If 10.0 is a massive revamp was it worth dealing with Shadowlands?

[Aucald]

This thread isn't about FF14, so let's drop the "Game vs. Game" derailing tangent.

[Beloren]

I highly doubt they're doing any sort of massive world revamp since they look at Cataclysm as a huge time sink that ultimately became outdated within a couple of expansions. Now they've reworked the leveling concept, making it a "choose your adventure" from a menu of past stories. That almost makes investing time in revamping EK and Kalimdor a waste of time. If they want to move the narrative forward in those continents, they can use phasing tech, not have to redo a thousand quests across two continents. We're never getting a revamped EK/Kalimdor again like in Cataclysm, and Shadowlands put a nail in that coffin, IMO.

They should just do a new game.

But keep it on the wow servers.
Everything changes. But you can still level in the old world.

Nee game it’s a new remote server so your character literally jumps server when you cross into the old world but automatically.

Ya basically WoW 2 without losing old content.

This is what I think they’ll do.

[Bladesyphon]

Hit it's stride, more like people praising it in hopes of spiting blizzard. The people I listen to when it comes to how good Shadowbringer is are people who actually played because they like FF XIV. People who ran to the game because of anger will quickly leave the game once something new comes along such as something made by a ex-Blizzard employee.

Surely that wouldn't have anything to do with a certain loud mouthed streamer and his army of rabid fanatics following him into his game of choosing, right?

If Asmongold decided to play Lotro, you can bet your ass that SSG's entire infrastructure would have collapsed as his entire base immediatly started playing the game just so they cold run around alongside their internet hero. Once Asmon grows bored of XIV and leaves, you can damn well be sure a *huge* chunk of his followers are going to leave with him.

And honestly, that kind of worries me with XIV and SE. SE is like pretty much every Japanese developer - notoriously bad when it comes to understanding what streams and streamers are, and how they interact with a game. When their higher ups see Asmon's followers leave in droves when he inevitably grows bored of the game, they're going to think something is drastically wrong with the game to cause such a huge departure of subscribers, leading them to probably make some stupid, knee-jerk reactions to "Fix" the problem.

[Fahrad Wagner]

Can they make a 10.0 that is so good people will want to come back and will re-energize those who stay? Absolutely they can.

Will they?

Will we get another expansion that is only rich in systems and currencies?

Will we get an expansion that treats all players as being valuable? Or only those who partake in certain activities?

My thoughts exactly. If the people in charge of the game's direction do not shift their current approach to the game and listen more to the players feedback, all revamps and WoW 2 scenarios will be pointless. And I am not saying this as a hater or a troll: I have defended the development team and WoW for years, and I still think a lot of people at Blizzard do a terrific job (art and music teams for example, are always on point). But some things are just not acceptable for a game which costs what it costs every month. Whether it's failed game mechanics, new systems that feel like chores or in-game cutscenes which look outrageously bad, I am just tired of finding excuses for them doing a bad job regarding some aspects of a game I have loved for years.

I really hope 10.0 fixes most of those issues and offers us a fresh start. The game deserves it, the players deserve it, and the devs who are passionate about the game deserve it. But I already hoped the same for 8.0 and 9.0, and everytime I go back to thinking about what went wrong and what could have been done instead. I'm not saying it was all bad, but it feels to me like Blizzard doesn't really learn from their mistakes after an expansion, they just reproduce those and change the packaging and the flavour.

Anyway, here's to hoping 10.0 will give us that fresh breeze of revival that the old world needs!

[NineSpine]

Yes you are correct, you gotta do Torghast to get your legendaries. I somehow did not think about that, because it is a one time thing. But, besides getting the 190, it is not required to get any further. Earning a bit more than 4x the Soul Ash is a 2% power increase (roughly, source: https://www.raidbots.com/simbot/repo...uosVZF1EVUTHjE ).
Yes, few do it, but it is not required.

This is getting really, really exhausting. If I like doing casual pvp, can I get close to BiS from it? No. If I like doing regular non-mythic dungeons, can I get close to BiS from it? No. If I like doing Torghast, can I get close to BiS from it? No. If I like open world content can I get close to BiS from it? No. Why? Because WoW has mandatory content called rated pvp, mythic+, and heroic raids. Even if I do just that content, other content such as Torghast and upgrading soulbinds is going to be required.

Your refusal to get this is starting to sound like not wanting to get it.

Mate, I was asking about how this works in my first comment. You calling me ignorant is ironically ignorant. There is TW, which makes that content relevant again, which should probably be a bit more often one expac each week or so, but when thinking about m+, having 10-12 dungeons is a good idea. Probably, heroic/mythic version of old dungeons should be queueable all the time, as well as more relevant raid ilvl reward. How close is that in FF? Does old raid content give worse gear than the current raid, is it similar?

Virtually all content from every expansion can be used to obtain tomestones, which are the games version of valor points. These tomestones can be used to buy endgame gear. The hardest content, which is ultimate difficulty, only drops cosmetics and scales you down to the max ilvl at the time the raid was released, so it is permanently the hardest content. You cannot overgear it or come back at a higher level and stomp it for the reward.

So if WoW is withing 15%, FF is within 10%? Is that the correct interpretation? Has anyone done the math on that? Because if not, you saying "it is that close" has literally 0 value because it is feelycraft.

Yes, there are parses just like there are for WoW that use the same math to quantify it.

No, but it is just the truth. If you cannot commit a certain amount of time a game requires to play in one sitting, the game is just not for you. You cannot commit to play for x hours straight? Well, you have to pick Single player game, or do single player acitivties then in MMOs. I really don't see how this is condescending.

What are you talking about? You tried to cast aspersions on people that prefer a trash-less raid model because in your eyes that made them less of raiders.

... No? You can pick the right stuff, but you can ALSO pick slightly worse stuff and be fine. And, if you think you'll use the same talents all the time once you hit 60, you have not played WoW.

You switch talents to the right one for the scenario you are in. I'm glad you like that little busywork between content, but a lot of us don't and prefer just having a complete, balanced kit in the first place.

My argument is, that FF gameplay is FUCKING BORING in the beginning because you have so little. It is not frontloading. A good example is Sunfire, you get it early, then a few levels later it becomes and AoE spell, and later on it becomes a larger AoE spell. That is a satisfying progression. Not getting Stone 1, and then Stone 2 a few hours later.

Nobody is telling you that you have to like it. Maybe you are forgetting how this started. I listed reasons people like FF14 and somehow this hurt your feelings and you became consumed with trying to objectively prove me wrong on what people subjectively enjoy.

That after the a "game destroying" 6.0, 7.0. 8.0, and 8.3, Wow pulls record numbers with 9.0. It will be just alright.

Will the game turn off? No. Everquest is still running for fucks sake. However, if you think that the game isn't having a serious problem right now, you aren't dealing with reality. Mythic+ logs, which are a decent proxy for player engagement, is lower than 8.3, which we already know was a serious low point for the game. That's a really bad sign on the FIRST major content patch of an expansion. Do you think its some giant coincidence that FF14 is seeing a historic rise in popularity, gigantic player count increases AT THE END OF AN EXPANSION, which is a period when it should be declining... and WoW just happens to have incredibly low engagement, tons of bad press, streamers switching to FF14, and the forums are not constantly people arguing about FF14?

You are welcome to think that that is all a big coincidence, but it just makes you sound like someone who is less concerned with the quality and health of WoW and more concerned with some weird ego trip you get from thinking you are playing the "better game".

Sure, call me biased, I did try the game, and really disliked it - I informed myself a bit about endgame, I watched some streams. The two games are just very different, and are made for different people. I just don't see how this game is the WoW killer. Is there proof that wow has more subs?

You don't have to like it, but at this point you seem to be refusing to understand why OTHER PEOPLE like it. WoW's current design is fantastic for a small slice of players that push very far into endgame content. That's not a lot of people. It aint millions of people. It's questionable whether its even more than a couple hundred thousand.

For everyone else, WoW is kind of a trainwreck. The world content is bland and boring. Old content is deprecated so fast that you are funneled into a very narrow set of new content. Every patch feels like a reset that makes progress feel pointless. Time gating makes a lot of the content feel like a chore. The community is really, really negatively toxic.

You just seem either unwilling or unable to see WoW through the eyes of anyone who is interested in anything except rated pvp, mythic+, or raiding, and some things you have said also indicate a downright toxic attitude toward people who aren't interested in those things.

It's not that FF14 is made for casual players, which seems to be the underlying assumption of your argument. FF14 has hardcore content, arguably just as much as WoW really has depending on how you quantify it. It has raids. It has extremely difficult raids. It has world first races. It has people fighting for the highest parses. It has theorycrafting. It has all that stuff. It's just that it has MORE than that, unlike WoW where everything outside of that feels like half-assed, condescending, time gated wastes that will be deprecated in a few months anyway. If you can't understand why to OTHER PEOPLE this is a problem, and if you think WoW can survive on its hardcore population alone, you just don't seem concerned with reality.

[Queen of Hamsters]

It's hard to put any numbers to WoW since they don't release any tbh. What we do know though is that final fantasy just recently (like 2 days ago I think) shattered its record for concurrent steam users and it did so over 2 years after it's last expansion released. FF14's store literally broke because so many people were buying the game. We also know that shadowlands season 2 participation is low. Some of WoWs biggest streamers and youtubers are also playing final fantasy. If you don't think those things are connected I guess thats up to you but yea.

Lol, Twitch viewership...

But OK:



And no, I do not believe that big streamers and their viewership are an acceptable indicator for the performance of a business. Ya'll admit that there's no way to tell yet you make statements suggesting that we somehow know.

Miss me with that shit until the next quarterly. Not gonna discuss it further as it derails the thread.

- - - Updated - - -

Anyway, here's to hoping 10.0 will give us that fresh breeze of revival that the old world needs!

Hear hear!

Although it wouldn't do much good if they stick with the same class design (terrible) and the same systems design (burnout fodder) for me...

I am hopeful that the push to update old world models (boars for example!) are a "slow burner" path towards a full revamp though.

[Fahrad Wagner]

Lol, Twitch viewership...
I am hopeful that the push to update old world models (boars for example!) are a "slow burner" path towards a full revamp though.

My thoughts exactly. They have updated so many old models, only a few remain so far, and they did not even bother replacing old models everywhere (Kalimdor still has old harpies). We're still missing a few like giraffes, gnolls and such, but most of the work has been done. I also found that sometimes, new models were used without making a lot of sense (Hurrans on Kul'Tiras felt out of place for me), as if they were trying to save resources by using an old model they had just finished revamping.

I don't know, I may be reading too much into this...

[Queen of Hamsters]

My thoughts exactly. They have updated so many old models, only a few remain so far, and they did not even bother replacing old models everywhere (Kalimdor still has old harpies). We're still missing a few like giraffes, gnolls and such, but most of the work has been done. I also found that sometimes, new models were used without making a lot of sense (Hurrans on Kul'Tiras felt out of place for me), as if they were trying to save resources by using an old model they had just finished revamping.

I don't know, I may be reading too much into this...

Wait... Kalimdor still has old harpies? I was under the impression that all of the updated models were in use in the old world equivalents!
Interesting.

And I don't think you're reading too much into it at all, I'm actually convinced that they're not very happy with EK/Kalimdor being so out-of-date both visually and narratively/mechanically. They did after all dedicate work to an entire zone to move entirely new players away from Cataclysm zones.

I know I would be rearing to change things if this was "my" game to rule over. After Cataclysm I'd make sure to lay the groundwork for a revamp over years and years of development where it made sense and then opt for making the next major revamp more intertwined with endgame by utilizing modern tools of phasing and mechanics.

One can hope, SO SO much, that that's where we're headed... Imagine Dustwallow utilizing modern shading, mist and lighting tech... :d

[Fahrad Wagner]

Wait... Kalimdor still has old harpies? I was under the impression that all of the updated models were in use in the old world equivalents!
Interesting.

And I don't think you're reading too much into it at all, I'm actually convinced that they're not very happy with EK/Kalimdor being so out-of-date both visually and narratively/mechanically. They did after all dedicate work to an entire zone to move entirely new players away from Cataclysm zones.

I know I would be rearing to change things if this was "my" game to rule over. After Cataclysm I'd make sure to lay the groundwork for a revamp over years and years of development where it made sense and then opt for making the next major revamp more intertwined with endgame by utilizing modern tools of phasing and mechanics.

One can hope, SO SO much, that that's where we're headed... Imagine Dustwallow utilizing modern shading, mist and lighting tech... :d

I think so about the harpies, or maybe it's just old Teldrassil, but I have definitely seen those old models still in use recently. Maybe it's been fixed, I'd have to investigate! Dustwallow could be amazing! Especially if it comes with ogres or mok'nathal as a race hehe!

[cparle87]

After Legion I haven't really played much WoW except around expansion launches and occasionally patches.

So you admit you don't know the first thing about Shadowlands but still come onto the forums to spread hate messages along the lines "was it worth dealing with" playing a game you don't play?

[ro9ue]

So you admit you don't know the first thing about Shadowlands but still come onto the forums to spread hate messages along the lines "was it worth dealing with" playing a game you don't play?

No I played Shadowlands at expansion release and when 9.1 came out.

[cparle87]

No I played Shadowlands at expansion release and when 9.1 came out.

You play at patch launches, the most unbalanced buggiest times, then quit before things are tuned, then come here to shitpost.