Dragonflight Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[Gaidax]

Sure, if you can't come up with one. That's okay.

More like it was refuted so many times already that I don't even know how one can put that crap up with a straight face. I'll just put it right here, over last 5 years Activision tripled their MAUs... Blizzard halved and lost much of their leadership in process bailing like rats from the sinking ship even before the lawsuit.

Great success there, exceptional management. But hey, they can do some remasters and cash shop crap to keep $$ flowing from the dwindling playerbase, that a win, bois.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

Its none of the above really. this 9.1.5 isn't some scramble unless you think people at Blizz are all mindless drones who speak in "TIME TO MAKE MONEY"

[Makabreska]

More like it was refuted so many times already that I don't even know how one can put that crap up with a straight face. I'll just put it right here, over last 5 years Activision tripled their MAUs... Blizzard halved and lost much of their leadership in process bailing like rats from the sinking ship even before the lawsuit.

Great success there, exceptional management. But hey, they can do some remasters and cash shop crap to keep $$ flowing from the dwindling playerbase, that a win, bois.

You talking about Acti-Blizz in total? Because blizzard lost 20mil MAUs since 2017 (from 46mil). And we already know that some of the leadership bail was due to already ongoing harassment investigation. And yes, it is a win in the eyes of CEOs and shareholders if you still make money.

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Its none of the above really. this 9.1.5 isn't some scramble unless you think people at Blizz are all mindless drones who speak in "TIME TO MAKE MONEY"

No, it's par for the course for xpac. Release features with well known obstacles, then remove them later to retain player base. Only this time it may come earlier than ever due to outside factors.

[Gaidax]

You talking about Acti-Blizz in total? Because blizzard lost 20mil MAUs since 2017 (from 46mil). And we already know that some of the leadership bail was due to already ongoing harassment investigation. And yes, it is a win in the eyes of CEOs and shareholders if you still make money.

No, I'm talking Activision only and Blizzard only. Activision got up from ~40m to ~150m, Blizzard from 46m to 20m over same time...

If you think it's not a failure, just because they manage to somewhat compensate and squeeze a bit more bookings from ever dwindling playerbase. I don't know what to say then.

This shit is dire and it's result of Blizzard not knowing what the fuck they are doing across their whole business last 5 years. You don't lose half of your fucking customer-base and get a pat on the back for good management, no matter how much you try to massage quarterly report to make performance appear not as horrible as it is.

"Whelp, despite losing half of our playerbase across all Blizzard games last 5 years, we managed to not lose that much money with tricks and shticks, damn we're good."

And you tell me management is good - we eat this shit and the good way to approach it is what is happening last 2-3 months with giant shitstorm that will hopefully shake them out of their letargy.

[Cosmic Janitor]

No, it's par for the course for xpac. Release features with well known obstacles, then remove them later to retain player base. Only this time it may come later than ever due to outside factors.

Is it really later? For something that was planned as a core feature for the whole expansion it actually came rather early. Legendaries in Legion went through multiple iterations until the damn vendor finally came at the end of the expansion. Azerite was a bit different, since the 2nd iteration kinda stuck and the system was overshadowed by the 2nd and 3rd system that they stacked on top of it by the end, which will probably not happen this time as domination sockets are already marked with a death date.

Either way, for a feature of that size the complete break down is actually rather early (we can even mog cross covenant, that usually happens after the current expansion). They really were desperate this time and pulled out all the stops.


Also discussing such things is very much on topic, the current state of the game and Blizzard's behaviour is pretty much the biggest thing we have to go on as basis for speculation.

[Makabreska]

Is it really later? For something that was planned as a core feature for the whole expansion it actually came rather early. Legendaries in Legion went through multiple iterations until the damn vendor finally came at the end of the expansion. Azerite was a bit different, since the 2nd iteration kinda stuck and the system was overshadowed by the 2nd and 3rd system that they stacked on top of it by the end, which will probably not happen this time as domination sockets are already marked with a death date.

I meant "early", actually.

[Nagawithlegs]

Just noticed they refer to renown 80 as "max renown". They may just mean max as of now, but perhaps because the feature is so definitive (you "maxxed out" your covenant so you can play other) maybe we aren't getting more renown stuff in 9.2?

[Cosmic Janitor]

I meant "early", actually.

Ah, nvm then.

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They could still use it. It is an effective time gate, the question is more if they want to keep adding to the covenants as such in 9.2 or will they do the usual and abandon most of it for the (probably) final major patch? Frankly I'm not sure I care much for more champions I have to level once again or unlocking boring conduit upgrades. The 9.1 levels of 41-80 are already kinda forced imho and not very exciting. I guess they could time gate stuff differently if they don't have many small things that they want to lock down, as the campaign might as well just be a weekly thing like in the past. Heck they could even do the thing they did in Suramar and cap it by reputation with fixed gains.

[Sondrelk]

The thing about the questionable business decisions is that if it makes money then it is doing something right.
If witholding seemingly crucial buffs or improvements to core systems is what is needed to keep the playerbase stable, if annoyed, then who knows if it is better in the long-term.
Sure, it damages the brand and the faith the consumers have in the developers, so it's probably not a good long-term strategy, but since when has corporate culture been about long-term investment anyways.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

Just noticed they refer to renown 80 as "max renown". They may just mean max as of now, but perhaps because the feature is so definitive (you "maxxed out" your covenant so you can play other) maybe we aren't getting more renown stuff in 9.2?

Mayhaps but, I wouldn't say its set in stone. I wouldn't be upset about it.

[Nagawithlegs]

I have a feeling that the return of Tier Sets will be tied to the art team being freed up from covenant themed mounts and outfits. 9.2 could be the end of the renown system as well as the end of expansion.

[Sondrelk]

Just noticed they refer to renown 80 as "max renown". They may just mean max as of now, but perhaps because the feature is so definitive (you "maxxed out" your covenant so you can play other) maybe we aren't getting more renown stuff in 9.2?

Saying max renonwn doesnt preclude them adding more renown later and for the renown neede to swap staying at 80. Though it sure would be construed that way by the playerbase, nothing seems to be as stimulating to the general WOW forumgoer than to take someting said as a developer and applying it to every situation in which it could be even remotely applicable, even better when they get the exact quote wrong like how some on Reddit called Blizzard liars for supposedly going back on not giving heritage armors every X.X.5 patch, despite such a promise never being made.

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I have a feeling that the return of Tier Sets will be tied to the art team being freed up from covenant themed mounts and outfits. 9.2 could be the end of the renown system as well as the end of expansion.

I doubt the Renown system will go away. I'm sure there will be something that Blizzard can put into it, as rewards beside more Soulbind upgrades. If nothing else they will keep using it to continue gatekeeping the questlines more organically.

The Renown system is in my opinion the best idea Blizzard has had in years, and I really hope we see something similar in 10.0.

[Makabreska]

I have a feeling that the return of Tier Sets will be tied to the art team being freed up from covenant themed mounts and outfits. 9.2 could be the end of the renown system as well as the end of expansion.

Let's actually hope that sets are coming as promised in SL, because current situation makes promises spoken more than a year ago not a very solid ground.

[Sondrelk]

Let's actually hope that sets are coming as promised in SL, because current situation makes words spoken more than a year ago not a very solid ground.

The work to make them should have already started back when he said that, so unless they straight up decide on making 4 of the sets the generic sets and scrap the rest I doubt they would go back on it.

[Makabreska]

The work to make them should have already started back when he said that, so unless they straight up decide on making 4 of the sets the generic sets and scrap the rest I doubt they would go back on it.

I dunno what's up with them, because Dom Shards work very well like sets. Are they testing something? What for? People wanted sets that worked as always for more than a decade.

[Cosmic Janitor]

The work to make them should have already started back when he said that, so unless they straight up decide on making 4 of the sets the generic sets and scrap the rest I doubt they would go back on it.

I maen I wouldn't even mind if sets had a common base theme and they only styled the helmets, shoulders, belts and gloves a bit to reflect the class in question.

That being said, I think a way bigger problem right now would be to adress the loot issue in M+ and how sets interact with that. Imho the way m+ handles loot needs to be thought through again from the beginning. Having 2 years of hunting the same rubbish is mostly just boring. Also needing to raid to get bonuses in m+ (and PvP) is something that should be addressed by letting each type of gameplay have it's own bonuses that either only work there (only good thing about domination sockets tbh) or have bonuses that are mostly usefull there.

[Sondrelk]

I dunno what's up with them, because Dom Shards work very well like sets. Are they testing something? What for? People wanted sets that worked as always for more than a decade.

I imagine they wanted to test something tier set adjacent. This patch brought the shortcomings of tier sets as gearing back into full force.
For that matter they probably also wanted something that could work alongside the Box of many things to help nerf Torghast, as well as work as a pseudo-nerf for the raid like they usually like to have.

As for why gems I think it was just straight up to test a version of Tier sets that might have less inherent problems. Or at least different ones.

[Dracullus]

No, I'm talking Activision only and Blizzard only. Activision got up from ~40m to ~150m, Blizzard from 46m to 20m over same time...

Nice manipulation. When you actually see chart that was posted everywhere you can notice few things:

a) WoW expansions did not change downfall trend at all
b) if somehow you deny that WoW expansion short term bring shit ton of MAUs (relatively to WoW population), Vanilla Classic launch, easily biggest WoW related launch in history, didn't change trend either, overall MAUs increased just by 1 million for 1 quarter and keep falling after that
c) we are back to numbers from early 2016
d) biggest increase was 2016-2017, then sharp drop 2018-2019, now slower decrease 2020-2021

Did Blizzard release game in 2016 with different target group than RPG/strategy players that could massively expand their playerbase? How this game is performing now? Hmmmmm.

[Gaidax]

Nice manipulation. When you actually see chart that was posted everywhere you can notice few things:

a) WoW expansions did not change downfall trend at all
b) if somehow you deny that WoW expansion short term bring shit ton of MAUs (relatively to WoW population), Vanilla Classic launch, easily biggest WoW related launch in history, didn't change trend either, overall MAUs increased just by 1 million for 1 quarter and keep falling after that
c) we are back to numbers from early 2016
d) biggest increase was 2016-2017, then sharp drop 2018-2019, now slower decrease 2020-2021

Did Blizzard release game in 2016 with different target group than RPG/strategy players that could massively expand their playerbase? How this game is performing now? Hmmmmm.

It's not a manipulation, it's how it is.

Blizzard did not release anything new for years, their first new game won't be out until 2023 - that's 7 years of nothing. And the few remaining live games they have - they kill off one by one, whether it's HoTS, Overwatch and now even WoW with its current obvious exodus.

It is beyond me how they even got to this state, why they did nothing with Starcraft IP that's just sitting there gathering dust? Why it took almost a decade to even start talking about D4? Where are new games? Heck, even something like WIII Remaster - which could have been their pride and joy turned into a meme because of neglect for a bigger part of its development.

You want to tell me that's good management for Blizzard? This is nothing short of a disaster. They don't even have bloody anything good to write in their latest report - except oh look we found this one metric that does not suck and our projects, which won't be a thing for a year plus are on track. Meanwhile Activision spiking.

At this rate there won't be any Activision-Blizzard. It will be Activision and Blizzard will be just some Activision satellite studio - well deserved outcome.

[Pheraz]

It's not a manipulation, it's how it is.

Blizzard did not release anything new for years, their first new game won't be out until 2023 - that's 7 years of nothing. And the few remaining live games they have - they kill off one by one, whether it's HoTS, Overwatch and now even WoW with its current obvious exodus.

It is beyond me how they even got to this state, why they did nothing with Starcraft IP that's just sitting there gathering dust? Why it took almost a decade to even start talking about D4? Where are new games? Heck, even something like WIII Remaster - which could have been their pride and joy turned into a meme because of neglect for a bigger part of its development.

You want to tell me that's good management for Blizzard? This is nothing short of a disaster. They don't even have bloody anything good to write in their latest report - except oh look we found this one metric that does not suck and our projects, which won't be a thing for a year plus are on track. Meanwhile Activision spiking.

At this rate there won't be any Activision-Blizzard. It will be Activision and Blizzard will be just some Activision satellite studio - well deserved outcome.

So, what was the reason for you to post this in this thread? Look at the topic. Make some drama topic outside of this one