Battle for Azeroth Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[Lahis]

Wasn't there some speculation about those coins being for a man at some point? Because of the rainbow behind your character when you collect them?

Speculation: Khadgar and Aethas are together, that's why he was so open to let Sunreavers back into Dalaran.

[rda]

Imagine the amount of stress that comes with his job! I may not agree with every decision, but he's doing pretty well I'd say.

To be honest, he is doing the job really good. Under his "reign" we've got the dev Q&A's which brought a lot more dev interaction with the community. And after that Argus mic drop at Blizzcon 2016 he became my favorite Blizzar dev.

Disagree.

The measure of how good a job Ion is doing is in the game. Who cares about how well he is holding up in the interviews (= how well he is deflecting questions, which, if you think about it, is a pretty strange thing to praise him for as a player). It's the game that is his job that matters.

And going directly for the jugular: is the game good? Is Legion good? I don't think it is. As in, it is better than WoD, but players are still leaving big time and there are so many big, big, big problems piling up on top of each other, that the game is more or less buried under them.

Look into the future. The most one could hope for is that the next expansion will *maybe* clean the slate a bit and *not make things worse*. It is abundantly clear that the next expansion will NOT solve any of the big issues and will not do anything radically good - like, for example, we will still obviously have the extreme time gates, and we will still obviously have the extreme grinds, and we will still obviously have two hundred recolors / renumbers of the same instances masquerading as "tons of content" (with the word "new" wisely omitted), and the story will obviously continue to be trash cartoons, etc, etc, etc - no, nobody expects that the new expansion will actually fix anything. The most people could hope for is that the new expansion *will not ADD more big issues to the existing bouquet*. That's it.

So, no. Ion is not doing a good job. It is unclear to me to what extent he is actually driving this vehicle, but the vehicle is going down so far, not up.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

Yeah I got the same vibe from the coins as you. Which honestly would be cool of blizzard imo to have that for a character that is so well known like Khadgar.

More so he wants Modera. I mean there's some text ingame hinting at that.

[Drekmar]

So not admitting to anything but not denying it either while saying to not trust datamining too much. Hmm, they trained him well!

That's a lawyer for you.

[Fahrad Wagner]

Yeah I got the same vibe from the coins as you. Which honestly would be cool of blizzard imo to have that for a character that is so well known like Khadgar.

Yeah I guess it would be cool, if it's not done in a cheesy or forced way. The community on this game is still quite close-minded. :/

12 times i had to sit through that!!!

I just skip Val'sharah because of them haha!

More so he wants Modera. I mean there's some text ingame hinting at that.

Can you link that, I'm quite interested! I just remember her asking him if he wanted a kiss on the forehead after being hurt or something, and she was sarcastic.

[Drekmar]

So, no. Ion is not doing a good job. It is unclear to me to what extent he is actually driving this vehicle, but the vehicle is going down so far, not up.

It went down under GC and Chilton, so by that logic they're significantly worse.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

Can you link that, I'm quite interested! I just remember her asking him if he wanted a kiss on the forehead after being hurt or something, and she was sarcastic.

That's the line I'm thinking of. Sarcastic or not, it feels very flirtish.

[Fahrad Wagner]

That's the line I'm thinking of. Sarcastic or not, it feels very flirtish.

I don't know, I felt it was more in a "mommy" way, as in she's his friend and making fun of him, but maybe you're right indeed, who knows what happens in Dalaran at night!

It went down under GC and Chilton, so by that logic they're significantly worse.

I just can't with Chilton, there's something with him and I just can't...

[effs]

It went down under GC and Chilton, so by that logic they're significantly worse.

yeah Ion is doing a far better job with these Q&As and such, not saying he's perfect, look at the RNG in Legion and legendary system.

[Shadochi]

Disagree.

The measure of how good a job Ion is doing is in the game. Who cares about how well he is holding up in the interviews (= how well he is deflecting questions, which, if you think about it, is a pretty strange thing to praise him for as a player). It's the game that is his job that matters.

And going directly for the jugular: is the game good? Is Legion good? I don't think it is. As in, it is better than WoD, but players are still leaving big time and there are so many big, big, big problems piling up on top of each other, that the game is more or less buried under them.

Look into the future. The most one could hope for is that the next expansion will *maybe* clean the slate a bit and *not make things worse*. It is abundantly clear that the next expansion will NOT solve any of the big issues and will not do anything radically good - like, for example, we will still obviously have the extreme time gates, and we will still obviously have the extreme grinds, and we will still obviously have two hundred recolors / renumbers of the same instances masquerading as "tons of content" (with the word "new" wisely omitted), and the story will obviously continue to be trash cartoons, etc, etc, etc - no, nobody expects that the new expansion will actually fix anything. The most people could hope for is that the new expansion *will not ADD more big issues to the existing bouquet*. That's it.

So, no. Ion is not doing a good job. It is unclear to me to what extent he is actually driving this vehicle, but the vehicle is going down so far, not up.

Is Legion good? For me it is. For me Legion is the brand-new clean slate, would go as far as to say it feels almost like WoW2.

And when his job to be at the top of the game it is important for him to have some interaction with the players other than the big conventions where he presents the new stuff.

[Fahrad Wagner]

Is Legion good? For me it is. For me Legion is the brand-new clean slate, would go as far as to say it feels almost like WoW2.

And when his job to be at the top of the game it is important for him to have some interaction with the players other than the big conventions where he presents the new stuff.

Same, I'm satisfied with Legion! I'm not a hardcore raider, I'm mainly a rolist, reputation and achievements farmer, pet and mounts collector and lore lover. So maybe I'm not bothered too much by this RNG thing. I've had 6 legendaries on my main so far, I wish I could give them to people who aren't that lucky.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

Is Legion good? For me it is. For me Legion is the brand-new clean slate, would go as far as to say it feels almost like WoW2.

And when his job to be at the top of the game it is important for him to have some interaction with the players other than the big conventions where he presents the new stuff.

No expansion is perfect either. Same can be said about Wrath. I recently looked at the last content patch(Big one, not the halion one) and well it wasn't really that big. Sure it gave us the very lore heavy raid Icecrown Citadel and some extra daily quests(Oh and Quel'delar obviously) but compared to say 7.3

Or some other content patches in the past, 3.3 pales in comparison to other big content patches. Things have improved.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

You're right, LFG was introduced(DERP) Hrothgar's Landing was a zone. ICC had the three dungeons. Again DERP DERP DERP.


This is what happens with my memory

[derpkitteh]

modera's pegging aethas right now. though, knowing aethas, his dick would explode at the thought of a big human kirin tor man fucking his woman in front of him.

[Fahrad Wagner]

Hrothgar's Landing is a rock in the sea though with just a few dailies, so it's not like "proper" content.

[rda]

Is Legion good? For me it is. For me Legion is the brand-new clean slate, would go as far as to say it feels almost like WoW2.

And when his job to be at the top of the game it is important for him to have some interaction with the players other than the big conventions where he presents the new stuff.

Same, I'm satisfied with Legion! I'm not a hardcore raider, I'm mainly a rolist, reputation and achievements farmer, pet and mounts collector and lore lover. So maybe I'm not bothered too much by this RNG thing. I've had 6 legendaries on my main so far, I wish I could give them to people who aren't that lucky.

No issues with that.

Some people liked WoD, too, for example. Different tastes and different experiences.

In terms of improved communication, I am, frankly, not seeing much. I mean, I agree that interviews now happen more often. But they also became so boring and information-free, I am no longer bothering to watch. (Heck, you can check just how much they managed to disclose at Gamescom, that's pretty characteristic of modern "interviews" - that disclose nothing and tell you nothing.)

Do they listen to feedback more? ROFL, no. The Legion beta was a textbook example of how to structure your test in the way that makes it abundantly clear to the testers that (a) you don't need them, your hands are full with bugs that don't need testers to find, and (b) whatever they write can go straight to the trash can, you won't even read it, partly because of (a) and partly because life is unfair.

But wait, maybe it's just the beta that was bad, maybe it got better after? Nah, they have been declaring a couple of times that they agree they have communication issues and are working to fix them right now, but none of the declarations was followed up by any results worth showing. They make a big deal of new processes that will supposedly help here, then nothing happens for a month or so, then they issue a patch which manages to sneak in a hidden feature that ups the health / damage of the mobs according to the ilvl of the player - and then we have another PR disaster, another round of apologies and another round of promises...

The EU forums are still dead with no blues ever responding to anything, just reposting scraps from the US forums. Etc, etc, etc.

I am a bit baffled at where do you see improvements. Not sure under which rock I should peek.

- - - Updated - - -

One more illustration of how good Legion really is and how good developer-player communication is as well: look at PVP. *Holinka had to resign.* The changes to PVP were so great and the PVP was so universally loved that the PVP designer had to be asked to leave / left by himself (don't care which is it, really). That's perhaps a darker shade of Legion than the game in general, but yeah, we are talking about the same game. This happened in Legion. On Ion's clock. After PVP ladders shrunk to 30% of what they were in WoD.

[Feali]

More so he wants Modera. I mean there's some text ingame hinting at that.

Obviously an alibi.

[Fahrad Wagner]

Obviously an alibi.

#ModeraConfirmedAsKhadgar'sBeard

[Shadochi]

One more illustration of how good Legion really is and how good developer-player communication is as well: look at PVP. *Holinka had to resign.* The changes to PVP were so great and the PVP was so universally loved that the PVP designer had to be asked to leave / left by himself (don't care which is it, really). That's perhaps a darker shade of Legion than the game in general, but yeah, we are talking about the same game. This happened in Legion. On Ion's clock. After PVP ladders shrunk to 30% of what they were in WoD.

If you're gonna go by PvP participation for how bad Legion is then why not look at how good it is by checking how many max level players are still participating in dungeons that were available on launch compared to the previous expansions. I bet that compared to some, it's maybe even an order of magnitude higher.

[rda]

If you're gonna go by PvP participation for how bad Legion is then why not look at how good it is by checking how many max level players are still participating in dungeons that were available on launch compared to the previous expansions. I bet that compared to some, it's maybe even an order of magnitude higher.

People do mythic instances, yes. I am not sure that if we count the percentage of people doing instances, Legion is going to win over Cata / MoP / WotLK all that much, just in case. All of those expansions had valor / something similar and so running instances every week for a cap was bread and butter. But let's even pretend that Legion wins here some percentage. This does not compensate at all for the dramatic damage to PVP. Neither numerically, nor qualitatively.

I will also say this: in a big picture PVE matters much less than PVP. Because PVE requires scripted encounters (which they can only produce so many of) while PVP creates its own game. It's a travesty that they have been neglecting PVP for so long. It's very likely a product of Ion and other Blizzard folks being raiders and not PVPers. WoW got unlucky for PVP in that way. If they hadn't ignored PVP, WoW could have been several times bigger today than it was at its peak in WotLK, rivaling MOBAs. Because the BGs/arenas could have been more or less what MOBAs delivered, WoW would have been MOBA+world, a unique combination.