and good decisions, but when everyone complained about the direction of combat, what they did with that was not beneficial.
*Insert every single ridiculous PC parts detail here that no one cares about*
Devs have stated that it took some getting used to but hasn't really slowed development. You can believe they were lying but there is no reason for them to lie about it. There would be a productivity loss but it clearly wasn't anything major that people like to claim in forum posts when discussing the delays. Voice overs can be done last minute if needed. Blizzard has had plenty of time to safely do professional level voice overs.
If the latest Brandon Sanderson book that has 2 or more days of spoken audio can be recorded during a pandemic then Blizzard can manage to do any amount of voice over work needed for WoW.
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2012, with MoP, is when Blizzard introduced 6 talent rows. They added a 7th in WoD. Talent emphasis is the same as borrowed power because Blizzard would just rework those talents between expansions. The same thing with spells and specs. They usually get changed during each expansion with the borrowed power of the past getting baked in to the class when it makes sense.
"Man is his own star. His acts are his angels, good or ill, While his fatal shadows walk silently beside him."-Rhyme of the Primeval Paradine AFC 54
You know a community is bad when moderators lock a thread because "...this isnt the place to talk about it either seeing as it will get trolled..."
Timeless gear were 496 item level (at the time) while SoO LFR was 528 (again, at the time). The fact that Timeless gear had random stats did not make them better. It made them worse, because you could go your entire time in the game, for those 14 months of content drought, and not get a piece of Timeless gear that had the stats you wanted. However, TG could get better item level than LFR (by 7 points) if you used a rare/expensive item called Burden of Eternity. But, again: very rare, and very expensive. IMO, the difference was not worth the intense grind.
By "story" I meant the quests, the ones that tell the story.2) The "story" is never what people comment on, or we'd all have stopped playing back in Wrath.
If you're going for "grinds as content" angle, Wrath had the Argent Tournament for the gear, pets and mounts.3) The daily wasn't the point, the grind existed and people did it. You can complain that you didn't like it all you want, people did it and people enjoyed the content.
Pro-tip: don't assume the kind of player I am, lest you risk making a fool of yourself. And no, I was never an "overachieving raider". I was a casual raider. But on topic: dungeons were useless to the average person because the valor points became useless after you bought all the gear and upgraded what raid gear you had, and IIRC, LFR gear did not upgrade.4) Dungeons had valor. YOU had plenty of valor as an overachieving raider, but not everyone did.
Great. So you did the scenarios 7 times in a day, and they would be useless for the whole rest of the week! Hooray...?5) Scenarios weren't useless past the first one of the day, both because you could do all of your weekly Valor point grind in a single day (something you seem to have conveniently forgotten, you had 7 weekly bonuses in MoP which you could use at any point in the week, not refreshing daily),
Ignoring the fact you could not buy crafting materials with Justice Points in MoP, only in Cataclysm, each scenario gave you 50 justice points if you did not get gear from the cache. The cheapest full stack of mats (20 was full stack, at the time) was 1000 justice points. That would mean 20 scenarios. If, like you claimed, every scenario lasted roughly 5 minutes, that means you'd take over an hour and a half to gather 1000 justice points. You'd get a full stack of mats by gathering them in the world for half the time.and as mentioned, because DPS could continue to queue for them earning justice points for profession mats, and it would continue to use up queue time in other queues.
And going back to the "no crafting materials in MoP for JP", those were sold for Spirits of Harmony, not Justice Points. Kind of throwing your entire arguments down the drain, there...
You are just one person. When I said I haven't seen anyone make a request for the return of scenarios, I think it was obvious that there wasn't a widely requested feature to return. Or even "decently requested". Because when you say "it has been sorely missed since" you heavily imply that it's a feature a good chunk of the playerbase misses. You did not make it clear you speaking only about yourself, there.You obviously haven't seen my post history. I've complained about the removal of Scenarios since the removal of Scenarios.
That is not "seeing content". If you see LFR, then you see the content that exists within the raids. You see the game's story being told through the raids. There is no extra content locked behind extra difficulties, aside from the mythic-only phases that only a small handful of bosses have.Good thing I didn't say "More people saw raid content than ever before" then.
More people saw CONTENT than ever before. That's because people who couldn't previously move beyond LFR, moved into Flex. People who didn't like LFR for being far too easy, could do Flex if they enjoyed that. People who liked small group content, could do Flex instead of LFR. The addition of Cross Realms and subsequently oQueue made this much easier. I can't believe I have to explain this.
Six months. Wratch's last content patch lasted 6 months. Because patch 3.3.5 added the Ruby Sanctum. Also, funny how you berate me for "refusing to count scenarios", but then you go and do the same here by "refusing to count" the Argent Tournament dailies as world content.And Wrath's last patch lasted one year, and people were sick of it 6 months in because there was no world content. The same problem happened in Cata, coincidentally offering absolutely no world content whatsovever. Their dungeon content did not satisfy the playerbase on it's own. And nothing else you mentioned even matters - Raids are introduced in EVERY final patch, and Darkmoon Faire was nothing until it had several more patches in order to add more to it.
This is highly ironic coming from you, considering these were your exact words in that very same post:You're stretching INCREDIBLY far with your 'content' when you try to pass fishing contest and transmog as 'content,' but refuse to count Scenarios at all.
Also, I "refused to count scenarios", because MoP's last patch did not add any scenario. If you cared to read what I wrote, you'd know I was talking about what the last patch added. And I commented on the scenarios in a previous post.You can complain that you didn't like it all you want, people did it and people enjoyed the content.
The "Barrens Insurrection" event ended when the Siege of Orgrimmar raid opened. So, no, it wasn't "something to do during the content drought".Considering SoO had double the bosses of Dragon Soul, and an extra mode, and world content via the Barrens Insurrection, and scenarios (which did have new options in the last patch, nevermind the option for Heroic Scenarios) and that the catch up mechanic from dungeons had been moved to Timeless Isle... I'd actually argue the 3 dungeons AND Dragon Soul at the end of Cata amounted to less than SoO on it's own. (And before you cry "LFR", SoO introduced Flex, so it introduced new modes equally.)
The expansion being "well received" is immaterial to the claim about its content drought.Sorry, but MoP was received well for a reason, and it's not because those who played it refuse to look at it.
Yes I saw what was written. But you seemed to be taking issue with specific wording in a few cherry picked words while ignoring the context.
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Seriously, you're missing the point and arguing semantics. The poster has clarified what was meant and yet you're still trying to argue this point? The fact that people may have been able to "see the content" in LFR doesn't change the fact that Flex made organized, real raiding more accessible to a lot of players and thus gave that segment of players a reason to stay engaged with the game.
At this point you're essentially trying to argue that the existence of LFR invalidates the existence of Flex, and that is a pretty ludicrous standpoint tbh.
Funny. I did not said "they don't matter". I said they are quickly made obsolete by LFR. And, by the way: since you called me "the overachiever raider", let me put in some newsflash for you: not everyone is an "overachiever grinder" like you. I'd wager the majority of players don't really enjoy mindlessly grinding the same zero-challenge content for months on end for little reward.
You're moving the goalposts. I spoke about the story quests: i.e. that keep people occupied and progressing through the game. Not the writing.And? I told you before. Nobody comments on the story. Ever. If they did, we'd have all stopped playing back in Wrath, because the quests that tell a story have all sucked since then.
Now you're flip-flopping between what the expansion offers as a whole and what it offers on its last patch, since you used scenarios as "content to grind" when none was added in the last patch of MoP. Stick to one definition: is it the expansion "as a whole" or only what it offers "on its last patch"?That'd be on you for not mentioning it prior.
Also, it wasn't in the last patch.
Again, neither I or my guild were "overachiever raiders". And one slight correction on my part: we did not kill heroic Garrosh, only 25-man Garrosh. My bad. I mistook the word "heroic" to mean 25-man since that's how it used to be back in Wrath. No, never heroic Garrosh, just 25-man Garrosh. Heroic, our guild only progressed up to Norushen.To assume, you'd have had to not tell us already that you and your group full cleared SoO on Heroic.
Whether you like it or not, in MoP, you were an overachieving raider. So was I, as someone who only cleared up to heroic Klaxxi. We are a VERY small portion of the playerbase, having gotten into Heroic Raids at all.
You don't have to be hardcore to raid Heroic. But you ARE overachieving compared to a large portion of the playerbase if you do.
Except that was not my argument. You're the one that is using the VP reward as "grindable content" for the scenarios. I have never used the Cataclysm daily dungeons at all as an argument against you. I flat out said that grinding VP quickly becomes moot as you quickly max out the amount you could hold (I think 4k VP?) and nowhere to spend it.As opposed to... What? A single dungeon daily for 7 times a week from Cata? You're not helping your own argument by attacking mine here.
Elite mobs that exist within raids... the drop rate in the world wasn't really much different between elite and normal mobs.My point about Harmony still stands though. You easily got more harmony in group content, as the drop rate was higher from elite mobs than regular mobs.
Dude. Get real. Do you really think I'm going to browse over nine thousand posts to find evidence for your claims? That's not how it works.And YOU are also just one person. When I said you haven't seen my post history, I was pointing out that obviously you haven't seen the entirety of every forum, nor every opinion out there which exists. In fact, you were surprised earlier today to see someone arguing in favor of WoD - Something which has been happening since WoD ended, even if I don't agree with it.
So yes, I admit that my opinion is my opinion - I'm just not stupid enough to think I'm the only one with that opinion just because I haven't specifically seen it posted on this forum before.
Congratulations! You just invalidated your claims regarding Flex raiding! Because the raids existed prior and people raided normal and LFR prior to flex raiding being introduced. Nice point-blank shot to your own feet.Then LFR isn't content either. The raid existed prior and people raided normal prior to LFR, so LFR was a useless introduction not worth mentioning ever either.
Also, LFR did allow more players to see the content than before, because to get into normal raiding you need a group and not everyone has the time to dedicate for a full raid night (2-4 hours), and/or can only play during the day. But the introduction of LFR gave those people a way to raid at any hour of the day they want, without having to dedicate more than an hour. They kill 3 bosses today, tomorrow morning they kill three more, and three days from now they kill three more...
... Again: Barrens Insurrection was removed when patch 5.4 hit.Oh, right, my bad. In which case:
Wrath: Ruby Sanctum
MoP: Barrens Insurrection, SoO, Timeless Isle, Legendary Cloak finish quest, Flex Raiding...
And yet you did count scenarios that have existed since MoP day 1 as "grindable content"? Of which none was added in MoP's last patch? Sounds a bit... disingenuous.Suddenly Wrath's last patch looks REALLY bad, doesn't it? I haven't counted the Argent Dailies because they've been available since ToC. They're not last patch content. The Molten Front would ALSO count if that were the case, but it doesn't because it was with the Firelands patch, not the Dragon Soul patch.
And yet... flex raiding is somehow "new content" and not "an attempt to breathe new life into existing content"...Really not though? I don't see the irony. Transmog is not content, it took existing content and attempted to breathe new life into it.
Yeah. A heirloom ring people use every time they decide to level a new alt. And on top of that, here's some words of your own that you should keep in mind:And fishing contest... Do I really need to even attempt to explain why this isn't content? The reward from it can't even be considered content, it's a fucking heirloom ring.
I disqualified the Barrens Insurrection because it was removed from the game when Patch 5.4 hit the live servers. Meaning you could not do Barrens Insurrection anymore. Just like you can't do the "building the Argent Tournament" dailies anymore, after the ToC patch hit live servers, back in Wrath.Oh, now it's not "stuff implemented during the last patch," it's "stuff to deal with the content drought." That clearly is not what was said here:
If it's "stuff to deal with the content drought," then you take away all of ICC, all of the dungeons, cross server LFD... These were simply patch content WITH ICC. Ruby Sanctum is ALL we got to deal with the content drought.
You seem to have a warped, nebulous definition of "new content". Does every single thing about what is added has to be "new" for it to be considered "new content"? Because by your logic, the Barrens Insurrection wasn't "new content", since we would still be in the Barrens (old content) killing the Horde (old content). Flex raiding also wouldn't be "new content" since we could still be going into the same instance to kill the same bosses. Define what you mean by "new content", please.As for Cata, we got NOTHING to deal with the content drought. The last patch was the last patch and we were expected to deal with it when it came to the drought. (Unless you count Darkmoon Faire, again, which isn't content because there was no content there at the time. It was an island where you grabbed a single quest to turn in a bunch of ears, earned from existing content. NOWADAYS the Darkmoon Faire would be content, because there's plenty to do there, but back when Cata launched it, it was a bunch of "to be filled in" areas that had no benefit to you.)
Your list looks very dishonest, for several reasons. Here's some of them:But since you mentioned the Argent Tourney as 'content drought avoidance'... If we were to count non-last patch stuff:
Wrath: Argent Tourney Dailies, ICC, Ruby Sanctum, Dungeons, Ulduar (Counted since it was done during content drought for Legendary Hammer)
Cata: Molten Front Dailies, Tol Barad Dailies, Dragon Soul, LFR, Dungeons, Archaeology, Firelands (for Legendary Staff)
MoP: Isle of Thunder Dailies, Insurrection Dailies, Initial Expansion Dailies, Timeless Isle, Isle of Giants, Cloud Serpent Riding, SoO, Flex, Scenarios, Heroic Scenarios, World Bosses, Player's Farm, Challenge Mode Dungeons, Proving Grounds (though considering how not-used this ended up being, I wouldn't even count it tbh), Dino mount farming (only mentioned separately as these were specific spawns to hunt down and had their own mechanics), Isle of Thunder treasure room runs (I still miss this)
Still looks better for MoP than other expansions - And the others both got buffed up by their duo legendaries.
• You're refusing to count the fishing event for Wrath, and yet you count MoP's farm.
• You're not counting LFD added in Wrath.
• You're not counting the legendary axe in Wrath.
• You're counting scenarios and heroic scenarios separately.
• You're counting Insurrection dailies, which were removed from the game when the last patch of MoP went live.
• You're counting dino mount farming but not the mount farming of Wrath, like the Time-Lost Proto-Drake.
• You're counting world bosses for MoP, but not for Cata or Wrath. Which existed within Vault of Archavon and Baradin Hold, respectively. And they had the advantage of not having to fight for "faction tap", too.
• You're counting the "initial expansion dailies" for MoP, but not doing the same for Wrath and Cataclysm.
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Which is funny considering you originally took one single line out of my whole post and responded to that single one in a vacuum.
The simple fact you believe that shows that you're not actually reading what I'm writing, since that was never my point.Seriously, you're missing the point and arguing semantics. The poster has clarified what was meant and yet you're still trying to argue this point? The fact that people may have been able to "see the content" in LFR doesn't change the fact that Flex made organized, real raiding more accessible to a lot of players and thus gave that segment of players a reason to stay engaged with the game.
At this point you're essentially trying to argue that the existence of LFR invalidates the existence of Flex, and that is a pretty ludicrous standpoint tbh.
I said that LFR invalidates his claim for the purpose for the creation of Flex raiding. He said Flex raiding was created "to allow more people to see content they otherwise would not", which is just objectively false, since that is what LFR is for. LFR was created to those who "otherwise would not see the content", i.e. could not get into organized raiding.
"Man is his own star. His acts are his angels, good or ill, While his fatal shadows walk silently beside him."-Rhyme of the Primeval Paradine AFC 54
You know a community is bad when moderators lock a thread because "...this isnt the place to talk about it either seeing as it will get trolled..."
No, I just said that I doubt it will really be "make it or break it scenario".
I haven't. My own "make it or break it" was Legion. It didn't make it.I don't give a fuck to convince anyone by the way if you had fun playing this so called expansion be my guest and continue having fun.
Not jumping you, just expressed my doubt. No need to be so defensive.This doesn't mean we have to share opinions does it? Jumping me for having a different opinion than you will prove utterly pointless for you so I strongly suggest that you move on.