Why did Blizzard blow their load on Mechagon?

[Soon-TM]

Not make sense might be a poor choice of words.
Rather my point is that only the Alliance side feels like it was crafted with a clear endgame, the Horde one is literally the same one.

I very distinctly remember some Devs talking about the Horde starting with a scuba team instead of the landfall the Alliance had, similarly I always imagined the Horde attacked from the opposite side ending in where Alliance makes landfall.

Overall though I feel confident stating the Darkshore warfront was cut down short mid development when it became clear it wasn't worth the time.

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My guess is their vision for BfA hinged on islands, warfronts and azerite armour being well received.
When they realized no amount of patching could salvage it in time they probably just decided to scrap it like what happened with WoD after they realized they were behind schedule.

Probably. It is also consistent with the Barrens warfront (and possibly the Silvermoon one too) being cut off - at least, I remember seeing a lot of datamined stuff about it in Wowhead.

Still, I can't understand why could Devs possibly think that islands, Warfronts and Azerite were going to be well received, given the fact that they were pretty much unanimously roasted during beta. And not by random LFR dwellers, but by some of the best players in the world, from both PvP and PvE venues.

[Lodreh]

...This led to us feeling like there's little to no resolution on many of the core themes BFA tried to explore. Why does it feel like the thing they put they most effort into this expansion was the side story?

The faction conflict is a weak premise for a 15 year old game that ask both sides to work together to overcome every major conflict. Fortunately, we had side stories to keep the lore and character development moving forward... it may have not been much but it was well executed. I still hold that Mechagon should have been the Suramar of BfA at release... or at the very least in the 8.1 patch. It was a much needed heroic diversion in the face of all the war mongering.

[Sondrelk]

Probably. It is also consistent with the Barrens warfront (and possibly the Silvermoon one too) being cut off - at least, I remember seeing a lot of datamined stuff about it in Wowhead.

Still, I can't understand why could Devs possibly think that islands, Warfronts and Azerite were going to be well received, given the fact that they were pretty much unanimously roasted during beta. And not by random LFR dwellers, but by some of the best players in the world, from both PvP and PvE venues.

Devs cannot change major plans and systems like that by the time they were out. They clearly attempted to fix it partway In with the change to diversify the islands and cluster the enemies up. Problem was it didn't work.

Similarly with Warfronts they had probably started initial development on the Darkshore warfront by the time it became abundantly clear it wasn't going to work.

In both cases we still got the systems because simply scrapping them is a monumental waste of time and effort for which they could make no equivalent in time, so they threw it out the, made some token attempts to fix it then abandoned it when it didn't work.

[ravenmoon]

I think they had big vision on the begining how BfA should looks but there were a lot of layoffs throu the long way. Some PR problems. Activision things. And general issues inside the company. I feels like BfA is cutted in a half and squished to the end to start over again in Shadowlands. Classic made some subs i bet BfA made sales well so they decide to pack it up and close story faster. Cheers.

I think the only thing that changed in an affectable way to the game is bringing battle of darkshore to 8.1 because of how massive the whinge was over the burning of Teldrassil plot. I also think theymay have changed their horde/alliance plans as a consequence.

[PhilUK]

Mechagon always seemed to me that it would be a customization unlock like the night warrior, with vulpera and sethrak as the allied races, but that never happened.

[Monster Hunter]

Seems like a waste to put so many resources on Mechagon with the big dungeon and world content when that could have been used for Nzoth stuff instead. Besides giving the alliance an allied race that barely anyone wants to play what was the point? Mechagon is so isolated from the rest of the story that BFA wouldn't have really been affected if it didn't exist. Why not just do Mechagon in another expansion?

Blizzard was already chewing on too many themes in BFA already. Sargeras sword stuck in azeroth, wrathion/dragons, Horde vs Horde&Alliance, the drust, Ghuun, Azshara, Nzoth, Voljin & Bob Salami, Azerite, Sylvanus plans, exploring Zandalaar & Kul'tiras and then amputee gnomes out of nowhere?? Blizzard lost focus with this expansion and just tried to throw everything in the can and shake it up and see what holds. This led to us feeling like there's little to no resolution on many of the core themes BFA tried to explore. Why does it feel like the thing they put they most effort into this expansion was the side story?

Thing is nyalotha has as many new assets as mechagone does.

I think what you mean is why did blizz spend so much resource on these new assets just for what is a small amount of content in regards to time spent there.

Wlthe big difference isn't the Art assets added in though. Its the maps, 8.2 had 2 new zones, new raid and new dongeon. 8.3 was just new assets in old zones and a new raid. To which I can I ly think is because the level designers are likely mostly focused on Shadowlands, blizz only had one zone playable at Blizzcon and 0 class changes avaliable. The demo was bfa with a new map and a few extra quests so my gut says there likely crunching like fuck to get stuff sorted for that to release an alpha in the next month or so worth testing.

[bullseyed]

Mechagon is so isolated from the rest of the story

Sometimes I have to wonder what game you people who skip lore/quests are even playing.


This is an old god expansion about the curse of flesh. The king of Mechagon wants to reverse the curse of flesh to return to a pure state. This is highly related to the story.

The only "problem" is we didn't get any closure with N'zoth on this angle. We, as fleshlings, are children of N'zoth. He specifically created us as a part of his plan to beat the Titans and the Titan Azeroth in particular. He planned that we would free him, he planned that we would beat Azshara. He might have even planned that we'd "kill" him. The question is why, and what is his endgame? The whole thing with the dagger and stabbing him to break a hole open and the dagger falling on the floor somewhere is probably highly important, but probably won't be answered for another 2-3 expansions.


Anyway, we again kill a good guy in Mechagon, as the king there looks at N'zoth and says "N'zoth bad, I should undo his plans with these fleshlings" and tries to defeat us. Just like we locked up Sargeras, a good guy who was trying to stop the void lords from using an old god to corrupt Azeroth and birth a void titan.

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Thing is nyalotha has as many new assets as mechagone does.

I think what you mean is why did blizz spend so much resource on these new assets just for what is a small amount of content in regards to time spent there.

Wlthe big difference isn't the Art assets added in though. Its the maps, 8.2 had 2 new zones, new raid and new dongeon. 8.3 was just new assets in old zones and a new raid. To which I can I ly think is because the level designers are likely mostly focused on Shadowlands, blizz only had one zone playable at Blizzcon and 0 class changes avaliable. The demo was bfa with a new map and a few extra quests so my gut says there likely crunching like fuck to get stuff sorted for that to release an alpha in the next month or so worth testing.

Funny that people can come to completely wrong conclusions like this...

8.2 had 2 new zones instead of 1, this means that one of the zones that should have been in 8.3 got pulled up and released FASTER than scheduled. Apparently they had "too many developers" by this moronic "working on the next expansion" stuff people spout off about.

8.2 had a new mega-dungeon, which is worth at least 2 regular dungeons. Again, this means instead of getting 1 dungeon in 8.2 and 1 in 8.3, we got 2 dungeons in 8.2, meaning FASTER content. Holding back the M+ version until 8.3 to give us something new was nice. They could have released junkyard in 8.2 and workshop in 8.3 to keep the slower folks happier, I guess.

And "no class changes" is a design goal that is generally positive. If you quit in 8.1 and come back in 8.3, you shouldn't need to re-itemize and re-learn your entire class. The goal is to make it so that you can jump in and out at any point in the expansion. This is the opposite of what our slower friends claim about "forcing longer subscriptions" and whatnot. Does it suck if you spec isn't so good and you want it to be better? Sure. But the game has never been so balanced with all specs doing negligibly different DPS. All specs are viable in raids currently and have been the entire expansion.

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The faction conflict is a weak premise

If only they had some kind of big bad guy who was known for controlling people's minds and making them act out of character. People could do things that don't even logically make sense, because they're being controlled!

I guess that concept would be too hard for children to understand.

[alturic]

QA IS part of Dev. That's the problem here. Everything QA can find early reduces the amount of dev time. The current shit-show with 8.3 means that devs have to fix stuff instead of working on shadowlands.

Please, learn this: QA is part of dev, and being stingy on QA costs exponentially. To give you a simple example from my company:

With QA:

Dev creates new feature.
QA finds bug, sends it back.
Dev can fix it.

Without QA:

Dev creates new feature.
Customer reports bug.
Service has to document bug and start the process.
Product Management gets this and decides on what to do in conjunction with the development lead.
Dev has to fix it, but probably not the same person and even if she/he probably has forgotten a lot - takes longer.
New builds for customer + delivery + installation.
Update of Manuals.

Trust me, every bug QA finds in house before the User is a massive cost saver on dev but also dev support time.

Sadly, the pencil pushers at Activision/Blizzard are not aware of that.

Unless your company has a very, very, VERY tight coupling between QA and devs, your "Without QA" process is identical to the "With QA" process, just using different words.

For example:

With QA:

Dev creates new feature.
QA finds bug.
QA has to document bug and start the process.
Product Management gets this and decides on what to do in conjunction with the development lead.
Dev has to fix it.
New builds for QA + delivery + installation
Update of Manuals.

The point I'm trying to make is, QA *is* the customer in your "With QA" example. I disagree that manuals ever need to be updated, unless the fix to the bug alters what the feature originally was designed to be (i.e. requiring a manual tweak).

[Amariw]

The only load that was blown anywhere went into the dungeon, and even that's pretty poor.
Like, fucking Mechagon, and all we're getting is a zone that looks like Tiragarde with a bunch of cogs and scrap and a dungeon that showcases like 1% of what is supposed to be an entire kingdom... basically the exact same as Nazjatar/Eternal Palace. An actual joke compared to what it was supposed to be.
The idea and the actual activities in the zones might be top notch, but the actual zones are just pathetic - and 8.3's Nzoth stuff is no different from that. There's lore and potential for an entire expansion... and all we're getting is a joke of a slice of like 5% of what it could actually be.

The outdoor activities were shit as well. In mop timeless isle there were ton of elites, non elites, and super strong elites that you could still solo like the crystal giants, but they rewarded bigger timeless coins for people who enjoyed solo play. Mechagon is filled with meaningless trivial non elites, what little elites there are are unimpressive, and there's no incentive to go after them anyway because your rewards are dictated by dailies and the world quest. Its far less enjoyable then even wod's tanaan, and just generally a really faulty outdoor design.

[cparle87]

Not make sense might be a poor choice of words.
Rather my point is that only the Alliance side feels like it was crafted with a clear endgame, the Horde one is literally the same one.

I very distinctly remember some Devs talking about the Horde starting with a scuba team instead of the landfall the Alliance had, similarly I always imagined the Horde attacked from the opposite side ending in where Alliance makes landfall.

Overall though I feel confident stating the Darkshore warfront was cut down short mid development when it became clear it wasn't worth the time.

Although I've never heard of the scuba thing before it does sound pretty cool. On the other hand, with the number of bugs we've seen in the submarine stuff during the Nazmir Alliance invasion and the general hatred of underwater combat it might be a good idea that they gave that idea a pass.

[Monster Hunter]

Sometimes I have to wonder what game you people who skip lore/quests are even playing.


This is an old god expansion about the curse of flesh. The king of Mechagon wants to reverse the curse of flesh to return to a pure state. This is highly related to the story.

The only "problem" is we didn't get any closure with N'zoth on this angle. We, as fleshlings, are children of N'zoth. He specifically created us as a part of his plan to beat the Titans and the Titan Azeroth in particular. He planned that we would free him, he planned that we would beat Azshara. He might have even planned that we'd "kill" him. The question is why, and what is his endgame? The whole thing with the dagger and stabbing him to break a hole open and the dagger falling on the floor somewhere is probably highly important, but probably won't be answered for another 2-3 expansions.


Anyway, we again kill a good guy in Mechagon, as the king there looks at N'zoth and says "N'zoth bad, I should undo his plans with these fleshlings" and tries to defeat us. Just like we locked up Sargeras, a good guy who was trying to stop the void lords from using an old god to corrupt Azeroth and birth a void titan.

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Funny that people can come to completely wrong conclusions like this...

8.2 had 2 new zones instead of 1, this means that one of the zones that should have been in 8.3 got pulled up and released FASTER than scheduled. Apparently they had "too many developers" by this moronic "working on the next expansion" stuff people spout off about.

8.2 had a new mega-dungeon, which is worth at least 2 regular dungeons. Again, this means instead of getting 1 dungeon in 8.2 and 1 in 8.3, we got 2 dungeons in 8.2, meaning FASTER content. Holding back the M+ version until 8.3 to give us something new was nice. They could have released junkyard in 8.2 and workshop in 8.3 to keep the slower folks happier, I guess.

And "no class changes" is a design goal that is generally positive. If you quit in 8.1 and come back in 8.3, you shouldn't need to re-itemize and re-learn your entire class. The goal is to make it so that you can jump in and out at any point in the expansion. This is the opposite of what our slower friends claim about "forcing longer subscriptions" and whatnot. Does it suck if you spec isn't so good and you want it to be better? Sure. But the game has never been so balanced with all specs doing negligibly different DPS. All specs are viable in raids currently and have been the entire expansion.

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If only they had some kind of big bad guy who was known for controlling people's minds and making them act out of character. People could do things that don't even logically make sense, because they're being controlled!

I guess that concept would be too hard for children to understand.

No class changes in the blizz con demo.

Blizz have had the no big changes during expansion policy for a fair few years now.

They seem to be adopting a no more sweeping redesigns between expansions policy which I wish they had taken in mop but now it looks like we're stuck with the current class designs for a log time. At least we're getting some old mostly useless spells back though.

[keyboardshinobi]

Right, but like you said Customer reports bug, meaning we have to get said content first. In reality is means more bugs in the content we get, but they won't hold all the devs back to fix bugs, just fix critical ones and move on.



Prepatch is not x.x.5, Prepatch is considered 9.0. Usually we get that what, 2 week - month before release? I just hope we get it a bit sooner.

im aware prepatch is not x.x.5 but 8.3.5 was cancelled so hopefully 9.0 is sooner than later