Four zones are the standard now?

[cone of cold]

4 level up zones, plus the Drac'thyr starting zone, which will be significantly smaller, because they start at level 58. They will be about as big as Death Knight and Demon Hunter zones, if that.

So only 4 real new zones. Even in recent expansions, before Shadowlands, like in MoP, WoD, Legion and BFA, we've always at least gotten 5-6 zones. Now since Shadowlands (The Maw doesn't count), and continuing on into Dragonflight, the new standard is 4 zones.

We used to have double as much. WotLK had 8, not counting the 2 empty zones. TBC had 7, and if you count the starter zones as well it had 11.

And all of the zones look very bland to be honest. Everything looks like something we've already seen before.

[Stone Dude]

It's a shame really.

[Teriz]

4 level up zones, plus the Drac'thyr starting zone, which will be significantly smaller, because they start at level 58. They will be about as big as Death Knight and Demon Hunter zones, if that.

So only 4 real new zones. Even in recent expansions, before Shadowlands, like in MoP, WoD, Legion and BFA, we've always at least gotten 5-6 zones. Now since Shadowlands (The Maw doesn't count), and continuing on into Dragonflight, the new standard is 4 zones.

We used to have double as much. WotLK had 8, not counting the 2 empty zones. TBC had 7, and if you count the starter zones as well it had 11.

And all of the zones look very bland to be honest. Everything looks like something we've already seen before.

Actually, Blizzard has stated that these zones are going to be much larger, and have a lot more vertical height because of dragonflight. So yeah, it's not a fair comparison.

[Luck4]

And people still believe that the WoW team is giant. I'm pretty sure it's smaller than in Legion.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Four zones are the standard now?

Yup. Blizzard has learned that they can produce less content and still be rewarded.

[sephrinx]

Yeah 4 zones is crazy low. The absolute minimum should be at least 5 if not 6.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

And people still believe that the WoW team is giant. I'm pretty sure it's smaller than in Legion.

The amount of people working on wow in one way or another (devs translators QA ect) grew by almost 1000 from legion to BFA, shadowlands is unfortunately not cataloged as of yet.

Legion 4772 people (4763 developers, 9 thanks)
BFA 5705 people (5696 developers, 9 thanks)

https://www.mobygames.com/game/windo...legion/credits
https://www.mobygames.com/game/windo...zeroth/credits

[DiscipleofCazicThule]

They've also said that these are the largest zones they've ever created, so it's possible we are getting more with less. Either way, we won't know until Alpha, but I'm sure that won't stop the "Blizzard bad" people from doom saying.

[RobertMugabe]

4 level up zones, plus the Drac'thyr starting zone, which will be significantly smaller, because they start at level 58. They will be about as big as Death Knight and Demon Hunter zones, if that.

So only 4 real new zones. Even in recent expansions, before Shadowlands, like in MoP, WoD, Legion and BFA, we've always at least gotten 5-6 zones. Now since Shadowlands (The Maw doesn't count), and continuing on into Dragonflight, the new standard is 4 zones.

We used to have double as much. WotLK had 8, not counting the 2 empty zones. TBC had 7, and if you count the starter zones as well it had 11.

And all of the zones look very bland to be honest. Everything looks like something we've already seen before.

Zone counts are just as stupid as counting the no. of raids they release at launch.

It doesn't matter at all, how many zones there are, it matters how much content they give you and if they're fun. Yes, Wrath added 8 leveling zones, but they were much much smaller and there was actually less leveling content and quests in a all of them combined, than for example Shadowlands.

Furthermore Wotlk's zones were mostly one-dimensional. You entered a zone and it looked the same every besides a few small exceptions. In the more modern expansions each zone has a clear identity, but all the subzones still offer so much variety, which simply wasn't the case before.

All in all, your argument is very weak, basically saying: Number of Zones = expansion good or bad, which is just stupid.

Anyways, Wrath was hot garbage, because we only had 10 classes back then. /s

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And people still believe that the WoW team is giant. I'm pretty sure it's smaller than in Legion.

It's hilarious how you think that knowing how many people work on WoW is some mystery and something arguable, even though they list every single person involved (and what they do) every time on the credits.

[shise]

They are larger than anything we´ve seen til now so it might as well work as 6 for as much as we know.
When we get some map and scale we will know, but forget about the number 4, it means nothing given the scale of the land.

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They've also said that these are the largest zones they've ever created, so it's possible we are getting more with less. Either way, we won't know until Alpha, but I'm sure that won't stop the "Blizzard bad" people from doom saying.

Yeah exactly. And at this point haters are going to hate regardless of what comes, even if the game is tailor made for them. Just gotta ignore them.

[MrLachyG]

It's a shame really.

Did you really respond to a thread you created on one account with another after the first got banned? I know your second one got banned, but I’m assuming you’ll reply on your third account

Also, on topic: quality over quantity. That is all

[Chickat]

Actually, Blizzard has stated that these zones are going to be much larger, and have a lot more vertical height because of dragonflight. So yeah, it's not a fair comparison.

Also all the zones have more biomes than normal. They confirmed like 4 or 5 biomes for the Snow zone.

Open fields. Coastline. Forrests, red mountains, and then the top snow area. Almost like a few zones smashed into one.

They did confirm that its one of the biggest continents they have done, and that the snow zone may be the biggest zone in WoW history.

So The 4 Dragonflight zones are going to be bigger than Pandaria and the Broken Isles that's for sure.

[Trenbolone]

4 Zones, 4 Dungeons...

[Rumred]

If the Evoker leveling zone is large and becomes a max level zone and they add new zones per major patch it will be ok. To be fair in Legion we got 4 leveling zones and a max level zone at the start so if the Evoker starter zone fills that role we are the same as we were in Legion. To be honest 4 leveling zones just flow better with the current speed of leveling. One max level zone at start and add more via major content patches just works well with the current design.

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4 Zones, 4 Dungeons...

8 Dungeons just 4 for mythic+ in season 1 but they can always change that with pressure as its an easy switch to flip.

[Niter]

The amount of people working on wow in one way or another (devs translators QA ect) grew by almost 1000 from legion to BFA, shadowlands is unfortunately not cataloged as of yet.

Legion 4772 people (4763 developers, 9 thanks)
BFA 5705 people (5696 developers, 9 thanks)

https://www.mobygames.com/game/windo...legion/credits
https://www.mobygames.com/game/windo...zeroth/credits

Although I understand where you're coming from, I want to add that for Warcraft 3 Reforged they credited nearly 5.600 people:
https://www.mobygames.com/game/windo...forged/credits

There is a lot of repetition in the credits as well, so that might not be best metric, and the vast majority credited are Customer/Service related, so not people working on developing the product. Although I must say that there seems to be more devs and testers in both games as compared to Legion, lots of names do get repeated despite their being different games and products, so working out these numbers might not be possible for us.

As for the subject of this thread, I guess it'll remain to be seen. Blizzard have not kept their word for many years now, so whether they are firing empty promises and saying what players want to hear to keep people engaged while not actually intent on delivering, well... We just don't know. We'll wait and see.

[Raven]

Yeah 4 zones, but on the other side, we dont know the size of them and with phasing 4 new zones can easy have alot more content then 8 old zones.

[MoanaLisa]

Counting zones as a measure of anything is dumb. It's the content that's within them that matters (quality and quanitity).

[calaion]

if they are huge and vertical, I dont see the problem. Hopefully they start using the rest of the world lol

[Lorgar Aurelian]

Although I understand where you're coming from, I want to add that for Warcraft 3 Reforged they credited nearly 5.600 people:
https://www.mobygames.com/game/windo...forged/credits

There is a lot of repetition in the credits as well, so that might not be best metric, and the vast majority credited are Customer/Service related, so not people working on developing the product. Although I must say that there seems to be more devs and testers in both games as compared to Legion, lots of names do get repeated despite their being different games and products, so working out these numbers might not be possible for us.

As for the subject of this thread, I guess it'll remain to be seen. Blizzard have not kept their word for many years now, so whether they are firing empty promises and saying what players want to hear to keep people engaged while not actually intent on delivering, well... We just don't know. We'll wait and see.

I don’t know I’d argue the credits are the best metric as it’s the literal only one that lists every one involved.

Though of course listing every one involved is also a negative if you just want pure devs and no support staff but even then the credits would be the best place to look though you’d just have to manually sift through them.

[Athorha]

The first week of shadowlands I spent more time in revendreth than I did in zul'drak through all of wotlk on my hunter.