If 9.1 Bombs...

[Edward Wu]

Fascinating how quickly people turn on Towelliee the moment he releases anything even remotely critical.

[Verdugo]

Fascinating how quickly people turn on Towelliee the moment he releases anything even remotely critical.

I remember when he used to post here, he always had that aura of smug fanboyism. What happened since then.

[Kumorii]

Declare modern WoW a lost cause and funnel resources into a theoretical Classic+

This made me laugh, even more so when I realised 17 people voted for it.

Also don't think this is true either.
The WoW team would need a serious overhaul of talent

Blizzard surely don't lack talent, they still have some of the most talented people in the gaming business. What they lack, to me, is direction. And the fact that they have been in "trying to please everybody, so they please no one" mode since TBC launched. However, problem with changing this direction to a more clear one would result in some player drop off and considering how wow players already act, the whine would be even bigger for a time. Though I do think on a longer period it will result in a better game for the players who stick around and the ones who clearly hate the game might finally be able to move on rather than being stringed a long because they can't cut the cord themselves.

Happier community, which results in a happier game.

[kamuimac]

Their problem is that they are no longer designing the game to be fun, They are designing it to keep players around...

Every single thing in the game is structured so that youll have to visit it daily for 15-30min.
And honestly, no1 enjoys that.

Immagine if another game was strucutred like that. Like if you could only play 30min per day on say Red dead redemption/Cyberpunk/Ghost of tsushima main Qline be4 a timegate kicked in to stop you. That would utterly suck, and this is why i think the current wow isnt as popular as it used to be. This obscession with player retention is contributing to a suckier product wich ppl doenst cling to as hard as they do a good product.

eh i wish it was like log in and play the game for 30 mintues

my exeprience is more like log in - spend 30 minutes trying to get into group with 2 possible outcomes - a) i succed - have 30-40 minutes fun and then log out because i cba to go through another 30 minutes of constant declines or b) you failed first time and logged out because you cba spending another 30 minutes of constant declines.

and thats why 60 % of playerbase already left SL.

- - - Updated - - -

Let's look at the "facts": 9.1 is more in the regions of a 8.2 or 7.2 patch than that of 8.1 or 7.1. Which brings me to the conclusion, they either swapped the positions of the huge second content patch of an expansion with the first smaller content patch of an expansion or there are just two big content patches for Shadowlands and no small one (which means we won't see 9.3). Why do I say this? Because past timelines of patches support my argument. 9.1 will come 7 or more months after 9.0. Content patches usually last 6 months. Which means the next content patch (9.2) will either hit live servers in December or January. And if that's the case, there's basically no room left for an additional content patch, as the usual content droughts after expansions are around 9-10 months.

you are extreme optymist if you assume we will get anythign in june/july

what is more realistic is september release of 9.1 as last tier of expansion

SL is already lost cause - they will not funnel additional resources into something which they cannot salvage anymore.

those resources went to TBC + and 10.0 .

[lolmmofuture]

The LoL MMO won't be out for years. They're just now staffing up to make it.

i know, but its stil the only one with any real chance. The wow killers of the past were never real wow killers, but this lol mmo, if its a tradional MMORPG the way we know it to be, then wow is undoubtedly done for. that doesnt mean current wow players will stop, many will move but many that are addicted will stay, it just means that the population of the lol mmo will be greater than that of wow, making it be able to take first spot for the first time since wow came out lol.

[Edward Wu]

Let's look at the "facts": 9.1 is more in the regions of a 8.2 or 7.2 patch than that of 8.1 or 7.1. Which brings me to the conclusion, they either swapped the positions of the huge second content patch of an expansion with the first smaller content patch of an expansion or there are just two big content patches for Shadowlands and no small one (which means we won't see 9.3). Why do I say this? Because past timelines of patches support my argument. 9.1 will come 7 or more months after 9.0. Content patches usually last 6 months. Which means the next content patch (9.2) will either hit live servers in December or January. And if that's the case, there's basically no room left for an additional content patch, as the usual content droughts after expansions are around 9-10 months.

Yeah the jig was up the moment they announced the info around 9.1 and how much different it is compared to previous .1 patches. I'm not really complaining, I don't mind this sort of set-up but only because I'm not big on SL itself anyway so I wouldn't mind a big 9.1, small 9.1.5, and big 9.2 to finish off the expansion. Probably enough to get all the story threads wrapped up.

Also something to ponder: Anyone remember a few years ago when they said (might be during Legion) in regards to patch structure that they wouldn't hesitate to delay portions of a patch to get it out quicker? For example, if a small raid was included in a patch, they wouldn't hesitate to delay it to the following patch in order to get out the original patch earlier. Interesting how they seem to have abandoned that concept.

[BeerEelemental]

i know, but its stil the only one with any real chance. The wow killers of the past were never real wow killers, but this lol mmo, if its a tradional MMORPG the way we know it to be, then wow is undoubtedly done for. that doesnt mean current wow players will stop, many will move but many that are addicted will stay, it just means that the population of the lol mmo will be greater than that of wow, making it be able to take first spot for the first time since wow came out lol.

Yeah...
So we heard with Rift, Warhammer online, Aion, Tabula Rasa, Star wars MMO, Wildstar, Age of conan, etc. etc etc.
They were all gonna be this next new big thing that was gonna be bigger than WoW. The only one even remotely alive of those still is the Star Wars one

[Osmeric]

Yeah...
So we heard with Rift, Warhammer online, Aion, Tabula Rasa, Star wars MMO, Wildstar, Age of conan, etc. etc etc.
They were all gonna be this next new big thing that was gonna be bigger than WoW. The only one even remotely alive of those still is the Star Wars one

I think what those showed was how very easy it is to screw up an MMO. Get some essential point wrong and the game is doomed.

Now consider what SL is getting wrong.

[lolmmofuture]

Yeah...
So we heard with Rift, Warhammer online, Aion, Tabula Rasa, Star wars MMO, Wildstar, Age of conan, etc. etc etc.
They were all gonna be this next new big thing that was gonna be bigger than WoW. The only one even remotely alive of those still is the Star Wars one

like i said in the post u quoted, the wow killers of the past were never real wow killers, but this lol mmo has the realest chance based on REACH alone. bruh, league of legends has like qudruple the amount of players than wow does. those other mmos didnt.

[MoanaLisa]

i know, but its stil the only one with any real chance. The wow killers of the past were never real wow killers, but this lol mmo, if its a tradional MMORPG the way we know it to be, then wow is undoubtedly done for. that doesnt mean current wow players will stop, many will move but many that are addicted will stay, it just means that the population of the lol mmo will be greater than that of wow, making it be able to take first spot for the first time since wow came out lol.

Gaming has moved on. It's extremely unlikely that WoW's success will ever be replicated. If it isn't obvious by now WoW's tremendous popularity was a freak thing that hasn't been equaled by anyone else and there have been some worthy passes at it. The plain fact is that MMO's are not a huge part of the gaming market and paying a monthly fee for one is something that only Blizzard has managed to pull off.

[Nyel]

you are extreme optymist if you assume we will get anythign in june/july

what is more realistic is september release of 9.1 as last tier of expansion

SL is already lost cause - they will not funnel additional resources into something which they cannot salvage anymore.

those resources went to TBC + and 10.0 .

I‘m pretty sure we’re getting another raid after SoD which wraps up the Jailer / Shadowlands storyline. What I indeed doubt is that we’ll get another raid in between. There’s really no point to give us a filler raid in this expansion and there is just not that much time for it on top of that.

If 10.0 is a huge world revamp with a time jump, which I hope, they really need all their manpower similar to the transition between WoD and Legion. If 10.0 is very ambitious and vast in scope, cutting Shadowlands short will be worth it. But if 10.0 is just Legion 4.0, I don’t see any real benefit by doing that. But again, the time isn’t on Blizzard‘s side here.

[Kralljin]

Yeah...
So we heard with Rift, Warhammer online, Aion, Tabula Rasa, Star wars MMO, Wildstar, Age of conan, etc. etc etc.

Yeah, no one believed that Rome would fall, until it did.

Bear in mind, with the power of hindsight one can see that the majority of "WoW Killers" launched during what one can pretty much say was the prime of the game, 2008-2011 was were multiple "WoW killers" launched while the game had 10M+ subs.

Now, a decade later, the game has had 7 rough years under its belt, WoD & BfA absolutely took their toll, while people are generally more positive towards Legion, it got carried by large extent of it being a new thing and a very solid content schedule - which can be partially attributed to them throwing half of WoD under the bus.

With the perception now turning on SL as well, it doesn't take a genius to figure that new contenders will have a much better shot at taking a bite out of WoW's playerbase.

Bear in mind, Classic is also a massive indicator that the people who dislike the modern direction of WoW isn't some insignificant minority - and Classic is a 15 year old game with numerous, objective flaws.

[iosdeveloper]

They just have to plan out a great content patches stream for SL,
meanwhile hire another team of wowclassic-loving engineers and make them do the next expansion.
let the engineers decide on features and not marketing

Next expansion has to be crazy big to explore like vanilla, not a choose 1 out of 4 zones kind of shit.
and a killer music score always helps

[VinceVega]

i know, but its stil the only one with any real chance. The wow killers of the past were never real wow killers, but this lol mmo, if its a tradional MMORPG the way we know it to be, then wow is undoubtedly done for. that doesnt mean current wow players will stop, many will move but many that are addicted will stay, it just means that the population of the lol mmo will be greater than that of wow, making it be able to take first spot for the first time since wow came out lol.

Yeah... sure... the big LoL MMO riddled with MTX left and right. It will be succesfull in Asia. I highly doubt it will stay relevant for long in the west. Overmonetized games rarely do.
No MMO will ever overtake wow. Soooo many (some really really good) MMOs tried. None succeeded. The better ones managed to stay alive with a decent playerbase like ESO, FF14 and Swotor.

The Lol MMO will be a F2P buy your transmog extravaganza and to make it better, you will look like a peasant without it. Exploit the weak is what riot does well.

Their games are good. Lol and Tft are amazing (don't like valorant) Never saying anything against that. But MTX and the way theri female characters all look like generic anime girls just rubbs me the wrong way. In a MOBA or TfT i do not care what my character looks like... but this is a big part in a MMORPG... and if i have to pay to get something decent... now way jose.

Like FF14 with the Mogry Station and their millions of gear pieces you can by there... horrible design. Especcially with the monthly sub on top.

[exochaft]

While 9.1 may be a short-term metric for Blizz, I'm more concerned about the long-term effects, especially since I've been playing since the early stages of vanilla.

It's been nearing two decades since I started playing this game, and I've found that the players in the game and the changes to the social norms over time are becoming more impactful than the specific content itself. As an example, raiding at the mythic level (or the highest level at any given time in WoW's history) has become more and more unappealing for your average player. I've seen it in my kid, who wasn't even born when WoW launched, where the younger generation isn't really interested in the dedication nor the time commitment that is required for raiding. His generation is more into "pick-up" gaming, where you can jump into a multiplayer game, spend a short amount of time in it (maybe 30min to an hour roughly), then jump out without having to do prep/research or investing large chunks of time at once to even get rewards. Furthermore, the carrot-on-a-stick that used to be gear from raiding is no longer there, as it's been arduous this tier with the lower drop rates and the restrictions of loot drops/trading. Essentially, what my kid's generation is more interested in is the M+/PvP models, with the seasonal model that's become quite common in many games combined with a quick playtime sessions and a reward system that exceeds raiding.

Generational desires aside, one thing that has been wearing me down with SL thus far are the bugs and constant breaking of encounters. There's always going to be bugs, but the bugs themselves are becoming more serious/impactful and more visible to the average person. It's getting to the point where I probably average finding 4-5 new bugs every week on live servers, while the old ones I report still haven't been fixed (some of them that were even present on the beta haven't been fixed yet). Going back to the raid scene, I noticed around WoD that the raid encounters were progressively getting worse when it came to bugs, and the turn-around time on fixing them has gotten slower. Even Castle Nathria has bugs that still occur and haven't been fixed that can be quite annoying, such as evasion bugs and DC/crashes that put our raids to a halt and cost so much time. I'm not going to say something silly like raiding is dead, but I will say that something will have to change as its trajectory is likely not good in terms of being attractive to the masses.

Will 9.1 do anything to touch on this aspect? Maybe. There were hints that raiding would get the M+ Valor treatment or some adjustments beyond just increased drop rates, but even the M+ Valor system has many problems in its current state. However, what's wearing me down is that the game still feels like it's in early access. Every time hotfixes roll out, something else breaks, and some bugs I've just resigned will never be fixed despite them actually being impactful and/or annoying. The game experience itself has become exhausting when it shouldn't, and while 9.1 could change things up a bit, there's going to have to be serious overhauls to keep players like myself engaged in the game.

If we're going down to just numbers analysis, I'd surmise that lockdowns have inflated the numbers when it comes to WoW... and once things open up and get back to normal, the landscape for WoW's playbase will also likely adjust downward. To be fair, many games probably received the covid 'bump' in terms of participation, and in many respects I think gaming developers/companies (Blizz included) have used the situation as an excuse to let things slide way more than they should. It's basically abusing the customer's good will and leniency while still speaking empty platitudes out of the side of their mouths to invoke sympathy and/or empathy. While my words may sound more harsh than I intend, what people need to understand is that the world still goes on despite whatever difficulties people may encounter, and what I heard more often than not from the gaming devs/companies are excuses rather than solutions.

[lolmmofuture]

Yeah... sure... the big LoL MMO riddled with MTX left and right. It will be succesfull in Asia. I highly doubt it will stay relevant for long in the west. Overmonetized games rarely do.
No MMO will ever overtake wow. Soooo many (some really really good) MMOs tried. None succeeded. The better ones managed to stay alive with a decent playerbase like ESO, FF14 and Swotor.

The Lol MMO will be a F2P buy your transmog extravaganza and to make it better, you will look like a peasant without it. Exploit the weak is what riot does well.

Their games are good. Lol and Tft are amazing (don't like valorant) Never saying anything against that. But MTX and the way theri female characters all look like generic anime girls just rubbs me the wrong way. In a MOBA or TfT i do not care what my character looks like... but this is a big part in a MMORPG... and if i have to pay to get something decent... now way jose.

Like FF14 with the Mogry Station and their millions of gear pieces you can by there... horrible design. Especcially with the monthly sub on top.

haha i mean time will tell. but i think its safe bet they will sell skins lol skins in an mmo yeee. but the total population will most likely be way above wow tho, and nothing is confirmed yet so heres hoping. im sure theyre aware of some of the points uve made.

[Edward Wu]

They just have to plan out a great content patches stream for SL,
meanwhile hire another team of wowclassic-loving engineers and make them do the next expansion.
let the engineers decide on features and not marketing

Next expansion has to be crazy big to explore like vanilla, not a choose 1 out of 4 zones kind of shit.
and a killer music score always helps

The dream is a 10.0 revamped Kalimdor & EK but this time on steroids with a graphical overpass to look the same level of quality as recent expansion zones, to go along with the thousands of new quests, and then somehow tie it all in together and seamlessly meld the leveling experience with the endgame together. I think if that kind of expansion hit the right chords, it would bring a record amount of people back into the game.

[Asrialol]

While 9.1 may be a short-term metric for Blizz, I'm more concerned about the long-term effects, especially since I've been playing since the early stages of vanilla.

It's been nearing two decades since I started playing this game, and I've found that the players in the game and the changes to the social norms over time are becoming more impactful than the specific content itself. As an example, raiding at the mythic level (or the highest level at any given time in WoW's history) has become more and more unappealing for your average player. I've seen it in my kid, who wasn't even born when WoW launched, where the younger generation isn't really interested in the dedication nor the time commitment that is required for raiding. His generation is more into "pick-up" gaming, where you can jump into a multiplayer game, spend a short amount of time in it (maybe 30min to an hour roughly), then jump out without having to do prep/research or investing large chunks of time at once to even get rewards. Furthermore, the carrot-on-a-stick that used to be gear from raiding is no longer there, as it's been arduous this tier with the lower drop rates and the restrictions of loot drops/trading. Essentially, what my kid's generation is more interested in is the M+/PvP models, with the seasonal model that's become quite common in many games combined with a quick playtime sessions and a reward system that exceeds raiding.

Generational desires aside, one thing that has been wearing me down with SL thus far are the bugs and constant breaking of encounters. There's always going to be bugs, but the bugs themselves are becoming more serious/impactful and more visible to the average person. It's getting to the point where I probably average finding 4-5 new bugs every week on live servers, while the old ones I report still haven't been fixed (some of them that were even present on the beta haven't been fixed yet). Going back to the raid scene, I noticed around WoD that the raid encounters were progressively getting worse when it came to bugs, and the turn-around time on fixing them has gotten slower. Even Castle Nathria has bugs that still occur and haven't been fixed that can be quite annoying, such as evasion bugs and DC/crashes that put our raids to a halt and cost so much time. I'm not going to say something silly like raiding is dead, but I will say that something will have to change as its trajectory is likely not good in terms of being attractive to the masses.

Will 9.1 do anything to touch on this aspect? Maybe. There were hints that raiding would get the M+ Valor treatment or some adjustments beyond just increased drop rates, but even the M+ Valor system has many problems in its current state. However, what's wearing me down is that the game still feels like it's in early access. Every time hotfixes roll out, something else breaks, and some bugs I've just resigned will never be fixed despite them actually being impactful and/or annoying. The game experience itself has become exhausting when it shouldn't, and while 9.1 could change things up a bit, there's going to have to be serious overhauls to keep players like myself engaged in the game.

If we're going down to just numbers analysis, I'd surmise that lockdowns have inflated the numbers when it comes to WoW... and once things open up and get back to normal, the landscape for WoW's playbase will also likely adjust downward. To be fair, many games probably received the covid 'bump' in terms of participation, and in many respects I think gaming developers/companies (Blizz included) have used the situation as an excuse to let things slide way more than they should. It's basically abusing the customer's good will and leniency while still speaking empty platitudes out of the side of their mouths to invoke sympathy and/or empathy. While my words may sound more harsh than I intend, what people need to understand is that the world still goes on despite whatever difficulties people may encounter, and what I heard more often than not from the gaming devs/companies are excuses rather than solutions.

Two questions.

How much do you play per day/week?

And, can you give some examples of bugs you encounter? For the past two weeks, what was the 8-10 bugs you found?

[socialmaker]

World of Warcraft is but a shadow of what it once was. We are just addicts re-re-re-re-imagining every expansion that the game can offer some new idea, a glimpse of something to push the MMORPG genre and so on. At this point the recipe is so transparent that everyone can see it. If only they could keep up the 77 days pacing but nooo wait 6-7 months+ for a shitty new raid go figure. Even if 9.1 does not bomb it will be the same stale shit in 3-4 months because there is little originality left in current WoW.

[Devilyaki]

But if it does they’ll have classic tbc numbers to inflate the sub numbers to hide behind anyways yes?