Why did Blizzard abandon Scenario's (3 man scenario's)

[Tyris Flare]

And we both know the devs never lie, especcially in regards to systems they remove and are met with a wave of anger over it.

Why would they lie about something their metrics show were unpopular?

People always look for conspiracies when banal explanations will suffice: they were resource intensive (like all story content) and not very popular (as shown by their internal metrics).

Lots of folks like to wishlist stuff, which to some extent I understand, but creating story stuff is very inefficient compared to making a dungeon or raid or pvp arena people will use over and over again. Most people do story stuff once and then want to skip it on alts. Now obviously some version of that content is necessarily, especially at the start of an expansion, but it's a huge black hole of resources.

[FelPlague]

it is not the same though, MoP scenario's had a whole different feeling to it. I just assumed those were more "special" quests but i never felt i did some scenario. Now thinking back it does remind me of them, but it is not what i ment.

Those are a once in a lifetime experience if you quest, they should be queue-able and farmable.

Cause they were literally dungeons with variety, which well they decided was so well taken they started doing it in dungeons.

[aceperson]

i don't really know why blizz has effectively hid scenarios. i think scenario's are a great story telling tool and loved how they were used in wod but there are ways of using scenarios for max level stories too. and i don't really consider the unqued "scenarios" that you get in the open world actual scenarios as it's really just phasing. heck, blizz could remake lfr into an intro to raiding, and make end game qued scenarios that is for speed running a 3 man version of the raid to be the effective story mode. or even just get rid of lfr as it would be an effective 4th difficulty that isn't needed.

[tomten]

How did it fail? Everyone back in the days at MoP loved it.

MoP/cata is my favorite expos and I hated them and know nobody who did them, liked them and certainly nobody "farmed" them. You remember wrong.

[Niwes]

They were perfect for telling story of a specific zone or town. They were used for alot of places in MoP and it was pretty well received during it's lifespan.
So why did they quit doing this? It required no tank/heal most of the times, you had fast queue's, the run itself was alot faster then dungeons and you could still get some rewards from it. They were perfectly made really.

So why not just re-introduce it for leveling and endgame?

asked myself the same, because they were solely designed for one reason: cost effectiveness.

at the time of MoP they could create scenarios from random (based on a specific list) world design/gfx elements. by a computetd generator software. in short: they could select „Human looking environment style“ and get out a randomized „humans environment“ sceanrio, with some Boxes, Cereals, etc. and it was instant usable in Theramore. Then they selected „Orc looking scenario“ and got out a randomized „Orcs environment“ scenario, with some barrels, metal, etc and it was instant usable as some Orgrimmar Fire scenario (can’t remember the name). And so on. You get what i mean.

So, this technique was solely created by Blizz as an even cheaper way to create some content on an automated base. and it’s still a base technology for a lot of stuff today. look at the same repeating Torghast parts, or look at some caves. you can clearly see, how the base of that technology was implemented into WoW for a lot of content.

What i don’t get is: Why they were not keeping the original idea of offering small, seperate content parts for 3 ppls? It’s not more or less cost effective, than using it in other xpacs corners. Maybe it’s their strange mindset of not moving xpacs features forward. m+ was the only xpac feature, they did this with. also DF will have no Torghast-like thing.

to me this stance is strange. they get better and better in investing as least as possible in WoW for content. but they always just move the technology for that forward, instead of the whole application of that technology. that seems strange to me.

[Ticj]

I loved heroic scenarios in MoP. I really liked upgrading my gear using the badges you got from them. Not sure why they removed em

- - - Updated - - -

MoP/cata is my favorite expos and I hated them and know nobody who did them, liked them and certainly nobody "farmed" them. You remember wrong.

I liked them, did them, and farmed them. As did my friends lol

[Niwes]

MoP/cata is my favorite expos and I hated them and know nobody who did them, liked them and certainly nobody "farmed" them. You remember wrong.

in my experience you remember wrong. nearly everyone i knew back then did it on x characters, because it was the fastest way to farm the 2k valor points weekly cap.

can’t agree here.

[Fabled]

I only remember the one with the elementals/alementals in that small panda town. Huh.

[Niwes]

Why would they lie about something their metrics show were unpopular?

People always look for conspiracies when banal explanations will suffice: they were resource intensive (like all story content) and not very popular (as shown by their internal metrics).

Lots of folks like to wishlist stuff, which to some extent I understand, but creating story stuff is very inefficient compared to making a dungeon or raid or pvp arena people will use over and over again. Most people do story stuff once and then want to skip it on alts. Now obviously some version of that content is necessarily, especially at the start of an expansion, but it's a huge black hole of resources.

you are so far away from the truth. one can not even be more far away.

first: the most expensive in WoW is dungeons and raids. followed by battlegrounds. because of the enormous amount of styling, pathes, combat/game logic, gfx and so on. and foremost the testing. it’s absurd expensive. factor 10 than Scenarios or Torghast.

second: scenarios were EXACTLY made to counter that. by creating small parts of finished content, combined by an automated system. and then quickly some cheap story was added. it was Blizzards first technological try (after LFG/LFR) to lower costs for creating content. scenarios just EXACTLY existed because they are way cheaper than creating a raid or a dungeon.

third: story is one of the most cheap parts of wow. heck, some quest texts are autogenerated and just reviewed quickly by humans. did you ever read some quest texts in the last 5 years? or ever did something with textual analytics?

so, imo, it’s not possible to be more wrong here, as you do.

[Gimlix]

They were too easy and not rewarding at all.

You can change that, they were rewarding enough to do weekly though.

[Oneirophobia]

Scenarios were some of my favorite content ever added to the game, but I recognize that there was incessant bitching about them during MoP from the usual crowd. You know, the raiders and PvPers that felt they were "forced" to do something they didn't want to do so there can never be content for anyone else other than them. This attitude is reaching a new zenith with Dragonflight, wherein there is nothing new to keep you occupied other than raiding/m+/rated PvP. It's going to be the instance-oriented player's dream of never having to interact with the world of the game at all.

On top of that, there are still an alarming amount of posts asking for M+ to be discontinued because people don't want alternatives to raiding (IE anything that rewards anything remotely close to raiding makes them feel "forced" to play other game types).

[GUZ]

Because most of them were boring and a chore. Not many people enjoyed them at the time.

[Tyris Flare]

you are so far away from the truth. one can not even be more far away.

first: the most expensive in WoW is dungeons and raids. followed by battlegrounds. because of the enormous amount of styling, pathes, combat/game logic, gfx and so on. and foremost the testing. it’s absurd expensive. factor 10 than Scenarios or Torghast.

second: scenarios were EXACTLY made to counter that. by creating small parts of finished content, combined by an automated system. and then quickly some cheap story was added. it was Blizzards first technological try (after LFG/LFR) to lower costs for creating content. scenarios just EXACTLY existed because they are way cheaper than creating a raid or a dungeon.

third: story is one of the most cheap parts of wow. heck, some quest texts are autogenerated and just reviewed quickly by humans. did you ever read some quest texts in the last 5 years? or ever did something with textual analytics?

so, imo, it’s not possible to be more wrong here, as you do.

You don't understand. Those things are less expensive because people repeat the content.

Story stuff is incredibly inefficient. Even if they take 10x fewer resources to make, not many people run them twice - and they certainly don't run them 100x like they do a dungeon. Consider how many times people have done a random covenant campaign quest with voice over compared to how many people have run Plaguefall.

And by story content we are talking about scenarios and stuff which are voiced (expensive), not random quest text. Obviously making something with 75 words where you go grab 5 bear asses does not require many resources, but it also isn't "story content"

[MoanaLisa]

[scenarios] were resource intensive (like all story content) and not very popular (as shown by their internal metrics).

The first part of this is untrue. There was a developer note about them way back when saying that the design was innovative and it was very simple to create a lot of scenarios in a short amount of time. That...was part of the problem. Many were very vanilla cut-and-paste instances with some different art assets that looked and felt as if barely any effort at all went into creating them.

I still believe that's why people ended up thinking not much of them.

[Tyris Flare]

The first part of this is untrue. There was a developer note about them way back when saying that the design was innovative and it was very simple to create a lot of scenarios in a short amount of time. That...was part of the problem. Many were very vanilla cut-and-paste instances with some different art assets that looked and felt as if barely any effort at all went into creating them.

I still believe that's why people ended up thinking not much of them.

For the levels and enemies that's fair, but I assume that's not including the voice over/writing etc which is what would be required for something to be considered modern "story content" (and not just 15 sec of dialogue). Kind of a tautology I suppose but that would be the difference between quick repeatable cut/paste content and story content.

[Alvito]

How did it fail? Everyone back in the days at MoP loved it.

You may have, everyone certainly did not. A good example of this is the fact nobody talks about them or asks for them back.

[Venziir]

Then you should be able to answer what part of wow you would have fun playing again and again with no reward?

I've played since the closed EU beta, and never once cared about raids, loot, prestige or pvp. I have each class at max level, so I'd say that I find the game fun in general. Though SL wasn't fun though, sadly.

[Zulggun]

People only "loved" scenarios back in MoP because dungeons sucked so bad then. Like literally, MoP dungeons are the worst in game.

[melzas]

They were just a glorified group quests. Pretty boring after few times. And I also remember they were mindnumbigly easy.

I'd rather have them improve on island expeditions kind of experience than half-assed dungeon/group quest hybrid. At least IE were something different (and PvP version was really fun)

[MoanaLisa]

You may have, everyone certainly did not. A good example of this is the fact nobody talks about them or asks for them back.

And yet, here we are in a thread where some people wouldn't mind seeing them return with a little of that iteration that Blizzard used to be famous for and have since abandoned. Weirdly enough, we're talking about them and some want to see them back. Phenomenal and difficult to explain I'm sure.

The point being not everyone hated them, not everyone liked them, some were ambivalent about them and some thought it was a neat idea that needed to be better.