Dragonflight Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[Kereberus]

Shareholder stuff is dropping if you care about that.

[TheFirstOnes]

Yoshi-p wasn't apologizing though. He was being firm with what the game's design philosophy is. A philosophy they still uphold with every patch and every expansion. This is why FFXIV's community is so much better than WoW's. The director has a clear vision of what the game is and who it appeals to. The WoW team is only interested in keeping people logging in and spending money on the shop, which is why their design is all over the place and pleases no one. Weak and ineffective direction is the reason for WoW's problems.

Funny how the shop isn’t P2W at all, and nobody really cares about it.

[Sondrelk]

"Many activities leading to the same goal." And that brings us back to the same question that has haunted WoW for a decade.

Are the majority of WoW players no life progressionists, or casuals that will just do what they find fun?

Blizz has long skewed to the former in their designs, assuming that players if given 5 ways to reach 1 goal will choose to stack all 5 daily for maximum efficiency and thus "break the intended progression." So we get systems that are designed to be entirely self-contained. You run Torghast to get Legendaries, you run World Quests to get Anima, you run Raids to get Gear. It created the expectation that you were stacking all means of progression on a daily basis, making for a larger treadmill, but also leading a lot of players into eventual burnout.

Early WoW however was designed more around the latter and trusted most players wouldn't do every heroic every day, plus all the daily quests, plus farm for crafted gear, plus do arenas. Ultimately, this meant people who were doing all roads were getting ahead faster, which meant it became the "meta" to do things like double raid each week, or PvP in a PvE guild (and vice-versa), on top of the more normal things like doing your dailies or running heroics. And still we ended up at burnout for the people that were doing it.

The problem I would say is the design philosophy that became apparent in WotLK.
As I have said before, Raids were no longer just the endpoint of various stories, but the "end" criteria for the expansions as a whole.
The game shapes players just as much as the players shape the game, and in the case of WoW it ended up as a race towards the bottom, as exemplified in pre-Legion expansions like MoP or WoD, where raiding was everything, and if you didnt raid (or PvP) then you were not really playing the game. This in turn meant that raids were in essence the entire game, which in turn needed to be balanced.

Stacking 5 different gearing and power options in Vanilla for raids didnt really matter since raids were just one of many things to do at endgame. This didnt really matter in Vanilla since cheesing raiding was about as important as cheesing quests. But in the current WoW it does matter, and so the game has to be designed more tightly to prevent shenanigans that yes, it makes the game more unbalanced, but it does also make the game more varied.

[Kereberus]

https://investor.activision.com/stat...7-c18ebdb6b0e7

Yeah their MAU didn't change at all. Guess normies dont care about all that made up stuff.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

I don't see why Blizzard will stop with having major characters each expansion like Khadgar or Jaina or Anduin. WoW has been using the Call of Duty monetization model for the past 7 years where people buy the box expansion and resub for a month to check out the questing experience and then unsub. If an expansion doesn't advertise those main characters then how are they going to sell the questing experience to people?

Call of Duty releases games yearly, that aint the same with WoW, expansions come ever 2 years or so. SL will hit the 3 yr mark cause world events.

Yeah their MAU didn't change at all. Guess normies dont care about all that made up stuff.

If you mean the lawsuit stuff oh its real but the whole populace caring about it in general? Probably very disconnected from it. Now online communities that are deep(MMO-Champion, social media specific areas for warcraft,Starcraft etc etc, yeah there is a lot of care.

[TheFirstOnes]

You clearly haven't spent more than 5 seconds in FFXIV community spaces if you need proof that the story is one of the main draws of the game. So why open your figurative mouth to speak on something you know nothing of?

Why are we comparing FF’s storytelling with WoW’s???

It’s a genuine night and day process here…

FF has always been story driven, regardless of how it’s told in game. WoW started off with Gameplay before story, with its story taking up the spotlight starting 5.0 namely (3.0 and 4.0 were but slight jumps to that change in the philosophy).

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

I liked how in MoP I could just do PvP (and later on, Timeless Isle) to gear up and then join a PuG using that gear. Sure, the tier bonuses from the PvP sets weren't useful in raids but those were negligible and the stats were good enough. I was able to do the content I found fun (battlegrounds and chilling out on Timeless Isle) and then do the content I found fun (raids with not all of the mechanics stripped away) and didn't have to slog through stuff I hated (farming dungeons and raids to get geared up to do the raids I actually wanted to do).

Yeah personally I always enjoyed the design of older WoW where more things shared value over the modern design of everything having a very narrow and very mandatory value. Always loved farming the BC Heroics for a pre-raid Sword and being able to use the badges I got from them on other gear, and doing BGs for those sweet sets. Then in Wrath farming Heroic Dungeons and Wintergrasp for Badges again.

It's why "Bring back Justice Points" has been one consistent thing I've said Blizz should do to fix their gearing mess going back to BFA.

The FFXIV story right now is 300+ hours long, 100 hours of those are cutscenes, not even counting the time spent talking to NPCs or traveling. To a WoW player, telling them that they have to go through 300+ hours of a singleplayer JRPG before they can start doing the new hot raids with their friends is intimidating, especially since your average WoW player is no longer a teenager with unlimited free time anymore. Then again, FFXIV doesn't have much crossover appeal with WoW.

Yeah you can't expect every WoW player to cross over that gap, since 14 is a big difference from WoW. "RPG-MMO" as Jesse Cox popularized. Folks going in are going in wanting a Final Fantasy/Elder Scrolls scale and depth to the story with the MMO mechanics on top as garnish rather than the other way around.

Though I will disagree slightly on your statement that doubling down on Story wont help WoW. I think it's entirely possible that WoW can double down on its story and not alienate the existing players, they just need to be smart about how they do it. They've got the groundwork already for an "MSQ" between the War Campaign and Covenant Campaign, it's largely just about making characters and a story arc people will care about which they have thus far repeatedly failed miserably at.

Honestly this take may be hot to some vets here, but the old race/class leaders need to be put out to pasture. No more Anduin, Thrall, Baine, Tyrande, Jaina, et al. Let's get some characters in there that feel more like they're actually on our level of power and fame, folks like Zek'han or Talia.

[Makabreska]

Have you met any player in the last months who stated: I’ve been new to WoW? Have you?

Yes I did, in Newcomer chat each week.

[draugril]

Funny how the shop isn’t P2W at all, and nobody really cares about it.

Arguable with the token in the shop... The rest of it is fine, that that token is extraordinarily disruptive.

[EbaumsTipster]

I am hoping they do a soft reboot for 10.0's story. You don't have to be an old player to know Turalyon = military light guy, Thrall = nice guy orc, Azhara = bad tentacle elf, etc.

[Makabreska]

I am hoping they do a soft reboot for 10.0's story. You don't have to be an old player to know Turalyon = military light guy, Thrall = nice guy orc, Azhara = bad tentacle elf, etc.

Same here. Story that accumulated is exhausting.

[EbaumsTipster]

New sword got snuck into 9.1.5 that has a First One appearance. Maybe a hint that we are getting Zereth Mortis as a raid?

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Yeah you can't expect every WoW player to cross over that gap, since 14 is a big difference from WoW. "RPG-MMO" as Jesse Cox popularized. Folks going in are going in wanting a Final Fantasy/Elder Scrolls scale and depth to the story with the MMO mechanics on top as garnish rather than the other way around.

Though I will disagree slightly on your statement that doubling down on Story wont help WoW. I think it's entirely possible that WoW can double down on its story and not alienate the existing players, they just need to be smart about how they do it. They've got the groundwork already for an "MSQ" between the War Campaign and Covenant Campaign, it's largely just about making characters and a story arc people will care about which they have thus far repeatedly failed miserably at.

Honestly this take may be hot to some vets here, but the old race/class leaders need to be put out to pasture. No more Anduin, Thrall, Baine, Tyrande, Jaina, et al. Let's get some characters in there that feel more like they're actually on our level of power and fame, folks like Zek'han or Talia.

I agree that the old factions and characters have been thoroughly exhausted, but at this point it doesn't matter what characters Blizzard uses; the execution of the writing is still going to be bad. No one cares about the new characters of Calia or Bolvar's daughter or that Nightborne lady or the Primus. People still have an emotional investment in the old characters like Thrall and Anduin, who were created back when the story was still decent. Blizzard mind as well stick with them. When the writing was still decent, new material like Pandaria could be pulled out of thin air and people would like it. But when you have bad writing you get Shadowlands, and people are begging to go back to what is familiar. It seems people would rather have bad writing with characters and factions they at least liked, like BFA, then have bad writing with new characters and factions they never cared about (Shadowlands).

[Makabreska]

Quarterly report is up.

[Sondrelk]

I am hoping they do a soft reboot for 10.0's story. You don't have to be an old player to know Turalyon = military light guy, Thrall = nice guy orc, Azhara = bad tentacle elf, etc.

All a new player needs to know is that you have a somewhat generic cast of fantasy races. Forsaken are former zombies who gained sentience, and that Orcs and Draenei are from different planets that got destroyed by demons.
Stuff like the War of the Ancients, or that Velen is several milennia old and was the leader of the race that became the lead demons isnt really that important for enjoyment of the story.

A new set of quests for 10-50 players that quickly explain the smaller nuances of the different races' history, and what they want going forward is all a new player needs to know to really get into the game.
Stuff like Shadowlands is already an outlier in how much knowledge the player needs to know to make sense of what is happening in the intro. For expansions like BfA you just need to know that Kul Tiras is a naval nation of humans, and that the Zandalari is a race of trolls.

[draugril]

Same here. Story that accumulated is exhausting.

WoW's story has been cliffhanger after dangled carrot after cliffhanger with no resolution for years. It's not really a story at all - just a manipulation.

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

Quarterly report is up.

MAUs down, fucking called it.

They were doing damage control on that weeks ago already. Caved to some of the ABABK demands, cut Kotick's pay, the Ion interview, the Player Council move. It was all attempts to show investors "look we're trying to improve for Q4!"

[Makabreska]

All a new player needs to know is that you have a somewhat generic cast of fantasy races. Forsaken are former zombies who gained sentience, and that Orcs and Draenei are from different planets that got destroyed by demons.
Stuff like the War of the Ancients, or that Velen is several milennia old and was the leader of the race that became the lead demons isnt really that important for enjoyment of the story.

A new set of quests for 10-50 players that quickly explain the smaller nuances of the different races' history, and what they want going forward is all a new player needs to know to really get into the game.
Stuff like Shadowlands is already an outlier in how much knowledge the player needs to know to make sense of what is happening in the intro. For expansions like BfA you just need to know that Kul Tiras is a naval nation of humans, and that the Zandalari is a race of trolls.

It is just not doable to bring new players up to speed of 16+ years WoW history on top of Warcraft I-III.

- - - Updated - - -

MAUs down, fucking called it.

They were doing damage control on that weeks ago already. Caved to some of the ABABK demands, cut Kotick's pay, the Ion interview, the Player Council move. It was all attempts to show investors "look we're trying to improve for Q4!"

Ye, got any more calls? Blizz MAU's didn't change since last time.

[Kereberus]

MAUs down, fucking called it.

They were doing damage control on that weeks ago already. Caved to some of the ABABK demands, cut Kotick's pay, the Ion interview, the Player Council move. It was all attempts to show investors "look we're trying to improve for Q4!"

MAUs are the exact same? 26 Million to 26 Million.

[Sondrelk]

Same here. Story that accumulated is exhausting.

Most of the story is extraneous. The firelands invasion into Hyjal for instance can essentially be ignored by any player that just wants to know the bare minimum of whats happening in the current story.