BfA Patch Speculation thread (8.3 and later).

[Raetary]

world quests are pathetic lazy, you just kill the same boss every day with no reason at all

This is what dailies are aswell.
"Do this one thing once a day for X days until you are capped"

Literally the only difference between dailies and WQs is that you don't have to pick up and turn in the quest.

for me the only difference between dailies and WQ is that you don't have to take and deliver the quest.

Oh look, you just said it yourself.
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a significantly worse faction war storyline that's only lasting impact was having a not-orc as warchief

I mostly agree with the rest of your post, but to hell no.
MoPs story is not in any way shape or form inferior to that incomprehensibly ridiculous clusterfuck that is the "story" of BfA

Good but worse: Music, zones, enemies, armor, and especially weapons.

And all of that belongs in the 'highly subjective' box.

For me, mop had some of my favorite warcraft tracks, and the general armor and weapon design was more appealing than BfAs.
As for enemies, i don't have a preference, though i did love the Shas aetheistics and wish N'zoths forces looked somewhat more distinct.

And i prefer Zandalar and KT over Pandaria.

[Wangming]

When 9.0 speculation thread will rise, mods will likely close this one. There is no point for two hype threads at same time, we talk about everything anyway.

I know. It will be a new thread. And the race will be on to overtake the BfA thread. But I'm sure that will happen. Most people can't wait to be rid of BfA and switch it for something new.

[Hitei]

I mostly agree with the rest of your post, but to hell no.
MoPs story is not in any way shape or form inferior to that incomprehensibly ridiculous clusterfuck that is the "story" of BfA

MoP's faction conflict was awful. It starts off as arbitrary skirmishing, then completely disappears from existence after Doubt, then suddenly shows back up in Landfall with the factions fighting over literally nothing, then is back to light skirmishing in IoT, leading into the Alliance deciding to just ignore everything that happened, give the Horde a shit ton of resources and help them take back their city for free.

It was really, really bad and it's only lasting impact was that Garrosh was dethroned and Warchief stopped being an Orc thing, and Theramore.

BfA's faction war is much more coherent, actually following up on events (Jinyu and Hozen just basically vanish off the face of the planet after Jade Forest, both factions effectively abandoned Krasarang just after Landfall, Blood Elves fought to get their hands on Mogu tech and then don't make use of it until Legion, has Jaina ever even actually used her Lei Shen empowerment?). It involves an actual back and forth with small victories and losses. It has actual ongoing characters.

Who was important in MoP's war? Faction leaders... Nazgrim, Lor'themar and Zaela? Only really at the end. Anduin, Jaina. CHo and Taran Zhu to some extent. Even the named NPCs (Rogers, Taylor, etc) basically did nothing outside of a couple moments in early quests. Compare that mess to BfA, with Shandris, Shaw, Draven, Rexxar, Voss, Zelling, Nathanos, Rokhan, Jaina, Talanji, Gallywix, Flynn, Umbric, Thalyssra... like I don't even know how you look at MoP and seriously, genuinely go "Oh yeah man, Jinyu fighting monkeys and some dailies on a beach, THAT'S A REAL FACTION WAR!"

The pinnacle of the turning tide for Alliance in 5.3 was using a fucking robot cat to scout some stuff outside Orgrimmar, and then Amber Kearnen, an SI:7 agent with literally zero authority or decision making power, deciding that now the Alliance are going to fight for the Darkspear and bring them stuff.

Meanwhile Moira and the other dwarf clans sort out some differences so that they can not be involved at all in the fight everyone is preparing for.

I sometimes wonder if all these "BfA's lore is a mess!" comments are just made by people who don't actually ever read quests and just run to objectives subsequently being confused and angry when they have literally no idea what is going on. Because it isn't a clusterfuck at all, it's been extremely straightforward if you actually pay attention.

you mean the best era of almost all classes? and one of the best class design? worse than bfa? for real?

No, I mean the era of copy pasting abilities from one class to other class until they were a shitty coagulation of reskinned casters and melee with no individuality, but I guess if you're the kind of person who subscribes to "I have more shiny buttons to push and a bunch of utility abilities everyone else also has! Yipee" then sure, the """"""best"""""" era.

[Prophet June Bug]

Not counting the holidays, 8.1.5 was on the PTR 2-3 weeks after 8.1.
The patch has been out for a month now, it's pretty dumb we haven't heard anything regarding an 8.2.5. announcement stream.

At this rate it's gnna be a late september/early october release, which lines up with when people are first able to earn the Nazjatar meta achievement. Seems rather coincidental gating.

This BfA patch schedule has been a joke so far.

[Shampro]

Telling a story like this with so many '' To be continued...'' scenarios really showed it's detrimental colours in this expansion. They just can't tell a ''story'' like this in a MMO satisfyingly.

Waiting 3, 4, 6 months to see if they will bother to actually use Sylvanas at some point (member the Vol'jin storyline?), or remember that other characters not called Jaina, Nathanos and Saurfang EXIST, really is hurting their delivery.

In past expansions, the trajectory was semi-clear in the sense that the ''to be continued'' had a sense of closure, BFA has had ZERO so far, and they just keep somehow opening up even MORE story threads relevant to this expansion.

[3vyan]

Not counting the holidays, 8.1.5 was on the PTR 2-3 weeks after 8.1.
The patch has been out for a month now, it's pretty dumb we haven't heard anything regarding an 8.2.5. announcement stream.

At this rate it's gnna be a late september/early october release, which lines up with when people are first able to earn the Nazjatar meta achievement. Seems rather coincidental gating.

This BfA patch schedule has been a joke so far.

I agree.

I don't mind pacing the patches, I felt a bit overwhelmed in legion because I also played lots of other games.
I prefer pacing the patches over having the famous content droughts at the end of the expansion.

However, 5 weeks will have passed before they even announce a PTR or a stream for a minor patch.
A patch that finally delivers models promised to us in 2014, so basically 5 years later...
That's just overpacing and I really lack patience this time around .

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Telling a story like this with so many '' To be continued...'' scenarios really showed it's detrimental colours in this expansion. They just can't tell a ''story'' like this in a MMO satisfyingly.

Waiting 3, 4, 6 months to see if they will bother to actually use Sylvanas at some point (member the Vol'jin storyline?), or remember that other characters not called Jaina, Nathanos and Saurfang EXIST, really is hurting their delivery.

In past expansions, the trajectory was semi-clear in the sense that the ''to be continued'' had a sense of closure, BFA has had ZERO so far, and they just keep somehow opening up even MORE story threads relevant to this expansion.

I prefer not knowing what to expect.

The expansions before MOP were too straight forward.
It's like watching a series and knowing how it will end, I lose interest.

There must be a balance though, some stories have to get some closure, some need to stay vague to build upon later.

The speculation that BFA provides is lovely but it should have an unexpected ending because of blizzard constantly saying this isn't MOP 2.0.

[Queen of Hamsters]

Blizzard never planned to remove flying. They always wanted to abuse it to re-re-re-incentivize their dull world content.

The large reward for the missing gameplay.

Why add engaging content with monthly updates if you just need the biggest piece of cake people want to eat?

Lure people into the worst chores you could imagine just with giving them back what they already had over and over.

Seems to work like a charm in world of warcraft.

For other, really good games, developers add engagement by other means than skinner boxes.

No, they meant to remove it completely from any future new content.
And WoW never had monthly updates during my decade of playing. Monthly updates seem like there would be nothing of real depth added.

If the game feels like "endless chores" and "no fun" to you, might I suggest playing something else? The Skinner box buzzphrase got old back in WoD, and even then it wasn't all that accurate compared to the Goldfish bowl phrase.

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I sometimes wonder if all these "BfA's lore is a mess!" comments are just made by people who don't actually ever read quests and just run to objectives subsequently being confused and angry when they have literally no idea what is going on. Because it isn't a clusterfuck at all, it's been extremely straightforward if you actually pay attention.

Yep.

Starting with Legion, they've only gotten more and more coherent and put more effort into telling the story in-game.
MoP's story to me was at its best with the Pandaren and the Thunder King.

It's like with the "there's no content!!" crowd. Translation: They just don't want to do anything but the very minimum because who doesn't spend money on a game one doesn't really enjoy?? Seems like a proper use of funds right?

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Not counting the holidays, 8.1.5 was on the PTR 2-3 weeks after 8.1.
The patch has been out for a month now, it's pretty dumb we haven't heard anything regarding an 8.2.5. announcement stream.

At this rate it's gnna be a late september/early october release, which lines up with when people are first able to earn the Nazjatar meta achievement. Seems rather coincidental gating.

This BfA patch schedule has been a joke so far.

You and the rest of us have zero insight to player engagement though.

Blizzard already stated that they could've paced Legion better. If they're in no hurry to release new stuff, you can bet your ass it's because there's not really a need because engagement isn't going down.

[Fred Skinner]

Which is why they didn't have to rebuild Draenor to make it possible. Oh, wait.

They did not rebuild Draenor. It was flyable from start.

[Queen of Hamsters]

I know. It will be a new thread. And the race will be on to overtake the BfA thread. But I'm sure that will happen. Most people can't wait to be rid of BfA and switch it for something new.

Citation fucking needed.

Oh, you mean on MMO-C where everyone that hasn't enjoyed WoW for oomph amount of years congregate, rather than tangible evidence from player engagement numbers and stats?

Ok, carry on then.

I however can't wait for 8.3, BfA can only improve and already has done just that. 9.0 should be given all the time it deserves on the development table, impatient suckers unable to move on with their lives when they don't enjoy this title shouldn't dictate the rush of content.

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They did not rebuild Draenor. It was flyable from start.

Literally fucking untrue.

When it was made clear that they'd compromise on flying, they had to spend significant time making sure that Draenor was fit for flying. It was LITERALLY designed without flying in mind. And even once players got flying, there were still invisible wall bugs here and there that the team had missed.

If you can't remember history, don't pretend to. It only makes you wrong.

[Nyel]

I sometimes wonder if all these "BfA's lore is a mess!" comments are just made by people who don't actually ever read quests and just run to objectives subsequently being confused and angry when they have literally no idea what is going on. Because it isn't a clusterfuck at all, it's been extremely straightforward if you actually pay attention.

I tend to read every quest at least once. And even if BfA has a somewhat coherent storyline, it’s incredibly bad in many aspects.

The zone specific storylines are okayish (with Zandalari being superior to Kul Tiras in my opinion but that doesn’t really matter) yet the overarching story is indeed a clusterfuck. This is reflected in the content patches / raids as well - Uldir (Alliance has basically zero story for that) and then BoD which is an entirely different theme. After that we have the two N’zoth/Azshara raids that are again entirely different to the raids we had before. Three raid tiers with three different themes - and we don’t even know what the next tier will be, is it faction war, is it N’zoth or is it both together. It’s just a mess that doesn’t make any sense.

On top of that a lot of the lore isn’t even in game - it’s told via videos, comics or short stories outside of the game. That’s incredibly bad storytelling. WoWs story should be entirely in game without the need to further reach out to half a dozen other media forms to understand what’s going on. It’s great when you expand your universe in novels, videos and stuff outside of the game but don’t make the in game storyline dependent on that.

Don’t fool yourself and make the BfA storyline better than it is. There’s a reason why it’s one of the biggest weaknesses of this expansion and gets constantly called out by the playerbase. BfAs Story feels forced and artificial and not genuine - that’s a huge difference to the MoP storyline you compared it to. I wish I would like it as much as you as it deals with some of my favorite characters in WoW (Azshara, N’zoth, Kul Tiras, Jaina) yet I can’t because it’s just not an enticing story in my eyes (yet). 8.3 might tie all those lose ends together but after 1.5 years of having this mess... it might be too late.

[Queen of Hamsters]

Which is why they didn't have to rebuild Draenor to make it possible. Oh, wait.

No, you're just wrong.

Yep.

It was a big deal, the work they had to put in to ensure flying for us in Draenor.
And even then they did a half-ass job, because WoD was a half-ass kind of product.

[serra2]

You know, with all of these "leak" threads popping up, I am somewhat disappointed that no one took the obvious route and posted a leak for the totally planned expansion on Classic, where we will fight Illidan and fly...

[huth]

They did not rebuild Draenor. It was flyable from start.

They actually had to delay the patch to do it because it very much wasn't. Shows how poorly informed your claims are.

[Blayze]

If we're talking about piss-poor themes, did anyone else catch how Mists threw its own theme away?

All expansion long, we're told the Alliance and Horde being at each others' throats is a weakness.
And yet Wrathion gets told by a pandaren bartender near the end of the expansion that the mantid and pandaren being at each others' throats is what keeps both strong.

Then again, I shouldn't have expected anything else from a game that has us kill the Sha of Violence with violence.

[Verdugo]

They actually had to delay the patch to do it because it very much wasn't. Shows how poorly informed your claims are.

Do you have proof?

And no them saying so isnt proof, Blizzard is notorious when it comes to straight faced lies.

[Maxilian]

All expansion long, we're told the Alliance and Horde being at each others' throats is a weakness.
And yet Wrathion gets told by a pandaren bartender near the end of the expansion that the mantid and pandaren being at each others' throats is what keeps both strong.

Lets be fair, that's the mentality the Mantid hold, that's the whole reason for their constant attacks, to make sure the weak die and the strong survive, i'm not that surprised that some Pandaren agree that it does make each other stronger (as the Pandaren have to constatly train, even in times of peace).

Either way, i don't think we should assume that the theme of the expansion was thrown into the flames just because of what 1 NPC said.

But... you're right, is quite silly that we beat the Sha of Violence with Violence.

Note: The Sha of Violence fight should have been a healing fight (basically the healers got to heal the boss while the DPS deal with adds)

[huth]

Lets be fair, that's the mentality the Mantid hold, that's the whole reason for their constant attacks, to make sure the weak die and the strong survive, i'm not that surprised that some Pandaren agree that it does make each other stronger (as the Pandaren have to constatly train, even in times of peace).

It should be noted that there are significant times of peace between each individual swarm, rather unlike Horde and Alliance.

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Do you have proof?

And no them saying so isnt proof, Blizzard is notorious when it comes to straight faced lies.

You could fly through buildings and other stuff on the PTR. I did so myself.

How about you give some proof for your alleged lies? And for the record, a lie is knowingly telling an untruth. Not things changing after you talked about them.

[Hitei]

I tend to read every quest at least once. And even if BfA has a somewhat coherent storyline, it’s incredibly bad in many aspects.

The zone specific storylines are okayish (with Zandalari being superior to Kul Tiras in my opinion but that doesn’t really matter) yet the overarching story is indeed a clusterfuck. This is reflected in the content patches / raids as well - Uldir (Alliance has basically zero story for that) and then BoD which is an entirely different theme. After that we have the two N’zoth/Azshara raids that are again entirely different to the raids we had before. Three raid tiers with three different themes - and we don’t even know what the next tier will be, is it faction war, is it N’zoth or is it both together. It’s just a mess that doesn’t make any sense.

You are literally just describing expansions.

a ghost tower > Naga and Blood Elves> Randomly forest trolls > into the past to fight the Legion for no real reason > Demons
Naxx, an undead fortress > completely unrelated titan complex > a dumb medieval tournament for no real reason > Undead
A mogu vault > The unrelated mantid and sha > trolls and a different group of mogu > Orcs
Ogres > Unrelated Orcs > Demon Orcs
Old god forces in the Emerald Dream > A bunch of completely unrelated mana addicted elves > Demons > Bigger Demons

Like did you even think about what you were claiming? The only expansion with even remotely continuous raid instances is Cata, because all the things you fight are working together on the side of the twilight forces. Are you really going to sit here and pretend BfA is a clusterfuck because Uldir's primary storyline is Horde when there is literally no reason in the world why Alliance should ever be in Zul'Aman, or Horde in Kara, or any reason at all to keep picking a fight with Ogres in the middle of a campaign against the Iron Horde? We won't even touch TotGC.

On top of that a lot of the lore isn’t even in game - it’s told via videos, comics or short stories outside of the game. That’s incredibly bad storytelling. WoWs story should be entirely in game without the need to further reach out to half a dozen other media forms to understand what’s going on. It’s great when you expand your universe in novels, videos and stuff outside of the game but don’t make the in game storyline dependent on that.

And this is exactly what I mean. Clearly you absolutely do not read quests if you are having any sort of trouble understanding what is going on. Nothing outside of the game does anything more than expand upon what is told in game. You don't need to know about the desolate council, Anduin's worries, or who saffy is to see that Azerite is a powerful substance and Sylvanas is taking the opportunity to strike against the Alliance in the wake of the war against the Legion. If you read Before the Storm you know more about saffy, if you didn't she is just one of the couple of gnomes you take with you to mechagon. If you read Elegy and A Good War, you know more about how exactly Delaryn came to die at Darkshore, if you didn't she is the night elf captain who died defending darkshore.

You are having trouble understanding because you don't read quest text. Nothing in game is dependent on you reading anything else.

Don’t fool yourself and make the BfA storyline better than it is.

I'm not. I just realize it's fine, and quite good compared to most of the other expansions.

There’s a reason why it’s one of the biggest weaknesses of this expansion and gets constantly called out by the playerbase. BfAs Story feels forced and artificial and not genuine - that’s a huge difference to the MoP storyline you compared it to.

The player base is full of retards. Just because people are so dumb they can't understand basic shit like "this country wants land and resources and so is attacking another vulnerable country", or "this monarch does not give a shit about their subjects and will sacrifice them for strategic gain", or "these two pairs of enemy soldiers are stuck someplace dangerous and briefly calling a ceasefire" doesn't make the story badly written. It makes those people fucking dumb.

[Monster Hunter]

More Warfronts? Yes, exactly what players want. I hope we get more Island Expeditions too, doubling down on successful and universally praised expansion features is always a good idea.

Btw I’m curious if Thunder Bluff is just a trap. But I can’t imagine her attacking Stormwind honestly, going for THE Alliance city when her support within the Horde has shrunken and she’s not so many allies left?

Would be strategic suicide at this point but then she's hardly been very smart so far so meh

[derpkitteh]

But... you're right, is quite silly that we beat the Sha of Violence with Violence.

Note: The Sha of Violence fight should have been a healing fight (basically the healers got to heal the boss while the DPS deal with adds)

no, the sha of violence fight was settled in the correct way.

it is the uncomfortable truth, that violence ultimately must be met with more violence to stop it.

i never really thought about it, but it's an uncharacteristic bit of reality from blizzard.