Should Blizzard work on 8.3 or 9.0?

[Nathasil]

The way the story goes right now is heavily pointing towards an Old God Tier for 8.3...imagine the joy of the raiding community if they get Crucible of Storms x4 for the last year of the expansion.

Of course, it's also possible that they directly jump to Sylvanas' Assault on Icecrown and the last tier will be undead-themed....but that would be a complete waste to throw at this garbarge expansion.

So, imho, 8.3 will be a horribly boring, unfun Old God raid..which is a GIANT mistake after rushing in a raid that COULD have been awesome like Crucible of Storms, just to make sure that everybody will already be burned out by the theme before the raid has even opened.

Maybe Blizzard will manage to actually surprise me in a positive way with the 8.3 setting...who knows? It's possible. But i don't realistically expect it to happen. I bet my money on a horribly-received Old-God tier that heavily reuses Crucible assets, which already is one of the least popular raids ever at this point...and that will be the grand finale of BFA for almost a year until we follow Sylvanas to Northrend in 9.0. If this actually holds true, i have no doubt in my mind that BFA will go down as the worst expansion in the history of this game...easily beating WoD to the title and letting Cata look like a marvelous gem of Video Game design.

[voxnor]

These are my favorite types of threads - the useless kind.

The answer is: They are an AAA developer and have teams working on multiple projects at once. This isn't a group of 3 building a poster for science fair folks.

And I would whole-heartedly disagree with 'catastrophic'. You may not like BFA, but that's a big word choice for a game still drawing millions of players world wide.

./2cents

[Alvito]

Every minute they spend trying to save BFA is another minute less on 9.0. I don't think that sacrifice is worth it.

Odd as it might seem some people like BfA. On top of that you are assuming that 9.0 will fix whatever you don't like about WoW now. So at the very least some are going to go with the devil they know.

[Kalarm]

As someone not playing. I'd admit I'd rather they focus on 9.0 to make something really kickass and fun. 8.2 does not make me want to come back at all. Classic... I've played classic and that is behind me. I might sub 1 month for old time sake and to level with a friend of mine and sing "I will show you the wooooorld" to her since she joined in cata.

If I'd be playing... I'd want my 8.3! :P

I do think they are trying to shift as much as they can on 9.0. It might be because at first we were led to believe some class changes would be made in a patch and they ended up scraping it to focus on WTV classes will look like in 9.0. The classes team might have went "we will NOT make changes for 8.1, 8.2 and 8.3 and focus on doing something really good for 9.0." I wouldn't be surprised if some classes / specs are well under way. (PLZ bring back shocks for enh instead of flametongue/frostbrand, PLZ PLZ PLZ). It may also be why the essence system is incredibly dull and boring. They weren't trying to make something really all that fun. They were trying to do something generic just to slow down the bleeding on someone with 95% chances of dying while they focus on that other patient that has much higher chances of survival IF they give it their full attention.

[Yunaqt]

8.3 pls, i'm in no rush ^^

[Thetruth1400]

- more focus on developing 9.0 classes instead of more 8.3 Azerite gimmicks
- shifting focus away from more failed Warfronts and islands in 8.3 to developing more zones and dungeons for 9.0
- not rushing through major lore characters like Azshara and developing intricate and meaningful story lines in 9.0
- with more people working on 9.0 it'd be out sooner

Agreed. BfA is a flop, and it's going to take big changes to actually, change the issues that are the primary flops. The big one is class design, which is absolutely terrible right now and will not be changed until 9.0.

8.2 itself, for as delayed it is has been, feels like a rush job.
- Tyrande just up and vanished from the story, and seeing as she's a Night elf and we're fighting, you know, former Night Elves, you'd think she'd be around somewhere.
- Queen Azshara basically just kind of shows up in the background briefly before she's killed off.
- Sylvanas has barely been around except in the background and what she is doing seems to make very little sense to the point all of the Horde leadership doesn't trust her.

And what does all of this have to do with the story of BfA? Nothing so far. We were at war with each other, (canon lore wise) Horde took a break to go fight G'huun and Alliance struck, killing their allies leader and decimating their fleet. Now we're going into 8.2, which really doesn't progress that story any further, instead focusing on the background story of N'Zoth to (probably) set up the next expansion and to Mechagnomes which are about as uninteresting of a side story as can be. "Oh they're just Gnomes that want some robot parts and their leader might be slightly crazy, but this has nothing to do with BfA story or the next expansion or anything really, it's just content."

It seems like a story that just isn't really going anywhere, just being drug out until they can finally get some idea of where they want to go for 9.0.

They need to wrap it up and give us the next expansion so we can have a story that actually progresses at a reasonable pace and the class changes / system changes that both we and they need to keep this game from dying, and yes I mean actual dying not just "oh this game is dying" like has been said for years, and I think we're finally getting to that point with how even their controversial things barely stir up any hype anymore.

[MrLachyG]

both /10char

[Alkizon]

And where is quite standard and logical, due to certain circumstances, option: "I don't give a $hit!"

[TigTone]

Can you expansion quitters just go away? We get it you don’t like BFA so you quit. Go play another game and to distract you for 9.0 release.

[Pebrocks The Warlock]

Given how catastrophic BFA has been so far

Why are you trying to push your views onto everyone else?

[Shefu]

Stop being lazy and focus on 8.3 first.

[Veritus7]

Was WoD worth sacrificing for Legion? Because it's basically what happened. WoD turned into a shitshow, but Legion was some of the best content they ever made. I look back at WoD with a bit of sadness, because it's potential really was enormous, but I'm at odds whether it was worth sacrificing it for Legion. I'm inclined to say yes, it was worth it.

[Xaviaton]

we do know how is the cycle, u can read the book about wow develop from ex-wow developer, they made karazhuan and finished it and scrapped it twice, pre-vanilla era even
they do random stuff, delay some for later and other release, they have a full dragon island that isn't released because it has no place in-game
so no, they didn't finish anything specific for 8.3 so far, if anything is 'finished' that's because they had it done for later use, not for 8.3 specifically

Fair enough then, sounds like you have done better research than me! I should pick this book up, thanks for intel

[RangerDaz]

they should work on both.

/thread

[Irian]

I mean, I'm personally not rejoining BfA. If the transmog changes didn't make me do it, nothing will.

That being said I think it's really indicative of the problem with Blizzard's hopelessly forgiving and addicted playerbase that people actually want them to scrap a product that they're completely blowing rather than actually make an effort to fix it. This arbitrary rule of "we don't change game or class-design mid expansion" is being used to justify BfA being coughed up as a loss when Blizzard themselves are directly responsible for that kind of decision making.

They've made their own rules and the playerbase has decided that that's the way it has to be because they are unwilling to change it. I can't speak for anyone else but I'm not buying this crap anymore, I want and expect them to both make 9.0 amazing and also properly develop and fix the expansion by 8.3 because they're charging us a subscription for this shit. If they want a game's worth of money every 4 months they'd damn well better actually earn it.