BfA Patch Speculation thread (8.3 and later).

[rda]

It does harm it. Those are resources which are basically wasted, but could have been used to dish out 8.3 faster or invested in a good 9.0.

They said they recruited a separate dev team. I agree that's still money that could have went towards 8.x / 9.x, but if we are talking about money, Classic might win some, it might turn out to be a net positive, and if that happens it's Classic who is going to be donating money to the mainline.

[Nathanyel]

That's what I meant with my parentheses. The zone is so large that even though technically you move faster, you still are "moving slower" , as in time it takes to reach your destinations which is ultimately what matters.

Not to discard subjective impressions, but with the density of quest hubs and quests/hub, you rarely had long distances to cover "just because", and sometimes you even had 'entertainment' on the way between hubs, see pursueing the naga from Kelp'thar into the Shimmering Expanse etc.

[Verdugo]

People forget that alternative to Vashjir was Hyjal. Voice acting on that green dragon that takes you there tells you everything you need to know about that zone.

[Sondrelk]

People forget that alternative to Vashjir was Hyjal. Voice acting on that green dragon that takes you there tells you everything you need to know about that zone.

Speaking of intruductions. Still such a crime that Blizz completely removed that amazing intro to Vashj'ir where your ship is attacked.


Looking back at Vashj'ir though, i am pretty convinced that most complaints about Vashj'ir stems more from perception and the echo chamber effect. When you go back there only the first quest has you actually move slowly underwater, and that area is also the only one that really has mobs placed far above the ocean floor.

In many ways, Vashj'ir is almost the ideal zone for a lot of reasons. It has a unique look and feel. The stakes are high, and the enemy feels like a credible threat. For those who like flying Vashj'ir is definitely the zone that best encapsulates what a zone built around flying should be.


Overall though it is just such a shame that it did not get the recognition it deserved. Nazjatar should have been at least partially submerged.

[SaneOstrich]

I'm honestly pretty sick of being hammered in the head with Classic bullshit which I have 0 interest in. They literally forgot their retail playerbase, we've had no relevant news since 8.2 launched. That's exactly why I've unsubbed and won't be coming back until retail moves forward and the Classic nonsense dies out.

I used to be like you, getting annoyed with all the attention classic was getting. Then I realised I should treat it like all the other games blizzard has and I have zero to little interest for (e.g. all but wow), shrug and move on. Like blizzcons that have little wow news, it's fine it's there and happening, it's just not for me.

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With Naz'jatar my issue is we never really see the Naga city part. It's there (in the travel scene between the Gate of the Queen and the Eternal Palace) but we don't really ever get inside. As far as Zin'Azshari is concerned my complaint is the lack of effort to add lore to the area; very few quests and very few interactible items. Instead of silly achievements like the cat one, there should have been tablets full of lore all over the area for us to gather. The size of the city doesn't bother me at all since it's clear most of it is still submerged.

If it was up to me and Blizzard had the resources for it, Mechagon would have been released earlier, Naz'jatar would have included a Mega Dungeon in the naga city proper and instead of the piss poor Naga commander event, there would be 4-5 custom underwater areas each with a miniboss that would be at a world boss level and that'd drop manapearls etc.

I agree with missing the city, WoW has a severe lack of proper sprawling city zones. Suramar was a great first attempt and I was hoping for an expansion on that somewhere in BfA, and naz'jatar would have been a great place to do it.

And even in their current form I would have prefered them releasing mecha and naz seperate. They are so thematically different it felt weird having them throw in at the same time.

[Nathanyel]

Just a thought, but what if 8.3 introduces two new zones adjacent to Naz'jatar, the city proper, and Nyarlotha that was (partially*) pulled into Azeroth

* think N'Zoth's realm/the Shadowlands "bleeding" into our plane

[rda]

Looking back at Vashj'ir though, i am pretty convinced that most complaints about Vashj'ir stems more from perception and the echo chamber effect. When you go back there only the first quest has you actually move slowly underwater, and that area is also the only one that really has mobs placed far above the ocean floor.

I don't think it's the echo chamber. On my alts I occasionally go to Vashjir and every time I go there I just want to go to Hyjal instead. Because of 3d movement. And I am fine with 3d movement when it comes in the form of flying. But not when it comes in the form of swimming. It's just unpleasant, as I said earlier.

I don't know how typical I am, obviously, but if I am typical, then Vashjir fails not because of the echo chamber, it fails on merits.

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Just a thought, but what if 8.3 introduces two new zones adjacent to Naz'jatar, the city proper, and Nyarlotha that was (partially*) pulled into Azeroth

* think N'Zoth's realm/the Shadowlands "bleeding" into our plane

What's the question - would that be good? Yes, I'd like that. I'll take anything, the more, the better.

[SaneOstrich]

I don't think it's the echo chamber. On my alts I occasionally go to Vashjir and every time I go there I just want to go to Hyjal instead. Because of 3d movement. And I am fine with 3d movement when it comes in the form of flying. But not when it comes in the form of swimming. It's just unpleasant, as I said earlier.

I don't know how typical I am, obviously, but if I am typical, then Vashjir fails not because of the echo chamber, it fails on merits.

I'm not discounting your experience, but mechanically the 'swimming' in vashjir is identical to flying.

Which reminds me, player movement is more then just it's mechanics. Speed and 3D movement aren't static in it's perception. I always have to adjust when I go from playing a gnome for a while to a tauren, because I'm 100% sure the movement on the latter is slower. Even though I also know that's just the animation of a bigger body moving at equal speed of a tiny one.

[Nyel]

It does harm it. Those are resources which are basically wasted, but could have been used to dish out 8.3 faster or invested in a good 9.0.

Based alone on popularity and presence... none of the resources used for Classic are wasted. The hype is massive, so is the player amount that only seems to get bigger and bigger towards Classic launch. To think 8.3 would generate more popularity than Classic at this point is... very optimistic. And due to both subs being linked to each other Classic doesn't harm anything, it more likely helps Blizzard boosting their sub numbers.

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Just a thought, but what if 8.3 introduces two new zones adjacent to Naz'jatar, the city proper, and Nyarlotha that was (partially*) pulled into Azeroth

* think N'Zoth's realm/the Shadowlands "bleeding" into our plane

I mean I like the idea because I expected much more from Nazjatar than what we've got but the question that will always linger is: what happens to Silithus, the Sword and the Heart Chamber?

Even if the Silithus leak is just fanmade, I think the final patch will take place either in one of the faction cities or indeed in Silithus.

[rda]

I'm not discounting your experience, but mechanically the 'swimming' in vashjir is identical to flying.

There's some viscosity to moving around in Vashjir which is not there with flying in other zones. I think they toned it down from what it was before, too.

[rda]

Based alone on popularity and presence... none of the resources used for Classic are wasted. The hype is massive, so is the player amount that only seems to get bigger and bigger towards Classic launch. To think 8.3 would generate more popularity than Classic at this point is... very optimistic. And due to both subs being linked to each other Classic doesn't harm anything, it more likely helps Blizzard boosting their sub numbers.

Regarding the amount of interest for Classic - it is sizeable, sure, I agree, I myself say above that Classic might end being a net positive on cash. But I wouldn't overestimate it. I mean, yes, the announced servers are currently oversubscribed, but that's just because there are very few of them. All Classic servers combined across all regions, are probably less than just the German sector of EU WoW wrt the number of players. And they couldn't have been undersubscribed, it's just the release strategy - announce what you think would be too little to avoid news of "they overestimated how many would like to play" and bring news of "they underestimated ...", then add a little, in portions. Have some queues at launch - within reason, but still. That's just them doing the release the right way.

[Nyel]

Regarding the amount of interest for Classic - it is sizeable, sure, I agree, I myself say above that Classic might end being a net positive on cash. But I wouldn't overestimate it. I mean, yes, the announced servers are currently oversubscribed, but that's just because there are very few of them. All Classic servers combined across all regions, are probably less than just the German sector of EU WoW wrt the number of players. And they couldn't have been undersubscribed, it's just the release strategy - announce what you think would be too little to avoid news of "they overestimated how many would like to play" and bring news of "they underestimated ...", then add a little, in portions. Have some queues at launch - within reason, but still. That's just them doing the release the right way.

It's not only the amount of Classic subscribers, it's just the massive surge in interest for WoW at this point. Interviews, videos, nostalgia - it just contributes a lot to WoW's popularity this year. BfA wouldn't have gotten near that attention anywhere and that's why Classic is such a huge contributing factor - it puts focus on WoW again where focus was lost within the last months / year.

[rda]

It's not only the amount of Classic subscribers, it's just the massive surge in interest for WoW at this point. Interviews, videos, nostalgia - it just contributes a lot to WoW's popularity this year. BfA wouldn't have gotten near that attention anywhere and that's why Classic is such a huge contributing factor - it puts focus on WoW again where focus was lost within the last months / year.

Yes, that's true, I agree.

Heck, I will keep tabs on the world first race in Classic myself. I didn't care who's going to be first to down Azshara, but for some reason I am suddenly interested in who's going to be first to down Ragnaros and Onyxia, and interested in details around that, like which classes are going to be in the setup, what consumables are going to be there, which bosses will turn out to be the hardest for the undergeared undertakers, etc. :-)

[Sondrelk]

The general strategy for Classic launch vis-a-vis the 8.2.5 patch and moving forward is i would imagine quite well thought out. And regardless of how well Classic was doing and how badly BfA was doing, the news would probably look about the same no matter what.

There is only so much new information a given player can process in a given time before the remainder simply becomes white noise.
Had the 8.2.5 PTR just been absolutely stuffed with new quests, voicelines, scenarios and datamined dialogue, then what would have happened is that the playerbase would become divided even more, few, if any would be able to dedicate their focus to only a single instance of WoW.

However, by splitting up the information what will happen is that Blizz first hooks the returning players for Classic, and maybe also whets the appetite of the BfA players who might be looking for another game to play in the between patch lulls.
After Classic has been released, Blizz can then capitalize on all hte players currently present in hte game, Classic or BfA, by giving them more news on 8.2.5 and the road going forward.
I can imagine that there might be quite a few players who quit after Cata or MoP that made a Worgen or Goblin that notices that BfA is updating their old alts, leading to them deciding to get back into BfA, just to give a random example.


tl;dr: Doubling down on information does not equal double the time investment. Spreading the information out in 2 major parts has a higher chance of doing just that though.

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Yes, that's true, I agree.

Heck, I will keep tabs on the world first race in Classic myself. I didn't care who's going to be first to down Azshara, but for some reason I am suddenly interested in who's going to be first to down Ragnaros and Onyxia, and interested in details around that, like which classes are going to be in the setup, what consumables are going to be there, which bosses will turn out to be the hardest for the undergeared undertakers, etc. :-)

I cannot imagine the race itslef being as interesting as you would imagine. The winner will probably go down to whoever can dedicate the most time into finding and gearing 40 players.

[rda]

I cannot imagine the race itslef being as interesting as you would imagine. The winner will probably go down to whoever can dedicate the most time into finding and gearing 40 players.

Well, the race isn't going to be on finding, it's going to be on doing everything fast, and we likely already know who the winner is going to be:

https://twitter.com/Methodgg/status/...702326272?s=20

...but I am interested not so much in who is going to win, but how. I am dying for details like "all our hunters were engineers and here is why ..." and "we managed to kill boss X with just two healers because ...". We lost so much of that RPG feel compared to vanilla, I am dying to at least sniff some back. (Even though I am not going to actually play Classic myself.)

[SaneOstrich]

It's not only the amount of Classic subscribers, it's just the massive surge in interest for WoW at this point. Interviews, videos, nostalgia - it just contributes a lot to WoW's popularity this year. BfA wouldn't have gotten near that attention anywhere and that's why Classic is such a huge contributing factor - it puts focus on WoW again where focus was lost within the last months / year.

All in all I think classic will be a net gain for wow as a whole. At the very least it offers variety, which is always good. I also expect both games will be able to benefit from their core player base.

Now back to a question about 8.2.5 With the announcement of no heritage armour for worgen/goblins, do you lot expect different races getting theirs? So it's not, we don't have armor this time, but more 'we want to spread our attention to more then just worgen and goblins'. I'd be surprised we end BfA without heritage armor for humans and orcs, but am personally hoping they add trolls asap.

[Sondrelk]

Well, the race isn't going to be on finding, it's going to be on doing everything fast, and we likely already know who the winner is going to be:

https://twitter.com/Methodgg/status/...702326272?s=20

...but I am interested not so much in who is going to win, but how. I am dying for details like "all our hunters were engineers and here is why ..." and "we managed to kill boss X with just two healers because ...". We lost so much of that RPG feel compared to vanilla, I am dying to at least sniff some back. (Even though I am not going to actually play Classic myself.)

I am going to go out on a limb here and assume most of them will be Herbalist/Alchemy for the Black lotus flasks.

Though i suppose you are right. There might be some curveballs. My point is more that the race itself will not be as interesting as the prep for it.

[Anime]

no real raid content for atleast another 6+ months

[Kagdar]

In a way yeah if you noticed they've been hyping up Classic Launch the past few days. Probably though they're still doing some internal testing regardless, and that whole AV with Blues was just for one day..

My thought was that they might have been waiting for LFR Azhara to actually be available before revealing what comes next.

[Sondrelk]

My thought was that they might have been waiting for LFR Azhara to actually be available before revealing what comes next.

LFR Azshara has been out for a while now though.