Backlash opening new doors?

[Cosmic Janitor]

This is mere presumption on your part. I can present alternate scenarios. For example, suppose WoW is doing best in China, and that Kotick feels the need to replace experienced devs here. It could be better to just sell the IP to Tencent and not worry about it.

Give me a precedent where that actually happened.

[Darkimpact]

My mantra is "Expect nothing and Blizzard will still disappointed you." If you think anything is going to actually change because of this you don't know the modern state of WoW.

[Relapses]

The basics points of the story were made that the new team could elaborate on instead of defining it solidly in order to give the new writers room to shape the story as they desired. This gives narrative continuity.

And again, you make a strawman of me that you can explicitly have express that I know nothing. Meritocracy is a lie, it's ultimately who you know instead of your performance level, your performance level is just a factor. Sure, Ian's performance was high enough to get him considered, what got him over the line was that Afrasabi liked him, which given what Afrasabi did makes Hazzikostas infinitely sus.

Your entire post expresses your belief that there's a Grand Plan that guides everything. There's none, like Marvel movies they put in stuff that they can later elaborate on so you can go back and watch the old movies and gain a greater appreciation. The whole Avengers thing only came about because Rober Downey Jr improvised and said, "I am Iron Man."

"And they're still there," no. And I'm unable to blame them, doing the same thing for 12 years takes some serious dedication. I get bored after 12 months if I have to do the same thing all the time.

This is an impressive level of mental gymnastics you're trying to pull simply so you can live in a world where "Legion GOOD; new expansions BAD." It's fine to enjoy an expansion more than others but when you flat out refuse basic common sense so you can create a narrative where it's on a pedestal like this... it just looks sad.

[Quaade]

That's your subjective view that BfA and SL were/are better than Legion.

Objectively, only looking at player activities and things implemented then by the theory of the zone of proximal development Legion was vastly better than both BfA and SL. Enjoyment is subjective. Things that can be counted are objective.

Mind you, in order to disprove this statement about the ZPD you have to put forth a peer-reviewed theory that shows the opposite of the ZPD. You'll be unable to do that since the ZPD is close to 100 years and has a rock-solid theory for explaining engagement in activity. Anecdotal evidence is tier 4 out of the four tiers of evidence, the lowest.

"Common sense" is the worst possible argument. To use a hyperbolic example, phrenology was once "common sense."

[vsb]

I am not even sure how Wrath Classic will survive P1, to be honest.
You really think people who farmed Naxx and Onyxia in Vanilla Classic for 6 months (more for Onyxia) will want to farm them again in Wrath Classic?

Honestly I think that patches 3.0 and 3.2 should be short while 3.1 and 3.3 should be long.

But anyway I think that most WotLK players did not experience Naxx (yes, even today) and they'll be happy learning it.

[Relapses]

That's your subjective view that BfA and SL were/are better than Legion.

Objectively, only looking at player activities and things implemented then by the theory of the zone of proximal development Legion was vastly better than both BfA and SL. Enjoyment is subjective. Things that can be counted are objective.

Mind you, in order to disprove this statement about the ZPD you have to put forth a peer-reviewed theory that shows the opposite of the ZPD. You'll be unable to do that since the ZPD is close to 100 years and has a rock-solid theory for explaining engagement in activity. Anecdotal evidence is tier 4 out of the four tiers of evidence, the lowest.

"Common sense" is the worst possible argument. To use a hyperbolic example, phrenology was once "common sense."

The common sense is that you (nor anybody else on this forum) have no idea how Blizzard's internal staffing works and using phrasing and terminology to exclude your precious Legion expansion from being developed by the same fucking people as the expansions afterwards is baffling at best and outright pathetic at worst.

[Johnjohn]

Ion and the team is what is keeping this whole ship floating.

I think he's giga underappreciated, the ability to pull out non-stop tier patches for years is exceptional and it's a key to WoW still staying in millions of subs. It's really critical. like look at Shadowlands 9.0, they flapped here - released 9.1 8 months after - this overstretched 9.0 good 2-3 months beyond what it was supposed to be and resulted in sour experience.

Yes, there is a cost to it - they can't really do another "Legion" grade expansion - an expansion that shakes up and rejuvenates WoW like this, because that needs a good year plus break. That break is unfeasible.


But in my opinion between various shitheads that left, were removed or still lurking in Blizzard, Ion is not one. Blizzard does need to help him out though, it is clear that he can't keep this up for much longer and you can't just have next expansion be just another reskin of Legion, people want something new. Legion formula was good, but you can only eat same food for so long.

Definitely to each their own. but I am on the complete opposite side of the spectrum. Legion to me was a bit of a one hit wonder and was successful in spite of its time gated chore grinds. My reasons for this are artifact weapon system, every zone being amazing saving maybe broken shore, class halls and even the artifact trait system if they actually kept it going after Legion. Unfortunately I believe Blizzard completely misunderstood what made Legion good, which is why we got to keep all the worst parts of that expansion for BFA and Shadowlands.

Some people will argue that WoW has always been the same but I just cannot agree myself. There was a distinct difference in the game before Legion and after Legion. I absolutely hate the direction the game has gone post Legion. The game has gotten way harder, way grindier and is completely catered towards the hardcore esports player, The game also feels like diablo now when it never did before. Casual players get to do world quests for rewards. If you told me in WOLK that all my gear would come from tedious daily quests, I would have quit. If you told me the best dungeon experiences are now reserved for the super hardcore, I would have quit.

For me, you can tell this game is designed by someone with a mind like Ion. I doubt I will ever play the game again (9 months since I logged in) with him at the helm.

[Relapses]

Definitely to each their own. but I am on the complete opposite side of the spectrum. Legion to me was a bit of a one hit wonder and was successful in spite of its time gated chore grinds. My reasons for this are artifact weapon system, every zone being amazing saving maybe broken shore, class halls and even the artifact trait system if they actually kept it going after Legion. Unfortunately I believe Blizzard completely misunderstood what made Legion good, which is why we got to keep all the worst parts of that expansion for BFA and Shadowlands.

Some people will argue that WoW has always been the same but I just cannot agree myself. There was a distinct difference in the game before Legion and after Legion. I absolutely hate the direction the game has gone post Legion. The game has gotten way harder, way grindier and is completely catered towards the hardcore esports player, The game also feels like diablo now when it never did before. Casual players get to do world quests for rewards. If you told me in WOLK that all my gear would come from tedious daily quests, I would have quit. If you told me the best dungeon experiences are now reserved for the super hardcore, I would have quit.

For me, you can tell this game is designed by someone with a mind like Ion. I doubt I will ever play the game again (9 months since I logged in) with him at the helm.

By your own admission you haven't even played the most recent expansion. The fact that you seem so secure in your distaste for the game despite, you know, never experiencing it is one of the biggest issues people have with the present day WoW community. It's just a bunch of people who played at some indeterminate point in the past mad that the game had the audacity not to stay exactly the same for its entire existence.

[Quaade]

The common sense is that you (nor anybody else on this forum) have no idea how Blizzard's internal staffing works and using phrasing and terminology to exclude your precious Legion expansion from being developed by the same fucking people as the expansions afterwards is baffling at best and outright pathetic at worst.

If they use terminology differently than how it's normally used they're literally creating Newspeak. This is science, your "common sense" has no place in it as "common sense" is anecdotal and heavily driven by an emotional bias. You're unaware of this since if did know then any appeal to it would make you the villain and no one is the villain of their own narrative. In Thanos' head, he never did anything evil, he did the tough but necessary thing.

As for it being developed by the same people, that's a technical truth. If all you have is a technical truth then you have no argument at all, you just subconsciously want to say something that makes you look correct. All the practical work is done by the WoW development team and that consists of far more people than just the ones we know by name. And given the Ship of Theseus even if the team has been completely changed over time due to entropy it has happened so slowly that it's still the original team.

As for the named ones, Metzen has left the company completely, Ghostcrawler, who worked on a good deal of them left the company, Afrasabi left the team to work on Overwatch. Morheim worked on WoW before he was promoted to company lead and then later left the team, etc. I could go on with pretty much everyone. I think the longest running WoW person is John Height.

[Queen of Hamsters]

1 month from now shit will be back to normal.

The Hong Kong controversy was going to "shake the company to its core" and shit just went on as usual.

Same as with Riot, or Ubisoft.

People are merely using this turmoil as a way of stroking their own ego. C L E A R L Y the game would "stop teh bleed", which always was ongoing even during WOTLK, if Blizzard took lEsSoNs from the backlash to IRL issues and just implemented the ideas of average Joes on MMO-C...

[Gaidax]

1 month from now shit will be back to normal.

The Hong Kong controversy was going to "shake the company to its core" and shit just went on as usual.

Same as with Riot, or Ubisoft.

People are merely using this turmoil as a way of stroking their own ego. C L E A R L Y the game would "stop teh bleed", which always was ongoing even during WOTLK, if Blizzard took lEsSoNs from the backlash to IRL issues and just implemented the ideas of average Joes on MMO-C...

This is true, though I expect the lawsuit to do some more aftershocks down the road, because there will be ongoing case. I do bet ActiBlizz will settle fast, because it's just a smart thing to do.

Then they will put out D4, new WoW expansion, OW2 and so on and all will be forgotten.

[Schizoide]

Subs have been declining for many years now. IMO, they should have been working on a pivot to B2P (buy to play) since the writing was on the wall in 2017 or so.

Additionally, everybody (including Actiblizzard) knows they need to release content faster. They should split into 5 separate teams.

- Floats, horizontals of all disciplines pulled to other teams' dev sprints as needed to fill in gaps (Largest group)
- Live support, bugfix/QoL/hotfixes/agile response (Small group)
- Patch, next major content patch (small core, pulls heavily from floats)
- Next expansion (large)
- Expansion N+1 (small core, but grows when it becomes the next expansion)

Only problem is that really all this stuff takes several years to bear fruit, so doing it now is starting a footrace 20 minutes late.

Everybody saying the current scandal will blow over and it'll go back to normal is almost certainly correct. I would be shocked if it doesn't. But "normal" is steadily descending subscriptions. WoW needs a substantial shake-up to be revitalized.

[Gaidax]

Subs have been declining for many years now. IMO, they should have been working on a pivot to B2P (buy to play) since the writing was on the wall in 2017 or so.

WoW is nowhere near needing B2P., it gets absolutely eyewatering revenue from subs alone. One month of sub at current levels is like releasing a bloody AA game every month without even trying.

Eventually in some years down the road they will do that and then massively boost their store. But now when they still have millions of subs? Nope.

[Schizoide]

It's the difference between needing to make a change to avoid immediate disaster and seeing what's coming down the road and taking a different route. WoW subs are consistently declining. How do you reverse that decline? Would a really great expansion do it? No-- Legion was great and it didn't cut the mustard.

What keeps people in the game? Social structures, connections, the network effect. The same reason Facebook is so popular. Why are people on Facebook? Because their friends are there. Not because Facebook is great. Lots of kids login to Fortnite every day just to chat with their friends. The network effect is powerful.

B2P makes a lot of sense because it brings in more players. Even if they aren't paying monthly, population matters. You still have subscriptions, of course-- you just make them optional. Elder Scrolls Online is a great example of this.

In addition to B2P and gearing up to build content in parallel, they should release a console version of WoW too. Another thing that they really should have been working on for several years already.

[Lahis]

This is true, though I expect the lawsuit to do some more aftershocks down the road, because there will be ongoing case. I do bet ActiBlizz will settle fast, because it's just a smart thing to do.

Then they will put out D4, new WoW expansion, OW2 and so on and all will be forgotten.

Riot is still fighting their case from 2018.

I doubt there will be quick settling of things, but people will forget it soon enough. Though unlike Riot, Blizzard doesn't have any good or new games that would help people to forget this whole thing.

[Shelly]

Let's see, for me I'd like:

A reduction in systems requiring multiple currencies and juggling multiple things.

Better difficulty curve in the raid - let's face it getting AotC in Castle Nathria was painful and killed a ton of guilds into just not even raid logging.

Stop this idea that everything casual in the game needs to take 1/2 an hour. It shouldn't take me 1/2 an hour to clean out a single calling that's just complete 3 world quests.

Bring back actual tier sets.

Give us another row of talents to keep things fresh - there's like zero reason that the covenant abilities couldn't have just been a row of talents.

Stop writing the game around a protagonist and antagonist. It worked for like MoP and Legion, but overall just isn't that interesting. WoW lore is at the best when it's fuzzy with lots of room for the community to fill in. Let us be adventurers inhabiting the world, not sidekicks to the main lore characters just along for the ride on their heroes journey.

That's most of my major gripes. I don't mind some systems but we've been overloaded with them to the point where I have a hard time caring. So let's cut a lot of them back. Make the game engaging, don't worry about making everything so damn clever.

[Gaidax]

Riot is still fighting their case from 2018.

I doubt there will be quick settling of things, but people will forget it soon enough. Though unlike Riot, Blizzard doesn't have any good or new games that would help people to forget this whole thing.

That's why I mentioned D4, new expansion and OW2. They have some stuff in pipeline and if they deliver on D4 alone, it's all they need.

And yes it will be like Riot, that's why I said that down the road there will be more noise, but overall it won't matter mid-long term, just like it does not really matter for Riot.

People really think this is some earthshattering thing that will change everything. But in my opinion, while it's major news and bad rep, it's ultimately a passing matter and what will really decide is what kind of games and stuff Blizzard will release next several years.

[Lahis]

That's why I mentioned D4, new expansion and OW2. They have some stuff in pipeline and if they deliver on D4 alone, it's all they need.

And yes it will be like Riot, that's why I said that down the road there will be more noise, but overall it won't matter mid-long term, just like it does not really matter for Riot.

People really think this is some earthshattering thing that will change everything. But in my opinion, while it's major news and bad rep, it's ultimately a passing matter and what will really decide is what kind of games and stuff Blizzard will release next several years.

Diablo 4 is the only thing that has potential of being any good.

OW2 is just a content patch that comes 4 years too late. Interest in that game has sunk way down.

And does anyone really think Blizz can deliver a good WoW expansion anymore? World of Systemscraft with badly told nonsensical story can't save them.

[Gaidax]

And does anyone really think Blizz can deliver a good WoW expansion anymore? World of Systemscraft with badly told nonsensical story can't save them.

You say that, but Legion was merely 5 years ago and yes it had shitton of systems, but it was a genuinely good expansion through and through.

So yes, besides D4, I'm sure they can absolutely pull out another good WoW expansion once they are done with this whole Sylvanas nonsense.

Heck I look even more recently at something like 8.2 patch, which was absolutely amazing patch with a ton of great content. So yeah, they can do when they try and I'm sure they realize they need to try extra hard for 10.0.

[Mic_128]

OW2 is just a content patch that comes 4 years too late. Interest in that game has sunk way down.

The stupid thing is that it would be doing so much better if they didn't try and force it into being an E-sport. Same with poor HotS.