Page 21 of 32 FirstFirst ...
11
19
20
21
22
23
31
... LastLast
  1. #401
    Quote Originally Posted by ClassicPeon View Post
    This was not an announcement meant to be out on release afaik. It was something they wanted to do further down the line.
    Posted 22 days ago: https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wo...october/666214

    "As we continue to work towards making Shadowlands worth the wait, we have an update on several changes and improvements players can expect to see coming to the Beta over the next few weeks.

    The Maw

    The Maw is intended to be the desolate and brutal domain of the Jailer, and not a place any soul in the Warcraft cosmos ever hopes to visit. But this is, after all, a video game, and telling that story can’t come at the expense of creating a fun environment for adventurers. We’ve heard feedback that this content is currently falling short of that mark, and we agree.

    We’re working to increase visual distinction and combat gameplay variety across the different areas of the Maw, as well as exploring adding new localized events and world interactions. We also want to give players who journey to the Maw a bit more direction, while still preserving the “sandbox” roots of Maw gameplay. Players will venture into the Maw weekly to rescue souls to aid in restoring their Covenants, and the mysterious broker Ve’nari offers a range of cosmetic, convenience, and power rewards in exchange for Stygia. Those goals need to be more immediately apparent early on. We’ll share more info about specific updates when these changes are ready for Beta testing and feedback."
    MAGA - Make Alliance Great Again

  2. #402
    The fire could easily result in weeks of lost development time, which imo has some good chances of them pushing the release to next year because the staff deserve some vacations, and I think even in the dystopia that employment in the US is, blizzard would not force their staff into a super crunch mode after all that just to make it to a 2020 release date.

  3. #403
    Quote Originally Posted by vagnar View Post
    it's funny how people used to say, "still no release date for prepatch, it's getting to a point where we'd only have 2 weeks of prepatch, and that's way too short"... and now we've gotten to the point where we might be looking at a 2 month prepatch and there is still not even new content available
    Prepatch is always a miserably unbalanced, meaningless time. I would assume that people eager for prepatch were just eager to get into the new expansion. It's silly of me, but I'm always surprised at just how poor a player experience they allow prepatch to be. You see a lot of "what do you expect, it's prepatch" in defense, but that seems like a weak way to excuse a shit experience, especially now that it could be 2 months or more.

  4. #404
    It is clearly end of November to hit their sales requirements.

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by Cumbersome View Post
    The fire could easily result in weeks of lost development time, which imo has some good chances of them pushing the release to next year because the staff deserve some vacations, and I think even in the dystopia that employment in the US is, blizzard would not force their staff into a super crunch mode after all that just to make it to a 2020 release date.
    This is Activision, don't expect anything as far as employee wellbeing is concerned lol.
    Lead Game Designer

    YouTube Channel

    https://www.youtube.com/@Nateanderthal

  5. #405
    Quote Originally Posted by Prag View Post
    Prepatch is always a miserably unbalanced, meaningless time. I would assume that people eager for prepatch were just eager to get into the new expansion. It's silly of me, but I'm always surprised at just how poor a player experience they allow prepatch to be. You see a lot of "what do you expect, it's prepatch" in defense, but that seems like a weak way to excuse a shit experience, especially now that it could be 2 months or more.
    Pre patch is really great for leveling up new characters though. I haven’t leveled a new one in half a decade because I already had every class, but I’m leveling a Vulpera Monk now in BfA and it’s a really good experience.
    MAGA - Make Alliance Great Again

  6. #406
    Personally hope it's either November or 2021. Will be annoying for it to launch on the same week as the FFXIV update.

  7. #407
    Quote Originally Posted by tomten View Post
    Anyone who seriously believes a 2020 release is delusional af lol...
    2021 release, 100%. Save this comment for later verification and how well it aged
    Blizzard said the game is coming out in 2020. The first delay was respectable, if Blizzard has to delay shadowlands twice that will make them look so incompetent.

  8. #408
    Quote Originally Posted by Nyel View Post
    Posted 22 days ago: https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wo...october/666214

    "As we continue to work towards making Shadowlands worth the wait, we have an update on several changes and improvements players can expect to see coming to the Beta over the next few weeks.

    The Maw

    The Maw is intended to be the desolate and brutal domain of the Jailer, and not a place any soul in the Warcraft cosmos ever hopes to visit. But this is, after all, a video game, and telling that story can’t come at the expense of creating a fun environment for adventurers. We’ve heard feedback that this content is currently falling short of that mark, and we agree.

    We’re working to increase visual distinction and combat gameplay variety across the different areas of the Maw, as well as exploring adding new localized events and world interactions. We also want to give players who journey to the Maw a bit more direction, while still preserving the “sandbox” roots of Maw gameplay. Players will venture into the Maw weekly to rescue souls to aid in restoring their Covenants, and the mysterious broker Ve’nari offers a range of cosmetic, convenience, and power rewards in exchange for Stygia. Those goals need to be more immediately apparent early on. We’ll share more info about specific updates when these changes are ready for Beta testing and feedback."
    This does not imply that these changes to the Maw will be the endpoint of Maw development. They can get what they can get done with the Maw before release, and continue to develop it in the first several weeks of Shadowlands. "The unfinished Maw" is not a good argument for the necessity of a December release.

  9. #409
    Quote Originally Posted by Pohut View Post
    Well, I have a problem with it. I resubbed to get some alts leveled before SL. I thought that I'll level a bunch of alts, check out the new builds and organically roll into SL, but now it looks like I will have to un-sub again for who knows how long, possibly up to 5 months, and then when I'll come back to SL I will have to re-learn all my rotations etc. It is really annoying.
    That sounds like a you problem. You are deciding to play that way, Blizzard didn't force you to play that way. It was going to be a lose-lose situation with Blizzard if they released Shadowlands in the state it apparently is. So they delayed it and have people complaining about that too. I didn't take holidays or anything like other people but I planned a little lan party with my buddy to play Shadowlands today because it would've been launched last night for me.

    Guess what we're doing instead? Still playing WoW and any other game we want to play tonight. What are we not doing? Complaining about the control a company has over their game.

  10. #410
    Quote Originally Posted by Yunzi View Post
    This does not imply that these changes to the Maw will be the endpoint of Maw development. They can get what they can get done with the Maw before release, and continue to develop it in the first several weeks of Shadowlands. "The unfinished Maw" is not a good argument for the necessity of a December release.
    That statement clearly indicates they want(ed) to update the Maw during beta - and as of now, three weeks later, they haven't done any of that (except those minor adjustments to Venari). So either they scrapped what they planned three weeks ago to be part of SL at launch and it will get released in November or they release it later and we get the Maw updates this or the next week. I'd say the latter has a 99% chance to be the case. Changing their minds within 3 weeks on that topic would be questionable.
    MAGA - Make Alliance Great Again

  11. #411
    Quote Originally Posted by Nyel View Post
    That statement clearly indicates they want(ed) to update the Maw during beta - and as of now, three weeks later, they haven't done any of that (except those minor adjustments to Venari). So either they scrapped what they planned three weeks ago to be part of SL at launch and it will get released in November or they release it later and we get the Maw updates this or the next week. I'd say the latter has a 99% chance to be the case. Changing their minds within 3 weeks on that topic would be questionable.
    Once they announced the game was being delayed it’s very clear they will cut corners and content to get this game out if they feel like they can. This is almost certainly another wod.
    www.twitch.tv/rtrain

    Free Agent! Looking for Guild for Legion!

  12. #412
    Quote Originally Posted by Rtrain View Post
    Once they announced the game was being delayed it’s very clear they will cut corners and content to get this game out if they feel like they can. This is almost certainly another wod.
    Yeah, but they made this announcement after the cancellation, not before. So they clearly have a plan to implement the Maw changes right before launch, otherwise it wouldn't have made any sense to tell us about them in the beta update post. If they never planned to release them at launch, they would have been better off just telling us nothing in that regard.
    MAGA - Make Alliance Great Again

  13. #413
    CP2077 now December 10th. Pretty important.

  14. #414
    Quote Originally Posted by Collected View Post
    CP2077 now December 10th. Pretty important.
    Really, they delayed it again for 3 more weeks?

    Edit: yeah, just saw it on Twitter https://twitter.com/CyberpunkGame/st...176002/photo/1

    Honestly, this becomes ridiculous. For Shadowlands it doesn't change much, Blizzard will not rush out the expansion because of that.
    MAGA - Make Alliance Great Again

  15. #415
    Quote Originally Posted by Nyel View Post
    It‘s not like leveling takes any meaningful amount of time. From 45-50 (Legion > BfA so to say) you can level within 2-3 hours. I’ve read from 1-50 it takes about 10.
    It takes 15-20 hours to get from 1-50 depending on your class/playstyle. Still a massive step up from the old levelling experience.

  16. #416
    Pandaren Monk AngerFork's Avatar
    10+ Year Old Account
    Join Date
    Nov 2011
    Location
    Right behind you!
    Posts
    1,759
    Quote Originally Posted by Cumbersome View Post
    The fire could easily result in weeks of lost development time, which imo has some good chances of them pushing the release to next year because the staff deserve some vacations, and I think even in the dystopia that employment in the US is, blizzard would not force their staff into a super crunch mode after all that just to make it to a 2020 release date.
    Agreed. Perhaps they would've made it to 2020 pre-fires, but with the fires in place it isn't worth the risk to the devs nor the game to try and push for a 2020 release. Release it in mid-late Jan 2021, release the raid tier right after BlizzCon, and make it so the dev team and the game are in a stable state before release.

  17. #417
    Quote Originally Posted by Collected View Post
    CP2077 now December 10th. Pretty important.
    Yeah. That makes it more likely we'll see a late Nov or early Dec release. SL can release as late as December 7th PST and still preempt CP2077. There are a few Activision-Blizzard executives celebrating right now.

  18. #418
    Quote Originally Posted by Cumbersome View Post
    The fire could easily result in weeks of lost development time, which imo has some good chances of them pushing the release to next year because the staff deserve some vacations, and I think even in the dystopia that employment in the US is, blizzard would not force their staff into a super crunch mode after all that just to make it to a 2020 release date.
    Expansions are worked on for years ahead of time and wow is not reinventing something new, they are formulaic. California wild fires are not a legitimate excuse to delay the game especially with nearly all their employees working from home.

    All of this can be chalked up to piss poor planning
    Chronomancer Club

  19. #419
    Quote Originally Posted by Yunzi View Post
    Yeah. That makes it more likely we'll see a late Nov or early Dec release. SL can release as late as December 7th PST and still preempt CP2077. There are a few Activision-Blizzard executives celebrating right now.
    I'm sure they're celebrating right now, they even lit a bonfire next to their headquarters...

    Like seriously. Celebrating? lol
    MAGA - Make Alliance Great Again

  20. #420
    Scarab Lord
    10+ Year Old Account
    Join Date
    Jul 2010
    Location
    In the same urn as Vol'Jin
    Posts
    4,595
    Quote Originally Posted by Nyel View Post
    I'm sure they're celebrating right now, they even lit a bonfire next to their headquarters...

    Like seriously. Celebrating? lol
    Right? I don't often agree with you but it seems very unlikely Blizzard are pleased about this.

    It may not make a huge difference to them. I'm not sure how large the crossover is between "NEEEEEEDSSSS to play CP2077 day 1!!!!" and "NEEEEEDSSSS to play Shadowlands day 1!!!!!" is, but it's going to be some amount of crossover (I remember even all the way back when I was playing DAoC and KotOR came out, a noticeable number of people were missing for a bit). And any isn't great. Mid-November vs early December was plenty of clearance, as after a week or two the most obsessive players of CRPGs will have either finished their first run-through, or burned out, and be back to MMOs or whatever.

    So them stepping on each other isn't ideal.

    On the other hand, if the actual raids are not until January, esp. mid-January, it might not make all the much of a difference.

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by cityguy193 View Post
    Expansions are worked on for years ahead of time and wow is not reinventing something new, they are formulaic. California wild fires are not a legitimate excuse to delay the game especially with nearly all their employees working from home.

    All of this can be chalked up to piss poor planning
    All of this?

    Seriously?

    Fuck's sake mate. No. This year has been hell for a lot of businesses, and even ones relatively well-prepared for the situation, like Blizzard seem to have been, have seen a noticeable drop in productivity as people adjust to new situations, new ways or working, less access to teams or hardware/software (or different access), and so on.

    Shit like "all of this" is exactly the kind of stuff gamers get mocked for, frankly. It's completely unrealistic nonsense.

    EDIT - Also, and I think this applies more to CDPR than Blizzard (who don't have a horrific rep for crunch in recent years, though they definitely used to do it a lot), I bet it's vastly harder to get people to do "optional" crunch when they're working from home, because you're not in this kind of peer-pressure environment. At a business, when they crunch, you see everyone around you crunching, you are all getting food delivered together, someone brought in a bunch of sleeping bags or whatever, and there's strong social pressure on you to crunch. Working from home, though, that isn't there. You don't know exactly what other people are doing (especially if you're actually working hard - it's literally impossible to do real work and monitor a bunch of people on Zoom or whatever at the same time), and your spouse and kids are around to bother you and observe and comment on exactly how much you're being overworked (and you can see how much you're missing out on even more). I guess maybe you can squeeze an extra hour or so out of people instead of a commute but that's not like crunch hours, which tend to be more like several extra hours/day.
    Last edited by Eurhetemec; 2020-10-27 at 05:16 PM.
    "A youtuber said so."

    "... some wow experts being interviewed..."

    "According to researchers from Wowhead..."

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •