Shadowlands is the "players were right" expansion.

[Raetary]

Now if they just reversed their stance on ARPG gameplay borrowed from Diablo 3 (looking at you M+)

How about no?

[Aucald]

I think it's a good thing for the developers to acknowledge they've made some errors and judgment and seek to reverse or at least find middle ground on some of the more highly contested elements of retail WoW. I can understand why they might feel the need to be protective of their work - this is their baby, after all, and there's more than a little pride involved in defending it from caustic and/or destructive criticism (the majority of the kind we sadly tend to employ). More importantly than this, though; is the idea that Blizzard has reversed its previous (and wrongheaded) stance on providing feedback and soliciting feedback directly from the playerbase. I am sure there's a lot of toxicity to slog through, but this is required in order for the playerbase not to feel disenfranchised by the developers' silence - a problem we've had since WoD and which came to a head in BfA. Shadowlands, in addition to its many reversals and returns to form in terms of gameplay, also heralds a return to form of developer/player communication, and this too will be a net boon to the game going forward if it continues.

[Cyanu]

They've backflipped on almost all their egregious design choices.

Almost everything every level headed person has been saying is wrong with the game is getting fixed in Shadowlands. It's almost like Ion and his legion of fanboys were wrong the whole time.

Let loot be loot.
Vendors and currencies back for PvP.
No titanforging or shitty RNG system of any kind.
Un-pruning classes.
Craftable legendaries.
Making professions matter again.
Less loot will drop making loot more meaningful - no more vendoring thousands of epics every expansion.
Potential return of class themed sets.

World of Warcraft: Shadowlands. ("Please stop leaving our game, you were right.")


I mean there is still some shit things like we don't know much about Anima Power(AP) and the Covenant abilities can NEVER be balanced(Blizzard is dogshit at balancing).

At this point though it turns out the Blizz Defenders were wrong. It's too early to celebrate but from a pessimist at least they're saying all the right things. Ion is a pathological liar though so only time will tell.

possibly BUT if the players come back with an attitude like: OMG THIS GAME SUX WTF IS THIS SHIT?!?!?!? then the players are morons and the devs are just sane people trying to do the impossible

if the players take a more normal reaction and appreciate the fact that their feedback is actually implemented into the game, then yes, players were right

besides many of the (hated) changes over the years were based on player feedback

[huth]

Apparently you are having trouble reading. I said "at this point" and "it's too early to celebrate". Just gloss over it though and provide a snarky response.

No, you're just not doing what you're saying. Words are cheap.

[Kaver]

Dude...member when we saw anti-titanforging threads everyday and we thought "everyone" hated it?

And then...member now when we had a couple "i miss titanforging" threads?

Literally impossible.

People who miss titanforging are just mad that they cannot get the best loot in the game anymore through easy heroic raids.

[Queen of Hamsters]

Nah, Shadowlands will be just as disliked as BfA as long as it's current. There's no such thing as a WoW expansion that's good whilst current to the vocal minority active on forums and social media.

Whilst not part of that crowd myself, I'm managing my expectations. Am not filled with confidence in regards to my own class, for example.

[Jamie081]

My spec still has a one-dimensional playstyle that came with Legion and stayed with BFA, so no not really.

[Big Thanks]

Nah, Shadowlands will be just as disliked as BfA as long as it's current. There's no such thing as a WoW expansion that's good whilst current to the vocal minority active on forums and social media.

Whilst not part of that crowd myself, I'm managing my expectations. Am not filled with confidence in regards to my own class, for example.

But he is not saying no one will rage

He is saying Shadowlands is the "well see if players were right" expansion (i changed the title a little bit)

[Obelisk Kai]

I just think...being in the "comfort zone" is the enemy to progress. Thats all.
In all things.

Does Blizzard has the responsability to try and progress? No...but i want them to.

What's wrong with the comfort zone? People want to be in comfort zones. Comfort zones are pleasant. And this is a game after all, you want to be in a comfort zone when playing a game.

The facts are stark. In the past three expansions Blizzard has engaged in iterative behaviour for it's own sake.

Warlords's garrison feature cratered the expansion.

Legion was fun, but it 'diablo-fied' the game, with systems designed to support the artifact weapons and which obscured that system's drawbacks.

BFA attempted to replace the missing artifact weapons with something else, and they sank a ton of developer time into attempting to correct the disaster that turned out to be.

There has to be an end. Settle on your core systems such as loot and where people get it as well as a catch up mechanism. Keep it consistent from expansion to expansion. If you have to iterate, do so around the edges with systems that don't impact this core loop. A new class, a new race or even player housing, things where experimentation can take place without risking the creation of an unfun game we have to suffer through in the hopes the next expansion will be better.

Iteration for the sake of it is the enemy of fun. Iteration for the sake of it wastes time that could be spent building content. 8.3 is clearly a pared back version of what they wanted to do. 8.3.5 was cut entirely. So was 6.2. Stable systems that players like and MORE CONTENT rather than continually tinkering with the game's guts is the ticket to success.

[Zarithras]

Should this expansion turn out to work and the design decisions are validated, Blizzard needs to do one thing for 10.0.

Nothing. Constant iteration has heavily damage this game as they strive to reinvent it with every expansion. If Shadowlands is the working formula, STOP ITERATING. Just create new content, new quests, new zones, new stories. If 10.0 is the same game as 9.0, what of it if 9.0 was a wild success?

If that requires a new roguelike dungeon for Torghast, just do another one. If crafting our own legendaries is a brilliant system, just do that again.

No need to continually reinvent the wheel which each expansion because there's 50/50 chance doing so will make the next expansion suck.

Strongly disagree.

Vanilla was a wild success. Why did Blizzard add heroic dungeons in TBC? Why innovate on class design? Why add flying?

TBC was even more successful. Why further innovate on classes in WotLK? Why add a new PvP scenario with Wintergrasp? Battlegrounds are great! Why add a new class? Aren't the current classes enough?

You get the point. Blizzard has designed some doozies over the past 16 years, but we wouldn't be near where we are today without that constant innovation. This same logic can be applied to any product really. "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses." -Henry Ford. Etc etc.

Sid Meier coined a game design principle called the rule of 33s. When designing a new iteration of a game, the idea is that it should be 33% new, 33% improved, and 33% what players already expect. I think the WoW team has done a pretty good job at following this principle. However, the issue is when their "improved" content is actually worse, AND their new content falls flat, we get a BfA experience.

[Eazy]

Nah, Shadowlands will be just as disliked as BfA as long as it's current.

Heavy doubt it.

There's no such thing as a WoW expansion that's good whilst current to the vocal minority active on forums and social media.

Do you have any numbers that says it's only vocal minority on the forums and social media?
Doubt it even more.

[FlubberPuddy]

I think it's a good thing for the developers to acknowledge they've made some errors and judgment and seek to reverse or at least find middle ground on some of the more highly contested elements of retail WoW. I can understand why they might feel the need to be protective of their work - this is their baby, after all, and there's more than a little pride involved in defending it from caustic and/or destructive criticism (the majority of the kind we sadly tend to employ). More importantly than this, though; is the idea that Blizzard has reversed its previous (and wrongheaded) stance on providing feedback and soliciting feedback directly from the playerbase. I am sure there's a lot of toxicity to slog through, but this is required in order for the playerbase not to feel disenfranchised by the developers' silence - a problem we've had since WoD and which came to a head in BfA. Shadowlands, in addition to its many reversals and returns to form in terms of gameplay, also heralds a return to form of developer/player communication, and this too will be a net boon to the game going forward if it continues.

That bold is the biggest take-away imo. Yes, it is understandable it's their baby, but with how long the game has been around, and with hindsight I'm sure there's more than enough examples for Blizzard to reflect on and see where they succeeded and where they failed and if in those instances of failure - was player feedback matching it.

I will always believe that when you're designing an online multiplayer game that requires a playerbase, then dev/player communication and player feedback is tantamount to its success. This isn't like single-player games where most of the sales are made initially with large drop offs. WoW stays successful thanks to their subscriptions and what they sell in their in-game store. I think it's sufficient to say that when player enjoyment drops, so do both subscriptions and in-game shop sales, which is why they've recently tagged on sub-promotions tied to the store mounts.

So they should really be on-board with taking in more player feedback. It will take a lot more work ofc, but I am for slower steadier progress if it means we can avoid systems/gameplay/content being shit for 2 years because of the recently current mindset of "we don't want to have big-shake ups during an expansion" that's too long of a wait and it only exacerbates what issues exist.

[Tomana]

I don't think they posted them, but SoulBreezy made a video about what he discovered in alpha so far. Some interesting stuff: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGryFfFIPVI

Thanks a lot, will check that video out

[Geckoo]

What's wrong with the comfort zone? People want to be in comfort zones. Comfort zones are pleasant. And this is a game after all, you want to be in a comfort zone when playing a game.

But here is the thing.
Back in MoP we had challenge mode, and it was a fun novelty and very well received. We move forward to WoD, same concept, and it didn't work out so well. That 'failure' lead to mythic dungeons and that has, so far, worked out really really well.
We could say the same about world quests. They were one of the biggest improvements introduced with legion, players generally liked them instead of daily quests and yet with BfA we've seen a tendency to move away from them in latest patch content and a general distaste for them. Maybe we get a better system with shadowlands.

I do get what you are saying and i agree up to some point (specially if we talk about borrowed power systems), but the game needs some iteration, even if something works on one expansion, it can simply stop working on the next one, be it because the content (thematically, storywise, mechanically, difficulty) is simply worse or because people get tired of it. And also we should not be deprived from new forms of content or systems just because what we have is currently working.

[Queen of Hamsters]

Heavy doubt it.



Do you have any numbers that says it's only vocal minority on the forums and social media?
Doubt it even more.

It's always been common knowledge that people bothering to be active on forums and social media, are a minority vs the people just playing or not playing.

Hell, check the stats on these forums alone. You can doubt it all you like though. Doesn't change what is and what will go down. I've seen enough expansions pass by to notice the pattern.

[araine]

Or it will turn out to be the "Player were utterly wrong" expansion. You're a bit to quick to celebrate here.

I think so as well, lack of titanforging etc will mean very little reasons to clear it multiple times

[Moonoxx]

Mythic raider perspective. :O

Let loot be loot. - I guess. RNG does suck when it sucks. The only people that hate the Titanforge or Corruption system are the people that don't get what they want. It's actually quite fun for those that do. XD The loot obsession people have has never made sense to me anyway. I only collect loot as it's the games way of slowly increasing your power between content. I don't care if I constantly replace stuff or find it easy to get, means nothing. Completing the content is what's important.

Vendors and currencies back for PvP. - I guess this is good, I don't PvP. Buying raid items with currency didn't really wow me so I don't care if it's gone or not, fairly minor. Cause you could never buy the best item level loot with currency anyway right? It was just normal raid item level.

No titanforging or shitty RNG system of any kind. - See above. Corruption system is actually quite fun.

Un-pruning classes. - They barely did this. I'm a Death Knight main, the class is still pruned in the sense you can't minmax your abilities. All they did was give me a few abilities, nothing major. Don't have Frost DK or Unholy DK executes anymore still. I still don't have my class buffs and debuffs back like magic damage taken, physical damage taken, melee haste, horn of winter ap buff, etc. Pretty pruned still.

Craftable legendaries. - ??? who cares ??? I didn't mind the old system of just one class/spec getting it per random raid tier. I don't really care about loot so means nothing to me really.

Making professions matter again. - How do they not matter right now? I actively seek out, craft and wear for the entire tier the current profession items. Totally confused when people say this. I run Blacksmithing and Jewelcrafting specifically so I can roll BiS stats on 3 items that are or near mythic raid BiS basically. I've killed mythic nzoth and I'm still using the JC ring.

Less loot will drop making loot more meaningful - no more vendoring thousands of epics every expansion. - Sounds crap really, just slows down mythic raid progression. Just means I have a higher chance of running sub optimal stats instead of having choice. Loot exists only to increase our power levels to complete content, so you're happy that we're gonna have slower progression and slower power increases? Why? :S Loot isn't really that meaningful, just a stat increase.

Potential return of class themed sets. - Yes, this is the only good point. I loved tier sets. But I can't blame Blizzard for wanting to try something different in BFA seeing as we've been using tier sets FOREVER. But yeah, it sucked and we're reverting. This does please meh. :3

Like other people have said though, there are always going to be people complaining no matter what Blizz does. The people in my guild/groups that I do mythic raid and dungeons with aren't really bothered by the current system. People will always complain or dislike something a bit, but none of them hate it so much they want to quit and preordered SL before details for it even came out. So IDK.

MMO-C people are trying to say that Dragon Soul was an amazing raid, even though it definetely wasn't and was universally hated at the time. The best/worst expansion changes between expansions, never stays the same. Fairly certain the majority of forum complainers don't even play the game. XD

[Azerate]

Or it will turn out to be the "Player were utterly wrong" expansion. You're a bit to quick to celebrate here.

Yeah, I just hope they still know what they're doing. SL sounds like every wish expressed by mythic raiders and elitist players on the internet come to reality. We'll see how it pans out, ultimately the combat system and raids is only one of my interests in the game, but I'd still prefer it to be approachable and casual.

[Sharby]

Tbh the only people that act like the 'Blizzard Defenders' you cite are just a few bonehead posters here. I don't think the majority of the playerbase ever subscribed to their beliefs, hence the changes.



I've always said WoD had some of the best class design so its really nice to see the classes I enjoy get reverted back to a state similar to it.

[Nicholaes92]

Or it will turn out to be the "Player were utterly wrong" expansion. You're a bit to quick to celebrate here.

The things he listed are 100% terrible design flaws with the game. It’s not as if the players are asking for some crazy changes here like asking for every class to tank and heal or something.

Titanforging is trash
Loot simulations is trash
Rng gear in pvp is trash
No professions is trash