"Catering to 5% of your player base will leave you with 5% of your player base"

[Video Games]

Did you forget the part where WotLK was the most successful expansion Blizzard ever released?

Sub numbers = quality? I don't agree

[uuuhname]

IDK dude, the fact they're not forcing another power system(s) onto us is probably the biggest W they can get from me right now.

[Caprias]

Gimmick that will be forgotten, just like class order halls, mage tower, warfronts, island expeditions, covenants, and chorghast.

So? Legion introduced new races and classes too and didn't stop it from being a raider's expansion.

So far that just amounts to being able to post buy orders on the AH like in GW2 or EVE Online. Nothing about actually revamping the gameplay of crafting, let alone making the stuff created by it relevant.

I'll see it when I believe it, but the post-WoD zone design of WoW is anti-exploration.

Which look incredibly bland and claustrophobic.

I actually liked the MoP talent system.

Because they're not addressing the abysmal lack of casual content. You'll do the four questing zones over a weekend and then all you're left with is mythic dungeons and doing the latest raid for 9 months.

Where did they talk about the raid? M+? Combat systems? Any esport related stuff?

Sure you can make a lot of assumptions since this was a meager announcement at best, but how do you see the "catered to the upper 5%" in this expansion reveal? In the shadowlands reveal they talked a lot more about intricate systems and how they could tune it all good etc., nothing of that sort here.

[Neuroticaine]

Gimmick that will be forgotten, just like class order halls, mage tower, warfronts, island expeditions, covenants, and chorghast.

"New content that I don't want isn't new content."

So? Legion introduced new races and classes too and didn't stop it from being a raider's expansion.

"New content that I don't want isn't new content."

So far that just amounts to being able to post buy orders on the AH like in GW2 or EVE Online. Nothing about actually revamping the gameplay of crafting, let alone making the stuff created by it relevant.

"I do not care about improvements unless they are exactly the improvements that I, personally, want."

I'll see it when I believe it, but the post-WoD zone design of WoW is anti-exploration.

"Each expansion's zones since WoD have has had more and more to to actually find and discovery, but I don't like how you find and discover things, so the zone design is anti-exploration."

Which look incredibly bland and claustrophobic.

"I think Hellfire Peninsula is peak zone design."

I actually liked the MoP talent system.

No opinion one way or the other

Because they're not addressing the abysmal lack of casual content. You'll do the four questing zones over a weekend and then all you're left with is mythic dungeons and doing the latest raid for 9 months.

Really not sure how anyone is expecting anything else for the main content cadence of a game that is 18 years old now. Will it be nice if they shake things up? Maybe add smaller story bits of content between major tier patches? Yeah, but it's like, at a certain point of Blizzard doing the same thing for nearly two decades, one should really come to the realization that there's probably not gonna be any major changes. Fortunately you do not have to play one game in all of your spare time. If a game's content runs dry for you, you can unsub and play something else.

There are so many games out there to play, and no one single game is going to be able to tick every single box for every single person.

[Relapses]

Sub numbers = quality? I don't agree

Where in my post did I mention the word quality? I said successful. And there's no cutting corners regardless of your personal opinion of the expansion, it made Blizzard the most money (from subscriptions alone).

[MrLachyG]

There was a whole interview from Jeremy Feasel stating that there is a renown system, but unlike Shadowlands, it's used in ALL factions and not just individual ones.



Source here

Here’s hoping they add renown catch-up items for alts from day 1. Also would love to see renown uncapped like it is now; getting them from specific daily or weekly activities is the way to go

[Celement]

Did you forget the part where WotLK was the most successful expansion Blizzard ever released?

I'm not sure it was... sure it had the most subs but people citing that always breeze over adding all of china and southern America to the playerbase...

[MoanaLisa]

Nothing that was shown today catered to the 5% of high-end players. The only real test of the expansion is if there's enough of an exploration component (which in itself isn't very repeatable) to keep people who aren't interested in raiding around. If all of that content only leads to "OK, you're done. Go and raid" then you may have a point. If people don't want to do M+, PVP or raid then they'll need something else to do. Otherwise they'll quit. There wasn't enough of anything in today's presentation to show that one way or the other.

[Tech614]

Where in my post did I mention the word quality? I said successful. And there's no cutting corners regardless of your personal opinion of the expansion, it made Blizzard the most money (from subscriptions alone).

The huge chinese increase where they saw pennies for each sub you mean?

Blizzard made way more money in MoP-legion combined with the in game shop and just getting a way better average per sub revenue. Look at their financials, you are talking out the wrong hole if you're claiming they made more money during WoTLK. The money they made during legion probably totals all of classic-wotlk combined.

[Video Games]

Where in my post did I mention the word quality? I said successful. And there's no cutting corners regardless of your personal opinion of the expansion, it made Blizzard the most money (from subscriptions alone).

And was also not very good because it catered to casuals too much. Succsessful doesnt mean good, so im not sure why you brought it up

[Video Games]

You simply must be contrarian to unironically believe Wrath isn't the peak of WoW

Mark my words, Wrath classic release will be the most popular and culturally relevant WoW has EVER been

And then people finish t7 in a couple days and quit because of how bad it is. T4 kinda sucked too, to be fair, but t7 is in a whole nother level

[RobertMugabe]

I'm very disappointed with whole announcement. No single world about casual and solo players.
Imo Ion again will focus on raiders and make ppl quit fast.

I have feeling that no matter what they told us, you'd be pissed. There is so little information about the expansion right now, it's hard to tell anything really.
Furthermore, they have not talked about raids or dungeons AT ALL. Literally everything they talked about seems to however heavily benefit casual players.

[enigma77]

So very this. I mean sure I don't think they will ever give a fuck but when players like me who paid x18 years simply unsub I mean they should really see something is not going well.

- - - Updated - - -



Yes it is and kindly tell me what major achievement can one get SOLO in wow? How far can pugs go? 2k pvp and 2-3 bosses mythic? Even the high end M+ can't be done solo grouping not without major pains that are NOT worth it.

You're not supposed to play a massively multiplayer online role playing game solo, dear.

[RobertMugabe]

You simply must be contrarian to unironically believe Wrath isn't the peak of WoW

Mark my words, Wrath classic release will be the most popular and culturally relevant WoW has EVER been

As someone who has played a lot of Wotlk on private servers and all that, I think you're up for a surprise lol. Wotlk has been undoubtetly a great expansion and I believe it will be in the longer run more popular than TBC Classic, but nowhere is it gonna be THIS BIG, just like how the player numbers in TBC Classic have been quite small compared to a retail release or when classic originally launched. People will appreciate the class design, the pvp and open world, but T7 and heroic dungeons won't be liked at all.

Ulduar is then gonna be a well received raid, but I believe that people will only get disappointed with it, because it absolutely won't live up to the hype and the raid mechanics.

ToC is gonna be more popular than originally, but it's a joke compared to Ulduar in terms of epicness and design.

ICC is good, not as good as Ulduar though.

[Soon-TM]

There was a whole interview from Jeremy Feasel stating that there is a renown system, but unlike Shadowlands, it's used in ALL factions and not just individual ones.



Source here

I like what this Feasel guy says. I'll believe it when I see it, though.

[Argorwal]

I'm very disappointed with whole announcement. No single world about casual and solo players.
Imo Ion again will focus on raiders and make ppl quit fast.

A new race/class and dragon riding sure looked it’s only for the top 5% that’s for sure.

/s

[Wonderment2]

They didn't even name the bloody raid what are you on about

[RobertMugabe]

You're not supposed to play a massively multiplayer online role playing game solo, dear.

This is just like your opinion man.
A lot of good MMO's, like FFXIV, are primarily designed for solo play despite being an MMO.
Even the early MMO's worked like that.

It's great how you're a part of an active and liveable world where you can see and communicate with other people, but it doesn't necessarily mean that the main goal for every player is group play. Even WoW was when you really look at it originally designed as a mostly solo experience before they changed their focus onto raids and dungeons.

[Wonderment2]

A new race/class and dragon riding sure looked it’s only for the top 5% that’s for sure.

/s

All I could think while they showed someone flying about the open world with the new flying system was "when the fuck will they shut up about mythic raiding"

[exochaft]

After going through the presentation, I think the main concern is that everything I saw and heard was expected. Now, I don't mean like "zomg it's a dragon expansion, we called it!", I mean the tone, how things were presented, and the specific verbiage they used. The TL;DR version is that I think a lot of the features and aspects of the upcoming expansion are a knee-jerk reaction and not a change of heart at Blizz.

I'll give an example: there was a point where Ion said (like he tends to do) that this was always part of the plan well before Shadowlands when asked about features. The "read between the lines" part is how this heavily scripted dialogue tries to heavily downplay not only how unhappy the players are, but also their own role or fault in all of this. I think the correct way to interpret things is that this dragon expansion was planned before Shadowlands, but a lot of the features that they're touting in this presentation probably weren't planned. For example, the talent tree and UI revamps I can almost guarantee were not going to be part of the expansion until more recently. I'm kind of torn if the extra class was or not, but I think seeing the state of the class on the alpha will be a huge indication.

Simply put, this presentation felt a lot more like damage control than anything else. It's very akin to the 9.1.5 announcements and roll-out in terms of tone and execution. Now... if this was born out of a legitimate desire to change things for the better, this would be something to get excited about. However, there's still nothing to indicate that this is Blizz turning a new leaf versus just placating out of necessity only to revert back to your old ways later. The unfortunate reality is that a lot of damage has already been done to WoW, and this expansion needs to be incredible for players to come back and stick around... but what's seen so far still isn't addressing a lot of the core issues WoW has.

As a slight aside, I could barely watch the lore aspect of the presentation. There's so many questions raised and even possible contradictions in their discussion that it was painful to watch. I mean there's already people making memes and joking about the cinematic and what's happening there in terms of story and lore, they're not exactly putting their best foot forward... or their best foot forward is bad.