Dev Interviews - Patch 9.2 Final Major Patch of Shadowlands, Level 60 Boost Now Live

[arkanon]

Because according to your logic 100% of the story needs to be known at the start.

Ironic - thats not at all what i said. Top quality strawman though

[TheRevenantHero]

With how much they've proven to despise large segments of the community, I'm not surprised that they're refusing to listen to feedback.

I don't think WoW will go anywhere any time soon, but I do think it could be put into maintenance mode within the next few years.

It's practically in maintenance mode already.

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Except they didn't say they actually planned for it way back then. Simply that this is the culmination of a story that started back then. Authors don't always know where the story will end otherwise A song of Ice and Fire would have had the next book released ages ago. Because according to your logic 100% of the story needs to be known at the start.

The Game of Thrones series isn't lagging because George R.R. Martin doesn't know how he's going to end it. He's just a lazy fuck. Good authors ALWAYS have a document that gives bullet points for how they want a series to go. Unless they're Stephen King who literally writes the ending last, causing every book to feel like it had a really rushed finale.

[arkanon]

The Game of Thrones series isn't lagging because George R.R. Martin doesn't know how he's going to end it. He's just a lazy fuck. Good authors ALWAYS have a document that gives bullet points for how they want a series to go. Unless they're Stephen King who literally writes the ending last, causing every book to feel like it had a really rushed finale.

FAMOUSLY, almost proudly lazy. Off topic, but the ability of SK to churn out moderate to high quality work in a matter of weeks / months is astonishing. I read a story a while back about the tiny town he was (still is?) living in, and one of the locals who had no idea who he was beyond "that guy who writes horror stories". They said they had just watched the shawshank redemption movie, and thought it was amazing, and asked why he didnt try to write something like that.....Like i said, off topic, but always makes me smile ear to ear.

I was a bit off with the story it seems (not sure Florida counts as a 'small town') - here is the quote directly from the man himself:

"I was in a supermarket down here in Florida, and I came around the corner and there was a woman coming the other way. She pointed at me, she said, ‘I know who you are! You’re Stephen King! You write all of those horrible things. And that’s ok. That’s alright. But I like uplifting things, like that movie Shawshank Redemption.’ And I said, ‘I wrote that!’ And she said, ‘No you didn’t. No you didn’t.’"

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It's practically in maintenance mode already.

It FEELS that way, and i really hope thats not the case but by god it feels like it is. They have SO much talent, so many amazing artists and staff, but they just seem to have become so big, that they have lost sight of what made the game amazing for so long.

[Mendzia]

New store mount and boost.
Terrible confusing story that can end (or continue?) in totally any way.
More dogshit recolored Maw content and another Artifact Power in new cloths.
Tier sets that have totally nothing to with class fantasy.
Timegated raid to artificially longthen patch.
Let's use dungeon added in 9.1 and split in to 2 halves and release it once again as M+ content.
They dare to rely on W3 stories.
No, Blizzard did not change for better against their announcements.

Oh... wait.
They are changing the game to worse with removing /spit, whole quests chains, models, paintings because it is 'better for community'.
They just confirmed to continue that in this patch.
Holy fuck...
What a sad company.

Atleast visuals/graphics team can get (again) my big applause for their job as the game aesthetics looks really good.

[kranur]

Want to jump right in the action without playing over a weekend? Here .. buy this level 60 boost so that you can go ahead to buy tokens and start buying M+ and raid boosts straight away.
Don't buy tomorrow what you can buy today.

[Confucius]

The team wants to move to a world where players have new content to consume more frequently.

didn't they say that like 5 years ago and then hilariously failed?

[Polybius]

Seriously looking at these developers...
I am pretty certain they THINK the game is liked because ABC, so they make this shitty "systems", outdoor zones and grinds with lots of meaningless cosmetics.

There are no "hard-to-achieve" AND "cool looking" sets/weapons/mounts anymore, just RNG outdoor drops for recolors.

Meanwhile most neckbeards want new bosses, new dungeons, new abilities to play with, interesting items and fair play.
And we get more single player content. Jeezzzz.

It has felt this way since Mythic+. No one wanted the timer bs but it’s the only content outside of raid and pvp. And now, because it’s content with most engagement and esports potential they keep the cycle of boring, casual-unfriendly content. These same metrics are how they decide to extend playtime through time gating.

[Xorzor]

I feel like a hypocrite after saying that WoW is garbage, only to now be intrigued by the 9.2 preview. It does look nice, but I remain weary.

[Strawberry]

Well, I am not going to complain about the story or the direction the game is going to. It's WoW afterall and I've been around since vanilla, so I'm used to it and expect nothing else.

However, reused animation and blurry textures are getting on my nerves every time I see new content.
Come on Blizzard, it's year 2021, almost 2022 and you're talking about creatures that are creating pantheons. Yet they look like reskinned NPCs we've seen for the past 10 years, with copy/paste animations from the models that use the same skeleton.
Yikes!

[Gadzooks]

It's practically in maintenance mode already.

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The Game of Thrones series isn't lagging because George R.R. Martin doesn't know how he's going to end it. He's just a lazy fuck. Good authors ALWAYS have a document that gives bullet points for how they want a series to go. Unless they're Stephen King who literally writes the ending last, causing every book to feel like it had a really rushed finale.

The thing with George, is he's stated before that he loses interest in a story when he knows how it ends. And, he gave the show runners notes on what ending he had in his head, at that point - which may or may not have been it's final form, if he'd been more motivated to write more. Clearly, he's either stuck on the story, or just disinterested completely, considering how long it's been, and how much effort he's put into other projects. He's signed onto multiple projects currently, without even a whiff of when the next book is coming. I think that whole thing has nothing to with Wow, or anything else, that's a George thing that's unique to him.

As for WoW, I don't agree it's in maintenance mode. I think it's where they intended it to be. They talked a LOT building up to WOD talking about tech that would make their job easier, a framework they could build, and then just "turn knobs and wheels" to make adjustments to, when needed. And that's what they have - versions of the Garrison, the adventure table, currency systems, the systems for legendaries, etc. That's the framework, and they just hang new art off it and change a few things around. It's efficient, and it's...boring. Just like classes have had all the interesting parts filed off and the cracks filled with bondo, so they're all the same and easier to attempt to balance. Build, spend, special. Done. Throw some flavor spells in for class fantasy - hey, it's an expansion.

9.2 is simply filling out the rest of the framework. It's Argus/Mechagon/Nazjatar, without new dungeons. It's more systems, because they're not gonna redo the whole game in a patch. This is what they intended to release, with some mumbo jumbo bullshit from Danuser that they always planned 3 chapters. (which is bullshit. Did I mention he's completely full of shit?)

I think 10.0 is the only time they can truly show they are willing to try something else than the base systems they have now. If there's no form of mission tables, garrison/covenant/class halls, massive currencies, and all the rest, then I might buy they learned anything. 9.2 is just more of the same. And they may claw back some players with it, simply because [new content]. Which is fine - you know players like Hazelnutty and T&E will be gushing at it - and that's fine, too. There are plenty of people who just want new stuff, regardless, and I'm not gonna judge them.

But they won't bring back players who quit over the lawsuit scandal. They lost them for good.

We'll see. The reaction, from the look I took at other forums and you tube, is...whelming. Not angry, but not that much hype, to be honest. So they'll maintain what players they have, bring some back. Might even go back to being profitable. But I think it's early to call "maintenance mode" or "It's dead!"...yet. I think it's just enough to maintain.

10.0? Then we'll talk about real change on Team 2.

[Mentaldemise]

I'm usually the first to shit on Blizzard and their copy paste timegated "dev" cycle, but the idea that there's a passage of time in the raid where something extremely serious happens for us to have to take a break mid raid is a very interesting gameplay choice.

Of course, it could be as simple as them thinking like the death of a character or some "mind-altering revelation" needs to have time, but I seriously hope that after we kill/save anduin there's an actual time period skip because of the events such as us not being able to follow the jailor or that we need to prepare for something or that it just takes place a few years later after the events of anduin.

Probably the only thing that's seems interesting in this entire patch.

[tomolak]

"Patch 9.2 will be the finale of Shadowlands." Ah, my prayers have been answered. Put this abomination out of its misery...then move on to creating a greater abomination.

[Adamas102]

The idea that there aren't enough game developers out there to fill an expansion of Blizzard's WoW capacity is absurd. I have well a over a dozen friends who work in the gaming industry, most for much smaller companies, and while most of them are pretty happy where they are, the realistic ability to work on a product like World of Warcraft would get most of them jumping in a heartbeat (especially if Blizz cleans up its act with its employees.) And there are new game designers coming out of schools every year.

Seriously? People actually WANT to work on a 20 year old, by-the-numbers game that's long past its prime? I mean, I can see someone who needs the paycheck wanting to do it, but truly talented artists, designers, and developers that could instead be working on more innovative, creative, cutting edge games? Even without all the baggage associated with the lawsuits and bad press, I can't see anyone who is truly passionate about creating games wanting to work on the Xth expansion for WoW.

The most "difficult" challenge I can see is just coming up with new world themes and aesthetics that don't overlap TOO much with ones that have already been made. After that, you just need people to write out a bunch of new text for quests that are just copy/pasted (collect X of this, kill Y of that, etc) and a few folks to designed boss encounters for dungeons and raids. The lore and story is usually planned out well in advance so no one coming on now would be contributing all that much to anything on that front that we'd see in the next few years. Oh, and of course you need a team to come up with an unbalance, throw away expansion feature.

[Easo]

The team wants to move to a world where players have new content to consume more frequently.

How... How many times this has been repeated? Words are cheap, actions matter. What's the point of even saying it? To push some hot air, vague hopes?

As someone said: "I am not mad, I am just very dissapointed."

[josykay]

Me watching all this: Sounds pretty dunno... not particulary interesting so far. OMG OMG OMG OMG!!!! SNAIL MOUNT!!!! NEEED!!!!

[Vasilisa]

Me watching all this: Sounds pretty dunno... not particulary interesting so far. OMG OMG OMG OMG!!!! SNAIL MOUNT!!!! NEEED!!!!

But...will it have snail speed?

[crusadernero]

didn't they say that like 5 years ago and then hilariously failed?

to be fair, they did deliver in Legion.

[scubi666stacy]

to be fair, they did deliver in Legion.

Despite all its flaws Legion was the greatest time in WoW for me.

Now, the art and music department deliver again - with some nice ideas here and there, though I would not call any of it "alien" because we have already seen it before in WoW.

If I want to have mind-blowing visuals, I would refer to Nolan movies like Interstellar or Inception. You know, the scene were Ariadne just folds up a part of the city in the dreamscape so the houses meet with their roofs and streets turn up and upside-down but people and cars just move as nothing had happened? Or the frozen clouds on one of the planets which the crew of the Interstellar movie visits? That was cool.
Or speaking of creatures, there was this Nicholas Cage movie (Colour from Outer Space). That had some freaky stuff in it. Imagine a rock with metal veins, which gradually turns into a tree, but instead of leaves there is something else and instead of fruit, there are heads of some animals dangling on it. Whatever.
The most alien thing I have seen in WoW so far has been in TBC and later on Argus in Legion.

Speaking of time-gating and systems - at least they will put flying back at some point in time. I really don't expect much these days. I almost stopped playing because I risk to get burnout on all these grinds. Preparing for Mage Tower TW is at least something different from the chores.

They should stop confusing chores with content. It is not.

[Proskill]

holy shit. its WoD all over again.

and to think ppl expected 9.3

[rhorle]

Ironic - thats not at all what i said. Top quality strawman though

Not only that, they ALWAYS planned for these story lines, since as far back as warcraft rts. They said it, so it's obviously true.

It is what you said. You are making fun of their statement by saying how ridiculous it is that they planned for the jailer since as far back as the RTS games. That is not what they claimed. They are continuing the story started with those games by adding new chapters are and considering this the conclusion of that story. Just as the Legion expansion was the conclusion of the Burning Legion story that also started with the RTS games.