Dragonflight Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[Bsirk]

Surprised to not see a single one leak the Retail Survey with Player Housing. I guess Retail players are either too loyal or too few got the Survey who want to leak.

Just hearsay of the questions in it, but nothing else.

I just took the survey actually. Mine was focused more towards Diablo IV imo.

[Makorus]

Why, beyond just "because it's Blizzard"?

I don't think people understand that there are only 2 things that make a company: the culture and the personnel. Both of which have taken massive hits since Legion came out. Don't know if you know this, but Ion wasn't Game Director of WoW until after Legion came out. The brainstorming of Legion was spearheaded by Tom Chilton, who I personally think is a far superior game designer compared to Ion.

I don't begrudge you for hoping. I would love it if 10.0 was great just as much as you would, but I don't think it's realistic at all. I do not feel a sense of passion from devs like Ion and outright hostility from others like Danuser. Ion these days just comes off as indifferent, which is extremely concerning.

Bullshit.

People act like all decisions by Blizzard are made by a singular person every time. He was Assistant Game Director in 2015, and became the actual Game Director in 2016. He had a big say in things, and actually was responsible for a lot of big changes, like Multistrike, even before he was the de-facto Game Director.

Legion was a dogshit expansion at launch, with probably the most ass-backwards design decisions, and the expansion got saved by the later patches. It was Ion that saved it, not Chilton.

[BaumanKing]

A war between two lovers of sorts.

An expansion about a cosmic love story? Sounds interesting, but I don't think most people need stories like this in Warcraft.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

Bullshit.

People act like all decisions by Blizzard are made by a singular person every time. He was Assistant Game Director in 2015, and became the actual Game Director in 2016. He had a big say in things, and actually was responsible for a lot of big changes, like Multistrike, even before he was the de-facto Game Director.

Legion was a dogshit expansion at launch, with probably the most ass-backwards design decisions, and the expansion got saved by the later patches. It was Ion that saved it, not Chilton.

Yeah Legion had people upset about the AP Grind, the legendaries(Legiondaries as they were called). I'm not saying Ion is bad though, its hard to tell who decided what.

[Edward Wu]

Bullshit.

People act like all decisions by Blizzard are made by a singular person every time. He was Assistant Game Director in 2015, and became the actual Game Director in 2016. He had a big say in things, and actually was responsible for a lot of big changes, like Multistrike, even before he was the de-facto Game Director.

Legion was a dogshit expansion at launch, with probably the most ass-backwards design decisions, and the expansion got saved by the later patches. It was Ion that saved it, not Chilton.

Curious that you'd bring up a mechanic that's been scrapped as some kind of evidence of Ion's design prowess, lol.

[Sondrelk]

The thing about Legion is that what made it great was the content, but more importantly that it was a fresh take on WoW after a disastrous one.
It did things adequate, but more importantly didn't do anything disastrous like BfA with its awful plot turns, or SL being severely hamstrung by delays.

SL should have been something similar to Legion. The lore is not great, and the plot is kinda boring, but it's not leagues worse than Legion like BfA was, and the way the expansion is set up with a more distinct line between what is and what isn't important for raids is close to what Legion did in making the overworked worth a damn.


The only thing I am able to confidently state is "better" than BfA and Legion is the nebulous concept that it was more "fun" in that it incentivized overworld content to a greater degree.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

The thing about Legion is that what made it great was the content, but more importantly that it was a fresh take on WoW after a disastrous one.
It did things adequate, but more importantly didn't do anything disastrous like BfA with its awful plot turns, or SL being severely hamstrung by delays.

SL should have been something similar to Legion. The lore is not great, and the plot is kinda boring, but it's not leagues worse than Legion like BfA was, and the way the expansion is set up with a more distinct line between what is and what isn't important for raids is close to what Legion did in making the overworked worth a damn.


The only thing I am able to confidently state is "better" than BfA and Legion is the nebulous concept that it was more "fun" in that it incentivized overworld content to a greater degree.

C19 is a big factor in all of this. If any expansion faced that, it would be hated. I'm not sure if the delays will go away, I have no idea how insync Blizzard is remotely.

[Dracullus]

Legion was combination of fresh ideas (some good, some bad, as always), long wait after very barren expansion and culmination of story that started Warcraft for many (most?) people. And proof that Blizzard shouldn't give a shit about min-maxers (9.0 kinda proves it too, but in other way).

Despite fact that 7.0 was objectively worse design that any patch after it, hype was real. Cause it's better when hardcores complain doing Maw of Souls 24/7 or RNG legos then casuals complaining there is 200 item level ceiling and leaving game.

[Sondrelk]

C19 is a big factor in all of this. If any expansion faced that, it would be hated. I'm not sure if the delays will go away, I have no idea how insync Blizzard is remotely.

Legion is a good example. Imagine being stuck in Emerald Nightmare for months with its awful Legiondary drops, getting the Suramar stuff and Nighthold long after it was needed, and then being stuck in that raid with only small amounts of extra content outside before getting 7.2 as a weak ending to the whole thing.
It would have been awful, and just like in SL would have magnified every single flaw from sheer boredom as you are stuck with miniscule amounts of content.

[Gaidax]

Why, beyond just "because it's Blizzard"?

I don't think people understand that there are only 2 things that make a company: the culture and the personnel. Both of which have taken massive hits since Legion came out. Don't know if you know this, but Ion wasn't Game Director of WoW until after Legion came out. The brainstorming of Legion was spearheaded by Tom Chilton, who I personally think is a far superior game designer compared to Ion.

I don't begrudge you for hoping. I would love it if 10.0 was great just as much as you would, but I don't think it's realistic at all. I do not feel a sense of passion from devs like Ion and outright hostility from others like Danuser. Ion these days just comes off as indifferent, which is extremely concerning.

Yes, because they are Blizzard and they have a massive team of talent readily available and covered as far as $$ goes. Focusing on some public target dummies like Ion and Danuser is just dumb. First of all they are far from prime evils you make out of them and secondly you have whole teams of designers that are pumping great stuff for many many years.

WoW's art, sound and music are still top notch. Encounter design, dungeons, questing - it's all there. The key pieces that allow them to craft great expansions and content patches are all there.

They need to wrap up SL and hopefully not end up burning shitton of time and effort on yet again trying to reinvent the bicycle like Torghast and put out a solid 10.0 with a lot of base content and meaty content patches on time. They have the talent for this.


And BTW, let me spoil it for you - Ion is on his way out and not because "Ion bad and getting fired", but because he has the creds to score better opportunities elsewhere and maybe get a vacation from being public enemy no.1 while at it.

[Makorus]

Yes, because they are Blizzard and they have a massive team of talent readily available and covered as far as $$ goes. Focusing on some public target dummies like Ion and Danuser is just dumb. First of all they are far from prime evils you make out of them and secondly you have whole teams of designers that are pumping great stuff for many many years.

WoW's art, sound and music are still top notch. Encounter design, dungeons, questing - it's all there. The key pieces that allow them to craft great expansions and content patches are all there.

They need to wrap up SL and hopefully not end up burning shitton of time and effort on yet again trying to reinvent the bicycle like Torghast and put out a solid 10.0 with a lot of base content and meaty content patches on time. They have the talent for this.


And BTW, let me spoil it for you - Ion is on his way out and not because "Ion bad and getting fired", but because he has the creds to score better opportunities elsewhere and maybe get a vacation from being public enemy no.1 while at it.

And when Ion leaves, it's gonna be the same story as when Holinka left after everyone said he "ruined PVP": Nothings gonna change.

Because game development is a team effort. The glorification and demonification of lead devs is so embarassing.

[Edward Wu]

Sure, game development is obviously a team effort, but Ion is not "a dev", he is the Game Director. He is the #1 guy of the WoW department, alongside John Hight as the Executive Producer. There are plenty of other talented people on the team like Morgan Day, Jeremy Feasel, etc who I'm sure all come up with very important ideas, systems, and content.

However, these 2 dudes have to manually greenlight every single design decision thought up by another developer. All the ideas, good and bad, go through them. More so Ion than Hight, the latter of which is primarily concerned with making sure the product development is on schedule.

That's a level of responsibility you can absolutely pin him for failing. Sorry not sorry. The CEO of a company is still canned at the end of the day regardless of whether the decisions he made lead to thousands of other employees doing the actual work (and not succeeding). Because responsibility is a thing, and it goes hand in hand with consequence.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

And when Ion leaves, it's gonna be the same story as when Holinka left after everyone said he "ruined PVP": Nothings gonna change.

Because game development is a team effort. The glorification and demonification of lead devs is so embarassing.

Well at least some of the creeps were pointed out and kicked out(Well ones that were mentioned in the lawsuit).

[huth]

However, these 2 dudes have to manually greenlight every single design decision thought up by another developer.

No, they don't. They only deal with the high-level stuff. Nothing would get done if they worked the way you claim.

[Palapop]

Shadowlands "success" has nothing to do with cosmic expansion or not - its a product of launch patch overstaying few months AND 9.1 being dogshit and also lasting longer than it ever should have.

Oh how i wish these 2 were the only problems of Shitlands.... or even the biggest problems out of many...

[Teriz]

They are going to have to pull a Hail Mary. I think they are going to pull their trump card Arthas out for 10.0. Not sure what the theme or location will be, but I bet Arthas is involved.

I doubt we're going to be doing another death expansion after we just had a death expansion with Shadowlands. I have a feeling that the next expansion is going to be completely opposite of the current expansion thematically.

Which is good for the health of the game.

[Palapop]

Legion was combination of fresh ideas (some good, some bad, as always), long wait after very barren expansion and culmination of story that started Warcraft for many (most?) people. And proof that Blizzard shouldn't give a shit about min-maxers (9.0 kinda proves it too, but in other way).

Despite fact that 7.0 was objectively worse design that any patch after it, hype was real. Cause it's better when hardcores complain doing Maw of Souls 24/7 or RNG legos then casuals complaining there is 200 item level ceiling and leaving game.

Tbh, I'll never EVER understand why people glorify Legion that much.

Imo, it was 1 of the worst exps. It's the point where it all went EXTREMELY downhill.

borrowed power grinds
rng legendary items
COMPELTELY ruined pvp
completely ruined professions (crafting especially)
community boosting shit-fest came live in that expansion
removed pvp/pve vendors
introduced countless ilvls per patch (from 2 'tier sets' per patch, up to 4+ )
DESTROYED/homogenized classes.....

etc, etc, etc...

[Aeluron Lightsong]

I don't think Legion was THAT bad, but it was shat on despite what MMO-Champion forums have you believe.

[Dracullus]

Imo, it was 1 of the worst exps. It's the point where it all went EXTREMELY downhill.

Damn Ion, everything was going so smoothly during WoD and he (personally) HAD TO destroy it.

[Gaidax]

Tbh, I'll never EVER understand why people glorify Legion that much.

Because Legion had SHITTON of quality content all the way from great raids and dungeons, introduction of M+, class questlines with unique weapons/halls, new class AND it had some amazing areas with Suramar.

That expansion was huge.

The stuff you mention are mostly mechanical issues, but it does not change the fact that Legion was amazing expansion overall.

One of the worst? Bruh... what are you even smoking.