I on Hazzikostas - there will be NO 8.3.5

[dcc626]

At earliest, Shadowlands is October. When they put up "release by" date, it's their more friendly way of stating the quarter they're aiming for. Legion/BFA had "by September 21 release" aka Q3. Shadowlands is "by December 31 release". Q4 is October to December.

i kinda doubt they would release Shadowlands at a time that would have the world first race interfere with blizzcon.

[Onikaroshi]

i kinda doubt they would release Shadowlands at a time that would have the world first race interfere with blizzcon.

And I highly doubt they'll release after Blizzcon. They'll probably release tail end of Oct. It's three weeks between launch and raid launch so taking a weekend out of the grind schedule isn't that big of a deal.

And if Method or what not wants to say people can't go.... tickets will sell out regardless, Blizz doesn't NEED method there.

[Chickat]

Well thats good news for an early alpha. Predicting Alpha in Feb now.

[Relapses]

Yea, essences were thrown together with little to no planning, they have said as much, probably why they kind of... suck.

But as to the cloak/ring. They heavily nerfed requirements on those and made them super easy to get, I really don't see an issue with that way of doing things.

That's the thing -- they really didn't "heavily nerf" the requirements for either the cloak or the ring. Catch-up mechanics were added but they saved maybe a week or two from the total grind. (I'd know, I grinded 6 fucking cloaks in MoP and 7 fully maxed rings in WoD. >_<)

[melodramocracy]

Honestly, I think it's a design flaw with Essences in general. And Essences themselves seem to have been Blizzard's answer to another of BfA's design flaws: Azerite gear. The whole system just kind of sucks and as much as account-wide Essences may be appreciated by the community, Blizzard likely doesn't view the effort required to upkeep them as a high enough barrier to entry into content. Similar arguments were made in WoD and MoP towards the Legendary Cloak/Ring but Blizzard never caved on that either.

Neither system is all that bad, it's just variation number 20 on the same systems that started creeping in once glyphs were removed, or at least made cosmetic, many expansions ago.

It's difficult to argue that the choices in such systems now absolutely ARE more interesting than what was previously provided. Granted, the talent tree itself is still pretty awful, and far too many specs have very obvious best choices in each row.

I think the disconnect currently lies in that Blizzard built BFA to not be alt friendly, and the playerbase seems to want just the opposite.

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Well thats good news for an early alpha. Predicting Alpha in Feb now.

Classic updating and maintenance is likely chipping into the team's overall effort.

[Onikaroshi]

That's the thing -- they really didn't "heavily nerf" the requirements for either the cloak or the ring. Catch-up mechanics were added but they saved maybe a week or two from the total grind. (I'd know, I grinded 6 fucking cloaks in MoP and 7 fully maxed rings in WoD. >_<)

I grinded a bunch of them too, never really had a problem after they nerfed them. It was far more than a week or two shaved off.

Hell, one step that took me a month on my main I got done in a week on an alt. ToT drops or something.

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Classic updating and maintenance is likely chipping into the team's overall effort.

The main wow team has zero to do with classic, it's its own small team. Aside from Ion also "running" it.

[Zeek Daniels]

So we will have a year long content drought, with no new open world content.

Well done, Ion. Well done.

How many will be still playing before the 9.0 prepatch launches? 100.000?

If you ask me, i believe Ion doses not really care. As long he has his Nyalotha raid.

The hell are you even talking about. You going to fully clear the raid and gear up all your toons in one week? This content should last most players 5 months b4 they start getting bored. That leaves a 6 month drought not a year long drought.

[Relapses]

I grinded a bunch of them too, never really had a problem after they nerfed them. It was far more than a week or two shaved off.

Hell, one step that took me a month on my main I got done in a week on an alt. ToT drops or something.

MoP's catch-up mechanics were better than WoD's. WoD's required Apexis crystal grinding and... well, sorry, fuck that noise. Suffice to say, they did KIND OF nerf the Essence requirement in 8.3 and I guess it's a matter of how you view that content as to whether you consider the Essence grind analogous to the Legendary cloak/ring. (Oh, and we're getting ANOTHER Legendary cloak in 8.3 too so... yeah. Good times.)

[Vakna]

They've been shooting for August expansion releases, which means July prepatch.

6 months isn't really a drought

They are definitely not hitting the August release date this time, alpha would be out by now if they were going to. The demo at Blizzcon was also absolutely barebones, it was just BfA in a new zone.

[Onikaroshi]

MoP's catch-up mechanics were better than WoD's. WoD's required Apexis crystal grinding and... well, sorry, fuck that noise. Suffice to say, they did KIND OF nerf the Essence requirement in 8.3 and I guess it's a matter of how you view that content as to whether you consider the Essence grind analogous to the Legendary cloak/ring. (Oh, and we're getting ANOTHER Legendary cloak in 8.3 too so... yeah. Good times.)

Cloaks are just kind of an easy slot to gear a legendary in I guess, the two really aren't comparable.

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They are definitely not hitting the August release date this time, alpha would be out by now if they were going to. The demo at Blizzcon was also absolutely barebones, it was just BfA in a new zone.

And Legions was just the first part of the DH starting area with a bunch of NYI abilities, your point?

Shit, legion alpha launched with like 3 classes.

Point is, we have no idea how far they are internally. But I doubt Aug. anyway, or they would have said sept. like the last two.

[Vakna]

And Legions was just the first part of the DH starting area with a bunch of NYI abilities, your point?

Shit, legion alpha launched with like 3 classes.

Point is, we have no idea how far they are internally. But I doubt Aug. anyway, or they would have said sept. like the last two.

Legion alpha also launched 3 months ago if we are using it as an example here.

[Nize]

i kinda doubt they would release Shadowlands at a time that would have the world first race interfere with blizzcon.

At earliest, it would be October. My personal guess is actually in November just after Blizzcon.

[FuujCraft]

Some people act like 8.3.5 would have been a massive content patch. Spoiler, it wouldn't have been.

[Onikaroshi]

Legion alpha also launched 3 months ago if we are using it as an example here.

It was also incredibly long because they did major work on most of the specs. It's not really that comparable, they're not doing major overhauls of the specs.

Legion's Alpha went from Nov. to May, about 5.5 months.

BfAs Alpha launched Feb and Went to April, like... 3 months total.

Also Legion beta May 9th, BfA beta April 24th, they started like 2 weeks apart.... we can infer nothing from when the alpha/beta starts or from what was shown at blizzcon.

[DemonDays]

At what point do you differentiate between "listening to feedback" and what Blizzard actually does with the game? And moreover, how accountable do we hold Blizzard for issues that are the result of external corporate pressure? (ie, it seems pretty obvious in retrospect that BfA was released early to meet a Q3 2018 benchmark.)

The problem I have with people saying that Blizzard "ignores feedback," is that there are often reasons Blizzard does or doesn't do things that players are powerless to change. I would love account wide essences but, sadly, Blizzard likely views them as a compelling reason to keep people engaged in the game. Does it burn out or frustrate people? Yes. Is that burnt out and frustration enough to lead people to become disengaged with the game... to the point where they decide to unsub? That's a less clear answer and despite what you see on forums, I have reservations as to the actual impact.

Sadly, I doubt time gating isn't going to go anywhere anytime soon. Once more, I don't like it. But the alternative to time gating is people playing the game a stupid amount then turning around and complaining that there's nothing to do after the content has been consumed. An even more unfortunate side effect to this are the few people who, when things are not time gated, feel compelled to full try hard things. (AP in Legion was a pretty good example of this. There was no implicit need to grind AP but because it was uncapped you were essentially always competing against whomever had the most free time to max it out.)

Add to that the fact that it seems Blizzard is letting BfA fall into maintenance mode while they shift efforts into SL and you can understand why there is seeming radio silence in reference to this expansion's woes. The same thing happened in WoD and it resulted in Legion so maybe that's not a bad thing. They likely view any changes made to the game at this point is too little too late.

All this to say that what this community views as willful ignorance of issues isn't always as cut and dry as people on this forum like to make it seem. I really don't think any developer ever sets out to intentionally piss off its playerbase and this community has become so bitter and cynical that the very possibility that Blizzard might or might not do something for any reason other than pure hatred of the people who play the game is met with harsh rebuke.

Whilst it seems pretty clear they rushed BfA out the door at the higher ups instructions who do we hold accountable for design decisions? You can't blame that on corporate meddling. You have to hold them accountable for these repeated mistakes and their insistence on completely ignoring well thought out feedback that they eventually admit was correct.

I thought suggestions that this expansion is in maintenance mode weren't allowed? Now it's obvious? It was pretty obvious when the 8.3 PTR went up and they were re-using Invasions in re-used old zones.

I didn't ask for time-gating to go away entirely. Re-read what I wrote. I specifically asked for time-gating to go away for the Essences from 8.2 as they are old content and they are a barrier for entry to play an alt.


Re-grinding traits on Azerite Armor was cut and dry. The RNG nature of them is cut and dry. All of these things were pointed out to them repeatedly during Beta and they ignored them. They didn't correct course until 8.1 and players were right, again. Certain specs like Shadow and Enhance being completely unfinished were cut and dry and Ion even admitted so and promised to rework them in 8.1. What they instead got was a few number changes that easily could have been in a hotfix.

There are just far too many examples of them completely ignoring feedback and then having to course correct over the entirety of the expansions life cycle. People look upon Legion fondly because they only remember 7.3.5. It also had major issues. Are you not sick of feeling like you're Beta testing an expansion over it's life cycle for it to eventually become decent in its final patch?

[Seasz]

Yikes

/chars

[Caerule]

Maybe it will be covered in 8.3, but I doubt it.

Nothing that I've seen datamined to confirm Azeroth is actually saved from Sargeras' damage. I mean, I suppose there's a 10% chance that it'll be in the raid cinematic. But you would at least expect that there would be some sort of wrap-up questline for that where Magni pats you on the back.

[Trassk]

why is anyone here surprised by another content drought? This has happened repeatedly in Wow. Do you really think they'd have changed things around now?

People will just play the hell out of the new content, and when thats dried up they will play other games, saying they've just given up on wow. And then shadowlands drops and your be back on like you said nothing in the first place.

[Onikaroshi]

Some people act like 8.3.5 would have been a massive content patch. Spoiler, it wouldn't have been.

Also... this, because 7.3.5 was basically nothing as well. Small story to "destroy" your Artifact which is not happening this time, and the Allied races patched in, which again, isn't something we're getting.

[DemonDays]

MoP's catch-up mechanics were better than WoD's. WoD's required Apexis crystal grinding and... well, sorry, fuck that noise. Suffice to say, they did KIND OF nerf the Essence requirement in 8.3 and I guess it's a matter of how you view that content as to whether you consider the Essence grind analogous to the Legendary cloak/ring. (Oh, and we're getting ANOTHER Legendary cloak in 8.3 too so... yeah. Good times.)

It doesn't matter if you nerf the Essence requirements if you still have the time-gating in place.

It still takes weeks because of an arbitrary lock on how much rep you can earn each day.