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  1. #161
    it was the dream expansion for people who just wanted to login and raid.

    everyone else had nothing to do

  2. #162
    Brewmaster Evaddon's Avatar
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    Because they gave up on the Expansion and started working on Legion? 6.1 was a joke patch giving us a camera, blood elf models,and twitter interrogation people hardly use and no one wanted. This was the nail in the coffin to the expansions terrible endgame systems and features..WoD was great up until endgame, WoD had the worst endgame to date

    The launch of WoD other then various bugs and issues, was fantastic. WoD still has one of the best leveling experiences and questing experiences to date.

  3. #163
    Quote Originally Posted by Marrilaife View Post
    They cut corners left and right, who knows why, official excuse was "we hired a lot of people and had to train them" but they could you know... train them by making them do some job?

    WOD had tons of scrapped content like Bladespire / Karabor capitals, Farahlon, Southern Ogre Continent, Kargath mini-raid and he was lumped into Highmaul, Shattrath raid, Yrel story arc, Doomhammer proper story arc, Tess Greymane story, reps were an afterthought, apexis gear was way too overpriced trying to mask lack of content with extended grind (a theme we will see time and time again afterwards), ability to put your Garrison in any zone of your choice was removed and put into static spot, promised ideas of decorating Garrisons with trophies from slain rares and raid bosses removed and replaced with 3 monuments, racial customization in buildings and followers never happened all we got was a handful of guards, Blood Elf models were delayed until 6.1 and a lot of other ones had to be tweaked, from female Draenei faces to female Orc and Troll animations, Goblins & Worgens delayed until BFA lol...

    I could go for ages.

    The suspected reason why WOD was abandoned was that they tried to develop WOD & Legion parallelly to transition into "yearly expansions" (cashing in on box sales when subs jump to 10 mil on launch only to drop to 3-5 mil after was a lucrative perspective if you could double the frequency), but failed so hard that they finally realized best they can do is keep the 2-year expac cycle we had since basically tbc / wotlk.
    It's funny because WoD and Cataclysm are my two least favorite expansions and arguably among the worst, and I always wonder how different they'd have been if Blizzard didn't cut a tremendous amount of content from the both of them. Would they be middle of the pack or among the best?

    It's interesting to think about.

    (and no I'm not counting BFA among the worst yet because it still has life)

  4. #164
    Quote Originally Posted by otaXephon View Post
    Wha... Am I reading this correct? Not only do you think that BfA was supposed to come before Legion but that Shadowlands is underdeveloped with no "fallback"? (what)
    Yes.

    /10char

  5. #165
    Quote Originally Posted by Elestia View Post
    Yes.

    /10char
    Well, uh, thanks for clarifying I guess.

    Hey, um, can you pick up premium TV channels with that tin foil hat?

  6. #166
    Would've rather had 2 more years of SoO than what we ended up getting with WoD.

  7. #167
    Quote Originally Posted by Adoxe View Post
    Would've rather had 2 more years of SoO than what we ended up getting with WoD.
    I promise you: You wouldn't.

  8. #168
    Quote Originally Posted by valky94 View Post
    theres nothing to do except login once a day for dailies and for raids
    That's how most games are tho.

  9. #169
    Quote Originally Posted by Eggroll View Post
    It's public knowledge, not a secret. If you watch some of the dev interviews from that time, they even say it - new devs had to be trained in WoW matters. No tinfoil hat attached.
    You've got it backwards. They moved devs from Project Titan to WoW, which did indeed happen during WoD. Those were the people needing training.

  10. #170
    Quote Originally Posted by huth View Post
    You've got it backwards. They moved devs from Project Titan to WoW, which did indeed happen during WoD. Those were the people needing training.
    It happened in 2013, during WoD's development. But still, that dude's order of operations is wildly inaccurate and serves only to fuel some ridiculous conspiracy theory that WoD is intentionally bad because why the fuck not?

  11. #171
    Quote Originally Posted by valky94 View Post
    there was nothing to do after HFC released except loging in once per day for garrisons and for raids, same reason why i canceled my sub last week till 8.3, theres nothing to do except login once a day for dailies and for raids
    That's how the game was since vanilla...

    "Something to do" usually ends up being a boring grind like AP, leggos, herbs for pots, reps, so basically stuff most players what to get over with and actually play the end game which was raids or pvp. Now we have m+ as well.

    Tell me when there was "something to do" that lasted months and it wasn't raids / dungeons / pvp / dailies / grinding gold?

  12. #172
    What also needs to be taken into account, it's entirely possible that they fucked up the planning phase of WoD.

    They realized a lot of the content in WoD would suffer from the "Orc fatigue" or is not exactly the best type of content.
    Thing is, if that content is already in development and hundreds of hours went into it, there is no magical button that restores this dev time for other projects.

    There are a handful of videos on WoD which show that there was quite a lot of content in WoD rather far in development but then got scrapped before the alpha.

    The graveyard of scrapped systems / content in WoD is probably a lot bigger than for any other expansion.

  13. #173
    Quote Originally Posted by Narwhalosh Whalescream View Post
    Like how does that work?
    let me first correct this for you:

    WoD failed hard for YOU. or maybe us. or the consumers. WoD not failed THAT hard for blizz. they made an xpac with a great marketing and a „back to the roots“ setup in mind, which leaded to the most selling xpac in the first 2-3 months. they had over 12 million subs. but they did not any investments besides world and raid and garisson.

    if you just assume they know they need that ppl for other games and they already did that system/setup with a concept like „lets make enough money with the outcome of the xpac and save all money while xpac is running“ in mind, they maybe get same or more amount of profit with it, than with more investment but for longer subs.

    ofc, they can do that for a long time, bc loosing subs is long term problematic, so they ofc need a „bring back players all in“ thing like Legion after it. but for WoD itself, i think that worked very well for blizz. they know what they are doing. otherwise that xpac would not had that heavy marketing and not such a giant first 2-3 months peek. in the end they were even with their calculation and it was fine.

    what i just wanna say is: YOU think WoD failed. THEY think WoD was financial wise ok. At least: Maybe.

    and that means you ask your question (even with wrong given timeframe of 2 years, it wasnt 2 years) based on a false assumption. blizz was imo totally fine with SOO, because for the raiders it was good. and WoD was completely based on the old „raid or die“ concept.

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by Kralljin View Post
    What also needs to be taken into account, it's entirely possible that they fucked up the planning phase of WoD.

    They realized a lot of the content in WoD would suffer from the "Orc fatigue" or is not exactly the best type of content.
    Thing is, if that content is already in development and hundreds of hours went into it, there is no magical button that restores this dev time for other projects.

    There are a handful of videos on WoD which show that there was quite a lot of content in WoD rather far in development but then got scrapped before the alpha.

    The graveyard of scrapped systems / content in WoD is probably a lot bigger than for any other expansion.
    they fucked up nothing. as they said later in time, they shifted a lot of ppl to other projects and their focuses changed while already in development of WoD but a year or so before WoD even released. this wasnt an accident. this was planned and striped down. the complete mentailty of the whole marketing campaign was „back to the roots“ and „back to raid or die“ and brought A LOT old vanilla players back. thats the reason for the more than 12.2 million subs in the first 2-3 months and the most sold xpac.

    - - - Updated - - -

    ppl have to differentiate that their point of view and mindset is not blizzards.
    Last edited by Niwes; 2019-12-08 at 12:28 PM.

  14. #174
    No new class/race.
    https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads...lopment-thread
    Quote Originally Posted by Nevcairiel View Post
    If you are suggesting to take my Night Elfs Shadowmeld away, then please find some pike to run yourself through, tyvm.

  15. #175
    Quote Originally Posted by Niwes View Post
    as they said later in time, they shifted a lot of ppl to other projects and their focuses changed while already in development of WoD but a year or so before WoD even released.
    Source on that.

    That aside, your entire reasoning doesn't even explain the reason why they apparently shifted a lot of people to other projects.
    Did they because they just felt like "Fuck WoW" or what?

    Quote Originally Posted by Niwes View Post
    and „back to raid or die“
    Again, please provide me a source where Blizzard actually marketed this as pillar of WoD.

    All i recall from WoD was a marketing campaign on "Savage orcs, orcs & orcs".

  16. #176
    Quote Originally Posted by Kralljin View Post
    What also needs to be taken into account, it's entirely possible that they fucked up the planning phase of WoD.

    They realized a lot of the content in WoD would suffer from the "Orc fatigue" or is not exactly the best type of content.
    Thing is, if that content is already in development and hundreds of hours went into it, there is no magical button that restores this dev time for other projects.

    There are a handful of videos on WoD which show that there was quite a lot of content in WoD rather far in development but then got scrapped before the alpha.

    The graveyard of scrapped systems / content in WoD is probably a lot bigger than for any other expansion.
    They could've released it. They didn't hesitate to release other pet projects like... islands in BFA for example. I'd swear half of Blizzcon where they announced BFA, was about the goddamned islands.

    It's better to have some content than no content. It starts being bad when instead of leaving it optional they want to push the participation numbers up and force everyone to do that content whether they like it or not by tying the rest of the game to it, gate other stuff behind it, or add way too lucrative rewards for it.

    Like for example in MOP they had to gate the valor point rewards behind dailies, or the legendary cloak behind 2 bg wins (yes we get it Blizz, you added 2 new bgs, we'd probably play them if only we liked to pvp).

    Orc fatigue is a bit of a silly excuse, each expansion has a theme, did people complain about wotlk that there's too much snow and too much about scourge and undead?

    And WOD could have some non-Orc themes as well, like Ogre, Arakkoa, Saberon, Gronn, Botani, etc. but main storyline was meant to be about Orc and Draenei. For example I'm a big Draenei fan and I feel that 2 places that were meant to be about them, WOD, and 7.3 Argus, were disappointing and story cut short. Tbh half of Mac'aree was about Alleria and the void...

    Now for the Orc fans, I imagine Grom's story cut short and replaced with Gul'dan was probably disappointing as well.

  17. #177
    I am Murloc! KOUNTERPARTS's Avatar
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    I think WoD delivered on exactly what it was marketed for.

  18. #178
    The Patient
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    Because they didn't finish it.

    Where's Farahlon?
    Where's the Zangar Sea?
    Why did garrisons feel like they weren't tested properly?
    Why is the entire second raid tier missing?

    The part that annoys me the most about the whole thing is that Alt-Draenor is quite possibly the most interesting, beautiful world Blizzard have ever made, and it was utterly wasted by the total lack of faith in their own product. When the going got tough, they just dumped WoD by the wayside, cracked open the emergency Illidan/Demon Hunter box, and forgot the whole thing ever happened.

    Quote Originally Posted by Kaleredar View Post
    Developing ALL of the Garrison buildings and all of its various trappings with entirely new and iterative models, as well as designing all of the garrison systems as well? Allowing players to build buildings, invite in other players, recruit and manage followers, etc, etc? ALL of that stuff was brand-spanking-new in WoD, and, like it or hate it, was probably a tremendous amount of work from the art and programming departments. Same with Ashran. It's clear from the structure of the Battleground that a LOT of work went into it. I've always had the suspicion that blizzard intentionally axed Karabor and Bladespire as the capitals to incentivize participation in Ashran.
    Yeah, Blizzard seemingly went all in on garrisons -- and when they failed to deliver, there wasn't another major system to fall back on to pick up the slack. It worries me a little that when I look at Shadowlands, I see the same precarious scenario potentially playing out again with Torghast.
    Last edited by EbonBehelit-; 2019-12-08 at 01:20 PM.
    "Why has government been instituted at all? Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice, without constraint." - Alexander Hamilton

  19. #179
    Quote Originally Posted by Marrilaife View Post
    They could've released it. They didn't hesitate to release other pet projects like... islands in BFA for example. I'd swear half of Blizzcon where they announced BFA, was about the goddamned islands.
    Well yeah, i personally believe that BfA is basically the "complete" WoD if they had finished it rather than cutting it short.
    They realized that WoD wasn't shaping up properly, so they cut their losses, in BfA, they also most likely realized that Island expeditions, Warfronts (that was the most overhyped feature of the expansion for me) or Azerite armor but kept on because they didn't want to repeat WoD.

    Quote Originally Posted by Marrilaife View Post
    Orc fatigue is a bit of a silly excuse, each expansion has a theme, did people complain about wotlk that there's too much snow and too much about scourge and undead?
    It isn't.
    After over a whole year of fighting Orcs in SoO, people got tired of Orcs, then a new expansion rolled around and was filled with Orcs.

    As a matter of fact, they would have run into the same issue coming from WoD to Legion but avoided this in Legion by giving demons more of a side role initially.
    Aszuna focuses on Undead elves and Naga.
    Val'sharah on the Nightmare.
    Highmountain on the Drogbar.
    Stormheim on Vrykul.

    The expansion later had strong demonic themes with ToS and Argus, but the Broken Isles itself were not as heavy on demons as Draenor was on Orcs.

    Quote Originally Posted by Marrilaife View Post
    And WOD could have some non-Orc themes as well, like Ogre, Arakkoa, Saberon, Gronn, Botani, etc. but main storyline was meant to be about Orc and Draenei.
    "Could" is the key word.
    They could have avoided this issue, but they didn't and realized this issue too late in development.
    Gorgrond for example is a half finished mess on live because the original storyline was supposed to be about Orgrim and Durotan, the original layout of Gorgrond was also supposed to be different with the Grimrail track taking up a more prominent role.

  20. #180
    The Insane Thage's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Villager720 View Post
    They also promised different capital hubs - then argued they didn’t do that - then said we’d still see the inside of Karabor even if it was not a hub.
    The doors remain shut.
    And I never got my zangarwhale. Or dragonfly mount.

    WoD clearly hit some sort of enormous development implosion along the way - I honestly thought we’d have been told about it by now.
    They did tell us what happened. When Titan got cancelled, they moved most of the Titan devs back to WoW and the WoW teams were bogged down by bringing the Titan devs up to speed. Apparently there was also a culture clash between the two groups as to what direction to take WoD in; the buckets of wasted time and man hours resulted in a total development shitstorm and what we got was a half-baked wet shart of an expansion.
    Be seeing you guys on Bloodsail Buccaneers NA!



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