Where has the saved development time gone?

[kaminaris]

Gear has always been rental gear and it was never a problem until it became a buzzword. I don't need or want infinite horizontal progression and I certainly don't belive that a lack of it is what is hurting the game right now. I don't really care enough about Island Expeditions to want to see them bolstered more than the things that were discussed in the panel.

Another thing people seem to be missing is that warfronts really looked like an excuse to revamp some older zones, and I think they did a great job. We can probably expect something similar with shadowlands, I just hope it is more well received than WFs were.

It doesn't matter what you want, what matters is that some people like islands, they were low cost feature that could be alternative for some people.

And no, gear has never been as rental as it was in legion, to the extend that your class played completely hollow at without it. It never changed so drastically your gameplay.

As for warfronts, well idea wasn't bad, but execution was horrible.

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Islands is teh foundation for Torghast, in that Islands were the first experiement into a truly "infinite" replayable system dependent on randomization.
Not really a whole lot of overlap beyond that, i admit. But Islands did not really have anywhere else to go beyond tiny refinements on teh base system, akin to how Challenge dungeons eventually became M+, or taking the parts that worked and making something new.

That being said, i do think that come 10.0 we might see a system combining teh best parts of Islands (varied world design) combined wit hthe best parts of Torghast (roguelike dungeon) and possibly combine it into one great big lump of fun content to do in your downtime.

Foundation for torghast? PLEASE. Its nowhere near the islands. Unless that is like 50th iteration of island that turned them into something completely different.
Islands had A LOT of room for improvement. First and foremost, more items, better items.

I don't want to see combination of systems! I want to see all previous systems at the same time, iterated to something better over time. Long lasting form of content.

[FelPlague]

We all have to wait until release before having an opinion, didn't you know? Especially beta, when effectively 95% of it is feature complete. No way can we complain yet, we need to wait until release after people have bought it before making our own opinion.

Literally no one is saying wait till beta or release or etc.
people are saying to wait till we actually have something to talk about, everything so far people are talking about is either 100% made up, or 100% guesses made on random sways of minor things.

[Jester Joe]

Foundation for torghast? PLEASE. Its nowhere near the islands. Unless that is like 50th iteration of island that turned them into something completely different.
Islands had A LOT of room for improvement. First and foremost, more items, better items.

I don't want to see combination of systems! I want to see all previous systems at the same time, iterated to something better over time. Long lasting form of content.

People seem to forget the biggest part of islands that Blizzard has already expanded on and said they're going to keep looking into.

Enemy AI.

Imagine how much it would spice up Torghast with actual mobs hunting you down instead of just patrolling an area. Ones that actually try to dodge and counter you, instead of just being a glorified trash pack.

They would be foolish to not implement that.

[agentsi]

Shadowlands is launching with fewer dungeons, zones, and less staple content compared to the past. In addition, there will be no new features, races, classes or professions with the expansion.

So the question becomes, where has all the saved development time by not adding these standard expansion features gone to instead? Usually those resources are devoted to expansion gimmicks like Artifacts, Warfronts, Garrisons or other things. But in Shadowlands' case, it has no new gimmicks yet STILL has less staple content.

There will be class reworks, but there are always major class reworks in every expansion, yet these expansions still manage to launch with new features like new classes on top of the reworks. So that is not an excuse either. And with the end game zone being barren with your typical reputation grind (Covenants), it makes you wonder what the questing and zone team have actually been doing with their time.

All in all, it seems like Shadowlands has thinned out the amount of staple expansion content that WoW typically provides, without actually giving anything in return. The only explanation I can think of is that a significant portion of the WoW development team has been moved to D4 (similar to how much of the D3 team moved to WoW in Legion). As a result of this cost cutting for WoW, there is less raw content in Shadowlands.

Jesus, why do you feel so "entitled" to know where that extra time went. Are you a developer? How do you know that this expansion, the theme, the systems, the artwork, etc, didn't take up EVEN MORE TIME, than before? What puts you in a position to think this way?

The end game system alone took plenty of time I'm sure, not to mention, this looks like it has more going on than BFA did. Legion was fantastic in my book, mainly due to artifact weapons and legendaries. Kept you playing, and rewarded you for doing so.

They're not taking a shit on the job, it's Blizzard, as much as folks here want to hate and tear them down. They make good quality games, with amazing CGI work. Storytelling is hit or miss, as it is with ANY series. A lot of people just need to realize, the majority of their player base enjoys the game. So much so, they're willing to play an older verison of it and experience what it was like before all the massive QoL changes. Some love it, some hate it.

Either enjoy the game or stop coming to a forum to cry that it isn't what you think it should be. It's not your game, and if your input was valuable in anyway, they would be asking you for it and you wouldn't be giving it away freely on a forum.

[FelPlague]

Counting our Subscription money and laughing

They're rolling in their seats knowing people will pay £50 for a char boost.

i mean time to level 1-110 is long enough i rather pay then do all of that. first time leveling sure fun, second time sure fun, but i have done loremaster atleast 2-3 times by this point.
however funnily enough if blizz really wanted to make money, they woulda made the allied races not cancelled by boosts, so you could just boost to get the armor.

[ErrandRunner]

Pet Battles

[Triceron]

I think you are confused. Not only that, but the "final project " is a bad time to start asking questions.

Depends on the question. 'What the hell are the devs doing' is an unanswerable question that's existed since Warcraft 1. Final product or not, its just an excuse to rag on the devs more than any real search for answers.

[Mojo03]

I’m not sure if you heard...

BFA wasn’t well received, it’s not unlikely they reduced staff.

I’m fairly convinced they are going to do what OW is doing and make a 2.0 that updates and changes a bunch of stuff, but progress carries over for 10.0. So possible they’re working on that if that’s true.

The game feels dated AF currently and it’s getting harder for them to justify the cost... They need to do something novel if it’s going to survive in the modern age.

That’s my guess where resources are going, but who knows.

[kaminaris]

People seem to forget the biggest part of islands that Blizzard has already expanded on and said they're going to keep looking into.

Enemy AI.

Imagine how much it would spice up Torghast with actual mobs hunting you down instead of just patrolling an area. Ones that actually try to dodge and counter you, instead of just being a glorified trash pack.

They would be foolish to not implement that.

Yeah well I'd like that as well in both islands and thorgast. I completely don't understand why they scrapped it.

Exploration played some part but there was SO MUCH FUN with ATOMIK, damn. It's gone now.
I also liked it was open space, not some tight knitted dungeon.
For me islands lasted 5x longer than world quests.

[Jester Joe]

Yeah well I'd like that as well in both islands and thorgast. I completely don't understand why they scrapped it.

Exploration played some part but there was SO MUCH FUN with ATOMIK, damn. It's gone now.
I also liked it was open space, not some tight knitted dungeon.
For me islands lasted 5x longer than world quests.

When did they scrap it?

They used it in the PvP brawl for Arathi Basin I believe it is, Comp Stomp, where you fight an entire team utilizing that AI system.

I'm sure it will be in Torghast, they've even mentioned having mobs track you down.

[kaminaris]

When did they scrap it?

They used it in the PvP brawl for Arathi Basin I believe it is, Comp Stomp, where you fight an entire team utilizing that AI system.

I'm sure it will be in Torghast, they've even mentioned having mobs track you down.

I meant island expeditions, they scrapped it in SL.
Not just AI system that was interesting there but items from vendors, ATOMIK, pulling entire map and nuking all the mobs was fun.
Micro jetpack, rabbit charm

[Yriel]

No, they're more like Legion Order Halls from what I can tell. Which were one the best things about Legion. Hopefully, there will be a "Mage Tower" for each as well.

But think about it... what did you like about Order Halls?
For me it's two things, the artifact weapon and the class identity. Both are missing from Covenants. Yes you get two abilities but thats not the same as the weapons. And the theming is really generic, Light - Dark - Nature - Undead. I liked the class halls because it gave a cool class identity feeling. The look was mostly well done and it was cool to see all other players with your class around. Not seeing that in Covenants.
Aside from that they are just a reputation hub like the Pandaria Warcampaign (minus the dailies).

Plus, even if you see it as Order Halls 2.0 it still isn't anything new.

regarding features. explain to me what qualify as a feature.

Mostly it has to be new or unique. Otherwise anything is a feature (Hey we have quests in the expansion. Hey we have hunters as a playable class in the expansion. Great features).
And ideally it should be something with gameplay that you spend a lot of time playing. Doing five quests for some WoW VIP is nice but nothing new and maybe takes 2 hours to finish... and thats it for the whole expansion.
I liked the order halls (and i played through all of them) but the quests for them weren't well done or interesting 90% of the time and took like an hour to finish all of them combined (if you exclude the grind quests). Not really a selling point for me.

[Augusta138]

Its been pointed out before, other xpacs didnt bring much new features either.

BFA Features:
- 6 new zones ( 3 per faction to lvl in, other 3 are basically there for war campaign / WQs)
- Islands
- Heart of Azeroth
- Warfronts
- 8 boss starter raid
- 9 dungeons at launch (10th locked behind rep)
- 10 levels

Shadowlands features:
- 10 levels
- 4 new zones + town.
- Level squish / leveling overhaul (yay)
- Targetable legendaries
- de-pruning classes
- 10 boss start raid
- 8 dungeons at launch
- Covenants
- Tower (infinite challenge)

In my eyes, there is still roughly the same amount of content coming.

[Segus1992]

You're essentially just saying :"Shut up and buy it" when people are curious if they even should buy it.

No, but nobody knows yet. If you're unsure, never pre-order anything. Wait a week/month when it comes out and you'll have your answer.

Being naysaying at this point is just naysaying for the sake of being edgy and cool. It has no other purpose and no possible outcome except outrage. It's not like Blizzard doesn't know people expect content, they've seen before what happens when the content is lacking.

[owbu]

But that's exactly what people should do. Buy something, test it for yourself, build your own opinion instead of listening to others, and then if you don't like it, take it back and get a refund. That's how the world works. Trusting reviewers is the pinnacle of idiocy.

That sounds like a lot of time wasted on playing shitty games, because you couldn't be bothered to pick some reviewers who are good at describing game mechanics and have somewhat similiar tastes to you.
I can usually tell wether or not I will like a game based on just reading some reviews for 5 minutes. This is especially true for WoW.

[arandomuser]

8.2 wasnt planned the entire essence system was a new unplanned feature, but it kind of saved BFA so it was worth it. And more content isn always better IE warfronts and island expeditions.

[PenguinChan]

Literally no one is saying wait till beta or release or etc.
people are saying to wait till we actually have something to talk about, everything so far people are talking about is either 100% made up, or 100% guesses made on random sways of minor things.

Literally people have said that and I'm poking fun at it for good reason. I understand right now there is barely anything to prove where all the development time is going, or where it isn't. But I'm jumping in knowing people will keep saying the same thing about how we should wait until 'x' to provide feedback or have a complete opinion on it. I even said in another post that maybe a lot of the features we are getting will have way more depth than we are led on to believe.

There are also people who complain about people giving feedback. Someone quoted me and said that, and I'm just baffled.

Nice strawman you have there.

No one said wait till release. No one said wait till 9.0 beta. But people like you aren't even willing to wait till fucking alpha before you decide the expansion is shit.

Read above, people have said wait until release and people do say wait until things have changed / released.

I'm gonna have to start adding in /s or [Huge Sarcasm] to some of my posts.

[Weatherwax]

Maybe waiting to see with your eyes what's in the xpac instead of speculating on a few slides and interviews almost a year before the release would be a smart move?

That's exactly what we heard about BfA. Which probably means they'll have to make new AI to replace actual players by the end of Shadowlands, or else queues will take 2 hours (they already take more than one hour now).

[Yriel]

But here is my problem with new features. azerite gear was a new feature. (not a good one)

an expansion quality doesn't come with quantity of content. it's about how refined & good they are.

For example, they are bringing legendaries back in shadowlands with a way to target them instead of relying completely on RNG. This is a refined feature. waaay better than pure RNG.

The new weekly chest less RNG & can target them <<< refined feature.

I think that successful expansions takes on existing features & improve on them instead of doing a complete overhaul every expansion. For example, I was completely against removing legendary items in BFA. It just needed tweaking & less RNG.

Well yes, of course they are hit or miss. But i think that shouldn't keep them from trying and seeing what sticks.
I mean, thats the main draw of an expansion for me. Regular, established content is something for patches, in an expansion i expect something completely new. And even if from 4 new features only one makes it to the regular content thats a win for me.
Everything else would be a stagnating game.

[Vorkreist]

I cant wait for the hypothetical asteroid coming our way somewhere in time.

You must be new to wow or something.