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

[Alvito]

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.

A single thread with very few people that were reminded of an event saying they were fond or didn't hate something doesn't really count for much. When you get that close to zero, well it counts as zero. In fairness they have been morphed into other things, islands in BFA for example are a spin off of sorts. The biggest issue with the MoP version they didn't solve any problems, achieve any real goals, were moved away from almost immediately and with that fade away like Ruby Sanctum or other forgotten parts of the game that were lack luster and brief so it is as if they never were. As much as people may want to argue they were a success or had any real following, if they did they wouldn't have gone away and we would have been talking about it a lot more from then to now.

[Celement]

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.

I mean they were made better with mage tower and visions then regressed with torghast.

[MrLachyG]

I liked them well enough that I used the Scenaturdist title for a long time. They were a good source of gear and points for alts.

Am I totally blanking, or did Island Expeditions sort of take their place?

did they drop gear? I don't remember them dropping gear.

[lordjust]

did they drop gear? I don't remember them dropping gear.

They did drop blue quality gear, 1 piece per scenario with a chance to be epic quality, on par with end of dungeon epics from heroic.

As far as I remember, Blizzard's reasoning was that not enough people did scenarios to justify the development cost. Lots of people only did them once for the story and one every day for the charms and VP. Rewards were on par with normal and heroic dungeons but in reduced quantity so that it was more effective to run dungeons even with the added time sitting in que or forming a group.

[Auxis]

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.

Reputations, world quests, professions, old content, leveling alts, completing achievements, filling out all collections (transmog, battle pets, mounts, titles, toys, heirlooms), leveling all battle pets to max level and quality, maintaining social relationships ingame as this is an MMO, getting all cosmetic rewards (class specific spell effects, artifact appearances and tints, heritage armours, etc.), unlocking every allied race, completing every quest (super version of Loremaster, obviously repeatable quests only once.

I'm sure I'm missing some things.

[Yriel]

Reputations, world quests, professions, old content, leveling alts, completing achievements, filling out all collections (transmog, battle pets, mounts, titles, toys, heirlooms), leveling all battle pets to max level and quality, maintaining social relationships ingame as this is an MMO, getting all cosmetic rewards (class specific spell effects, artifact appearances and tints, heritage armours, etc.), unlocking every allied race, completing every quest (super version of Loremaster, obviously repeatable quests only once.

I'm sure I'm missing some things.

Yeah, you could try to write the entierty of pi in the chat, you could see if anything special happens after you turned your character 1 mio times to the right, you could see if you could walk around Stormwind with the least amount of steps.
All that amazing content and still people complain...

[Zulggun]

Reputations, world quests, professions, old content, leveling alts, completing achievements, filling out all collections (transmog, battle pets, mounts, titles, toys, heirlooms), leveling all battle pets to max level and quality, maintaining social relationships ingame as this is an MMO, getting all cosmetic rewards (class specific spell effects, artifact appearances and tints, heritage armours, etc.), unlocking every allied race, completing every quest (super version of Loremaster, obviously repeatable quests only once.

I'm sure I'm missing some things.

A person that plays Wow on daily basis most likely has most of these things done already. Let's not try to sell previous expansion features to promote new expansion.

[Niwes]

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"

ofc, i totally understand where you coming from. it’s just not the reality.

i do this shit since more than 20 years, on a daily base. just ask someone at Blizz, they will explain it to you, how it works (ofc they will not, lol)..

the reality is: all the budget, the planings, the sprints, the financees, the monetization planings, etc. all of this is quarterly (3months cycles) based. the goal is to hop from one sprint to the next and make profit from quarter to quarter. it’s not long term investment planing with longterm profit (like you did in the 90s). all is based on quarter numbers today. this means: they don’t care what in the end, after 2-3 years of an xpac, was the most effective parts, in retrospective. they use the most cost effective parts „now“, in every quarter. from quarter to quarter.

why do you think, you get quests, story, campaign and stuff like Torghast changes, from patch to patch? instead of getting 1 raid + 2 dungeons + 1 BG every patch? the reason is: it’s cheap. raids, dungs, BGs are not. even when dungeons in example have more replay value. yes, the customers just consume a campaign once (alts beside here). when the quests/campaign is done, it’s over. consumed. end. this means: yes, the value of replay-ability is horrible low, in contrast to raids or dungeons. but it’s 100 times cheaper. therefore it’s more cost effective to feed ppls with 3 x cheap quest patches, than 1-2x expensive dungeons (even when them would have more replay value).

to me, the biggest problem here is, that english is not my native language. not sure if i am even able to share my sight of that things, based on my daily work. but let me assure you: the things you think makes stuff cheap or expensive is not the reality. also the corners, where you think the values lies in, is also not the reality.

[fenixazul]

Is not Torghast basically an evolution of scenarios? You can run most of the content with a 3 man party and not need the basic configuration of a tank, a healer and a group of DPS.

[Beuargh]

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.

BFA was released like 8 years ago and the feature in it's MoP form was gone. except this one thread we're in, I don't remember a single other thread asking for scenarios to be back. tells a lot about how popular the feature was... meanwhile, everytime a new xpac is announced, I see people asking for 2H enhancement shaman to be back on some way or another.

[Shurkien]

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

Thats straight up a lie.
The forums where full with complains bc everyone disliked them.

[Gimlix]

Thats straight up a lie.
The forums where full with complains bc everyone disliked them.

I just remember the fast queue's and the people i joined up in within the scenarios all seemed to enjoy it.
Why? Because it was quick, told some fun lore of the area and required no actual skill or gear. It was a good way to tell story and get some rewards in return.

[Linkedblade]

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?

They didn't fail. They evolved into the Island Expeditions in BfA. Other than the occasional quest now, that tech isn't utilized anymore. They use it at the end of Exile's Reach if you use that as your new character leveling zone.

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Is not Torghast basically an evolution of scenarios? You can run most of the content with a 3 man party and not need the basic configuration of a tank, a healer and a group of DPS.

Yeah, pretty much. Torghast is an improvement over Island Expeditions.

[Gimlix]

They didn't fail. They evolved into the Island Adventures in BfA. Other than the occasional quest now, that tech isn't utilized anymore. They use it at the end of Exile's Reach if you use that as your new character leveling zone.

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Yeah, pretty much. Torghast is an improvement over Island Expeditions.

That is way to look into it. But for some reason they abandon Island Adventures too while in my eyes they was a good succes too.
A good way to fill in time.

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Yeah, pretty much. Torghast is an improvement over Island Expeditions.

Isn't Torghast a downgrade though?

[Linkedblade]

I just remember the fast queue's and the people i joined up in within the scenarios all seemed to enjoy it.
Why? Because it was quick, told some fun lore of the area and required no actual skill or gear. It was a good way to tell story and get some rewards in return.

The problem with these systems is that they are only relevant for a short time. Scenarios were used for the questline ending content, so while people were leveling they were populated. Heroics didn't offer much of a reward and those rewards were competitive for very long.

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That is way to look into it. But for some reason they abandon Island Adventures too while in my eyes they was a good succes too.
A good way to fill in time.

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Isn't Torghast a downgrade though?

As far as story goes, yes. But as close as they got to a true roguelike with torghast made every playthrough different compared to the Islands.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

Isn't Torghast a downgrade though?

Gameplay wise it was an upgrade, no time limit, powers to change gameplay, explore as much or as little as you want, boss at the end to use all your power ups on.

Thematically it was a drown grade with only 5 or so crappy grey layouts and mostly crappy grey mobs.

[Scrysis]

I hated scenarios. I play a healer in group content, and I like playing a healer in group content. There was no place for me in scenarios.

So one more reason why scenarios were left behind -- they actively excluded whole segments of the population. Towards the end, you didn't even need a tank, so there was that too. So essentially scenarios became a thing just for dps. It was breaking down the tank-dps-healer trifecta that wow is based upon, and that GW2 was later forced to loosely copy.

[pahbi]

They didn't fail. They evolved into the Island Expeditions in BfA. Other than the occasional quest now, that tech isn't utilized anymore. They use it at the end of Exile's Reach if you use that as your new character leveling zone.

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Yeah, pretty much. Torghast is an improvement over Island Expeditions.

Torghast wasn't an improvement on anything... it was the worst thing ever foisted into wow.

[Peacemoon]

I think the problem with scenarios are all generally around the fact it was for 3 people and no role restrictions. So it has to be doable by 3 dps, so can’t require a tank or healer. It can’t have a dps requirement in case there are no dps. So you just end up with a lot of vague mechanics that you have to dodge or die and it was generally felt pretty meh.

Torghast is much better because it is 1-5 players, and the difficulty changes depending on the makeup. So they could bring scenarios back with clever tech.

The original idea was also to have something to do in groups that wouldn’t require 1x tank and 1x healer, as dungeon queues were difficult to resolve.

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Torghast wasn't an improvement on anything... it was the worst thing ever foisted into wow.

I love Torghast, it’s really fun. But when they made it a ‘chore’ that needed to be done for legendaries I think people resented that a lot.

[Beuargh]

I just remember the fast queue's and the people i joined up in within the scenarios all seemed to enjoy it.
Why? Because it was quick, told some fun lore of the area and required no actual skill or gear. It was a good way to tell story and get some rewards in return.

and I just remember how long those queues were after a couple month in the xpac. sometimes more than double the time it takes to complete the scenario... I stopped queuing and forgot about them, until this thread 8 years later....

it's good to tell a story, but once you did it once, you know the story... the feature is great as it is now, telling stories in the lvling phase or during a quest chain and it's done until you wanna lvl another toon and you have to do it again. people are asking for shortcuts so they don't have to go thru it again because they already did that with their first toon.... that's the limit of scenarios